Saving Lives Through Seamless Organ Transportation with Laura Epstein, CEO of Pulse Charter Connect

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:30] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket podcast recorded live here at Vive in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, I have the privilege of hosting Laura Epstein on the podcast. She is the CEO of Pulse Charter Connect, and she's changing the game in organ transplant. So I really want to welcome you to the podcast, Laura. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Yeah, excited you're here. So look, let's get into it.

[00:00:56] Tell us about you, your business. What do you guys do? How is it different? And why does it matter? Sure. So at Pulse Charter Connect, we're making organ transportation faster, easier, and more reliable. So right now, transplant centers rely on a handful of vendors, which can be a major problem if the fleets aren't available to transport the organs to the recipient. Instead of having these transplant coordinators, so the clinical staff members reaching out one at a time to all of these different vendors,

[00:01:23] we created an aggregated platform that automates the process and reduces delays to ensure organs get where they need to go quickly and efficiently. My background, so I used to work for the FAA for about five years as an engineer and then also my pilot's license. So really came at this from the transportation side of things and learned about this aspect of using private charters for organ transplants and was super excited to contribute to the mission to save more lives. I love it. It's such an important job that you've decided to focus on.

[00:01:53] So what end customer do you serve in the healthcare ecosystem ultimately? Sure. So we work with the transplant centers, so parts of the hospital, as well as the surgical teams directly. Sometimes there are some third-party groups that do the procurements on behalf of the transplant centers, and we make the transportation seamless. So not just for the organs, but also if these medical teams are traveling as well. And I understand that the surgical team is the same, right? The ones that take the organ are the ones that implant it as well, or am I wrong on that?

[00:02:22] No, historically that's correct. So especially for hearts, lungs, and livers, it is the same surgical team where the transplant surgeon will go from their recipient hospital to the donor site to procure the organ and then bring it back with them. So then do another surgery to transplant into their recipient. For kidneys, those might be shipped off one way, and that's just because they can be out of the body longer. Interesting. Wow. Fascinating. Yeah, I'm fascinated by the space. And what's one thing that most people don't know about the problem you solve?

[00:02:51] Sure. I think, especially with the media, most people think that everything's so immediate that once the organ's available, it's completely on its way. There's a lot of processes that allocate it to the correct recipient, and then it is, in fact, the surgical team going to go procure the organ. So really where we're coming in is in that gray space where it's just a high-stress environment and all of these plans are being made, and potentially there's switches in the times and delays and et cetera.

[00:03:19] So unfortunately, it's not as seamless as we'd all like it to be. So that's really what got us excited about the problem as well. Yeah. And so how are we taking out costs? Are we decreasing time? Like what's being improved? Yeah, I mean, our end goal is all of the above. So by making this platform with using software, we're making it cheaper to do all of the efforts while also being faster and more convenient on behalf of the surgical team staff that's actually coordinating these flights.

[00:03:48] Love it. And you had shared a stat with me before we connected, something around like a percentage of these that don't make it. So according to studies, it's about 20% of organs that are procured do not actually get transplanted into the recipients. That one shocked me. I was like, 20%, that's a lot. Yes. I will say that the industry at large is working at minimizing that and really making sure that we can maximize the gift of donation from these very generous donors. Yeah. And so your work is so important, Laura. I love what you're up to.

[00:04:17] And so, look, we love to learn from successful people. What's one favorite business resource or hack that you'd recommend to our listeners and why? Yeah. So when I was thinking about this question, I was really mostly looking at the books that I read most recently. So highly recommend both Burn Rate by Andy Dunn, who was the founder of Bonobos, and then Hangry by Mike Evans, who's one of the founders of Grubhub. And I think in those books, the founders are very vulnerable.

[00:04:45] And besides just sharing their successes, they're also sharing the breakdowns, bad decisions, all the things that we all are going through. And it's nice to hear advice from people that came out on the other side. I love that. Great recommendations. I love reading. Audible, especially. I like to consume books, and those are two good ones. So thank you for sharing those. Look, what you do is important, and we want to make sure that our listeners are able to reach you if something resonated with them, if they want to work with you. So where can they reach out to you to learn more?

[00:05:15] Sure. So you can learn more about Pulse Charter Connect on our website at pulsecharterconnect.com. And then I'm pretty active on LinkedIn under Laura Epstein, and I reply to messages. So if you want to chat about organ transplant logistics, healthcare startups, any of the above, feel free to reach out. Amazing. Laura, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us here at Vive. Like, we get to be here in person, which is always fun. And for everybody listening, make sure you check out the show notes where we'll put Laura's LinkedIn profile

[00:05:44] as well as her company's website, Pulse Charter Connect. Again, Laura Epstein, CEO of Pulse Charter Connect, improving the way we do organ delivery, the entire process. Laura, thanks for being with us. This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare-exclusive digital marketing agency.

[00:06:14] Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.