Empowered Patient Podcast

Randy Boldyga is the CEO, President, and Founder of RXNT, which provides electronic medical records, electronic prescribing, and practice management products. One primary focus is improving patient charts using AI tools to enable providers to communicate with patients more efficiently and effectively. Using predictive analytics and virtual health assistants, this approach can improve patient outcomes by making healthcare more personalized and proactive.  Randy explains, "There are things like enhanced diagnostics, in which AI can analyze medical images such as X-rays and MRIs with high accuracy, and personalized medicine, where AI can process and interpret genetic information, helping to tailor treatments to individual patients. There are predictive analytics, operational efficiencies such as AI, and streamlining administrative tasks for their office, such as scheduling, billing, and managing patient records." "There’s virtual health assistance where AI-powered chatbots and individual assistance can help with appointment scheduling and offer medication reminders, improving patient engagement and adherence. There’s robotic surgery, drug discovery and development, remote monitoring, enhanced patient records, and training and education. So those are all areas where AI has the potential to make healthcare more personalized, efficient, and proactive, leading to better patient outcomes in a more streamlined system." #RXNT #PatientCharts #MedAI #PersonalizedMedicine #AI #MedTech RXNT.com Download the transcript here

10/1/24 • 16:48

Joseph Mossel, CEO and Co-Founder of Ibex Medical Analytics is developing AI-based cancer diagnostic technology to help pathologists work faster and more accurately with tissue samples. This technology is being widely adopted as an artificial pathologist that can perform tasks more efficiently and aid the pathologist in reducing error rates, which is ever more important with the shortage of pathologists and increasing demand. Partnering with pharma companies, this technology has the potential to develop algorithms that can help determine the effectiveness of specific cancer drugs, expanding the application of AI beyond improving diagnostic accuracy. Joseph explains, "Pathology labs know how to receive a biopsy and a tissue sample and then convert it into a slide. Then, it is diagnosed by the pathologist. Our technology, not only does it help the pathologist to do their work faster, but it also is embedded within the lab workflow. You can think of the lab as the kind of a factory here, and we help all of that to be more efficient and faster. In some cases, we can actually cut down the time to diagnosis by even a few days." "Many studies that we’ve run with pathologists found that using our AI is better than just the AI and better than pathologists not using the AI. And you’ll ask soon better by how much. That depends on the specific pathologists and the lab. But we’ve seen good labs with an error rate of around 2% to 3%. And by error, I mean really missing a cancer diagnosis, so diagnosing a cancerous case as benign. And then the absolute worst we’ve ever seen was a lab where 20% of the cases were misdiagnosed, which was a bit shocking. With a pathologist using our algorithm, the advantage of the two working together is that the algorithm and the pathologist tend to make different mistakes. Working together, we get to a level where there’s maybe a handful of mistakes in every 10,000 cases." #IbexMedicalAnalytics #CancerDiagnostics #Cancer #DigitalPathology #Pathology #AI #AIinPathology #PatientOutcomes  ibex-ai.com Download the transcript here

9/30/24 • 18:48

Dr. Chris Heery is Chief Medical Officer at Arcellx, a company focusing on developing anito-cel, a significant advancement in CAR-T cell therapy, to treat relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma (rrMM). Multiple myeloma is a rare type of blood cancer that affects plasma cells in the bone marrow and has few treatment options. Arcellx is showing promising data from clinical trials with patients with rrMM who have failed prior therapies and have received Fast Track, Orphan Drug, and Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy Designations from the FDA for anito-cel. Chris explains, "The company was founded based on an idea that you could take a novel protein structure and modify it to be able to bind to targets on the surface of cancer cells. And over many years of work, the founders were able to demonstrate that that was possible. Over the last three or four years, Arcellx has focused more on taking what were some of those early ideas and turning them into a product that can help patients. For these last three or four years, most of our focus has been around the lead asset that we call anito-cel that treats multiple myeloma and trying to get that product through the approval process to be able to be a commercial product that can be used for patients both in the United States and the rest of the world." "When a patient is diagnosed with multiple myeloma, in general, most patients are older. The median age of diagnosis of multiple myeloma is around 70 years old, and those plasma cells can cause damage to the normal bone marrow by crowding out the normal bone marrow."  "They can also make a lot of the protein that a normal plasma cell would make. By making a lot of that protein, those proteins can cause deposition and damage into other tissues. So, patients can arrive at the clinic with a variety of different symptoms that have to do with either decreased bone marrow activity, decreased number of normal cell populations in their blood, or damage to things like their kidneys or other end organs that you need for normal human function." #Arcellx #CellTherapy #CARTTherapy #RRMM #MultipleMyeloma #BloodCancer #Cancer #RareDisease arcellx.com Download the transcript here

9/27/24 • 21:29

Dr. Mohammed Elamir, lead physician at Aviv Clinics, offers diagnostics and treatments for brain injuries such as PTSD, stroke, and traumatic brain injury and to address cognitive decline. After comprehensive physical and mental assessment, including brain scans, patients receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy and other therapies like psychotherapy and neurocognitive training. Individualized plans are designed to get to the root causes of neurological and cognitive issues and stimulate the growth of new cells and blood flow, even for patients with long-standing conditions.   Dr. Mo explains, "Our pre-assessment testing is a lot more rigorous than your kind of annual physical. We do three to five days of testing that can involve medical evaluations with the medical doctors and advanced blood work for different biomarkers for injury or inflammation. Two very specific brain scans that I think separate our assessment from most, and one is an MRI with DTI analysis. That is a microstructure analysis of the brain. So we can look at the nerve tracks running through the brain, how well-connected, and how dense they are."   "If somebody’s approved for the treatment, they would undergo up to a 12-week treatment regimen involving hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And we can go into the details of that oxygen therapy, but in addition to that, they’ll have other appointments, whether it’s PT, psychological counseling, or neurocognitive training. And by the end of the 12 weeks, they should be feeling better, but objectively, we want to see why. We repeat the entire pre-treatment assessment at the end so we can have an objective comparison."  #AvivClinics #HBOT #HyperbaricMedicine #PTSD #Stoke #Aging Aviv-Clinics.com Download the transcript here

9/26/24 • 16:41

Tomer Shussman, the Co-Founder and CEO of OneStep, is at the forefront of motion intelligence and gait analysis. OneStep provides a smartphone app that monitors movement and provides real-time data about gait patterns and changes over time. The system can predict and prevent conditions like falls, provide information about overall health, and reveal early warning signs for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and other aging-related diseases. Integrating OneStep's gait analysis data with Epic electronic health records allows healthcare providers to streamline documentation and leverage gait data to provide immediate actionable feedback to patients. Tomer explains, "When we started OneStep, we started with physical therapy and rehabilitation, particularly after knee replacements, hip replacements, and injuries of all kinds. But since then, we now have customers and partners who work with us on fall prevention, essentially identifying and quantifying the risk of falling through gait analysis. Our partners work with us on using gait as a biofeedback tool for dosing the level of chemotherapy." "We recently launched a cognitive decline score that measures and quantifies the cognitive impact on gait in cases like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, and dementia by looking at the differences between conscious and unconscious gait. And this is just scratching the surface. These are all things that are already commercialized. We have so much more in the pipeline that we’re currently researching." "What we’ve been able to add to it is that we have customers and partners conducting a Timed Up and Go Test through OneStep. What we’ve been able to add to it from a clinical perspective is parameters like the base width - is the patient walking on a very wide base or a very narrow base, the step length, and the step length asymmetry." #OneStep #GaitAnalysis #FallPrevention #Gait #RTM #RemoteTherapeuticMonitoring #SeniorLivingFacilities OneStep.co Download the transcript here

9/25/24 • 17:35

Dr. Sherif Idriss is the CEO of Elastin Biosciences, a company focused on targeting aging-related diseases by restoring elastin, a key protein in the extracellular matrix that provides elasticity and resilience to organs and tissues. They are developing small molecule therapies for diseases linked to elastin deficiency, including Williams syndrome and abdominal aortic aneurysm. As elastin degrades over time due to aging, it leads to loss of tissue structural integrity and function, contributing to numerous age-related diseases.   Sherif explains, "One of the hallmarks of aging is the loss of the extracellular matrix, which is composed of several proteins. Collagen is quite famous, but also elastin is the other major protein that is responsible for the elasticity of the different organs. For example, in our skin, the loss of elastin is associated with us looking older and having all the aging signs and wrinkles on the skin. If you imagine that there are other organs inside that we don’t visually see, then you have also the blood vessels, the lungs, a lot of the connective tissue. The extracellular matrix proteins and elastin itself are also aging in the same way and have their own form of damage one way or another. All of this contributes to aging and aging-related diseases as well." "Another kind of disease is the category of rare diseases. In this case, we aim to target Williams syndrome, a rare disease characterized by a genetic partial deletion of around 26 genes. One of these genes is elastin itself, so some genetic material is still there, but there is not enough. We would like to try to push the elastin production up in Williams syndrome, and this would help rectify a lot of the disease issues, particularly when it comes to the cardiovascular system because Williams syndrome patients have quite a lot of issues with the cardiovascular system from birth and all through life." #ElastinBiosciences #Aging #AgingRelatedDiseases #Elastin #WilliamsSyndrome  elastin-biosciences.com Download the transcript here

9/24/24 • 17:55

Dr. Harven DeShield is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vivacelle Bio, which is developing a nanoparticle-based treatment called VBI-S to address the underlying causes of septic shock. The treatment works by efficiently redistributing nitric oxide to help regulate blood pressure and improve organ function, reducing the need for traditional vasopressor treatments. Vivacelle is also developing a product to help address hemorrhagic shock and minimize reperfusion injury. Harven explains, "There are seven aspects to septic shock - actually eight. So, first, you have an infection. You have to have an infection, whether it is a bacterial, virus, or fungus. And then, eventually, they give you fluids—your blood pressure drops. And so, they try to correct that by giving you fluids. And when the fluids fail, then you transition from sepsis to septic shock." "Then, you are also dealing with the fact that they put you on vasopressors once you get into septic shock. When they put you on vasopressors, that creates another whole realm of problems, which I can get into later. But, essentially, they have some serious toxicity effects, including reducing cardiac output. It causes cardiac arrhythmia and blood clots and can even lead somebody to go into hemorrhagic shock. So, you have the infection problems, you have the relative and absolute hypovolemia problem." "Our product, for example, works within, and I’m using phase 2a - we see results in as little as 90 minutes, in terms of, at least, correcting the blood pressure. And it really can be very severe, and time is of the essence. There used to be something they called the "golden hour”.  This means you have an hour, depending on how low your blood pressure is. Now, some people call it the "platinum ten minutes". #VivacelleBio #SepticShock #Sepsis #Hypovolemia #UrgentCareTreatment vivicellebio.com Download the transcript here

9/23/24 • 19:42

Sandra Johnson, the Senior Vice President of Client Services at CliniComp, discusses the evolving landscape of electronic health records (EHRs) and the need for interoperability and customization to meet clinicians' needs. She emphasizes the importance of putting clinicians first and involving them in the software development process from the beginning to create a configurable and user-friendly system. There are multiple ways to use AI and automation to improve EHRs, including predictive analytics, automating routine tasks, and providing decision support for clinicians. Sandra explains, "We are a 40-year-old company, so we’ve evolved a lot over the years to meet the growing needs of the healthcare industry. We originally started as a modular EMR system focused on the perinatal and critical care setting. We’ve continued to evolve over the years to offer inpatient solutions and now a full-service EHR solution suite. We continue to scale and grow to meet the evolving needs of the healthcare community and are happy to be able to provide a solution that is customized and driven by the clinicians’ viewpoint." "Well, there are always new trends that are arising. The latest buzz is around AI, and so it’s a very complex environment with high acuity needs in the hospital setting. EHRs need to evolve to ensure that they’re continuing to offer the solutions and services needed as that landscape continues to change. So, systems that are data-driven can provide that automation to provide time savings and operational efficiencies. It’s not an easy task. It’s a very complex environment, but a strong infrastructure and architecture that can scale to meet these needs is critical." #Clinicomp #EHRSolutions #HealthcareInnovation #FutureHIT #IntegratedEHR #ElectronicHealthRecords #EHR #EMR clinicomp.com Download the transcript here

9/19/24 • 17:23

Kathy Gunn, VP of commercial and clinical operations at Wellsense, discusses the pressure mapping system Wellsense developed to prevent pressure injuries caused by support surfaces, offloading devices, and medical equipment. The pressure mapping technology works by installing an overlay into existing support surfaces, which sends real-time pressure readings and locations to an iPad-like device at the end of the bed. This visual feedback helps healthcare providers make better clinical decisions and customize care for each patient. Without this system, driven by standard procedures, the prevention of pressure injuries is inconsistent, and there is no way to assess the effectiveness of their actions or identify failing equipment. Kathy explains, "A whole slew of factors impact a patient’s exposure to pressure. Not only do we bring in our pressure mapping system to provide visual feedback and historical reports for root cause analysis, but we also bring in clinical specialists. We bring in these clinical specialists who are all former nurses, and we integrate them into each of our partner facilities so that they can provide ongoing education, support, and resources. We found that the collaboration and partnership we have leads to the greatest success, and we see reductions in pressure injuries anywhere from 50% to 100% with this method." "The pressure mapping system provides visual feedback that will give healthcare providers the information they need to make better clinical decisions. Whether it’s choosing an offloading device, a pillow, a wedge, or a fluidized positioner, the nursing staff at the bedside is going to know whether they’ve chosen the right type, the right quantity, and whether they’re placing it appropriately. They will know better how to adjust the head of the bed or the foot of the bed articulation. Furthermore, they’re going to be able to assess the functionality of their support surfaces - whether it’s nearing or it’s at the end of its life, whether it’s malfunctioning, or even if it’s appropriate for the size of the patient. These are all factors that are going to impact the patient’s exposure to pressure, and pressure is what is going to eventually lead to skin breakdown." #Wellsense #PressureInjuries #PressureMapping #PressureUlcers #PressurePrevention #WoundCare #HAPI #HospitalAcquiredPressureInjury wellsensevu.com Download the transcript here

9/18/24 • 19:02

Jean Sachs, CEO of Living Beyond Breast Cancer, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing disparities in cancer treatment and providing resources and support for individuals diagnosed with breast cancer. LBBC is part of the No One Missed breast cancer campaign, which aims to raise awareness about the importance of biomarker testing for metastatic breast cancer to help identify specific mutations in the tumor and develop a personalized treatment plan. Jean explains, "We are so proud at Living Beyond Breast Cancer to be part of this campaign, founded and launched by LUNGevity Foundation in 2021. So, they are an organization that focuses on lung cancer. They wanted to get the word out about the importance of biomarker testing, particularly to those with non-small cell lung cancer, which is the non-smoking kind of lung cancer. They pulled together 25 organizations, created a website, ran a big campaign for a few years, and then realized that this kind of education campaign would be so beneficial to other types of cancers. So, we were very honored to be selected as the organization that would take the lead for the breast cancer community." "Well, there are so many biomarker tests, and yes, they are more accurate, but this is important for anyone diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. This is breast cancer that is beyond the breast. It’s in a vital organ, usually liver, lung, bone, or brain - it’s now considered an incurable disease. They have to ask their doctor if they have had a biomarker test or when they will have it because it can lead to finding specific mutations in the cancer tumor that might lead to a new treatment that they wouldn’t be eligible for unless they knew they had the mutation." #NoOneMissed #LBBC #PersonalizedMedicine #Biomarker #BiomarkerTesting #MBC #MetastaticBreastCancer #BreastCancer #BreastCancerResources #CancerAwareness lbbc.org Download the transcript here

9/17/24 • 17:22

Dr. Monica Perez, the Scientific Chair at the Arms and Hands Lab at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Northwestern University, is focused on developing drugs and strategies for treating those with spinal cord injuries. With no FDA-approved treatment, the current standard of care is surgery and physical rehabilitation, depending upon the location of the injury and cause. The AbilityLab is conducting a clinical trial with NVG-291, which targets the body's natural inhibitors for repair, regenerates neurons in the CNS, and aims to improve connections disrupted by spinal cord injury. Exercise is also a component of this treatment to improve outcomes.   Monica explains, "The experiment we’re running today at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is the first of its kind study because we’re using a medication that we have evidence in animal studies that actually can improve regeneration in the central nervous system and contribute at least to enhance recovery of function. This is NVG-291, a medication that targets the body’s natural inhibitors for repair. And that, in theory, is supposed to improve connections disrupted by a spinal cord injury." "We are working with NervGen Pharma, a company that provides the medication. This is an injection. Our patients receive 84 injections during the trial. This is a randomized placebo-controlled trial, so they can receive either the real medication or a placebo medication, which is followed by exercise rehabilitation. So, it’s pharmacology - the medication targets the body’s natural inhibitors of repair, aiming to enhance the repair of connections that were affected by a spinal cord injury." #SRAbilityLab #SpinalCordInjury #NervGenPharma #CNS #CentralNervousSystem #Rehabilitation sralab.org Download the transcript here

9/16/24 • 16:38

Richard ‘RJ’ Kedziora, Co-Founder, CEO, and Chief People Officer at Estenda Solutions, emphasizes that usability is critical in developing successful digital therapeutics, and industry standards and interoperability are essential for data sharing and integration. A digital therapeutic can be prescribed by a physician and reimbursed by insurance companies. It is a digital health application that has undergone clinical trials and regulatory review to prevent, monitor, or treat physical or mental health issues. The future of digital therapeutics looks promising, especially with Medicare's introduction of billing codes for prescription digital therapeutics. Richard explains, " I think of the difference between a digital health application and a digital therapeutic as the difference between supplements and medications prescribed by a physician. So as you know, there are any number of supplements on the market. Some have more evidence than less about whether or not they can prevent, treat, or monitor a specific disease condition." "Digital therapeutics, which can be prescribed, have gone through a rigorous evidencing process of clinical trials to make sure they work and have gone through regulatory review here in the U.S. by the FDA. So, they’re an elevated category of digital health applications that have been created and can make a difference in the world." "You would still download them from the app store. That’s still where you’ll get them, but the key differentiator is probably from a billing perspective. Not only does that digital therapeutic meet a higher evidence-based, clinically-driven evaluation, but the idea is that you, as a patient individual, aren’t paying for it and can be reimbursed by the insurance companies. That can make a real difference in how much money a company putting these out can invest in it and then sustain a business based on the digital health applications." #Estenda #DigitalHealth #DigitalHealthApps #DigitalTherapeutics #HealthTech #HealthcareTechnology #HealthcareIT #HealthcareInnovation #ArtificialIntelligence #HealthAI #Medtech estenda.com Download the transcript here

9/13/24 • 17:27

Oren Gilad, President and CEO of Aprea Therapeutics, focused on the DNA damage response pathway, specifically targeting the ATR protein. ATR is a master regulator of DNA replication and is hyperactive in cancer cells, making it a potential Achilles heel for cancer therapy. By inhibiting ATR, cancer cells can be selectively targeted, while normal cells can tolerate lower levels of ATR activity. Synthetic lethality is applied when two genetic mutations are combined, leading to cell death, specifically in cancer cells. Aprea is conducting clinical trials for their targeted treatments, focusing on solid tumors with defined genetic mutations. Oren explains, "DDR, the DNA damage response pathway, is the broader terminology for the regulation of DNA synthesis. In order for cancer to grow, cells have to duplicate. In order for them to duplicate, they have to replicate their DNA. So what happens is that cancer cells get into this DNA replication phase very early and prematurely, causing a single-strand DNA to be exposed which then activates the ATR pathway, where in normal cells, this pathway is very tightly regulated. The normal cell is not going to enter this phase and start DNA replication before the environment is ready because it’s a very fragile phase of the cell cycle." "Double-strand DNA is a very stable molecule. It is found in mummies, it survives heat, and it survives freezing. When a double-strand DNA molecule is opened, the exposed single-strand DNA can easily break. That’s where ATR comes into play, it protects and responds to single-strand formation. A cancer cell is hyper-sensitive to ATR inhibition, which we identify as the Achilles heel of cancer. Our work showed that normal cells can live with a reduced level of the ATR activity, so it makes it a good target for cancer therapy." #ApreaTherapeutics #CancerTreatment #TargetedTherapy #Oncology #Cancer #SyntheticLethality #DNADamageResponsePathway aprea.com Download the transcript here

9/12/24 • 17:34

Dr. Marcy Carty, President and Chief Medical Officer of myLaurel, emphasizes the need to change the model where hospitals are the safest place for medical care. MyLaurel's acute care services include pre-hospital care to prevent emergency room visits, care-at-home to help patients get discharged earlier, and post-hospitalization care to smooth the transition. They work with primary physicians and other care providers to ensure a coordinated approach and use technology in the home to perform monitoring and diagnostics overseen by medical professionals and responders who can provide in-person and virtual visits. Marcy explains, "In the past, our health systems have looked at volume. I was a chief medical officer at a hospital, and I remember my CEO saying, "How many heads and beds can we get?" And so the system’s really driven towards reducing risk and putting people into hospitals, assuming that it’s the best place to be cared for. At myLaurel, we challenge that and work with communities to say, "How can we change that paradigm and bring the care to someone at home where they can sleep in their own bed, where they can hold all the power in their decision-making and ensure their goals of care are really incorporated into the care plan?" We want to change the paradigm that hospitals are the safest place to be and bring that care home, where I would say most people we talk to want to be cared for." "In general, myLaurel focuses on elderly or frail or people with complex medical conditions. What that means is our average patient is in their eighties, our average patient has about 13 medications, and our average patient has six or more chronic conditions. They generally represent the top 10% of patients for a health plan, accountable care organization, or physician group." #myLaurel #AcuteCare #InHomeCare #HospitalatHome #ObservationatHome mylaurelhealth.com Download the transcript here

9/11/24 • 16:57

Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq, the CEO and Founder of Biotricity, focuses on remote patient monitoring for heart health with HeartSecure, the three-channel wearable device that collects continuous ECG data. This device provides a more comprehensive view of the electrical activity of the heart compared to other wearables like smartwatches and can help identify potential cardiac issues, especially those that are intermittent and asymptomatic. Used by cardiologists and now available as a home-based diagnostic, this technology is a tool to screen those with risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnea, and obesity.  Waqaas explains, "When we talk about wearables, we have to understand what those wearables are collecting. A typical watch, like an Apple Watch or Samsung Watch or these kinds of devices, collects data through a PPG, which is really looking at light refraction and basically looking at your pulse rate. Based on skin tone, it will have varying results. Based on how tight you are wearing the band, it will have varying results."   "The second problem and why the cardiac issue is the number one killer and why it's the silent killer is most of these issues are intermittent, and most patients are asymptomatic. So if you don't feel the symptoms, you could take that 30-second ECG all the time, and you may never catch it because many times, these issues happen while we're sleeping. They're happening early in the morning." "The reason people are passing away is because many of these patients are screened is because when they are put on a monitor, sometimes you'll collect data on a patient for 24 hours a day for seven days. You'll not find the issue, and suddenly, you extend the monitor to day ten, and you'll find it on day nine. So how can you hold a device or a watch continuously for 24 hours, let alone continuously for nine days? And that's your challenge. That is why wearables are great awareness drivers. They're great tools if you've already been diagnosed and you're trying to manage your condition, but incredibly, incredibly blunt instruments when it comes to figuring out what your issue is." #Biotricity #HeartSecure #HeartHealth #Preventative #HeartDisease #HealthyHeart #SelfCare #HealthyLifeStyle #HealthTestatHome biotricity.com Download the transcript here

9/10/24 • 18:32

Bill Padula, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics, and Dr. David Armstrong, professor of surgery and Neurological surgery, are both at the University of Southern California and are concerned about wound care and the impact of potential changes in Medicare reimbursement of skin substitutes. They discuss the importance of skin substitutes in chronic wound care and their effectiveness in reducing amputations and hospital readmissions. With current advancements in wound care,  there is an emphasis on the need for education and advocacy to ensure that Medicare understands the value of skin substitutes and their potential for improving patient outcomes. David explains, "The skin substitutes we are talking about have been really helpful over the past, maybe at least the last decade, maybe even the last two decades, and especially over the last few years. We’ve seen now in some studies from our group and others that we can not only reduce amputation, but we can also reduce hospital admission and emergency department admission for these patients. So it’s a really exciting time. And so that’s on the positive end. On the not so positive end is that there have been some changes, and I’m sure Dr. Padula can talk about this. That may limit our access to it as clinicians, which is concerning certainly for the patients that I’m having right across the hallway." Bill elaborates, "Up until recently, Medicare hasn’t put a lot of governance on reimbursement for skin substitutes, and physicians have been using them autonomously with the patient to treat non-healing chronic wounds. We see from the data that these skin substitutes work best when applied on a patient every one to seven days in a wound clinic, like what David Armstrong runs here at the University of Southern California. Medicare wants to change the reimbursement pattern and reduce reimbursement so that it would be impossible to get reimbursed for more than ten applications of a skin substitute in twelve weeks. So, that reimbursement system makes it impossible for providers and patients to follow parameters for use and improve the likelihood of healing a chronic wound." #SkinSubstitute #Medicare #CMS #ChronicWounds  Keck School of Medicine at USC Download the transcript here

9/9/24 • 21:21

Gretchen Case, Managing Partner at The Wilshire Group a boutique healthcare revenue cycle consulting company that helps healthcare clients streamline workflows and processes. They work with hospitals, physician groups, and other providers to optimize their investment in technology and improve patient outcomes. Gretchen points out the various aspects of revenue cycle management, which include insurance benefit verification, explanation of costs, and identification of financial support. The middle revenue cycle includes the codification of clinical data and coordination with insurance companies and electronic health records. The third phase is the billing and payment.   Gretchen elaborates, "Some of the automation I’ve seen over the last several years has been designed to query the documentation and come up with suggested codes, called computer-assisted coding. And there is a lot of that in play. I think it expedites things and it makes things more efficient. I don’t know of anybody who’s just flipped that button and left it behind and not continued to monitor and manage it." "There’s also movement right now around what we call a single path. That’s just one way of saying it, but it’s about coding the professional and the technical at the same time. What does that mean? The physician’s procedure charge and the technical is what the hospital is going for that technical component of the services. And a lot of times, we share codes. So, if you’re going to be coding the physicians and getting her bill out the door correctly, you might as well be coding the hospital one at the same time. So there are definitely developments there, but I haven’t seen anything. Just completely automate it and step away." #TheWilshireGroup #RevenueCycleManagment #RCM #Hospitals thewilshiregroup.net Download the transcript here

9/5/24 • 18:16

Lynn Carroll, the Chief Operating Officer at HSBlox, focuses on payer-provider collaboration to mitigate risks related to the transition from a fee-for-service model to value-based care. Care coordination is critical to this model to reduce duplicative and unnecessary services and low-value providers by effectively sharing patient data. They are seeing an emphasis on high-cost categories, diagnostics, and disease management to rein in costs and improve patient outcomes. Lynn explains, "At HSBlox, we have built a platform for payer and provider collaboration around these types of arrangements, particularly for onboarding different types of alternative payment model contracts, bringing together the care continuum to align primary care with specialty care because primary care can’t go alone in achieving success under value-based programs. A significant amount of spend, particularly under the total cost of care programs, is driven by specialty utilization." "We have built a platform that allows for multi-participant programs that enable the sharing of data and the movement of funds across these different alternative payment models. The purpose of the platform was to provide the infrastructure that would allow these programs to flourish and accelerate the pace of the end game for value-based administration."  #alternativepaymentmodels #carecoordination #contractmodeling #healthoutcomes #patientengagement #permissioneddataexchange #populationhealth #referralmanagement #reinbursementmodels #riskbearingproviders #ValuebasedCare #VBC HSBlox.com Download the transcript here    

9/4/24 • 18:53

Dave Kerwar is the CEO and Co-Founder of Inbound Health, a hospital-at-home organization that offers an advanced primary care model for patients who would typically go to the emergency department and a secondary care model for post-acute patients who would typically go to a skilled nursing facility. With virtual care enhanced by data analytics, remote sensors, and on-site visits, Inbound Health's model has shown lower readmission rates than traditional facility-based care.   Dave explains, "We help health systems launch and scale advanced care models delivered from the home. So our flagship care model is a hospital-at-home model where we’re typically taking patients who are presenting in the emergency department or have been inpatient for less than 24 hours and who could otherwise receive the totality of their hospital stay from the comfort of their home. In that model, what we do is we bring forward the care model, so basically, the care pathways for how to care for those patients."   "We bring forward a technology and analytics platform to remotely care for those patients, monitor those patients, and manage all the logistics around the care that needs to be delivered. We bring forward the virtual care team, which is made up of virtual nurses and physicians who provide the care and oversee the patient 24/7 and the in-home care. Nurses, therapists, and community paramedics go into the home." "We have to manage a lot of the supply chain in these models. We bring forward durable medical equipment, home-based labs, home-based imaging, home infusion, transportation, and things like that. We manage the ability to provide that supply chain into home-managed care services. Often, these models are not a standard reimbursement structure with the payers, so we create that reimbursement structure with the payers on behalf of our health systems."   #InboundHealth #HospitalatHome #Medtech #DigitalHealth inboundhealth.com Download the transcript here 

9/3/24 • 21:21

Michelle Clavecilla-Chan, Director of Behavioral Health at MVP Health Care, and Amanda Conway, Chief Growth Officer at Aptihealth, have partnered to expand access to mental health services for MVP customers. Aptihealth provides virtual behavioral health services that connect patients to comprehensive mental health and substance abuse support. Through their digital platform and behavioral health provider network, MVP customers have options for integrated care that remove traditional access barriers and provide virtual visits to engage this high-need population. The partnership focuses on serving complex patient populations with conditions such as psychosis, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and personality disorders with personalized care plans. Michelle explains, "MVP provides coverage for all lines of business, including commercial Medicare, Medicaid, Child Health Plus, and Essential Plan enrollees. We provide all of the healthcare needs of our customers, and our mission is to improve our customers’ health and provide peace of mind to our customers by helping them access quality healthcare that meets their needs. Our mission is also to create healthier communities through innovation and collaboration, which is why we’re excited to partner with Aptihealth."   Amanda elaborates, "Aptihealth is a virtual behavioral health provider. We work with payers in value-based care arrangements to provide comprehensive services for behavioral health patients. We focus primarily on complex, high-acuity patient populations, which is unique to our virtual model, and we integrate within the communities that we serve to be a key stakeholder in the overall care of the patients we treat."  #MVPHealthCare #Aptihealth #MentalHealth #DigitalHealth #AccessToCare MVPHealthCare.com Aptihealth.com Download the transcript here

8/29/24 • 19:35

Martin Pytela is a functional medicine expert, metabolic typing coach, and fellow podcaster. He discusses the principles of functional medicine and its focus on finding the root causes of health issues rather than just treating symptoms. Understanding metabolic behavior and how it can affect emotional well-being and overall health highlights the need to better understand the connection between diet and health conditions. Martin emphasizes the need to personalize approaches to health based on individual genetics and endocrine dominance. Martin elaborates, "Functional medicine is a moniker developed to distinguish it from allopathic medicine in the sense that functionals are looking for root causes of things. In the typical medical setting, you are just looking at a symptom, and you address the symptom with some chemicals and let the patient manage or cope with life as is. With functional medicine, you try to find the cause of it and restore health. So, rather than treating symptoms alone, you’re trying to heal the patient." "Early on, they were checking venous blood pH. These days, we can get the same results just by putting forward a questionnaire with 120 multiple-choice questions. And at the end of it, we’re able to tell you what your endocrine dominance is and what your metabolic dominance is. The endocrine dominance, which we identify as the thyroid, adrenal, pituitary, or ovaries in women, will drive how a person will gain weight or lose weight primarily. And then the metabolic dominance, of which we have either the autonomic or the oxidizer, one is the lipo-oxidative the other one is carbo-oxidative dominances. With that we’ll figure out how the pH of the internal body terrain is responding to the food combinations." #MartinPytela #FunctionalMedicine #MetabolicTyping #EndocrineDominance #HolisticHealth #ThePainManifesto Life-Enthusiast.com Download the transcript here 

8/28/24 • 19:25

Patty Hayward, general manager for healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk, talks about transforming the traditional call center into one that uses AI and large language models to make it easier for patients to get help and free up call center staff to focus on value-added tasks. The technology supports call center agents in their conversations with patients and helps avoid escalations. Outbound messaging prompts patients to take action, reinforcing conversations with call centers to improve patient outcomes.   Patty explains, "Because AI has been around for a long time, we’ve had AI infused in our platform for many years. But these large language models that have come speeding into the market have enhanced how we use AI in such a great way and allowed us to more easily support patients and agents in their journeys. We in healthcare do not make these journeys easy. They’re very complex. There are a lot of things going on, and quite frankly, deployment and training of these models can be really difficult. So these large language models have helped democratize a lot of this AI so that you don’t have to have a full IT staff devoted to doing this, which I think has been great."   "Then there are things you need a human for. A human in the loop is really important in healthcare because of the complexity we discussed. So, being able to support the agents, listening to the conversation, and bringing out things like the next best actions. What should that patient be doing next? How does that go without having to read articles or have tons of tabs behind your call center product or sticky notes all over the screen? I’ve seen this in numerous call centers to help coach those agents to make sure that they’re answering calls correctly. Also, the first time the patient calls, she gets what she needs and is not transferred needlessly." #Talkdesk #GenAI #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ContactCenter #CallCenter #ValueBasedCare #VBC #PatientExperience #MemberExperience #CustomerExperience #Providers #Payers talkdesk.com Download the transcript here

8/27/24 • 17:44

AJ Tesler, an award-winning producer and director who, along with his wife Jenny, is launching Magnolia’s Guide to Adventuring, a new documentary video series created with support from Acadia Pharmaceuticals, inspired by their daughter Magnolia’s experience with the rare genetic neurodevelopmental disease Rett syndrome. We’re also joined by Dr. Cary Fu, a pediatric neurologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who emphasizes the need for early diagnosis. The video series highlights the adventures children with Rett syndrome can engage in.  While Cary emphasizes the importance of safety and consulting with specialists before pursuing an adventure, AJ and Cary encourage people to recognize the capabilities of children with Rett and focus on what they can do.   AJ explains, "We made a documentary about that experience and those initial steps that we took called Magnolia’s Hope, which is available on iTunes and Amazon streaming, as well as a bunch of other places. And in that documentary, my wife so sagely presents it as we want to make sure that when there’s a cure, she’ll have stories to tell. That’s an inspiring way to think about all of this. Her story does not just have to be about Rett syndrome. It doesn’t have to be about all the things that she can’t do. It can be about all the things that you can do." "Beyond that, it was also about finding families to come along on these adventures with us. Some of the families are adventurous and have tried these things before. Some of them have never done any of these things before. That was part of the creative vision for the entire thing, which was to show that no matter what your disability is, no matter where on the spectrum you are, as long as a doctor says that it’s okay to do these things, then, by all means, there are organizations that can help you do these things." Cary elaborates, "I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily unusual, but I do think that what AJ and Jenny have done with their family is very inspiring. I think families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I think the important thing is I encourage all of my families with Rett syndrome to make sure not to allow the diagnosis to define them. To make sure that whatever expectations they had as a family before the diagnosis was made and before they realized that there would be potential limitations and need to make modifications, they should feel free to pursue those things that they wanted, the hopes that they wanted for their child." #RettSyndrome #MagnoliasGuideToAdventuring" #AdventuringWithMagnolia #RettRevealed #AdaptiveSports #AdaptiveAdventures #RareDisease RettRevealed.com Download the transcript here

8/26/24 • 18:43

David Mazzo, President and CEO of Lisata Therapeutics, has a lead program focused on metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The Lisata CendR Platform and drug certepetide efficiently augment the effects of chemotherapy and immunotherapies in the tumor microenvironment. Based on early findings, the future of cancer treatment may involve combining existing therapies with certepetide to personalize treatment for most solid tumors. David explains, "At Lisata, we're developing therapies to combat a challenging problem in the medical field today, which is the effective treatment of solid tumors. Solid tumors are very difficult to treat for two very simple reasons. On the one hand, these tumors generate a layer of cells around them that acts as a physical barrier. It's called the tumor stroma, and it prevents the penetration of many anti-cancer medicines into the tumor, which is why you often don't get the kind of results that one would expect." "The other obstacle these tumors present is that they generate or express a tumor microenvironment that is immunosuppressive, which helps the tumor hide from your innate immune system. It helps it not respond very well to externally administered immunotherapies. When you combine these two challenges, you end up with a set of diseases that remains an enigma in medical science today."   "So our therapy at Lisata called certepetide, our lead product, actually combines the ability to target and penetrate tumors more effectively for co-administered anti-cancer drugs with the ability to modify the tumor microenvironment, making it more immunoreceptive and therefore more likely to respond to your immune system and immunotherapies."  #Lisata #Oncology #Cancer #SolidTumors #Immunotherapies #TumorMicroEnvironment lisata.com Download the transcript here

8/23/24 • 18:04

John Incledon, President and CEO of Hisamitsu America, the makers of Salonpas, has seen enormous growth in the acceptance of over-the-counter topical pain management options since introducing the Salonpas analgesic patch in the US market 37 years ago. This growth is partly due to television ads featuring doctors touting the benefits of Salonpas for mild to moderate nerve-related and muscle-related pain and the sampling program that aims to get doctors and patients to try out the products.   John explains, "Topical medications have only been around since the 1960s, with the introduction of the first OTC monograph by the FDA. Salonpas itself was formally introduced to the United States in 1987, so we’ve been around some 37 years or so as a brand in this country. And so, it’s been a challenge. I’ll give you a couple of fun facts: 85% of US households have a pill form of an OTC pain reliever in their house, and 30% have a topical analgesic of any sort, a cream, a roll-on, or a patch. So, there’s a great disparity there. Pills remain a modality, topicals are up and coming, and I think the horizon for them is excellent." "Topicals work locally, at least OTC topical analgesics. You can wear patches and things intended to be systemic, but in this category and the products we’re talking about, they’re not. They’re intended basically just to work below the surface of the skin. There are pain receptors that certain actives will trigger to help minimize the pain. However, they’re not intended to get into the bloodstream, so by working locally and acting locally, they’re generally safer than systemic analgesics."   "We have basically two mechanisms of action in our products. One is anesthetic-based and uses lidocaine, and lidocaine is going to be most appropriate to the extent that you can diagnose this if your source of pain is from aggravated nerves. So if your lower back pain is tending to move outward, say, from the spine, you want to use an anesthetic to treat that, and so, a lidocaine-based product would be best." "If it’s purely muscle-related, then you’re better off with our alternative formulas, which include menthol, methyl salicylate, and camphor. Methyl salicylate is an aspirin derivative, so it’s categorized as a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory but topically applied, as opposed to systemically." #Salonpas #Hisamitsu #GoodMedicine #ItsGoodMedicine #PainManagement #OTC #OvertheCounterDrugs #TopicalAnalgesics us.hisamitsu Download the transcript here

8/22/24 • 22:28

Dr. Doug Newton is the Chief Medical Officer at Rula Health, a tech-enabled provider group that offers therapy, psychiatry, care coordination, and other supportive behavioral health services with a whole-person approach. Mental health disorders are diagnosed and managed using a combination of sound clinical judgment and measurement-informed care, which involves using patient-reported data and other objective measures. Normalizing mental health and using objective measures can help doctors bring up the topic with people of all ages to develop a personalized plan to maintain good physical and psychological health.  Doug explains, "We do know that the behavioral health crisis was exacerbated by COVID. Still, unfortunately, for most demographic groupings, it was already starting before the pandemic hit.  Using adolescents as an example, because I’m a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist by training, I saw this trend, so I looked at the data. We saw that was already a problem for kids, adolescents, and adults, where the rates of depression and anxiety were going up, as well as despair, as well as suicidal ideation - and, unfortunately, completion - were going up prior to COVID. It went up even further with COVID. We’re seeing, unfortunately, either continued or slightly increased in the years post-COVID as well."   "The next component is, okay, great, let’s get people to equitable and quick quality care. That’s been harder. And so I do think that telehealth has allowed us to do that. I think it’s allowed more equitable care across rural and urban areas. It’s allowed providers and patients to find one another in a way we haven’t been able to before. And that’s great. I think the next frontier is making sure that we are providing the right care, and we can measure ways of providing the right care to that person. Highly personalized outcomes-based care is the frontier that we’re going into next, and that’s going to be critical." #RulaHealth #BehavioralHealth #MentalHealth #YouthMentalHealth #MentalHealthAwareness #MeasurementInformedCare #COVID Rula.com Download the transcript here

8/21/24 • 18:50

Professor Sir Peter Donnelly, Founder and CEO of Genomics plc, aims to use cutting-edge polygenic risk scores to identify inherited DNA mutations and genetic predispositions that could lead to common diseases. In partnership with the MassMutual life insurance company, Genomics offers a voluntary test that provides personalized risk measures and advice about conversations with clinicians. If the policyholder stays healthy longer, the insurance company will get paid more premiums before paying out to survivors. Win-win all the way around. Peter explains, "Until a few years ago, if I had the entire DNA sequence from a 40-year-old who’s currently healthy, I’d have learned something interesting and medically actionable in maybe 1% or 2% of cases. That’s because genetics has played into medicine through diseases where there’s a single change in our DNA, called a mutation, which often stops a crucial gene from working. Think cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease. Those are conditions that are individually serious. They’re rare individually, thankfully, and actually, they’re collectively rare. And so until a few years ago, and now still very much the case, genetic testing was about looking for those needles in haystacks, those one or two single places that caused a problem." "Now, if I have genetic information from a 40-year-old who’s healthy, I learn something medically useful in about 70% of cases. So, that massive change from 2% to 70% is because we can now measure the genetic component of risk for all of the common diseases, as I said, for heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, or prostate cancer." "What we’ve learned is that for any one of those diseases, if we take heart disease as an example, there’s not one gene that matters for heart disease. There aren’t two genes. There are a million or more places in our DNA individual positions in our DNA, which affect someone’s risk of heart disease. And we’ve now got large enough data sets and clever enough algorithms to measure those places and combine the information to get an overall summary for someone of their genetic predisposition to heart disease."  #Genomics #Genetics #PRS #PolygenicRiskScores #DrugDiscovery #Biopharma genomicsplc.com Download the transcript here

8/20/24 • 18:02

Oren Nissim, CEO and Co-Founder of Brook Health focuses on loneliness and its impact on individuals with chronic conditions, especially when access to support is limited. Societal stigma and guilt associated with chronic conditions often contribute to loneliness, which can include depression, lack of agency, and a sense of being alone. Brook Health provides nonjudgemental support to patients with chronic diseases using a combination of human interaction with health coaches and technology to help patients manage their conditions.   Oren elaborates, "I think that people who live at home with a condition need great support, and the reality is that they don’t always have access to great support. Even if they do have great support, they still go home and have to live with it themselves - it drives people to feel lonely. I can tell you from my personal experience that I’ve been living with diabetes for a very long period of time, and the reality is that living with a chronic condition is a very lonely thing to do." "It’s interesting that you raise that because society, for a long period of time, has been characterizing having a chronic condition like diabetes or hypertension as you’re not taking good care of yourself. "You should avoid this. You should have a better way to manage yourself." The reality is that for most people who have contracted these conditions, nobody chose to be there. And so, by virtue of that type of conversation, you end up feeling, "Oh, I’m not responsible enough. I haven’t done what I should have done. I could do better, and I should do better." Very penalizing thoughts, and society judges people in this way. And, of course, that leads to loneliness as well. Again, we don’t want to be celebrating our failures outside. It’s not easy to do." #BrookHealth #RemotePatientMonitoring #Loneliness #MentalHealth #BehavioralHealth #PublicHealth #ChronicDisease #AI  Brook.ai Download the transcript here

8/19/24 • 18:26

Kent Wakeford, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Form Bio,  a company that provides computational solutions to scientists who are focused on cell and gene therapy to accelerate drug discovery and development, reduce costs, and ultimately make treatments more affordable for patients. Form Bio's in silico platform utilizes computational biology tools, bioinformatics, machine learning, and AI to process large amounts of open source data to provide insights to scientists to help them solve critical challenges. They are committed to supporting the rare and ultra-rare disease community and offer their tools to patient advocacy groups for free. Kent explains, "There are a lot of bumps. The production, scaling up, and cost of gene therapies are major obstacles to their widespread success. As we’ve seen in small molecule, target identification is one of the key challenges, and there’s been a lot of breakthroughs in AI, and computational analysis that have helped scientists find those targets." "In cell and gene therapy, it’s different. It’s a little bit easier to find the gene of interest that you want to try and work on. Still, it is harder to design and ultimately develop the gene therapy that can scale, have limited immunotoxic impact, and provide the therapeutic outcome at the right place and strength in the body." "Training a platform is one of the most critical areas for an AI or a computational company. Our team of incredible AI scientists from some of the greatest academic labs went out and pulled together all the available data in the open-source market. And to be honest, there’s a lot, but it’s not that helpful when you’re trying to get very specific scientific outcomes." "And so, we partnered with a number of leading academic institutions where we commissioned and paid for scientific research that produced data that we can then train models on. We looked at specific genes of interest for major therapeutic areas and then looked at all the regulatory elements to understand the different interactions. We can understand if you were to change one element of this, what happens to the rest of the therapeutic? What happens to expression, what happens to tropism, what happens to the packaging and manufacturability of that drug?" #FormBio #AI #ML #ComputationalBiology #DrugDiscovery #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #CellTherapy #GeneTherapy #RareDiseases formbio.com  Download the transcript here

8/15/24 • 18:59

Ram Krishnan, CEO of Valant, works with therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and nurse practitioners in the outpatient behavioral healthcare environment, which has significant unmet needs that can be addressed with technology. Scaling a mental health practice differs from other medical practices due to the frequency of visits and the need for individualized care with the most effective therapist. Virtual visits and telehealth are helping providers bridge the gap between physical and mental health, and generative AI is showing promise in diagnosing and maintaining behavioral health.  Ram explains, "This has been a market that has evolved over the last 25 years because so much has changed with our overall perception of the value and importance of mental health. This is a market that was primarily rarely covered by insurance, and employers rarely demanded coverage for their employees. Therefore, it was a cash-based business for most of its existence." "But over the last ten years, as the stigma for mental health has started to fade, and people are more outspoken about mental health challenges that they’re facing, whether it’s celebrities or athletes, it’s just made its way to the forefront. So employers, first and foremost, have begun to demand that the payers offer their services, and that’s where it starts. Payers then, in turn, begin to look for coverage. Now you have a market that was built for cash working its way into the insurance model. Finding itself subscale, they are now looking to build to scale so that it can have the systems and structures required to be able to swim into the larger waters of the US healthcare system with the insurance and payer process. And so, you have a lot of practices that have a lot of catching up to do with respect to adopting technology, and quite frankly, just process."  #Valant #MentalHealth #BehavioralHealth #BehavioralHealthEHR #PracticeManagement #PatientPortal #Telehealth Valant.io Download the transcript here

8/14/24 • 19:36