Gerry Chillè ’90 has spent his career harnessing the power of technology to touch people’s lives through music and his work in health innovation.
Technical Advances
Chillè’s gift for technology took off at Purchase. He received his BFA in Studio Composition, enrolling during the program’s inaugural year. “Purchase’s first recording studio was opening, and some of us helped in areas such as wiring the mixing board and outboard effects, and we were there constantly,” he says. “I had the opportunity to learn more about production and many other aspects of music through Purchase. The offerings of the music conservatory pushed you to follow structure, but the studio blew the doors open to experimentation—and helped establish the belief you could go far and wide, professionally.”
A founder of Chillout Productions, Chillè found himself producing and engineering for countless artists, especially in the rap genre, at night while composing and recording music for advertisements during the day. Then one day, NYNEX Science & Technology—you would know them today as Verizon—called with a digital audio problem, hoping he could work some magic. Chillè skillfully did so, and the relationship with the company’s innovation research labs continued for the next 10 years. His work included some of the very first telemedicine proof-of-concept tests.
Improving Lives
Today, it’s Chillè’s work in medical innovation that’s getting noticed. He’s co-founder and Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer of Newel Health, a digital therapeutics company known for developing health apps that are both clinically validated and beautifully designed. One of the products, Amicomed, helps users control hypertension. Another app, Soturi, will use data from wearable sensors and a custom-designed algorithm to provide personalized treatment plans for those living with Parkinson’s disease.
With a recent $2.5 million grant for Soturi from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Newel Health hopes this work will bring greater dignity and improved quality of life to people living with Parkinson’s.
Chillè explains that Soturi (Finnish for warrior) collects motor data from a wearable device along with details about symptoms that the user enters in the app. The app also provides an anxiety support module, a digital exercise program, a speech therapy program, and more. It feeds data into an algorithm to develop a highly personalized Parkinson’s drug treatment.
“There is still no cure for this disease and it’s progressive, so finding out a personalized treatment plan can help people manage their symptoms for longer periods of time,” he says. “At the moment, we’re fine-tuning the symptoms detection algorithm and its medication recommendation module. This phase of the project will take another year and a half, after which we’ll hold clinical trials to demonstrate the benefit of using our digital solution to optimize the standard drug treatment. I’m very proud of our team doing this amazing work.”
A Degree of Confidence
Chillè’s career has been a matter of innovation as well as confidence. He says he was handed that, along with his degree, by Purchase.
“The academic atmosphere at Purchase definitely made a big difference in encouraging you to explore your talents and be open to many outcomes, which helped me find this one,” he says.
Graduating from Purchase has been a family tradition. Two of his sisters, Rossana Chillè ’91 and Giada Chillè ’97, attended, as did his son, Alessandro Chillè ’14. “By giving me a well-rounded education and opportunities to pursue my early career interests in a music epicenter like New York City not so far away, the school didn’t just say to have dreams—it fully prepared me to pursue them.”
