Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Jay Anders, Chief Medical Officer at Medicomp Systems, discusses the issue of dirty data — inaccurate and inconsistent medical data — and its origins, as well as how technology can be used to maintain correct health records. These kinds of errors can lead to incorrect diagnoses, inappropriate treatment, and negative consequences for patients, providers, and payers. AI and other technologies are being leveraged to help identify and flag inconsistencies, providing stakeholders with the tools to prioritize accuracy over efficiency. Jay explains, "What we do at Medicomp is a clinical knowledge engine with a knowledge graph that's built in that helps clinicians document, sort data, and clean up data. That engine was developed 46 years ago, and it's been done over again in different iterations for those 46 years. We're now incorporating new technologies inside of it to make it more efficient. But we handle medical data in documentation, presentation, and cleanup." "Well, dirty data has been around since physicians got a chisel and a hammer and etched it in a rock. Because if you think about the old days of dictation, when physicians didn't follow what they dictated or read it very carefully, things got into that medical record that may or may not be correct. What I mean by dirty data is, does the documentation of that patient's data actually represent what's going on with the patient?" "The other thing that happens, and it's happening more now with ambient listing technologies and other things, is that a family history of a terminal disease will all of a sudden be applied to the patient that's in front of you. So my father had Alzheimer's, now I have Alzheimer's, and it gets into the medical record that way. Gender changes. I have seen this back in the days of dictation, where he turns to her and back and forth again in the same note, which is obviously not correct. So when I say dirty data, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Basically, it's incorrect or misconstrued, and it gets propagated through the medical record, and with interoperability, that medical record tends to follow you everywhere you go now, and getting rid of some of that is a daunting task at best." #Medicomp #MedAI #MedicalRecords #PatientInformation #EHR medicomp.com Download the transcript here

Doug Ryan, CEO of Arineta, describes the advancements in cardiac CT imaging technology and how their ultra-fast scanning is revealing more accurate and higher-quality imaging of the heart. Using wide-area coverage and deep learning image reconstruction, the Arineta platform can detect arterial occlusions and coronary plaque buildup, which is a significant risk factor for sudden cardiac events and is often missed when relying solely on calcium scoring. The development of a mobile cardiac CT scanning unit is improving access to this technology, particularly in rural and underserved areas. Doig explains, "What you're trying to do is to stop the most complex organ inside the human body. The human heart translates, rotates, and beats somewhere between 60 and 100 beats per minute. So you really need advanced CT technology that comprises a great many areas, but the most important things are coverage speed and the ability to reconstruct it very quickly." "You're using advanced algorithms like our DLIR, our deep learning image reconstruction, which focuses on high-contrast, high-spatial, low-noise reconstructions that can then be put into what we call a multiplanar format. So you can look at these coronary arteries from all angles and do the diagnostic." "So it's actually a combination of several things. Ultra FAST is, of course, very important because you are literally trying to stop a bird mid-flight and get an accurate picture of it, but it's also the ability to encompass and see the entire heart in a single rotation. So, one of the secrets of the SpotLight and SpotLight Duo is both the ultra-fast rotation and the wide area coverage that we get with our detector system." #Arineta #CTImaging #CardiovascularDiagnostics #Cardiology #DeepLearningImageReconstruction Arineta.com Download the transcript here

Kory Daniels, Chief Information Security Officer at Trustwave, highlights the unique cybersecurity challenges facing the healthcare industry, particularly in this environment of funding constraints and the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks. Healthcare data is highly valuable to cybercriminals, who can use it for ransomware attacks, identity and insurance fraud, and other nefarious purposes. AI can be part of both the attack and the solution, helping to build in more cyber resilience and awareness about vulnerabilities. Kory explains, "Healthcare is a prime target for cyberattacks for a very fundamental reason. When human lives are at risk due to a criminal objective—which is to make money—they view organizations where human lives are at risk as a greater potential and opportunity. Facilitation of ransomware payments: Ransomware is one of the largest tactics that criminals use to achieve financial gain, but it's not the only tactic they use to achieve financial gain. So, they're looking to exploit the fear and uncertainty, putting patient lives at risk and adding complexity to patient care through their nefarious actions. But also, healthcare data is very attractive for cybercriminals, and just criminal activity in general. And why that is, is that criminals are looking at healthcare data even more so—it's more valuable than driver's license data." "Look at the opportunity of what you can do with healthcare records, and what can you do with PII, Personally Identifiable Information. Threat actors are tapping into this data in several different ways to achieve the additional financial gain above and beyond targeting a healthcare organization with a ransomware attack." "But they're also committing fraud, and fraud toward healthcare insurers, and looking at submitting false claims, fraud against the prescription drug industry in terms of soliciting and looking to obtain prescription drugs through nefarious means, but utilizing data and identity data that comes from hospital and healthcare records. There are a variety of different ways that we've just scratched the surface on, which make the healthcare industry such a desirable target for those seeking to achieve financial gain in the criminal industry." #Trustwave #Cybersecurity #CyberAttacks #HealthcareSecurity #HealthcareIT #CISOInsights trustwave.com Download the transcript here

Matt Brown, VP of Telehealth at Advisory Services at CHG Healthcare, discusses the current state and future of telehealth, including the rapid adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of technology and AI in enhancing telehealth experiences, and how telehealth can help address physician and nurse burnout. Improved internet access, mobile device usage, and consumer preferences for convenience have driven the increasing telehealth usage for initial visits, follow-up appointments, and chronic care management. Matt explains, "We are the nation's largest staffing agency. So, we're actually the founders of what's known as the locum tenens marketplace. CHG has been a pioneer in bringing physician services into remote and rural locations across the United States for the past four years. And over the last 10 years or so, we've continued to innovate on top of that physician-led experience and started to bring technology operations, as well as consulting services and telehealth, into the marketplace. So think of us as providing a broad array of staffing services, but also on top of that, technology and operations, and consulting that help the largest health systems in the country manage their physician workforce." "It's been widely adopted since the pandemic. If you think about coming out of the pandemic, a lot of our health systems and hospitals were really forced to do a few things. One, they really had to upgrade a lot of their infrastructure and technology. So that meant that they were bringing broadband access into their hospitals. They started to think about how they could deliver care to their patients more remotely. And as they were doing a lot of these technology upgrades, they also started to address patients more like consumers. So I think that there was a big shift that started to take place in consumer services, starting to look like healthcare services." "About that same time, you had a number of very large retail-focused, consumer-focused companies start to enter into the healthcare marketplace. So these are folks like Amazon, you have CVS and Walgreens, and now you've had a number of companies like Hims and Hers, and all of those are entering into the healthcare ecosystem through telehealth as a channel. So, as we've seen this increased infrastructure, this improvement in infrastructure, as well as consumerization of healthcare, continue to accelerate after the pandemic, and now we have more of this consumer-centric focus coming from a retail perspective." #CHFGHealthcare #MedAI #DigitalHealth #PatientAccess #Telehealth #PhysicianBurnout #ClinicianBurnout CHGHealthcare.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Chuck Link is the Executive Chairman of Syncromune, a company developing a novel immunotherapy approach for solid tumors by delivering the therapy into the tumor and surrounding lymph nodes to stimulate a systemic immune response. Their complex drug has four different components with varying levels of activity that activate the immune system and counteract immune suppression. This in situ immunotherapy technology, SYNC-T, was tested in a phase 1 trial for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, which showed high response rates and a favorable safety profile with low rates of serious side effects and minimal autoimmune toxicity. Chuck explains, "So, SYNC-T is a technology in which you put a needle directly into a tumor that can be done by a urologist in the prostate cancer situation, or by an interventional radiologist. That needle then the tip of it freezes, and does a freeze fracture. Think of a Coke bottle rupturing like in the freezer. And what that does is release the antigens from that patient's own specific tumor. So, it's personalized because the tumor proteins and antigens are used to create a vaccine effect that's released directly from the cancer." "The tumor microenvironment is basically within the tumor itself, and there are immune suppressive mechanisms that the tumor has evolved to protect it from the immune system. I like to think of it as a castle, multiple levels of defense where you have the castle itself, and then you have a castle wall, and then you have a moat, and then an army in front of the wall. So the cancer has multiple immune-suppressive mechanisms that are activated to defeat the immune system, even though cancer has a lot of abnormal, mutated proteins that the immune system should attack and destroy. So what SYNC-T accomplishes is it basically hits solutions for all four of those types of defense simultaneously to make it more difficult for the castle, in this case, the tumor, to protect itself." #Syncromune #Immunotherapy #MetastaticSolidTumors #Cancer #ProstateCancer syncromune.com Download the transcript here

David Sontag, CEO and Co-Founder of Layer Health, describes the environment of chart reviews in healthcare and how AI and large language models can be used to analyze a patient's medical record to extract key clinical details. Applying natural language processing to medical records has been challenging due to the complexity of the language and the longitudinal nature of the data. This large language approach from Layer can enhance clinical decision-making, quality measurement, regulatory compliance, and patient outcomes. David explains, "Every patient will have experienced a chart review at some point. Whether it's when they've come home from a medical visit and go to their electronic medical record to look at the notes written by their providers. Or it's been experienced in the patient room, in the doctor’s room, watching a clinician review the past medical records to try to get a better context of what's going on with that patient, so that's from the patient’s perspective." "The same thing happens everywhere else in healthcare. So, chart review is the process of analyzing a patient's medical record to extract key clinical details. You can imagine going through clinical notes, lab results, imaging reports, and medical history, trying to create that complete and accurate picture of the patient's health. And it's used everywhere for measuring quality, for improving the financial performance of health system providers, and for regulatory compliance." "Some aspects of natural language understanding from patients' medical records have been attempted for well over a decade, and these approaches have been typically very surface-level. So look at a single note, try to answer a relatively simplistic question from that note, but the grand challenge has always been one of how do we mimic the type of reasoning that a physician would do where they would be looking at a patient's longitudinal medical record across many notes trying to piece together data from not just from the unstructured but also the structured data." #LayerHealth #ClinicalAI #AIinHealthcare #MedicalChartReview #PrecisionMedicine #ClinicalResearch #LLMsinHealthcare layerhealth.com Download the transcript here

Alexandra Paul is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Accolade, a company that provides comprehensive healthcare for its members by integrating digital health solutions and leveraging AI. The company focuses on addressing the healthcare needs of underserved communities, such as truck drivers, and provides 24/7/365 access to virtual care. The Experience Store and WayFinding navigator utilizes AI and large language models to deliver real-time, chat-based guidance and personalized treatment options based on plan benefits. Alexandra explains, "What's really important for us is ensuring that we are targeting the right buyer who can help us really get in front of members to help them navigate a complex healthcare experience. Our core foundation is being the one place to go for health and care. And so, whether that's through a health plan offering or whether that's through an employer benefit offering, we've truly become kind of that front door experience and what we call WayFinding, which is our AI-powered solution to help members get the right care." "We're very excited about the Experience Store that we just launched, and a big part of that is making sure that we tap into technology. So, as we think about how we can provide this comprehensive care experience and this one place to go for health and care for members, we have been heavily focused on investing in AI and technology systems that make this care experience easier. A lot of that is really just thinking about large language models. So, members in their chat function can type in a question that AI in the new world, which feels so much like a person, can answer and provide real-time guidance to that member." #Accolade #DigitalHealth #HealthcareBenefits #Healthcare #PersonalizedCare #HealthTech accolade.com Download the transcript here

Julio Martinez-Clark, Co-Founder and CEO of Bioaccess, a Latin American MedTech CRO that works with US-based medtech and biopharma startups to conduct their first-in-human trials outside the US to accelerate development and recruitment. Data from overseas clinical trials conducted to international standards is considered valid and can support conversations with investors, strategic partners, and the FDA. Drawing on resources in the Balkans, Latin America, and Australia, clinical trials can get faster approvals, more easily recruit patients, and benefit those living in the communities where clinical trials are conducted. Julio explains, "The mission is to accelerate global clinical trials, and the type of clients is mostly us. Occasionally, we have European clients, but they're mostly San Francisco-based, Boston-based, San Diego-based, Minnesota-based, or Boston-based companies that are looking to execute a first-in-human clinical study outside of the United States. And for many reasons, Latin America is an obvious choice, at least for the exploratory phase. When they're looking for different countries, they usually explore Eastern Europe, Australia, and Latin America. And we help these companies, which have been predominantly US-based MedTech startups. More recently, we have expanded to biopharma as well. But let's talk with the conversation on MedTech startups, and their struggle to conduct these first inhuman trials in the United States. They seek help when they want to go overseas, and they call for us to help them find investigators and to recruit patients and to get past approvals, etc." "There is one single thing, which is that these companies are startups. Getting this type of trial approved is really, really difficult and expensive. And the timeline to get them approved is really uncertain. So when you have a startup that has investors backing the company and they have a business plan, they have some milestones, it is difficult to predict when you're going to hit these milestones, and you need to keep the investors happy. So if you don't have a solid business plan, then you are not going to be able to raise more funds to continue your operation and development." #BioAccess #GlobalTrialAccelerators #DigitalHealth #PrecisionMedicine #LATAMTrials #BalkansClinicalResearch #AustraliaCTN #AANVISA #ALIMS #MINSA #TrialAcceleration #FirstinHumanTrials #ClinicalTrials #MedTechInnovation #Biopharma #MedTech #PatientRecruitment #CRO bioaccessla.com Download the transcript here

Nicole Clark, Co-Founder and CEO of the Adult and Pediatric Institute for Health and Wellness, a comprehensive, personalized psychiatric practice that takes a holistic approach to mental health, looking at the interconnection of physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Nicole has two daughters with autism, which has informed the Institute's focus on serving the autism community, especially in these times of changes in the definition of autism spectrum disorder. Services include psychiatric and autism evaluations, medication management, education, and early intervention for children and adults and their family members. Nicole explains, "We're a comprehensive psychiatric practice, and we're kind of unique in that we have fully blended behavioral and mental health therapy. We see an individual as a whole person. They're not just one piece of their identity. They have multiple pieces of their identity. And so we don't like to only focus on a singular issue. We like to look at the person as a whole, and so we see the entire family. We see ages 18 months when we're doing autism evaluations, all the way up to 65 years old. And we offer psychiatric evaluations, autism evaluations, medication management, and different therapy modalities." "A lot of the time, we are treating someone's anxiety, or maybe we're treating their ADHD, or maybe we're treating bipolar depression, the other illnesses that are kind of stemming from that stomachache, especially with kids, the headaches, the 'I'm always feeling sick.” I don't want to go to school." "Or in adults-- the chronic stomachaches, the heart disease, all of these issues tend to start to resolve when you can treat the mind and when you can work on the mental health side of things, because these are real problems and these are real issues, physiological issues, heart disease. A heart attack, that's real. We know that is real. Well, what is causing that? Well, maybe it's being caused by elevated cortisol levels over an extended period of time because you have unresolved trauma, anxiety, or depression. And so, it's becoming a more collaborative approach to healthcare, which I love." #PEDSInstitute #PsychiatricCare #MentalHealth #PediatricHealth #Autism #AutismDiagnosis #AutismAwareness pedsinstitute.com Download the transcript here

Bob Roda, President and CEO of HemoSonics, highlights the current blood shortage and the challenges of patient blood management to minimize the need for transfusions. The HemoSonics Quanta Analyzer technology utilizes ultrasound to measure blood viscosity, providing real-time information on the patient's coagulation status and enabling clinicians to make more informed decisions about blood product administration. This approach can be applied in the operating room, emergency rooms, and hospital laboratories to improve patient outcomes and yield cost savings for the healthcare system. Bob explains, "As a company, we are very centered and focused on helping to shape human healthcare moving forward. Specifically, as it relates to coagulation management, we have a technology that is about five years old, and in layman's terms, it helps to identify what is going on with your blood in terms of coagulation, intraoperatively, and in near real-time. So what does that mean? It means that it is an aid for clinicians as they're making determinations for their patients as to what to do next in terms of managing their bleeding situations." "Think about patient blood management as a patient-centered, systematic, and evidence-based approach to improving patient outcomes simply by managing and preserving a patient's own blood while promoting safety and ultimately the empowerment of the patient. So what does that mean? What it means is that there is a multifaceted approach in terms of any surgical intervention, where ultimately your own blood, the patient's own blood, is really what's best for them. And so to the extent that you can limit or prevent or get ahead of the need for transfusion, that's ultimately to the benefit of the patient and to the benefit of the healthcare system from an economic perspective." #HemoSonics #Hemostasis #BloodManagement #Quantra #BleedingManagement #MedTech #HealthcareInnovation hemosonics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. David Carmouche, Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at Lumeris, is addressing the primary care shortage by providing a platform that supports primary care physicians in managing a broader patient population and delivering better health outcomes. The Lumeris platform, Tom, is an AI-powered virtual assistant that can interact with patients, provide chronic disease management, education and support, and coordinate care on behalf of providers. Tom can improve efficiency, reduce clinician burnout, and provide more convenient and personalized experiences for patients. David explains, "And so, they built the company, Lumeris, as a commercialization arm of their relationship to empower other primary care physicians to manage populations and deliver better health outcomes at a lower cost. And so for the last 12 years or so, Lumaris has been partnering largely with large medical groups and health systems to help them manage populations, Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial populations, and helping drive high performance and high outcomes within those relationships. The economics are shared economics, so when the plans and providers are successful by delivering better outcomes, Lumeris shares in those rewards." "Given the 20-year history that I mentioned of understanding care deeply as a provider of care and as a partner to those providers of care, we have the fortune to build new technology to support primary care. Our environment starts with aggregating data, and that data helps us define a view of a patient. That data could come from an electronic medical record, it could come from claims data from a pharmacist, it could come from claims data from a payer, or it could come from a pharmacist or a lab. It could be consumer data that is purchasable, as organizations like Target, Walmart, and others use to market to us today. We aggregate that data to create a 360° view of a patient. Then we're able to leverage some of the new artificial intelligence that creates the ability for the platform to interact with patients on behalf of their clinical care teams at points in time where we understand that there is a defined next best clinical action that might help you in your health journey." #Lumeris #MedAI #DigitalHealth #PrimaryCareProviders lumeris.com Download the transcript here

Jeff Bennett, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Modivcare, is addressing and expanding supportive care services to provide transportation, personal care services, and remote patient monitoring. A lack of transportation leads to missed appointments and therapies, necessitating a coordinated approach to support vulnerable populations. Modivcare utilizes remote sensors and AI to enhance human engagement and coordination, and is designed to be both preventative and predictive, keeping patients healthy and out of the hospital. Jeff explains, "Modivcare works on behalf of health plans, states, and risk-based entities. We provide supportive care services that meet the needs and address the needs of patients. One of those services is transportation, so non-emergency medical transportation. We also provide personal care services, which support members with activities of daily living, like bathing, meal preparation, and such. And then finally, I lead the monitoring organization, which provides services to monitor members or patients at home so they can live and age at home on their own." "The biggest need, at the top, is that our members have health-related social needs or SDOH needs. They also are living with chronic conditions, so they need supportive care services that not only provides that core service -- so there's the obvious "I need a ride" or "if I press the button because I've fallen and I need 911 to be called if I need an ambulance or my caregiver or family member to come help me." But most importantly, the services that they need are providing an engagement service. Really, what we provide is a supportive care service that drives human connection through cutting-edge technology that drives continuous engagement. They always know that we're here, and we listen to them. We understand their needs and try to address those needs, which could be healthcare-related, social-related, or simply loneliness. So it spans that broad spectrum. And any one of our services, we're delivering that core service, but we're also driving engagement and listening for what else the member needs." #Modivcare #SDOH #SupportiveCareServices #MedAI #DigitalHealth #CareCoordination modivcare.com Download the transcript here

Peter Ordentlich, Chief Scientific Officer and Founder at Syndax Pharmaceuticals, a clinical oncology company, is focused on developing precision medicine approaches to treat cancer and chronic graft-versus-host disease. The menin protein plays a critical role in driving certain types of blood cancers, and the Synex therapy is a menin inhibitor that can disrupt this cancer-driving pathway. The platform is also developing an antibody addressing the unmet needs in cGVHD to reduce the disease-driving macrophages. Peter explains, "Syndax is a clinical oncology company, which means we're focused primarily on cancer, and we're primarily doing clinical development. We started the company really looking at resistance pathways to developing cancer, and we've been focused on two main areas. One in the indication space of leukemia, which are certain types of blood cancers, and that's with a program we have around the small molecule drug called revumenib. We are also focused in another area of diseases called chronic graft-versus-host disease. These are diseases that happen post-stem cell transplant, and there we're developing an antibody called axatilimab. And so those two programs are really what we've been focusing on for the last five or six years and have led to each of those drugs." "So menin is a very interesting protein, and basically what this is, it's called a scaffold protein. And you can imagine a scaffold, just something you build things upon. And so menin interacts with DNA through a variety of other factors, and you build on top of this a complex of other proteins that can turn genes on and off. And in the case of certain types of leukemias, the mutation that creates certain other cancer-causing proteins binds to menin. That's what drives certain genes that drive leukemia to always be turned on. And so what we've tried to do and others have tried to do is disrupt that interaction and essentially cause the scaffold to fall apart. And when that falls apart, you can no longer keep those genes on that drive leukemia, and instead, you have genes that essentially cause the cell to stop growing." #SyndaxPharma #AcuteLeukemia #cGHVD #Oncology #PrecisionMedicine #Menin #MeninInhibitors syndax.com Download the transcript here

Vikram Bhaskran, CEO and Co-Founder, and Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Roon, have taken on the mission to provide trustworthy and personalized medical information to patients and caregivers. Leveraging technology and the expertise of medical professionals, Roon has created a comprehensive resource for navigating medical challenges. They emphasize the importance of addressing misinformation and providing accurate, science-based information. The platform is not intended to replace doctors, but to supplement relevant information and enable better communication with healthcare providers and improve patient outcomes. Vikram explains, "Our mission is to be the best place online for anyone navigating any health condition. I started the company really through my own journey as a caregiver to my dad, who had ALS. And in that journey, I had two insights. One is that the biggest tech companies fail us. And in this moment of crisis, most people navigating any health condition will turn to "Doctor Google" and Facebook groups, which can be an overwhelming experience. And so I felt we could do better as someone coming from the tech world. I was at Pinterest before this, and my second insight was that there's a finite number of doctors. And so the experience of health today for really anyone is that you spend a ton of time in waiting rooms. You spend a ton of time waiting for someone to answer your health questions. And so Roon was born out of those two insights. And our goal is to be the best online platform to scale the world's best medical experts and their knowledge." Rohan elaborates, "The doctors are from more than 70 different academic medical institutions, and the number is growing. They represent all the experts who have expertise to share alongside the health journeys we've launched. So as of today, we've launched brain cancer, ALS, dementia, Fertility and Family Building, PCOS, endometriosis, menopause, and we are soon to launch several other conditions related to women's health, including gynecological health. Our experts span the doctors you would expect, such as oncologists, neurologists, and OBGYNs, among others, but also social workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and legal and financial counselors - really anyone who has real expertise that they can lend to the experience of a journey. So much of dementia care, for example, is not driven by your neurologist, but by the experience of caring for someone who needs help, whether it's at a memory care facility or a skilled nursing facility, dealing with issues that doctors typically don't have a great answer for." #Roon #HealthcareInformation #MedAI #HealthcareOutcomes #DigitalHealth roon.com Download the transcript here

Barry Quart, CEO of Connect Biopharma, is developing the next generation of monoclonal antibodies targeting inflammatory respiratory diseases such as COPD and asthma. Administered subcutaneously, their lead program targets IL-4 and has demonstrated the ability to rapidly improve airway function and reduce the incidence of acute exacerbations in these patients. Current treatments rely on steroids and bronchodilators, which do not address the underlying inflammatory causes, an area that has largely been under-addressed by other biologic developers. Barry explains, "Connect has been dedicated for quite a few years to designing next-generation monoclonal antibodies targeting inflammatory diseases. I joined the company last year and really kind of turned the ship towards a sole focus on our lead program, which is rademikibart, a second-generation Dupixent, a monoclonal antibody targeting IL-4, a really important target for certain inflammatory diseases." "IL-4 can be used as a monoclonal antibody targeting IL-4 for diseases such as atopic dermatitis, asthma, and COPD, as well as several other conditions. We're focused on asthma and COPD. So, inflammatory respiratory disease, because our product has some unique characteristics that are going to allow us to focus on an area that's really been completely ignored by other developers of biologics in the respiratory space, and specifically on patients having acute exacerbations." #ConnectBiopharma #MonoclonalAntibody #IL4 #COPD #Asthma #AtopicDermatitis #InflammatoryDiseases #RespiratoryDiseases connectbiopharm.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kilian Kelly, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Cynata Therapeutics, has taken on the challenge of manufacturing stem cell therapies consistently and at scale in order to drive the advancements necessary for the next generation of regenerative medicine. Cynata is employing a novel approach that utilizes a single source of pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and mesenchymal cell ancestors (MCAs) to generate mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Lead programs are targeting graft-versus-host disease, osteoarthritis, and diabetic wounds, where clinical trials have shown great promise to treat these and other diseases. Kilian explains, "We're a stem cell regenerative medicine company, and what we're trying to do is to change the way that we can manufacture stem cell therapies in a consistent and scalable way. I'm sure many of your listeners have heard about stem cell therapies of various types. The particular type of cells that we're working on are called mesenchymal stem cells or MSCs. They've shown lots of promise for lots of different purposes, but a real challenge has been making these cells consistently, especially when you try to do that at a large scale. We have a unique novel manufacturing platform, which helps us to address that major challenge." "The way that these cells were historically produced and indeed still are produced in most cases is by harvesting cells from, for example, somebody donating bone marrow or adipose tissue, also known as fat. And those approaches have certainly allowed a lot of early-stage clinical trials to be performed, which showed lots of really exciting results. But often what happens is that when you move to a larger scale using such a process, and you try to make much larger quantities of cells, perhaps using many different donors, you start to see a lot of inconsistency. There are a few reasons for this. When you have inconsistency with a product, it's inevitable that you're going to get inconsistent results." "If you have inconsistent results in a clinical trial, it becomes a bit of a lottery, and sometimes you can have very disappointing results that are hard to explain. So we think that's been a really big issue that has caused a lot of problems in the field. And aside from the impact on clinical trial results, we also need to think about the future when these products are available and on the market, and how you can actually, in practical terms, produce enough of these products. So, in a nutshell, I think that is probably the major challenge that the field has faced." #CynataTherapeutics #StemCellTherapy #RegenerativeMedicine #iPSCs #MSCs #MCAs Cynata.com Download the transcript here

Shauna Sweeney, Founder of tendercare, aims to assist caregivers with digital tools and expert support to simplify the process of caring for an aging family member. Recognizing the essential role of caregivers in the quality of life of the patient, tendercare provides a user-friendly interface that incorporates data from wearables and remote sensors to identify early warning signs of risks, help coordinate care, and encourage proactive preparation. The Magic Magnet feature allows caregivers and emergency responders to quickly update and share critical health information. Shauna explains, "This is not just a gendered issue. We have 54 million just Americans, if we keep it to the US, who are currently providing unpaid family care. This usually takes the form of anything from looking through bills, managing medications, renewing prescriptions, coordinating doctors’ visits, and all other visits. Often, we find that those who are on our platform are the eldest child. So whether that's a daughter or a son, this is the type of person who is often leaning in to help. What is generally a parent or a grandparent who may or may not have the ability or the means to be able to get themselves to the doctor's appointments or pick up their prescriptions themselves, for instance." "Up until now, a lot of this has actually been human-powered. So, sitting down at the kitchen table with Mom and going through the mail to determine what needs to be paid by what time, but increasingly, because so many of us are living farther apart from one another, this is becoming more and more complicated. There is a level of coordination that we're all doing with one another, but we're often doing it over text. We're doing it over email, we're doing it over shared accounts and passwords. And so it's getting a lot more complicated, which is really where tendercare dropped in to try and help simplify a lot of this experience that so many of us are walking through right now." #Trytendercare #DigitalHealth #CareGiving #CareGivingTech #SmartCare #AginginPlace #HealthEquity trytendercare.com Download the transcript here

Karen Sussman Horgan is the Co-Founder and CEO of VAL Health, a behavioral economics consulting firm that helps healthcare organizations drive engagement and nudge patients to improve their health and lifestyle choices. Behavioral economics is the science of understanding how patients make irrational choices based on biases, fear, and faulty analysis of outcomes and risk. Nudges can be carrots or sticks, but in healthcare, the focus is on making the right path easier to follow, reducing friction, and introducing positive reinforcements rather than penalties. Karen explains, "We work across the entire healthcare ecosystem. We think about digital health companies, how do you drive enrollment and engagement, and how do you optimize the journey? There are communications for that. We do a lot of work with payers, which is closing gaps in care, but also just improving the member experience in general with providers. It could be around provider adoption of new care pathways, but it's also about population health. We work with employers on wellness programs and pharma on that adherence. So think about where information alone isn't driving people to think about their health or take care of themselves. We create the nudges to help make that happen." "It's the science of understanding that we as humans are irrational. We have a bias toward the present. We have an aversion to loss and regret. We overweight probability. There are dozens of known biases, and what we do is harness them rather than asking people to change their biases. So let me give you a few examples to bring this to light because right now people are probably like, What is a bias? So think about Netflix when you watch an episode. First of all, you have choice overload when you get there. So it's giving you recommendations, but it also defaults you into the next episode because it plays on the fact that we have a status quo bias, and we're lazy, and we're just going to sit there and binge-watch. " #VALHealth #BehavioralEconomics #BehavioralScience #BehaviorChange #DigitalHealth #Payers #HealthcareInnovation #HealthcareConsulting valhealth.com Download the transcript here

Christine Lee, Head of Health Strategy and Partnerships at AnalyticsIQ, focuses on helping healthcare brands and pharmaceutical companies better understand and engage with healthcare providers by taking into account data beyond their professional lives. This data-driven Provider as a Person approach analyzes the healthcare professional's personal characteristics, outside interests, decision-making style, and preferred method of communication. The goal is to foster more meaningful relationships with providers, address provider burnout, and improve patient outcomes. Christine explains, "We're coming into play here in supporting healthcare brands and better understanding the providers as people. As I mentioned, we're a people-based data company. I'd say that in an era where data is abundant and there is no shortage of health data being gathered and analyzed. So, you've got a lot of data assets out there that are coming from clinical trials, your real-world evidence, claims data, your electronic health records, all of which give insight into the aspects of a provider from a clinical setting. Traditionally, healthcare providers have been viewed primarily through the lens of their professional lives, their specialties, their role in patient care, prescription-writing behaviors, and even their affiliations. And these are super important factors. We do see those truly as table stakes, but they paint an incomplete picture." "Providers, like patients, have unique lives, needs, and preferences, which really shape how they interact with the work they do and the brands they seek to engage with. The industry is really recognizing these nuances, which presents a unique opportunity for healthcare brands to acknowledge the complexity of the providers' lives beyond what you could say are their white coat moments, and differentiate their message. And so this can dig into driving more meaningful engagement. And for us here at AnalyticsIQ, we're focused on helping to understand healthcare providers, or HCPs, more broadly, and understanding some of their personal characteristics. So, the data we're bringing to the table to complement all the other data in the ecosystem will be things like considering their work-life balance." #AnalyticsIQ #HealthcareData #HealthcareAnalytics #HealthTech #HCPengagement #PatientExperience #ValueBasedCare #PersonalizedCare #HealthEquity #SDOH #HealthcarePrivacy #PatientData analytics-iq.com Download the transcript here

Francisco Salva, President and CEO of Azitra, Inc., is leveraging the microbial bacteria that comprise the skin microbiome and exploring novel methods to deliver precision medicines to the skin. Azitra has genetically engineered specific strains of these microbes to produce proteins that are missing in patients with skin conditions like Netherton syndrome and cancer therapy-associated rashes. These bacterial strains have the ability to get beneath the stratum corneum and turn into miniature factories to make the therapeutic proteins and help the skin return to homeostasis. Francisco explains, "We're leveraging the billions of microbial bacteria that naturally live on us and are synergistic with our skin to help keep our skin in homeostasis or a regulated standard of existence. These bacteria makeup that are known as the skin microbiome, we have built up a library of these microbial bacteria strains commonly found on normal people and characterize them in a way that allows us to look for specific strains that may be able to deliver special proteins that may be missing or aberrantly made in the skin." "What we're leveraging is that microbial strain’s ability to get past the outer protective layer of the skin called the stratum corneum. And these microbial strains get through that outer layer through intermittent spaces between the hair and that outer skin layer, the stratum corneum, and are able to get underneath the stratum corneum, grow, multiply, and colonize. And so by genetically engineering specific strains of these microbes, we're able to synthetically, or also known as recombinantly, make proteins that are missing in the patient's skin." "It's a little bit newer than the gut microbiome, and the field of study is also a little bit newer. And so the development of the understanding of the microbiome, which is what they call the defined consortia of various strains that normally live on us, is not quite as well elucidated as it is in the gut microbiome. That said, our mission at Azitra isn't to try to reset the entire regulation of the entire skin microbiome, but really just leverage specific strains of these bacteria that have the ability to get underneath that external layer of the skin." #RareDisease #OrphanDisease #Dermatology #SkinDisease #SkinDisorder #PrecisionsMedicine #PrecisionDermatology #PrecisionDerm #Netherton #NethertonSyndrome #Ichthyosis #CancerRash #EGFRiRash #EGFRiTreament azitrainc.com Download the transcript here