Syed Alam Transforms Healthcare Through AI: Early Cancer Detection Five Years in Advance

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they overcome adversity.

My name is Anthony Codaspodi and today’s guest is Syed Alam. He is the founder and CEO of AccentEdge. It’s an IT services and consulting firm that provides solutions in cybersecurity, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. They also serve healthcare, financial services, retail, and government. They help these sectors adopt secure, scalable solutions. And their mission is to drive positive change by leveraging advanced technologies for early cancer detection and

democratic engagement. Syed has more than 30 years of proven leadership in technology and business. He founded AccentEdge to focus on healthcare innovation and empower communities worldwide. He led strategic initiatives as managing director at Alam Company and served as global head of digital transformation at AABV. Under his guidance, AccentEdge has contributed to global transformations, which we’ll hear more about. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

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Not everybody’s eligible. Results vary for each company. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the founder and CEO of AccentEdge, Syed Alam. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Syed Alam (01:52)
Good morning, Anthony. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. Really looking forward to a good conversation.

Anthony Codispoti (01:58)
Let’s get into it then. So Sayed, your journey started in Pakistan decades ago. What was it like growing up there and what opened the door to the USA for you?

Syed Alam (02:10)
⁓ So yeah, I grew up in Pakistan and ⁓ it was great. I I actually grew up in a military base there. My father worked for the government ⁓ and ⁓ he was an engineer and I grew up in an area where, you know, we had access to good education, good facilities for healthcare as well as education and ⁓

Growing up, one of the things that I always looked up to was the United States. And I always looked, you know, to the TV, through ⁓ books that I read about, ⁓ you know, this American system, this American way of living. And I really admired it. So it was always my goal to come to America to learn about ⁓ what drives this.

And so after my secondary education, I arrived at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the fall of 1984 to begin that journey.

Anthony Codispoti (03:19)
And so tell us about those early days coming to the States. Did you already speak English? Was the culture a big shock to you?

Syed Alam (03:26)
Yeah, I did ⁓ speak English. As I said, I grew up in an area where we had access to good education. ⁓ English, obviously I had, and I still have a little bit of that accent, but I did understand and others understood me. So ⁓ I that ⁓ skill already, but when I landed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and went to my dorms, ⁓ that’s when I started interacting with my,

you know, my other students in the dorms and we started becoming friends. And immediately what I realized was that I was in a place where people were extremely welcoming. They’re extremely generous and they’re extremely excited to learn about me. You know, asking simple questions like, do you have pizza in Pakistan? Do you have ice cream in Pakistan? And some place people may think,

that it was inappropriate in today’s politically correct world. But I didn’t feel that way. I felt it was they were just trying to be friendly and they had legitimate questions that they wanted to ask me. And they would invite me to the Trivial Pursuit Games and would play ping pong, the things that I was good at, I’ll share with them and the things they were good at. They…

they would share with me. So I think it was just like really, I couldn’t believe how seamless it was to make friends, to share ideas and moments immediately. It was such an open society that I was really, really not worried. And it just happened over time that I became more adept at American.

culture. So it was not a shock. think it was more like assimilation of me. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. I mean, was right. And the same way, think it felt that, you know, my people, my ⁓ people on my dorms that were in my house, you know, in my house, on my floor, they were genuinely interested in me.

Anthony Codispoti (05:31)
Lots of curiosity on your part to explore and understand what this whole country was about.

Syed Alam (05:50)
as I was in them. So I think it really was amazing and I still have those friends. I still have those memories of those early days.

Anthony Codispoti (06:02)
How did your interest in both business and technology begin to develop?

Syed Alam (06:08)
So I came here ⁓ for those two reasons. Number one, to learn about technology, you know, because obviously United States is the technological power without any, you know, peer and also the business. ⁓ So I wanted to learn those things and I wanted to take those things back to Pakistan, which was recently in the 84, it was only like, I don’t know.

30, 40 years old from 1947. An economy that was ⁓ just trying to get a footing. So I wanted to take all those things back. I was interested in technology ⁓ from the early age. I remember one time a father went to Germany on an official to…

trip and he brought back up, you know, those they used to have those spool tape recorders. I don’t know if anybody else remembers that, but I do reel and I will. I just open it up and you know, I want to see what’s inside it. So I’ve always been interested in technology all my life. So, you know, so obviously to come here and look at what’s the cutting edge was a draw for me.

Anthony Codispoti (07:07)
The reel to reel.

And so what was ⁓ coming out of college, what was the first job that you had?

Syed Alam (07:34)
So it’s interesting. I started work. So first year I didn’t work. And then the first summer that I was, I worked. I started working on campus as a foreign student who was in a visa. I only was allowed to work on campus up to 20 hours a week. So I had to look for jobs on campus. So in the summer I worked at

in our dorms. then, um, then I, you know, in the fall, when the new jobs came out, uh, there was a position for, uh, an assistant at the university’s power plant to run their Apple computer to run reports. And I, I, I, um, I got that job. So I started working right away. And that’s what I loved about it. That I was looking every time I would go to the union, those

days we used to have card box, know, the index cards on boards and you just look at what jobs are available. So every time I pass, you know, look at a job, the job board, found that I applied it or in, got it. So I started working right. Starting the second year that I was the second one school. And then, then the final year, I, you’re allowed to do, ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (08:48)
while you were in school.

Syed Alam (08:59)
practical training in business. The law allows you to go and work at a company outside so you can have that practical training in a business. So in the last year, last semester, I then went to work for a major Wisconsin bank ⁓ data center doing ⁓ MIS work, which was my degree in MIS and finance. So I became a programmer there.

So again, that is something that I didn’t know was possible because in Pakistan at that time that didn’t happen. But here I got engaged, know, whatever.

Anthony Codispoti (09:42)
You were getting

really great work experience while you were still finishing up your first degree.

Syed Alam (09:47)
Right. So, and then three months into my internship, ⁓ my boss came up to me and said, Hey, ⁓ we would like to hire you full time if you, if you, when you graduate. So ⁓ then one, you know, whatever day it was, I graduated the next day I was, I was working. And so I had, I actually, I did, I interviewed for my internship at that,

organization. But after that, I didn’t interview with anybody for five years because I just swear.

Anthony Codispoti (10:22)
What was it you think they

saw in you, Sayed?

Syed Alam (10:25)
⁓ I think the most important thing that I’ve learned is the relationship that you have with people. think people like to work with people that add value and that they can count on. So I think that’s what they saw that I would. I even, you know, I don’t know ⁓ where you live. Maybe you’re, you know, in your area, you have blizzards.

⁓ but in Wisconsin, there’s a lot of blizzards and they saw in me that even if there was a blizzard, I found a way to get to work. ⁓ they saw that, ⁓ you know, I took my work seriously and I put in an honest eight hours of work. ⁓ I think that really is what my personal experience has been that people are not necessarily looking for geniuses.

Anthony Codispoti (10:56)
We do, I’m in Columbus, Ohio.

Syed Alam (11:25)
They’re looking for people that they can count on. And I think people just being dependable and being part of a team where you look at what the team is trying to accomplish. I think that they enjoyed working with me. And so they wanted to keep me around. I think that’s probably the simplest way to put it.

Anthony Codispoti (11:29)
Just being dependable was a huge part of what you were presenting.

Makes a lot of sense. I want to spend quite a bit of our time talking about what you’re doing today with Accent Edge. But before that, maybe hand pick one of your career stops outside of Accent Edge and why it was so formative for you in the way that you approach your work and business today.

Syed Alam (12:15)
Yeah, so ⁓ what really as I ⁓ was evolving myself by going through these experiences of working at corporations, ⁓ at one point I realized that ⁓ working in a large corporation was limited for me. I think I wanted to

I wanted to do more things and I wanted to do things where I had ⁓ more control over what I worked on and how it, I wanted to see how I impacted the world. ⁓ So I had a great job at, you know, at a major consulting company at that time, one of the top technology consulting companies at the time. And I was doing great, but I,

got an opportunity to do ⁓ some groundbreaking work. ⁓ So I just dropped quit that job and I went and I started my own business. ⁓ So I think it was that defining moment and my core ⁓ of what really I want to do is to first of all work on things that I like to work on. And I want to see

those things making an impact. And I think it allowed having a business allows me to do that.

Anthony Codispoti (13:45)
Say more about this opportunity that came about to, I think your words were, do groundbreaking work.

Syed Alam (13:51)
So ⁓ this is Milwaukee. think it’s like 1992. I ⁓ am finishing up my MBA at Marquette. And I was paired with a person to do a project for a major manufacturing company in Milwaukee where one of the problems that the manufacturers has is how much to produce for the next quarter.

because if they produce too much, they have more costs of inventory. And if they produce less, they have ⁓ lost sales, lost sales. So we did, so this is from a statistics class. And what we did with our project was we took that company as an example for our project. And we did a time series statistical model where they could predict what their sales would be.

Anthony Codispoti (14:32)
They miss out on sales.

Syed Alam (14:51)
based on their, you know, and there’s a whole science that goes behind that in terms of, you know, how you, how do you apply that science to it? So we that did that model and we presented that at the senior management at that company. And the senior management tell my partner who was, who was a manager there. So who is this guy? ⁓ If he wants to do this in a real

As a real project will give him a project so they gave me a $50,000 project. They say I said sure so for $50,000 project with one company. I quit my job and I started on that because I thought that was something that was more meaningful for me to go in an area. ⁓ Where ⁓ where we could we could I could see that this is an area that’s unexplored.

because even a major corporation used to struggle with that.

Anthony Codispoti (15:51)
Did you feel ready for this project? Were you at all kind of intimidated or like, I’m just wrapping up my MBA. I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes to pull this off.

Syed Alam (16:01)
So I don’t know ⁓ if intimidated is the right word. think in my days, I think I look, I am more like driven by learning and exploring and just going for it.

So I think it was very exciting to me and I was learning a lot about that. And I think the exposure that it was giving me to actually talk to real business people and have them give me feedback. I think that was just too tempting for me ⁓ to when I compared with where I working for major brewing company as part of this consulting team.

where I had a very limited ⁓ impact on what was happening then.

Anthony Codispoti (17:02)
This was a chance for you

to learn, to get feedback on your ideas and your processes and be able to throw your line in the water.

Syed Alam (17:06)
Right.

Right, and I think I have kind of a blind spot for fear. Like, you know, I think because I think people said, hey, 99 % of the people at the time, they said 99 % of the people would not, you know, drop your job or quit your job and go on their own on just one project. So.

Anthony Codispoti (17:35)
You say a blind spot for fear, meaning you don’t feel fear?

Syed Alam (17:40)
I think I overlook that more so I have learned in my experience, I have learned in my experience that I overlook fear in my decision making process more so ⁓ than I think others.

Anthony Codispoti (17:57)
So it’s not that you don’t feel it or experience it.

It’s you like, ⁓ there’s the fear over here. I’m going to look in this direction instead.

Syed Alam (18:06)
Right, or this is the way to overcome that. I would say, okay, if I did this, ⁓ it would be fine in the end, because if I keep doing it, it would be fine. And I think I was very young at the time. I wasn’t married. ⁓ I could start over rather easily. So I valued those things more than my youth.

Anthony Codispoti (18:08)
Mm.

Stakes were lower.

Syed Alam (18:34)
my skills and the fact that I had the ability to relatively easy start all over again. It over, you know, it made more than the security of the job that I already had and the next promotion and all that. Cause that wasn’t that exciting.

Anthony Codispoti (18:53)
So

was that first $50,000 job successful? Did it lead to more work with that client or referrals for other companies?

Syed Alam (19:02)
Right, so it was successful, but it didn’t immediately lead to more work. Because again, there had to be processes to follow through on that. so then I had to learn how to get more work. Right? So I thought that…

Anthony Codispoti (19:25)
Mm-hmm.

Syed Alam (19:30)
So I didn’t get to meet at work. So we finished the project. It was great. And they loved it. But, you know, they, right. So it’s not, mean, a lot of people, I think that’s true in my experience. A lot of people think that if you do a good job, the follow on work is automatic. It is not. I mean, the business that you’re working for, even though they’re doing a great job,

Anthony Codispoti (19:38)
Now you got to go into business development mode, which you probably didn’t have experience with at the time.

Syed Alam (19:58)
It doesn’t mean that they will immediately shower you with more work because they have their own budgets. They have their own priorities. They may bring you back maybe after three months, maybe over six months, maybe after a year. But for a legitimate business, it has to have the capacity to generate more business. can’t just say that, I’m going to skip. So it didn’t happen. So then I had to figure out how to get more work.

That led me to the area of marketing. That led me to area of sales, making cold calls, dialing for numbers, ⁓ collateral myself. So yeah, so, and then it took me to other areas. So I did find work. That’s what I’m saying. I did find work and… ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (20:51)
who

taught you about business development and marketing?

Syed Alam (20:54)
⁓ So I relied a lot on what I had learned in business school and a lot of people say that business school is not that useful, but I think it is. It gives you the framework, think. So those things kind of worked, but I think what you have to do is to complement with your network. So the people that I worked at the bank, the people that I worked at the consulting company, the people that I worked

at my first client, they all know other people. you do that, you first define who you are, what you add as value, but then you leverage your network and then you leverage your collateral and then you have to overcome the fear of calling strangers. So you have to do everything, right? ⁓

So, you know, your education, your experiences, your network and your skills. ⁓ There’s no one thing. You have to kind of come up with your formula and how you’re going to balance all of that ⁓ that results in ⁓ work.

Anthony Codispoti (22:12)
It strikes me that to go through sort of these different phases of growth, that you have to be sort of at your core ⁓ curious, willing to put yourself in uncomfortable situations and ⁓ open to a variety of different possibilities because you’re pushing yourself in directions that you hadn’t gone before.

Syed Alam (22:35)
Right. Yeah, you know, it is. It is. And I think that that is that is that is to me that has been the most exciting part because in America you can go and you will make it work. It will work because there’s a there’s a system that that does structures and transparent. And I think I found that having that opportunity to make things work where you

⁓ There’s a predictable system in terms of its structure, in terms ⁓ of the capital markets, in terms of the legal system. All those things are transparent in structure. So you can depend on those things. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (23:21)
And you think this

is a differentiator for the USA.

Syed Alam (23:25)
I do think so because I do business with, I mean today I do business in many countries outside the US, many, many countries. And we know that, we know that why, or I know personally, I mean I do business in Pakistan, I do a lot of business in Pakistan. And I can tell why it is that,

it doesn’t become, it is not able to tap into that talent of 250 million people, these inefficiencies and these not having a transparent structure system, how that chips away for that. it actually makes me value the United States systems more because

You can see that you can see there’s an incredible idea. There’s an incredible person, but there’s no capital markets because there’s no transparency. There’s no liquidity. You people are extremely smart, but they can’t get the. They don’t have access to funds. They don’t have access to first. They don’t have access to I’m as simple as ⁓ mailing system. US mail. I mean.

Anthony Codispoti (24:36)
They don’t have access to the funds to put their ideas into action.

Syed Alam (24:50)
A lot of places on this world, and it doesn’t matter, I it still matters, before it didn’t, having a predictable, know, mail system, like Six Sigma Plus accuracy of a mail system is important because you know that at least what you’re mailing 10,000 pieces, almost all of them are gonna hit at almost a predictable timeframe. So you can plan against that. So I can see that.

⁓ that how those things, you know, ⁓ issues with certain certain locations.

Anthony Codispoti (25:29)
So the transparency, the capital markets, the legal structure, that’s all made the USA a great place for you to ⁓ start Accent Edge and grow it from your now doing business in multiple countries around the world. Let’s fast forward a bit ⁓ and talk about the state of the company today. What are the services that you actually let me me rewind for a second because I understand that there was a bit of a transition that took place through the COVID years.

Syed Alam (25:44)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (25:59)
So why don’t you kind of fast forward us to maybe 2018, 2019, what the state of the company was, and then let’s transition into that sort of COVID story.

Syed Alam (26:10)
Right. So right before I did Xantage, I was with Avvy, which is, I think it’s like an hour, $60 billion pharmaceutical company. And I was leading the digital transformation efforts at that time. was just starting. was 2014, 15, 16, 17, I was there. And

I just thought that, again, ⁓ I had that feeling, that limiting ⁓ feeling of, you know, what am I doing? Yeah, I’m delivering projects, I’m saving the company money, and I’m helping the company succeed. But what does that really mean for me? Because I was so removed to the actual impact. ⁓ So I started this sandwich and

⁓ to really ⁓ focus on digital transformation of large corporations, what I had learned at FV and other large companies that I worked before. And again, I just laughed and I relied on my network. ⁓ I had friends and colleagues that I’d worked with.

at major airlines, major financial institutions, major chemical companies. Chicago is a large economy. So if you’re working in Chicago, you can actually develop a good network. So we started working with them and we’re extremely proud. Well, this is like mid 2018. And come, I was at my health club, a gym, and morning in May, right before the…

March madness. It was March and I was watching TV and they said that WHO has declared COVID a global pandemic and everything shut down. And we were really having a good time. We’re doing a lot of AI work. We’re doing a lot of real transformation work. And our airline client said, look, it’s not you. We are shut down. You know, we’re not flying planes. We don’t want projects. You want to survive.

our banks clients said we are not looking to give out more loans. We’re trying to hurt the cattle to see if we’re going to survive this because everything is shut down. And I had all the staff, know, really, really smart people that were doing great job. You know, and they’re enjoying it and they had meaningful work. And so again, I saw so I had to pivot or we had to pivot and we saw who is spending money right?

And there were two areas where there was a lot of spending, healthcare and government. So we said, okay, in all commercial enterprises are not spending, so it’s gonna be a very tough sell. Let’s go sell to the government and let’s sell ⁓ to healthcare. So we redeployed ⁓ our AI experts that are working on ⁓ commercial projects for commercial clients on AI.

put them on healthcare for, and then we went after the government and then what we ended up doing was we immediately ⁓ became a leader in early cancer addiction to our people ⁓ that had experience in that, in the healthcare sector. And then we ended up ⁓ getting contract. One of them was with the government. One of them was with the United States Senate because

What happened was senators have to be with their constituents and with the COVID, they couldn’t be. And because they couldn’t do town halls, they couldn’t go and not shake hands. So how do you do that? So we then came to the United States Senate and we put in a service where we could allow them to do everything virtually. And we put up an office.

at the Willard Center in downtown Washington, D.C., where they could record ⁓ videos. It’s a mile from the U.S. Capitol, so they could switch and record something real quick. ⁓ They could do town halls. They could do all those things ⁓ to really engage with their constituents. And that just grew into

⁓ one of the major business ⁓ areas that we focus on as ⁓ democratic engagement. that, but when we powered that engagement to technology, we also saw opportunity to do it better than in person, right? Because so we, so it’s better engagement and how to fight misinformation. What are some of the tactics where, ⁓ so that went into that.

our early cancer detection algorithm that we had developed, we actually went to Tokyo and we competed with over 1200 companies on early cancer detection algorithms. And we actually won that in Tokyo for this major Asian competition that they have. and then, so going into the pandemic, we had one business and coming out of the pandemic, we had three businesses.

Anthony Codispoti (31:50)
Okay, so I want to peel back the layers of the onion here a bit because, you know, we’re talking about and we sort of condensed the story into just a couple of minutes. But what you’re talking about is a pretty drastic change in the direction of the business you guys going into COVID. You had a lot of good work with banks and airlines, right? And then airlines aren’t flying. They’re like, we’re in survival mode banks are like we’re in survival mode. So the spending stops there.

Syed Alam (31:50)
So again

Anthony Codispoti (32:20)
And the whole world is panicking, right? I mean, there’s some industries where spending is way up. There are other industries where the spending just stopped. I think maybe this is a bit of where like you just kind of overlook the fear part because a lot of people just, they sort of like were shaking on their boots. They’re stuck. They don’t know what to do. You guys made, you know, not one, but you know, multiple big pivots into industries that you weren’t really working in before. How did that

actually transpire? How did you actually get contracts with the government? How did you actually get into cancer detection when that’s not something you were doing previously?

Syed Alam (33:00)
So, ⁓ okay, so let’s take one at a time. And if I’m going too long, ⁓ please stop me. ⁓ So the scenario is this. So, you know, there’s a global pandemic and within overnight, we lose 80 % of our business. Other than what we have long-term contracts, all the project work was stopped. So we lost 80 % of our business. ⁓

when you say, okay, let’s, will go do the government route first. So we say, how do you do that? So one of the things about government is if the government is spending more than $25,000, they have to let you know. So commercial, they don’t have to tell you if they’re working or not, but the government does. And there’s a website called ⁓ Sam, sam.gov. That lists every single opportunity every day that the government

is purchasing for. So we just went to the SAM.gov, created an account, registered, and you have to register with that, and they have to vet you, and you have to… With government, there’s a lot of paperwork, but we did that. Again, this doesn’t happen without work. There’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of 16, 18-hour days doing in front of a computer, making sure and creating… With government contracts, there’s a lot of paperwork.

So, but it’s there, you know there’s work. So you, it’s a search engine, so you go and you search what products you can do, what talent you have, and then you bid. And the thing with the government is, you know, again, it’s transparent. So that’s how we went there. So you say, I’m gonna go for government, so you find out how you get work with the government. Then you go, so on the healthcare, so,

healthcare, I did have experience, we did have experience because we, did work with pharmaceutical companies and there was cancer research there and ⁓ I was responsible for providing the technology that was needed for those particular skills. So what we do is then again, we leverage our network and we say, Hey, ⁓ we have, and then we have people who had experience in that. So ⁓

⁓ We then just completely focused on that, redeployed the people who are working on their sectors to the pharmaceutical sector, but we were already working there, so the people who were already experts in that mentored the new people who were there. And that’s what I said before, when we first started, that one of the things that we…

make sure in our company is that we hire people who want to work and who want to work with other people. So then those people mentored them and obviously everybody was worried that what’s going to happen if they didn’t retain this job. So everybody kind of pulled together and we and then we leverage the network at major universities. And after we won the award, ⁓

There’s incubators in Chicago. There’s one called matter, which is actually one of the most recognized healthcare incubator in the world and we connected with them. We set up an office there so we can then leverage healthcare ⁓ related ecosystem. So again, ⁓ it’s not in a vacuum. So we would find how to enter that market and

go after that and then learn and ⁓ show up.

Anthony Codispoti (36:57)
So

you’re somebody, Sayed, that you wanna work, you’re adaptable, you want people to work for you that also wanna work and they’re adaptable. When you’re going through sort of that hiring and that screening process, how do you filter for that? How do you figure out that person is gonna fit in our culture here?

Syed Alam (37:19)
⁓ I think a lot of that you can tell ⁓ by how they answer questions, the words they use, ⁓ their temperament. I mean, we are all human. So if you are even on a screen, you can tell what is this person’s essence, right? I mean, are they friendly? they, you know,

tough or you know what is it that they like to do and what kind of person they are. ⁓ So I mean we look for people who would be open to working with others and working ⁓ in a positive way as a team member and you know typically you can ask those questions to people and the way they answer it you can typically tell.

Anthony Codispoti (38:16)
Like what’s a question

that you would ask?

Syed Alam (38:19)
You know, one of the questions that I like to ask is, explain to me how you work with your team. know, what is your role? Let’s say you are a team member. How would you contribute to that team of success? Where you get your information and how do you make sure that you are going to be a good member of the team?

Just ask them, How do you do that? Put that question to them. And the way they would answer that would give you cues to how they view the team, how are you working within the team.

Anthony Codispoti (39:02)
I want to go back to a couple of the things you talked about as you came out of the pandemic with three businesses. You went in with one, you came out with three. And two things that really caught my attention is, you you figured out how to do some of the things within government better through the technology. And one in particular was how to fight misinformation. Because it seems like this is something that is still a giant problem, maybe even bigger than it was going into COVID. What are some things that you guys have

figured out what kind of tools have you built to help with this.

Syed Alam (39:35)
So we actually ⁓ built a tool where we can tell what is a particular legislator’s, ⁓ how far their voice is going, what is their rating. We rate them, we say how effective they are because ⁓ all the legislators at the federal and state level, they all have Twitter, Facebook.

⁓ Instagram, all those accounts and they are pushing information through that and a lot of that is coming back to their website. People are getting that information and we, but what people don’t realize is on any particular topic, their public interest groups that are also intercepting that information and they’re also pushing that from their particular information out.

And they’re spending a lot of money. There’s a lot of money that’s spent on keywords that are related to the topics that are in front of the government. These public interest groups as well as commercial interest groups kind of are also doing the same thing. And what we do is we look at the positions of a legislator and what they’re speaking about and then compare that with all the other information.

that’s being pushed from interest groups. And we kind of have a way, we have developed a way to determine how we can tell and advise them that their voices are being drowned out or they’re breaking through. And if they’re being drowned out, we give them strategies to break through that. So their position gets out. And again, we have a two party system. So you not only look at the pub.

you know, and the interest groups of. But you also look at the two spectrums of our political system and see which one. Now we are neutral, so we don’t, you know, we are we, you know, support our clients. So we really don’t have an interest in which which particular position it is from either party. But we can tell them we have these we develop these systems to do that. We also.

⁓ help them with how to do ⁓ to their websites better, to how to kind of, you know, feed the traffic to them. And so, ⁓ that is not possible. Right, and ⁓ they couldn’t do that in person, you can’t do that. So,

Anthony Codispoti (42:10)
You’re providing them with a wide array of services.

Syed Alam (42:20)
Because everything on, if you’re online, everything is being traced and matched and, you know, processed through very, very large scale systems.

Anthony Codispoti (42:33)
So let’s go to the other new business that you created coming out of the pandemic ⁓ in healthcare and cancer detection. Not a person alive whose life hasn’t been touched either directly or indirectly by cancer. Can you give us, so I think this is gonna capture a lot of people’s attention. Can you give us one specific example of something that your technology has been able to help with in earlier detection of cancer?

Syed Alam (42:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So what we developed initially, that’s one thing that won the award in Tokyo in 2021, was what’s called digital biomarkers. So your body has biomarkers that you can detect from imaging.

like x-rays, MRI, CT scans, all that, your body will tell. It will tell because if you have 100 years or 50 years of images and you know that you have longitudinal information on those, these people had this type of signature on their x-ray and they ended up developing fatal cancer. And if the signature was there, it was…

not fatal, it was benign. So this AI that we have started with doing the digital imaging and we would have like 40, 50 years. So we worked with major universities and most of them where we have access to that information as well as the medical centers and that are associated with these universities. So we entered partnerships with them and say, if you give us, cause we just won this award. So now we could go.

And we can pitch, hey, we have this algorithm, we can help you so we establish those partnerships.

Anthony Codispoti (44:27)
And so what you needed from your partners was that data, the imaging data, so that you could feed it into the AI, teach and train the AI so that it gets better at detecting.

Syed Alam (44:29)
The data. Right.

right, and anonymized and also not only anonymized, but also diverse because a Caucasian person, African American person, an Asian American person, an African person, a South Asian person, they all react differently. Their bodies are not the same. So if you just do one one

race or one dominant group, it will be biased. So in AI, one of the big challenges is having unbiased, taking the bias out because some segments of the society have had better healthcare, so they have better data historically compared to others. So how do you deflate that, that advantage that they have? So yeah, so we, so, but hospitals have those, right? Or there’s, there’s lately, you know,

and there’s been synthetic data also ⁓ that can be developed. Yeah, it can be generated. So the latest AI can look at like ⁓ 50 years of data and then it can generate based on what it learns. It can actually generate synthetic data. Learning, yes, yes, yes. So.

Anthony Codispoti (45:40)
synthetic data.

and it does that for the purpose of training itself even more.

But it’s

that’s so unusual. It’s evaluating the data that it just created.

Syed Alam (46:07)
Right. Well, it will feed into an algorithm. So, but the thing is that there is this synthetic data that can be generated. Well, just like there is synthetic organs that can be generated. It’s the same thing. So we started with imaging, but then we integrated with what’s called multiomics, ⁓ your biology of your body, because ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (46:11)
Yeah.

Syed Alam (46:35)
Even before you have symptoms, cancer actually starts shedding signatures into your bloodstream and into your biology. now we have a model that does both radiomics, which is images and multiomics, and integrates that. And then up to five years in advance, we can… We have about 50 that we can…

Anthony Codispoti (46:42)
Hmm.

for what kinds of cancer?

Syed Alam (47:04)
actually work on. We have trained them and we can predict from them.

Anthony Codispoti (47:09)
So let’s say I’m somebody, ⁓ my family history, there’s a history of breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, bladder, whatever it is. And I’m like, hey, I feel good right now, but maybe I’m at that age where, you know, things traditionally in my family history have started to unravel for some folks. Is there a clinic somewhere in the world I can go and have a blood draw or a scan and it says, you’ve got those early shedding markers for X, Y, and Z.

Syed Alam (47:38)
So the best place is to go to your doctor. So that’s where you capture it. I think that we, so that’s another thing.

Anthony Codispoti (47:45)
But hang on,

Saia, because a lot of doctors…

How do I want to say this? Not everybody is at the forefront of the technology that you guys are trailblazing with, right? So there’s doctors in big towns, small towns that maybe have never heard of the kinds of scans that are available. Am I right or wrong on that? No? Okay.

Syed Alam (48:07)
No, that is

the beauty of it because our algorithm integrates with the existing systems. The doctor has EMR, electronic medical records. Our algorithms integrate with the systems that already exist. So what happens is, let’s say they do a blood draw, it just calls our system and our systems respond. You don’t have to buy a million dollar product.

Anthony Codispoti (48:36)
So I want to see if my body is shedding. It’s creating those early markers for pancreatic cancer, which is something that traditionally when it shows up, it’s too late, right? When the symptoms are there, your time is limited. So I can go to my doctor today, say, hey, draw my blood. And what happens? How is that getting scanned for those markers?

Syed Alam (48:37)
SSSSAPI

Right.

Great.

So they would use, they would actually send it to a lab or something. And if the lab, we would have interface to our system in the lab. So as part of that, they would just perform one more task that calls our system. It’s over the, it’s called what’s an application programming interface or API. It will just call that. It will feed what it found on your blood and it will shoot back the results.

Anthony Codispoti (49:33)
So what’s the request I’m giving to my doctor? I want to be scanned for pancreatic cancer. Let’s make it pancreatic cancer.

Syed Alam (49:40)
I think the ideal way would be to just say without specifying what you’re looking for because you would know that pancreas. So we test for pancreatic cancer. it would be like, this is the slate of cancers that it will detect. Cause every test detects a certain, for anything, not just for cancer, there’s screening systems that are for certain symptoms or.

Anthony Codispoti (50:06)
But there’s

a name of the product or a name of the screening or the scanning or the service that it has to go through so that it gets access to your algorithms.

Syed Alam (50:15)
So our product, our product is the actual algorithm is called Accentage Biomarker Cancer Detection, ABCD. And then we actually, the latest product that we have is called Doctari. What that is, that is actually based on generative AI. So you can actually have a conversation. So we’re taking the latest iteration of that is,

Anthony Codispoti (50:25)
Okay.

fascinating.

Syed Alam (50:44)
where you can actually have a conversation with that. So that generative AI, so that we did that pivot because the world just changed after chat GPT came out. So generative AI, ⁓ so we are putting on top of our science and technology, this ⁓ large language model for generative AI, where you can have a conversation with that at this point. I mean, it’s coming, it’s not there yet, but that’s our latest, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (51:12)
Yeah.

It’s fascinating. Wow. ⁓ Really ⁓ mind blowing, cutting edge stuff. Let’s take a little bit of a detour though, Syed. And I’d be sure because your company is very successful. Obviously, we talked about the hardships you guys went through, you know, in COVID. ⁓ Actually, let’s come back to that because it strikes me as that giant hardship there was actually a chance for you guys to reinvent yourselves. And as painful as that transition was,

Syed Alam (51:15)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (51:41)
Is there a part of you that has some gratitude looking back on that is like, wow, look at the company we became because of that that we might not have otherwise.

Syed Alam (51:51)
Yeah, I don’t have a gratitude for the COVID because a lot of people died for it. I mean, obviously that was heartbreaking, what we lost. But I think where it took us as a business and this is where ⁓ we are today. So one of the epiphanies that I, it also improved our profit margins ⁓ because one of the epiphanies that I had

was that if you solve the biggest needs of the humanity, actually it’s the biggest opportunity to make money. People don’t realize that. Because by definition, know, like cancer, who would want a discount on cancer treatment, right? ⁓ If you have a loved one and you’re going to pay what they ask for because you’re trying to save somebody from cancer, who would ask for a discount?

for protecting their hospital from cybersecurity attacks. Who would do that? So if you saw humanity’s toughest challenges, that is also the biggest opportunity to make a lot of money. So we realized that coming out of that. So I have gratitude for that, that it actually changed my mindset where a lot of people ⁓ are saying,

You know niche things or small things and if I can find this and I can cut costs to a certain bare bones and I can do this I can make I can increase my but how about thinking big how about thinking about so that’s why we focused on and now we focus on solving big problems because not because Well, there are problems that need to be solved but also there is a lot of money to be made from those if you focus on that if you solve that problems and that

One of the other areas that we’re looking at right now ⁓ is climate change. That is a big problem. That’s an existential threat. So if we can come up with solutions for addressing that, I think that also is an opportunity to make, to be a successful business.

Anthony Codispoti (54:07)
And so this is an area that you’re in the process of growing into.

Syed Alam (54:12)
Right. And one of the things that I like to do is this kind of funny story. One of the things that I like to do is to actually experience this myself, you know, like, um, see what it is like. So I recently took a trip from Chicago to Yellowstone National Park in an EV, which is 1400 miles one way. And I say, okay, what is the experience of an EV? Can I actually cause biggest fear that people have that I’m going to run out of batteries.

Right? So no. So what is shocking to me is that there’s so much EV infrastructure already in place. And then the cars have the technology. Well, they will route you to the exact same station. And you can actually charge an EV now and within 45 minutes, which is not too bad if you are next to like wild drug in South Dakota. I don’t know if you know that there’s like

Anthony Codispoti (54:44)
Did it happen to you?

Syed Alam (55:12)
Cause they put like wild drug, they put like EV eject to that. So you can go and you can charge a car and go and get the nickel coffee. Cause they still have a place where you can buy a coffee. They still have that. So it was my first time there. you go there, you wilder, you go there. They put them next to Walmart, Targets. ⁓ I was at the yellow, all the national parks have free charging. So you actually don’t even have to pay.

Anthony Codispoti (55:23)
They still have that, huh?

Syed Alam (55:42)
⁓ Mount Rushmore doesn’t have free charging. ⁓ But the issue is cost, because if you have high-speed charging, ⁓ you ⁓ have to pay a lot more. So it is actually more expensive than gasoline, almost twice as expensive. ⁓ So I think those costs are going to come down. ⁓

I think that’s an existential threat. We believe and we believe that that’s an area. ⁓ So I think we need to have solutions for that. We need to ⁓ find ways to reduce ⁓ emissions and we need to also find ways to generate electricity or power for that matter. That doesn’t ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (56:18)
How can you help?

Syed Alam (56:41)
that is free, neutral, carbon neutral. I mean, there’s so many ways. We can build buildings that don’t waste energy. We can do so many things. And applying that technology is like IoT or other technologies to see how we can kind of bring all that down. So we’re just beginning to look at that, but that’s another area that we are looking at right now as a big challenge that we want to get involved in.

Anthony Codispoti (57:11)
Sayed, think I want to wrap up our interview with what tends to be my favorite question. But before I do that, I want to give you a chance to tell people how to either get in touch with you directly or Accent Edge or to follow your story or that of the companies. What’s the best way?

Syed Alam (57:27)
So the best way I mean, I think would be to just send me ⁓ an invite on LinkedIn. I say, ⁓ I’m founder and CEO of Accentage. They can also ⁓ visit our website, Accentage.com, which has our phone number on it. And they can definitely call and ask for me. I’ll be more than happy to personally talk to any and all as long as I’m available.

Anthony Codispoti (57:57)
That’s generous offer. Well, and we’ll include links to to all that in our show notes here. But last question for you, Syed, what’s a serious challenge that you’ve had to overcome? Personal or professional? How’d you get through it? What did you learn?

Syed Alam (57:57)
Yeah, it’s not a hard. Yeah. Yes.

⁓ The personal challenge, think, was for me was to be alone when I because I came from a family. I came from a culture that, you know, that was surrounded by friends and family and I came alone. And I think I had to overcome that. had to see how to survive and how to succeed when you don’t have a support system around you. And ⁓

I feel lucky that I ended up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in America where it was an open society. But that was the challenge to rebuild my whole ⁓ life from a ground up. I think in that what I learned from that, whether it’s all about people, you just have to introduce yourself. Say, Hey, my name is Sayed.

99 % of the people will be open to you, talking to you. So just show up. I think just ask, just do. It’s very simple thing that probably your mother told you. So don’t forget those lessons that you were told as a child. And I think everything takes care of itself after that.

Anthony Codispoti (59:35)
I love that message. ⁓ know, safe human connection, I think is some of the best medicine that we have in the world. Yeah. And you coming here, you’re, you know, young adult at the time, hadn’t lived on your own before. You came from an environment where, you know, friends and family were close. And now you, but now you had to meet a whole bunch of new people. You know, you weren’t coming here with that support system. You had to stand on your own and you had to

Syed Alam (59:41)
Yep. It’s all about people.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:04)
kind of break through that barrier, that fear of, and I gotta go and introduce myself, and I’ve gotta find a new group to interact with, and it sounds like, man, you couldn’t have landed in a better place. The folks that you found there in Milwaukee, they accepted you arms wide open, right?

Syed Alam (1:00:16)
Yes.

Yeah, America, that’s America for you.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:23)
I love it. Syed Alam from Accent Edge, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Syed Alam (1:00:32)
And thank you for having me. I appreciate it as well.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:35)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.