Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights with Brian Hajjar

In this episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm, Quality Insights Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm speaks with Brian Hajjar, President & Founder of Telostrand.

Brian describes building non-invasive at-home urine-based molecular tests for infections like HPV, HIV, and hepatitis C to make testing simpler and more accessible. He also explains Telostrand Cloud, a patent-pending system designed to rapidly identify organisms and predict antimicrobial sensitivity in hours rather than days, potentially improving treatment decisions and supporting public health.

If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see on future episodes, reach out to us on our website.

The views and opinions expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views, positions, or policies of Quality Insights. Publication number QI-052226-GK

Transcript

Welcome to "Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights," the podcast that delves into the captivating intersection of innovation, science, compassion, and care. 

In each episode, Quality Insights’ Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm will have the privilege of engaging with leading experts across diverse fields, including dieticians, pharmacists, and brave patients navigating their own healthcare journeys. 

Our mission is to bring you the best healthcare insights, drawing from the expertise of professionals across West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the nation.

Subscribe now, and together, we can take healthcare by storm.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm. I am Dr. Jean Storm, the medical director here at Quality Insights, and today I'm joined by Brian Hajjar, president and founder of Telostrand, an innovative laboratory company focused on rethinking how diagnostic testing can be delivered to patients. Telostrand is working to transform the testing experience by combining advanced molecular diagnostics with patient-centered innovation, including non-invasive at-home testing options and faster turnaround times for infectious disease testing, something that is so very important these days with all the emerging infectious disease threats. Under Brian's leadership, Telostrand has developed Telostrand Cloud, a patent-pending empiric database designed to rapidly identify organisms and predict antimicrobial sensitivity using nucleic acid amplification methods. This approach has the potential to dramatically reduce the turnaround time for diagnostic insights compared to traditional culture methods. Telostrand is also pioneering new non-invasive testing solutions through its Telostrand viral platform, allowing individuals to test for conditions like HPV, HIV, and hepatitis C using urine-based testing from the comfort of their homes. I am so very excited to learn more about this technology, and I wanna jump into this conversation. Brian, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. What an intro, wow. W- I was like, "Wow, that's good." Oh Well, Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Dr. Storm, it's always great speaking with you. You know, I love that we have such a you know, very, uh, synergetic, if that's a word. Who knows? But a very you know, similar mindset on the view of healthcare, so it's, it's always great to speak with you and to, and to chat, so- Yeah thank you. We're aligned. We're aligned. We're aligned, yes. There we go. We're aligned. So tell me and the audience what originally led you to start Telostrand, and what problem in healthcare were you hoping to solve when you launched this company? It wasn't a real, it, it wasn't a real, like, I'm gonna go do X. It was, it kind of came out of problems that we had originally in the family business that I helped turn around during COVID. And it really kind of all started from the post-COVID boom, where newfound laboratories or laboratories that were down and out were kind of getting their groove back with COVID testing, right? You know, the demand was there, the money was there. It was a great storm pun intended. You know, a great storm to bring things back. And I saw that COVID was ending and, you know, the, the clients weren't coming back, and I realized that we had to expand this test menu. And we wanted to start doing UTI testing the regular way, right? You know, where you're plating and growing a sample in an incubator. And, after doing some speaking to some companies about, getting this sort of machinery, it came that to bring on this category on our CLIA license at that point would've costed the business about $1.5 million, and it really became something that was cost-prohibited in moving forward. So, you know, to answer your question, Telostrand is really based out of problems that I've experienced either personally in my own testing situations, in a business capacity as well, but also, problems that my friends have faced in their own healthcare journey. That's exciting and interesting. I think that, I think maybe, you know, my next question, and maybe you kind of answered it you know, most innovations, healthcare innovations start with a very specific challenge. Yeah. So is there a moment when you realized there was a gap in diagnostic testing that Telostrand could address? Yeah. Yeah. There are two, specific moments that come to mind. The first moment was during COVID we were servicing different camps across the country for COVID testing, for PCR. We had these kids swabbing themselves spitting into tubes 'cause we were do- we, we were doing the saliva methodology, but some camps required oropharyngeal or nasopharyngeal, right? And I realized that people were doing these things in their homes, in their cars, at office, so that, you know, healthcare being done outside of the this sort of gap in healthcare, right? Where you could do it anywhere, right? You know, that really started getting me going and thinking about how can you do this differently. The second instance was the issue that I was telling you about before, where it was based on a problem that was occurring, right? A company wanted to expand and grow, and the entry-level into that expansion was, cost prohibitive. Yeah. And the... Uh, COVID, I think, you know, a lot of people don't wanna talk about the COVID pandemic anymore, but- Which I find fascinating. I was thinking about it this morning. I was saying, we have not healed from this- Yeah ... since. We haven't heal- we haven't, we haven't even talked about it. I agree. I agree. So you mentioned, we touched on in the intro about STI, sexually transmitted infections. Yeah. Stigma plays a major role in whether people seek testing. So do you think stigma still prevents people from getting tested? I think it depends on the community that you're looking at. I think in the LGBTQ+ community, testing is very supported. If something's itching or something's burning, you're gonna go to, you know, you're, you're, you're gonna go get a test of, of some sort, right? I think the stigma is more around a, not a public stigma, but an internal one. You know what I mean? I think it's been mostly identified, that, you know, it's okay to go get, to go seek care. Any sort of now stigma that I see in either the LGBT commun- community or outside of it is more, or is more of, of an internal quiet stigma if that makes sense. Yeah. I haven't experienced in any sort of, of my own testing journey, I haven't experienced any stigma internally just because I do this for a living. But certainly there have been a lot of people who I know who are pro getting tested, but they, but they kinda don't wanna do it unless they really have to. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's still there certainly, but it's not as prominent as it once, was before the pandemic. The pandemic definitely was a, um, catalyst for people realizing that you should be testing yourself more regul- regularly for any sort of diseases, whether STIs or other sorts of mo- molecular, you know, infections. Yeah. And it's gone crazy, the at-home diagnostic testing. Like, now you can test your hormones at home. Yeah. All different kinds of things. And I mean, m- in your opinion, do you think this at-home testing is changing the face of healthcare? And if so, how do you think it's gonna reshape the way patients interact with the healthcare system? I love this question, 'cause I think about it every day. The healthcare industry in sort of how it's set up right now, right, the doctor takes a look at you, the doctor finds the problem, the doctor prescribes medicine, and then the journey is then, you know, ended there in a simple capacity, right? You know, there are other scenarios where they can go to getting s- you know, certain scans or further testing, whatever it may be, right? The at home portion, I believe, will become another avenue. It's not gonna replace other things. It'll be another avenue for new companies and new innovations like myself to come in to really give it, to give it a shot, right? So for example my technology, I've designed this stuff to be used in the home. Yes, you can use it in a doctor's office, office as well as it currently is used, but I've designed it specifically for this at home use in mind because of what I was seeing during COVID, So to answer your question more formally, I don't see it replacing it. I see it becoming a larger avenue where more people will use it as a first-stop shop, whether it's out of insurance capacities or even if someone has insurance and they have a high deductible and they'd rather just pay out of pocket for it, you know, for a 100 buck, 200 buck test than going through insurance. I just see it being more of a first stop on the healthcare journey, not replacing the entire journey as it currently is. Yeah. I, I like that, and I think all of these high deductibles and premiums are driving a lot of innovation, most definitely. Well, it comes back to the cost factor, right? You know, I gave you an example of that before, when you limit physicians, people, companies with a high, cost to get into something, it actually requires you to innovate to be able to grow. Innovation i- fr- from my little brain, innovation is driven by a multitude of factors, and one of them truly is cost, you know, cost-prohibitive natures. Yeah. So tell us about Telstra Viral and the work your team is doing to create non-invest- invasive testing options for infections like HPV, HIV, and hepatitis C. So what makes this approach unique? I think what makes it unique is the simplicity of it, and that's where I think uniqueness should live, is in the simplicity of something, right? Who doesn't wanna be able to pee into a cup, send it in and get, and get a, you know, a molecular diagnostic result in a non-invasive manner, You know, of course I can go into stories about why I came to these sort of ideas about doing something like this, but really as the concept of, Telstra Viral or we call it Telstra in One Cup, where we're screening for the, for the 14 major STDs that are out there, it really was to give people a non-invasive- Well, not just to give them a non-invasive pathway, but to show clinical validity in this sort of non-invasive diagnostic world, where, okay, you can use a non-invasive sample analyte, urine, as a diagnostic molecular basis to give some sort of diagnosis, right? So let's say I'm screening myself for HIV, I could do a quick new test which tells me, you know, if I have the antigens for HIV. Okay, that, that can't get my PrEP or it can't get my, you know, Descovy or Truvada, whatever I'm taking. But this test can because it's a molecular diagnostic test. I'm actually identifying is the virus in this sample, not just saying the antigens are present. So to to round out your question, the reason why, I created these things, we brought these to life, is to give people a easier pathway to test in general. Why should testing be painful? Why should testing be scary, Why should I prick myself with a lancet at home when I could just urine it into a cup and send it back? I think it's a no-brainer. But that's just my perspective on it. Just making it easier for people and just removing the barrier, how many people are scared to have their blood drawn, you know? Yeah. I can name three I spoke to yesterday, yeah. I mean, I too talk to people who are more comfortable testing for sexually transmitted infections at home compared to going to a clinic. Yeah. I'm really interested in what impact that could have on public health. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I look at and I'm drawn to a podcast that I listened to from the West Virginia Public Radio back in August of 2024, which is where I really got excited about what... 'Cause at this point, we had just brought this technology to market in the, in, in the clinician field, and I was like, "Wow, this can really help public health," where they had these vans that couldn't go to certain areas in West Virginia because the vans were broken down. And the interesting thing was that vans that were working, they were a- able to help patients screen for HIV in this case. But the problem was is that the antigen tests, even if they came up positive, the patient would see the positive and then the patient would run away. So from a, from a public health reporting s- statute, you couldn't even report out the positive in this location because it's technically not a positive of Department of Health standards. My perspective is you put my urine test in there, you know, behind the antigen as, as the confirmatory positive or negative, and even if it's positive on the antigen and positive in the urine, you have a full positive that you can say, "Okay," I'm using this, uh, as an example. In Boone County there's an HIV positive test, right? You know, someone is HIV positive over there, so we have to send resources. The technology can give backup to sort of this antigen sort of methodologies, right? To really round out what's required to show that there's a positive in this area. Of course you can- we can sit here and talk about ease of access. You can mail it back and forth. You can mail the kit to their house. They can pee. They can send it back, um, you know, for a plethora of what we do. Um, so from the public health sector it could certainly affect that. But I also think about, and why when I think about my intellectual property I filed certain international based patents on my stuff, was because it could help in countries that are underserved. places that may have been hit by a natural disaster, Even in the US, what if a small town that's near a healthcare network or a hospital system is wiped out by a blackout, We can go in with our test kits, collect the urine and send it out to a facility that's, that's using our technology to run these samples so that we can act- you know, give them quality healthcare, It's all about removing the barrier to getting the analyte from the patient by having it be the non-invasive analyte. Yeah. Huge. Huge. Yeah. I wanted to shift a little bit and talk about Telestram Cloud, which you've developed. Can you explain what that is and how it helps clinicians make faster or better decisions when treating infections? So I wanna g- Would you mind if I go back to the problem that we've encountered and why I thought it was important to do- No ... if that's okay? Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. 'Cause all, all of my stuff is, was based on a problem because it wouldn't become a thing for me to wanna do or put money behind if it wasn't a problem to begin with. Um, as I was saying to you a couple of minutes ago it was based out of this concept of we can't do the normal plating and growing because that would cost a lot of money. So I realized that we could do a molecular UTI test, which is of course using a PCR based methodology, which is wonderful, cause we already had PCRs for COVID. And, um- You know, I, I got a doctor on board and, you know, very nice doctor was very helpful. we ran the molecular UTI test and, we found something in it and I said, "Okay, here's the, he- here- here's the report, you know, go forth and prosper." And he said to me, "Well, what am I supposed to give the patient?" And I said, naively of course, "Well, isn't that, you know, something that you do?" You know, that's not really what we do. We just kind of identify what's in the sample. My lawyer speak goes, you know, we identify what's in the sample, and that's it. He's like, "No, it's the lab's job," because I'm also learning, right? "It's the lab's job to tell the doctor what's in the sample, what will work to treat it, and what won't work to treat it." So this concept of antibiotic sensitivity and resistance was a real kind of thorn in my side, to be honest. Like, well, it's not my job as the lab to figure... I'm not the doctor, I'm the lab. I just identify and I say, "Here you go," right? But of course, that's not how the industry works, right? I have to innovate within the box, as I call it. I have to put myself in the limitations and say, "Okay, how can I make this better?" So what I realized was, 'cause I was reading up also I got into a lot of antibiotic sensitivity and resistance as a concept, Um, we're, we're prescribing a lot of drugs that can, you know, cause these issues. And I realized that a lot of these medical journals and these scientific publications were pretty from my perspective, were pretty up to date on, you know, sort of changing in what would work and what won't work, you know, the sensitivity and resistance to certain, targets that are found. And I realized that if there was some way to marry the sort of scientific publications that are medically, you backed by science, right, with the sequencing that we were already doing, 'cause we were also developing the ability to sequence some of these targets inside of the, uh inside of the panel to give a better, you know, a, a better answer for the physician and also to help the cloud understand, okay, if we're finding these sorts of strains of, you know, E. coli, we're able to use these sorts of drugs that will or will not work, right? When it came to understanding that technology can marry into the science portion that's when it really became something that we could work with. And then after tinkering with it further to really give a cohesive exper- user experience, not just from the physician's perspective, but from the laboratory technology side perspective, um, and of course, after, you know, our clinicians reviewed it for, you know, for them to use, you know, formally, it became something that could help turnaround times, um- Against plating and culturing, that could take five to seven days to grow, and then another two days for the antibiotics to either work or not work. So we're taking something that would take seven days in a long-term capacity to show a result, we're now doing it within three to four hours, right? Based on how, how long it's gonna sit on the machine for. 'Cause once it's off the machine, once the result's been processed, you know, you're clicking a button in certain situations, and you're, you're garnishing a results for the physician to then take forward and use. It's very exciting. I'll just say as a individual who's spent a lot of time in nursing home medicine, I've seen a lot of antimicrobial resistance, so- Yeah ... that's top of mind. It's a major global health threat. So how important is rapid diagnostic information in helping clinicians choose the right antibiotics? And could technologies like Telstrand Cloud play a role in s- slowing the spread of antibiotic resistance? I think it certainly can slow the spread. I think what I look at the technology as is I, I l- I look at it from a, from... Yes, slowing the spread is better for patient care as well. I look at it from the perspective of how can I have somebody who's in pain not be in pain anymore? That's where my brain goes to immediately, Because at that point, if there's some sort of, possibilities of sepsis, right? down the road you want, you wanna mitigate that as quickly as possible. Especially in the, uh, nursing home facility, the NS- uh the S- the NSFs of it all you wanna give a result same day, right? We have the technology in 2026 to be able to give rapid results, Why can't we give those rapid results in the same-day capacity? Why should people wait more than a couple of days for a result? You know, as we're looking at how do you, how do you create a, you know, high-complexity laboratory inside an NSF to give better patient care is certainly something that I like to think of because it helps innovate to control that spread. If you're able to treat people with the proper antibiotics quickly, that should in theory slow the spread in and of itself. I think there are certainly innovations to be done on the medical law side of things to o- to incentivize this sort of innovation. 'Cause once you incentivize it, then people are gonna figure that out and then go forward with that, right? Um, but if there is no incentivizing somebody to do that, then unfortunately the innovation kinda just stays stagnant. You know, that's where I think where the cloud can help is really, diminishing these turnaround times from days to just numbers of hours. Yeah, and, and, a- as you mentioned, that the traditional culture and sensitivity can take several days. I know as a physician- Yeah ... I've ordered it. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, "Well, we're waiting," hey, right. You know, and, but, and, you know, and y- I'm so happy that you like the product, because it seems f- from what we've discussed this sort of topic of antibiotic, antibiotic sensitivity and resistance means, mean, means a lot to you. Was there something in your personal career as a physician that, you know, you know, that kinda was the catalyst for this sort of knowledge behind antibiotic sensitivity and and resistance? I- yeah. I mean, uh, I've seen ... What typically happens, you know, is, is when you're in the nursing home, you have patients who are obviously sick, and you're sending a culture, but you start an antibiotic, which you're kind of playing guess, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, you start them on something which may not be effective, so that is driving potentially antibiotic resistance in that category, and you're not getting, you're not treating, like, the actual infection. Yeah. It's interesting. What, what you're what I'm hearing is that you're attempting, not that you're, like, not wanting to do it, but you're wanting to give them the best patient care, right? I wanna give you something. But in actuality, that no good deed could hurt on the back end, right? It could be the complete wrong antibiotic, you know? You don't know, because you haven't tested it yet. Yes ... do you see what I'm saying? You know, it's, it's the intention of doing the right thing is there fully, um, but there's the risk of it's the wrong thing, or it can only, you know, support a 50% of course, you know certain specific patient allergies, like penicillin or something, right? You know, of course you you possibly already know that going in. But I hope that my technology is, especially the cloud, 'cause the cloud was my first baby, right? You know, I remember when I first kinda came to that conclusion, I'm like, "Oh, this is doing it differently." I was kinda, it w- I was up at, like, 2:00 o'clock in the morning thinking about this problem, because the problem was so annoying. It was annoying. You know why it was a- it was annoying? Because I was pissed personally that the physician was telling me, "This is your job," when I'm like, "But this is your job." You know what I mean? And I, Dr. Char, I know that you're a physician, and you know, you know, I, I don't mean to to, to rattle any cages. But it was like, well, how is this my job? I'm just the lab. I'm here to identify. But in reality, for this specific sort of test, I'm here to identify and treat Right? I'm here to make it go faster. And that's what I realized in my own naiveness there was, no, no, I have to do both. And that's what made me, you know, kind of stay up at night that one night saying, "Okay, if I do it like this," or, we have a line of code, 'cause I know how to code. We have a line of code that does this from the machine, and we have an API there. You know, we're able to connect to, you know, some sort of spreadsheet that has, you know, that's updated by a physician properly. You know what I mean? So it really this one, this patent to me is really important because it was able to innovate around a cost issue and I didn't want to see... And this was prior to Telstrands. I didn't wanna see my family business fail, and I wanted to make sure that I was giving a business that I worked very hard on to make a lot of money for, to, to help save. I wanted to make sure that it was successful. A lot of personal stuff tied into my technology, too. It's not just because of, oh, I think this is gonna be a good idea. It's because I encounter something in my personal life that says, "Hmm, maybe we should do it like this." Yeah. It, and it it's really, I mean, I, like I said, I love the technology. I'm very excited to see where it could go. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. So looking ahead, 5, 10, 15 years, what do you think the diagnostic testing experience will look like for patients, clinicians in this, in this area? Will we see more decentralized testing? And, like, how fast can we go? Yeah. How, what can we do? Like, get on the motorbike, right? You know? Yeah. Right. Right. You know? I like to think of this question, and I like to look at the laws that we have in our world in the medical world. A lot of health networks were not able to run their own samples, so they relied on large labs like Quest Lab, Core, BioReference in the Northeast. Very familiar with them. Um, Mako in the South, right? You know, insert your large lab, right? 'Cause they have the insurance contracts. When... And, uh, there, there's a whole reasoning behind all this to, to answer your question. When they, in 2021, when the federal government allowed an e- a exemption, the Stark Law allowing in-office ancillary services to exist, it gave hospitals and physician networks like a WVU Health Care or a Monroe Health, you know, network center, the ability to run their samples in-house to keep their revenues inside. that's giving better service to patients because you're able to keep it within the same house, To answer your question of where is this all going- I point to the law, and I say, "Will the laws allowed, allow innovation to succeed in the manner that it needs to succeed?" Personally, from my perspective, the only left-standing places in the medical industry to innovate is within laboratories because of the ability to easily innovate with still requirements and restrictions by CLIA and other, you know, state and federal forces that, inspect us. But if the laws are not optimized for innovation, and when I say that, I mean more of the FDA route for, like, medical devices and such, we're gonna be a little stagnant for another 15 years, I only look... And I can only look at this from a laboratory perspective because that's all I really, you know, that's all I know, right? I look at an LC-MS machine for toxicology for drug testing, right? They were using that in the '80s for, you know, crime scenes, right? And then they started using that in drug testing for patients, right? This machine is so outdated, and so clunky, and so expensive you saw a whole Medicaid carve-out be removed, and laboratories stop their drug testing because they're not gonna get paid on it anymore. So innovation has to be supported by monetary opportunities to create the innovation. It's certainly going in a fast direction but a fast direction in the at-home healthcare sphere because you can remove the barrier to testing, right? You, you, you can remove the visit to the doctor's office by just mailing the test kit to their house, right? That's where it's gonna go very quickly, Where laboratories may have to re-optimize themselves, like I am, to be more of an R&D-based business or more of an at-home healthcare business where they're partnering with different, web-based sort of at-home healthcare facilities. You know, we can go very fast, but it's only gonna be in certain sectors of the industry. That's what I'm trying to get at, uh, by giving you sort of the, the law side of it as well as the opportunity side of it in the laboratory sphere. That make, that makes sense. The there's just so many places you can go fast, I guess. Yeah. Well, there, the, it, and that's why I love the laboratory world because The FDA a- after the reversal of Chevron last summer, which the Chevron Act of 1988, I believe, or something, something or other, which basically said that a federal institution... The Chevron Act stated that a federal, federal institution can interpret the law the way that they see fit and then act upon it. When the Supreme Court reversed that- That then stated that a government entity like the FDA has to follow the law to the T, they can't just interpret. So the FDA wanted to see laboratory LDTS, what I do, my stuff, as in vitro, as IBDs, as medical devices. And the laboratory community, you know, basically had a, had a, had, had a revolt saying, " you're just the FDA. You can't oversee what we do. We're, we're CLIA. We're laboratories. We're separate." So they lost that. they lost a lawsuit from the Coalition of Laboratories, I believe, um, in Texas last summer. And with the reversal of Chevron, the FDA really sort of stepped back from laboratories because they made a lot of money during COVID, so they saw the laboratories as a new space to come in and you know, try to make money. But because of these law changes and sort of losing some of these lawsuits the, the FDA really, really took a step back. Not saying that they're not gonna come to us. I certainly think that they're gonna try again in maybe another decade, but that gives another decade of ability to innovate, create, and move forward. I don't want what I'm saying to say that the, that the FDA is impeding this innovation. Not at all. I'm not saying that they are, or I'm not saying that they intend to. W- what, what I'm saying is, is that if there's no economic opportunity, i.e. a lower cost of entry into these regulatory bodies for approval, right? Or if there's not a long list of, you know, red tape bureaucracy that you have to go through you can still go through those pathways if they were cost-effective to small businesses, right? If they're not, how can an entrepreneur or an inventor like myself wanna even take the risk? You see what I'm saying? If you don't have, you know, tens of millions of dollars to start how could someone take your idea seriously? Yeah. Yeah. So these are things that I, that I like to think about you know, when it comes to innovation and moving and moving as fast as possible. Yeah. Um, they're, they really go hand-in-hand with, with the regulatory aspects that we have to deal with every day, and that we should be dealing with. We should be regulated. But to what level of regulatory bureaucracy is required? I even think about PT testing which for listeners who don't know what PT testing is, the laboratory has to do PT testing every year to basically tell their department of health, "Our machines are good. The technicians aren't screwing up," that what we're running is appropriate. The chemistry's good. It's basically their way to keep tabs without inspecting you. PT testing can be done in such a different capacity that could save laboratories a ton of money, right? There's a lot of little ways in the laboratory world where we can make it more cost-effective for inventors or young physicians to come into this world to say, "Hey, let's go invent in this capacity. We can bring things to life quicker here at a lower cost." And thus pass it off to the patient at a lower cost too. Yeah. That would be amazing. Well, But- Well, so, yeah. So that brings it at me into my next question, which is two parts. So when you look five years in the future, where do you see Telestrain going? And this is the second question, this is kind of a bigger question. If you were placed in a leadership role shaping healthcare policy in the United States, what is the first change you would make to improve the healthcare system? First of all, taco Tuesdays. Let's just start there. Taco Tuesdays for everybody, for everybody. let's start with the first part of your question, which is where do I see the business in five years? I've been thinking about that a lot this past quarter. And I think any entrepreneur understands that whenever you wake up, you know, in the morning, you just get hit, hit in the face with a shovel, right? That's just the first thing that happens. And, um, I've decided personally that Telestrain needs to be an R&D based business where we create intellectual property. We run clinical samples because we're, we're a clinically licensed facility, a high complexity CLIA. But we're focused on creating our inventions, whether they're non-invasive or, or other things that we're looking at, at pets further than just humans. Pets, other types of animals, right? How can we give healthcare to every living being, right? In a non-invasive format. And I decided personally that my direction is gonna be in the more collaborating with other companies and other people who want technology for us to create for them in the R&D world, and spinning that off into entities that, that can then get larger investments from, you know, other sorts of venture capital firms or other sorts of companies that want us to create stuff for them to then invest in. Of course we'll still run clinical samples because we're a clinical facility, but I'm not focusing specifically on just running clinical samples anymore. It's focusing on the R&D portion. So that's number one. Number two is if I were to be put in a healthcare role, I would be very flattered and honored. Um, then I would, then I would institute taco Tuesdays. Then I would require any sort of like email signatures have like a fun quote at the end of it, like an inspirational quote. That's just a joke. But, um, I would really look at the creation of science portion, right? And say, "How do we keep this as cost-effective as possible for people to create innovative science for then it to be sold to companies or, you know, giving real pathways to medical reimbursement," reducing the fees for laboratories when it came, when it comes to a state- regulatory item. If I were placed at a larger, you know, kind of FDA level, I would really look at, I would look at the ability for the FDA to give laboratories the pathway to get FDA approval for their LDTs in a very competitive financial format, where it would be very cost effective. Say, you know, "If you only give us 1,000 bucks, we'll, we, we will review and give you FDA clearance," right? A r- like not just saying that they're gonna do it, but a real sort of cost-effectiveness that any sort of small laboratory in the middle of nowhere can afford it. That's what I would wanna look at. And I would wanna look at really removing, not just talking about removing the barriers, really removing the barriers, going into the weeds, saying, "What is this red tape here? Why don't you wanna do something?" And it's because, if it's because of someone's opinion, talk to that person saying, "Why do you have this opinion? What can we show you otherwise to show you that this sort of new direction's gonna work? What do we have to do to, to solve that?" a lot of what I do is just solve problems, and it would be to really kind of create a pathway for a new innovation to come into the health sphere in a more economic format, why does it cost hundreds of millions of, of dollars to develop a drug? Why? Other countries do it for a fraction of the cost. Why is it like that here? And I don't say that people don't deserve those sorts of salaries, they certainly do, but I just ask that question. why does it cost that much? Yeah. Yeah. That's a tough question. I know. It's, it, it's- Yeah ... but sometimes you have to look at the hard questions and just ask why. Yeah. You know? And not in the demeaning way, you know? Not, not in a patronizing way. It's more of in the curiosity way. "Well, why?" why do we for example, HPV and urine, right? Why does an OBGYN or an internal medicine physician say go to the Pap smear first? Okay, they wanna scrape the cervix for any sort of cell mutations to, to, to catch HPV. Okay, I get that. Makes sense to me, but why aren't you screening that person for HPV in their, in their bloodstream or in their urine to start with, right? Don't you wanna see if it's identified in the body first? You know, it's all systemic. Yeah. Agree. Maybe it's sort, maybe it's, maybe it's putting the patient first in the what, what do you want, right? You know, what's best for you from a from a customer service perspective. Yeah. Maybe it's looking at healthcare like that, where it's like how can we make this as painless of, as painless of a, of a procedure as it can possibly be. Yeah. Do you see from... Y- you know what I mean? Yeah. You know? Of course, we can sit here and get into why a physician would say go, go towards a Pap smear first, right? It makes sense from a medical reimbursement perspective. We can have that conversation at some point, but also it's also this sort of, Concept that I come up to all the time is, well, that's just how we've done things. Why would I change? Why would I try to create a new way to do drug testing when the LC-MS machine is tried and true and works? I could just go raise more money. Okay. You can raise more money. Anybody can go get money. But is that actually, are you actually doing good work? Are you actually doing healthcare or are you just here to make money? Yeah. You know? That's a g- So I mean, well, well that's what I'm saying. We have to ask these sorts of questions, right? You know, we have to sit here and say, "Okay, why do you do that?" Yeah. "Why do you do it like this?" Yeah. And not s- not, like I said, not in a patronizing way, just more, just more in a cur- in, in a curious way. There, there should be, you know, if someone says to me, "I don't wanna do that," or, "No," I say, "Okay, why?" Yeah. Tell me y- you, the reason can be very s- very specific and very real, I just wanna know the reasoning behind it. the curious part of my brain goes into overdrive, and I just wanna know why, you know? I'm also very, very an inquisitive person nonetheless you know, so maybe that's just me, but, yes. This was great. This was wonderful. I could talk for a long time. Oh, well, Dr. Storm, we can, we can both get on our, on our antimicrobial, um- ... soapboxes- Yeah ... and battle it out. Um, but as always, Dr. Storm, this is a- always wonderful speaking to you. there are, you are one of the few physicians that I've met who really see where healthcare is going, and I so appreciate you and your tenure in understanding that innovation has to happen in the healthcare sphere. So thank you for being su- such an advocate of what, not just what I do, but what companies like mine do. So thank you. Thank you so much. Well, I'm happy to do it. And if people wanna learn more about Telostrand and what you're doing, how can they do that? They can go to www.Telostrand.com. Uh, you can go onto TikTok @Telostrand or Instagram @Telostrand, or even at my Instagram H-A-J-J-A-B as in boy-106. You know, I love social media. Um, and you can also get our products on the TikTok shop. If you wanna buy them there, you can certainly do that, or on our website, and we can send it to you, and you pee in a cup and send it back. Awesome. Brian Hajjar, always a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thanks. Thank you, Dr. Storm.

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