HealthTech2Care Podcast featuring Ilker Hacihaliloglu, Engineer, Professor, Co-Founder & CTO of PONS
Ilker Hacihaliloglu (Guest):
🌐 Website: https://www.ponstech.co
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilkerh
Bert Fernandez (Host):
🌐 Website: https://www.healthtech2care.com
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-fernandez
📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HealthTech2Care
🎙 In this episode, Ilker Hacihaliloglu shares how a personal loss led to founding PONS—and why they're making early disease detection more accessible and equitable. PONS pairs handheld ultrasound with image enhancement and bias-resistant AI, giving clinicians clearer insights—even when patients scan themselves at home. Ilker explains how most AI fails across different populations, and how PONS standardizes every scan into a common domain to eliminate bias by age, BMI, gender, or geography. We also dive into real-world pilots with Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Rutgers—and how PONS supports imaging in teleradiology, outpatient centers, and decentralized trials.
⏱️ Timestamps:
00:00 The personal story behind PONS: Losing their father to a preventable heart attack
01:49 The rise of point-of-care ultrasound and why home monitoring is the future
03:58 Why early-stage detection is the key—and why AI needs new kinds of data
06:29 Making ultrasound viable for early-stage detection: image enhancement, scaling, and AI
10:59 How PONS improves diagnostic accuracy without contrast agents or expensive machines
14:16 Tackling data bias: standardizing ultrasound for all demographics and geographies
17:01 Building trust with clinicians through validation and partnerships (e.g., Mayo Clinic)
22:00 Applications beyond hospitals: imaging centers, tele-radiology, and clinical trials
🔑 Highlights:
- The personal story that inspired PONS' mission
- Why most AI imaging models break outside their training population
- How PONS enhances ultra
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