Julia Anthony: Conquering Fears to Simplify Adrenal Crisis Health Management
The 10 Most Innovative Leaders Changing the Face of Business, 2022
While medical advancements occur every day,
some health conditions still remain unnoticed. Such health conditions take
precious lives due to inadequate treatment protocols.
Salt-Wasting Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia
(SWCAH) is one such severe condition. The lack of cortisol produced by the
adrenal gland results in an adrenal crisis, a potentially deadly event if not
treated immediately.
Julia Anthony, the visionary behind
SOLUtion Medical, has emerged as the life savior for those suffering from
adrenal insufficiency. Julia, SOLUtion’s CEO, has Congenital Adrenal
Hyperplasia (SWCAH) and knows first-hand the difficulties of current adrenal
rescue medication.
A survivor of SWCAH herself, Julia has left
no stones unturned to modify the existing medical emergency protocol. She knows
first-hand the trials and difficulties of current adrenal rescue medication.
Founded by a patient with the aim to help other patients, SOLUtion
differentiates itself from the current plenitude of medical device and pharma
companies by staying laser focused on the human-facing aspects of a medical
product to provide users re-assurance and life-saving care.
Nearly 1,000,000 people in the US and
Europe are at diagnosed risk of an adrenal crisis due to a variety of rare
adrenal diseases including Addison’s Disease and Congenital Adrenal
Hyperplasia. At greatest risk in this patient population are the ~250k
children and adolescents at risk of an adrenal crisis. A disproportionate
number of children and adolescents are at risk of serious complications and
death from adrenal crisis compared to an adult with a similar adrenal disease
due to the complexities of managing adrenal disorders throughout childhood and
adolescence. To help them and meet the healthcare industry’s needs, Julia and
her team at SOLUtion Medical are developing proprietary user-friendly delivery
systems for reconstitutable drugs for patient-injected life-saving
medication. With their simpler, faster, and safer solution, SOLUtion’s
device will improve user experience and increase adherence, improve outcomes
and decrease healthcare burden, and, most importantly, save lives.
The fear of losing life becomes a
driving force
Julia and her brother both suffer from
adrenal insufficiency and have almost died multiple times throughout their
lives due to adrenal crises. Many rare diseases put patients at risk of an
adrenal crisis and like people at risk for anaphylaxis, adrenal insufficiency sufferers
must all carry rescue medication with them. However, people at risk of an
adrenal crisis do not have the luxury of an Epi-Pen. This is because their life
saving medication requires 14 steps and multiple minutes to mix and administer.
Because of the complexity of the current rescue injection, they can rarely
self-administer the life-saving medication and a non-medical bystander
unfamiliar with the multiple steps needed for the current injection would have
to perform a veritable chemistry experiment to save their lives. The fear of
dying due to an inadequate medical delivery system was simply
unacceptable.
While everyone waited for a miracle to
happen someday, Julia knew exactly what she wanted to do as she pursued her
graduate studies. She made a life-changing decision to set foot in the medical
industry. Julia explains, “I decided: never again would I want my brother to
fear for his life due to his condition. I was going to make an auto-injector
for adrenal crisis – a tangible improvement to our health management that would
not only save lives, but also evoke education and advocacy for our often
overlooked, rare disease.”
At that instant, Julia’s ultimate goal
became improving the existing health management system and spreading awareness
by shedding light on rare adrenal insufficiency diseases that are often
overlooked. This firm decision and need to meet the demands of the
healthcare system inspired her to begin her arduous journey.
The Major Setbacks on the path of
success
Like other leaders who had to cross a
myriad of hurdles laid on their path, Julia has also experienced a long process
and overcome challenges to reach where she is today.
Developing an auto-injector is a complex
task especially because the product is a combinatorial product, meaning it
combines two regulated components, the rescue drug and the drug delivery
device. Manufacturing, testing, documentation, and other regulatory compliance
add multiple layers of complexity on top of normal manufacturing adding to both
time and cost. These processes are all individually understood but combining
them into a product such as this is certainly non-trivial.
“We experience setbacks every day and use
these as opportunities to learn, grow, and be successful in achieving our
vision,” Julia says. For example, while SOLUtion is pursuing regulatory
approval in the United States first, they expect to procure approvals
throughout the world so their device can be obtained by anyone at risk of an
adrenal crisis regardless of location. In pursuing global availability, the
SOLUtion Medical team learned the standard of care in the United States does
not necessarily hold true in other countries. More specifically, the drug
formulations for treatment used throughout the world vary – at a high level,
some drug formulations contain preservatives while others do not.
“This is a critical consideration when
exploring product market fit and designing our device to meet as many
health-seekers’ needs as possible,” Julia explains. Rather than becoming
daunted, Julia went about expanding her network within the adrenal
insufficiency community, establishing relationships throughout the world
including the Europe, Canada, and Australia, to ensure the drug in their
delivery device will best serve all patients.
“When strangers say, ‘I learned something
today’; When people living with adrenal insufficiency from around the world
write ‘thank you for hearing us’; When investors describe our product as
‘elegant’ and ‘game-changing’ – the challenge is well-worth the rewards of saved
lives, shared knowledge, awareness, and user convenience.”
The essence of SOLUtion Medical
The primary mission of SOLUtion Medical is
to develop user-friendly delivery systems for reconstitutable drugs, or drugs
that require mixing immediately prior to injection. Keeping in view the current
delivery systems that are complex to use, Julia and her team at SOLUtion
Medical have put their best efforts to simplify them. SOLUtion Medical has
developed an effortless drug delivery system that requires only a single step
to reconstitute the drug.
The one-step process ensures the reduction
in the possible errors and makes the entire delivery process simpler, faster,
and safer. This delivery system is 20 times faster than the current adrenal
crisis standard of care. Moreover, it removes air automatically and gets
activated irrespective of the device’s orientation. The most crucial aspect
about SOLUtion Medical is that it is incredibly reliable, accurate, and saves
lives. SOLUtion’s auto-injector is a breakthrough in the medical field for
treating adrenal crisis.
Julia has managed to keep abreast with
other contenders in the same field by carrying out extensive research and
studies. Julia showcases incredible business competency, which is why her
company is performing so well. She explains, “We continually research our
competitors in the reconstituting medical device and auto-injector spaces,
making sure we stay abreast of the marketplace while we continue to expand our
patent portfolio.”
Ongoing trials and extensive research are
the key to a successful business, and Julia has proved the same through her
actions. It is thanks to inspiring CEO’s and Founders like Julia who have
established companies like SOLUtion Medical that patients will have access to
improved healthcare solutions.
Julia’s role in keeping the fire of
motivation burning bright
While Julia has explained the adverse
effects of her condition her whole life to all around her, she feels that
people lack knowledge about the disease:
“I’ve had to teach people about SWCAH my
entire life – friends, family, classmates, coworkers…paramedics, ER staff, and
the nurses at the universities I’ve attended. While the former is somewhat
understandable, the latter is not. This is not to say self-advocacy isn’t
important. On the contrary, it is vital. However, awareness about adrenal
insufficiency is significantly lacking, even within the medical community. In
some ways, adrenal insufficiency and the conditions that cause it are hidden
and become clinically significant only during times of physiologic stress. For
this reason, people unfamiliar with adrenal insufficiency and adrenal crisis
sometimes have a hard time understanding the life-threatening severity of such
conditions. The need for continued and improved systemic awareness about
adrenal insufficiency, adrenal crisis symptoms, and how to properly administer
life-saving medication during emergencies is paramount.”
The positive impact that SOLUtion Medical
is creating in medical science is the driving force behind their determination
to change the scenario for adrenal crisis care and improve the system for
good.
Dealing with SWCAH on a daily basis
Julia knows first-hand the symptoms of
adrenal insufficiency and the toll it has on daily life. She is grateful to
have a team around who understands her condition and provides full support in
every way possible. She keeps her focus on the families and individuals
being helped by her vision
Since the many rare conditions that can
result in an adrenal crisis are often misunderstood, Julia shares her personal
rare disease stories with others to create an everlasting bond through empathy
and learning.
“I remember being carried over the shoulder
of my mother through the emergency bay doors of Temple Children’s Hospital;
life a swirl of lights and noise, too tired to purposefully move yet my body
shaking with fever. This was one of many adrenal crises I experienced when I
was little, and each door we passed through felt like peeling away the layers
of an onion, each portal one checkpoint closer to a hospital bed and some
relief from the aching, vomiting, and headache. After having experienced many
“tune up” visits to the emergency room, the reverse scenario became a sharp
reminder that each door we walked out of led me closer to a world of people
with varying degrees of understanding and empathy towards my medical situation.
While doctors, support groups, and immediate family are bubbles of knowledge,
help, and hopefully comfort, managing adrenal insufficiency conditions and
relating to the rest of the world can be challenging. Though some of these
frustrations are outside of my control, others can be changed.”
The Shining Future of SOLUtion Medical
Julia has a strong, long term vision that
has always motivated her to keep moving forward and leverage opportunities to
create a better drug delivery system for adrenal crisis health management. In
the next five years, she aims for SOLUtion Medical’s device to be recognized as
the new adrenal crisis standard of care.
At present, Julia and her team at SOLUtion
Medical are optimizing their devices for manufacturing. In the longer-term,
Julia intends to make her devices applicable for several other drugs and
medical treatments. Her motive is to develop more devices that can be used for
improving at-home delivery of high-volume reconstitutable drugs for
self-treatment in a timely manner.
To learn more about the acute nature of
adrenal crisis and SOLUtion Medical’s life-saving work, please tune in and
watch one family’s adrenal insufficiency story on Beyond Explanation Magazine
or SOLUtion Medical’s website.