2022 has not disappointed in its drama – apparently the universe didn’t think 2020 and 2021 were enough. In spite of economic pressure and a looming recession, Digital Health feels alive and well (if not a bit more cash conscious than last year). Knowing that budgets and burn are top of mind, it’s timely that we are releasing our Annual Digital Health Compensation study this quarter. We had great responses this year, and added a number of questions to be able to slice the data in different ways, so we hope you find it useful. We also sat down with our friend David West, the Co-Founder and CEO of Proscia, to talk about how they are changing the way that cancer is diagnosed and treated. There’s a lot to look forward to in the back half of the year, and I hope that you and your family make some meaningful memories this summer.
— Tim Gordon

AQP Interview with David West – CEO & Co-Founder of Proscia

David West is the CEO and Co-Founder of Proscia, a software company that is accelerating pathology’s digital transformation to change the way we understand diseases like cancer. Proscia’s Concentriq digital pathology platform and powerful AI applications are advancing the 150-year-old standard of research and diagnosis towards a data-driven discipline, unlocking new insights that accelerate discovery, improve patient outcomes, and fulfill the promise of precision care.

Nina: What was the inspiration behind founding Proscia, and for those who aren’t familiar, tell us a bit about what you’re building?

David: My background is in computational biology. I studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins and fell in love with the pathology space when I worked with some scientists at Hopkins medicine who were doing work in this field of research that they called “quantitative nuclear morphometry,” which is definitely a mouthful! Today we would probably just call it AI in pathology or computational pathology. Essentially, we were looking at images of biopsies and using machine learning and computer vision to predict cancer outcomes. Cancer is something that runs in my family and has had a personal impact on my life with seeing family members go through that journey.

Aequitas Annual Digital Health Executive Compensation Study

As we cruise into the midway point in the year, it’s crazy to reflect on how much has happened in 5 short months. You could argue that the industry as a whole is in a different cycle now than it was in January. Chatter has lots of folks leaning out budgets, conserving capital, and preparing for a downturn of unknown severity and duration. We finally saw a drop-off in Digital Health Funding this year (a leading indicator we’ve been keeping and eye out for), and so we expect a moderated cooling of the talent market over the next 2-4 quarters. This feels like an overdue correction to us – so much funding has flooded that market in the last two years, leading to inflated valuations and skyrocketing salaries. Equilibrium is important, and we’ve been out of balance for a bit, so while we expect the next few quarters to be bumpy, longer term, we remain bullish. All of that said, there remains a tremendous supply/demand imbalance between jobs and strong execs to fill them, and the inventory will probably take some time to clear. To us, this means, that we likely see continued intense competition for talent this year, holding executive compensation near the highs they’ve recently enjoyed.