Eva van Rikxoort (CEO and Founder, Thirona)

Can you explain your job to a five-year-old? 

My kids are four and six, so I get some practice at home. I would say there are ways, if you go to a doctor, that we can look inside the body, like taking pictures of the inside of your body. But what we do is we make computer programs, a little bit like if you think of your own computer games, where we help doctors to see what is in your body, but also if I want to go from A to B through a maze, for example—how do you walk there to get to the thing that is actually where you are sick or where you have pain so that the doctor can treat it for you?

What excites you most about your job?

Yes, I think what I really like about going to work every day is that, with our company, we have a team of like-minded people, but also around us in the world, we are really working every single day on making things that make treatments of lung disease better. And that to me is very important. If you get a lung disease currently, it's one of the areas that has the most people dying and sick because we don't know how to treat it well. And we are really, every day as a whole community, taking steps to make sure we improve on this. So it's really exciting to do that. 

Which trend will change the future of medicine? 

So of course, we're an AI company, and I'm going to say AI, but I look at it a little bit more broadly then just saying yes, we can make treatments better, we can personalize. This is all very true. But I think an often overlooked thing that is really going to change things worldwide is that AI also equalizes everything. With an AI program, it doesn't matter if you go to a hospital with a doctor who studied at Harvard or in a developing country or even if there's no doctor, everyone will be able to get the same kind of expertise—in my case, with their CT scan.

So I think AI is going to not just make things better, more personalized. We are also equalizing the playing field much more and making all this expertise accessible everywhere. So to me, that is also a huge game changer that AI is going to accomplish, I think, actually very quickly. 

Looking back, which trends have you missed or underestimated? 

So again, I'm actually going to say that I, and many other people, we are probably underestimating the current AI hype. I think if you look at how fast it's developing—generative AI, everything—we are underestimating the change we're going through and it's either hop on or lose.

So I think it is something even I'm overlooking in the sense that also we might be moving too slow in adapting to everything that's happening in the general AI world. I think we are all, even the people right in it like ourselves, missing how fast it's all going to change. 

Which MedTech initiative or startup deserves more attention? 

What I really admire is when people really focus on things that are maybe commercially not top of mind. So that is rare diseases and developing countries. So there's AI and other companies specifically focusing there. And I think that is really admirable. And also, in some of those companies, they are setting an example, because there are, for example, no doctors in rural areas in developing countries. They're really showing us with AI how you can level the playing field again by going out there and doing it. So those are initiatives that I really admire. 

And I think rare diseases is something we try to work on a little bit but, it's so hard for people with rare diseases or children with rare diseases that, since it's commercially less attractive, it doesn't get the attention that it deserves. So I think those kinds of initiatives really deserve our admiration, but also funding.

Where would you put a million dollars? 

If I think about how I would make the world a better place if I could invest one million somewhere, and I look at what we do, I think of how we cannot get the world to stop smoking. So, if I think about that, and if I look at my own children, I would invest in education at a very young age of healthy habits and not smoking is one of them, but starting educating them about this early. And smoking is a personal pet peeve because I'm close to it because we work on lung diseases. But that is, I think, where I would invest in educating from a very young age. Don't smoke, please don't smoke. That's probably what I would do to hopefully for the next generation, make things better.

What's the best advice you've ever received? 

So I think it's a very simple one. I also very often share it and that is: If you need help, ask for help.

For so many, if you start a company, many things are different, but there are many people in the world who've been through many of the hoops that you have to go through, and you can do it all again yourself. But there are very few people who are not willing to help you, only you have to ask them. And that is advice I got very early on from another entrepreneur.

The worst thing that can happen is that someone says no, which actually rarely happens. And if they say no, nothing happens, or usually if people say no—I also sometimes have to say no, because I don't know or don't understand—but they usually try to find them someone else who can help, right? So it’s really knowing you are not alone and you don't have to be, and there are people who want to help. Actually, most people really want to help you. They really like that you started the company and yeah if you're not a competitor, they help with advice or anything. So that is by far the best advice I've ever gotten. And I use it a lot and I give it to a lot to other people now.