Empowered Patient Podcast

Aron Knickerbocker, President and CEO of Aulos Bioscience, is on a mission to extend the lives of cancer patients through safer and more effective immunotherapy using AI and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery and optimization. The company's lead drug candidate is an antibody that was designed using AI to harness the power of interleukin-2 to activate the immune system against tumors. The advantages of AU-007 over previous IL-2 therapies include the ability to selectively activate tumor-fighting immune cells while avoiding toxicity due to vascular leakage. Current trials are underway in advanced melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer, which are showing the potential for durable responses and immune memory. Aron explains, "So Aulos has really been founded to carry out a mission to extend the lives of patients with innovative, safe, and ultimately effective cancer immunotherapy. And you mentioned IL-2, which is the naturally occurring protein that we're seeking to harness and redirect in productive ways to help the patients. And this has really been kind of a driver for me over the years, wanting to improve on cancer patient care. This is a company with an important mission and a great team, and our program is really interesting. It's harnessing IL-2 in such a way that it sends it to the cells that are capable of attacking the tumor and killing the tumor cells, and keeps it away from the cells that suppress the immune response. It's really kind of using a double-edged sword in a productive way to help patients with cancer." "So this is the first antibody to go into human clinical trials. It was designed in part by leveraging an AI platform, as you noted. And that platform was created by our collaborators at Biologic Design. They're the company that created this molecule. And what biologic design does is essentially using an AI system that has machine learning algorithms that drive it. It mimics what the immune system does normally. So when we get sick and we need to make antibodies to something, our immune system says, Do I already have something that will kind of bind to the target or the virus or whatever it's trying to hit? And then it will optimize that. It will go through a process of rapid change. And what the AI system and the machine learning algorithms that have been trained on millions of antibodies in the targets to which they bind do is recognize patterns much like an AI chatbot might recognize language patterns." #AulosBio #Antibodies #MedAi #AI #IL2 #Onocology #Cancer #NSCLC #AdvancedCutaneousMelanoma #DrugDiscovery #BiologicDesign #Tregs aulosbio.com Download the transcript here

Aniq Rahman, Founder and CEO of Fabric, a technology company that uses an AI-powered platform to support health systems, health plans, and employers, to streamline patient care, scheduling appointments, and receiving virtual care. The system can triage patients, route them to appropriate care, and simplify the provider workflows to improve operational efficiency, drive better patient outcomes, and reduce provider burnout. Fabric is taking an integrated approach to healthcare technology rather than offering individual point solutions in order to create a seamless experience for patients and providers. Aniq explains, "We started Fabric about four years ago now in 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. And we're a technology company fundamentally. So, Fabric builds technology. We work primarily with health systems, but also with health plans and employers, to really help bring together the care journey of a patient. So that's everything from helping a patient find care, triage their symptoms, get virtual care, and also help with things like scheduling appointments and follow-ups. So we've built really an end-to-end platform today that has AI at its core and is able to sort of route patients more appropriately and then also help improve the workflows of providers and create efficiency on the clinical side as well." "Yes, so one of the things that has been sort of core to the Fabric vision is figuring out ways to actually improve patient experience, provider experience, and operational throughput without it compromising any of those three buckets. And so one of the things that we've been fortunate to have is a virtual care platform that we actually acquired. We bought a company called Zipnosis back in 2023, and Zipnosis had built a pretty robust set of clinical protocols to help streamline the virtual urgent care visits effectively. So, say a patient's coming in with something like a pink eye or a urinary tract infection, or even just a cold or flu, we have protocols that allow patients to go through and answer a series of questions in an adaptive interview. And based on the patient responses, we can figure out if that patient needs to be seen in person or may need to get referred out to the emergency department." #FabricHealth #MedAI #AI #DigitalAssistant #DigitalHealth #TriageEvaluation fabrichealth.com Download the transcript here

James Keppel, Founder and CEO of Sarana Health, is focused on an integrated healthcare model that addresses chronic health challenges and preventative care. By providing personalized care, advanced lab testing, and one-on-one coaching with healthcare professionals, Sarana aims to fill the gaps in the traditional healthcare system, which often focuses on sick care rather than keeping people healthy. The company's integrated care model looks at the interconnected body systems to identify underlying causes of health issues, rather than just treating symptoms. James explains, "What we provide is a totally personalized client-led and client-centric approach to wellness. We do that through an advanced series of lab tests and also you get to actually talk to the people who care for you, which I know is rare. Everything is very much about you and the person that you are, as opposed to charts and graphs about past history and that sort of thing with other doctors. So we get very dialed into the person." "We've got a lot of different ranges that we can hit. So you mentioned people with chronic conditions. Yes, absolutely. We can deal with that. A lot of times, those people have not gotten any good answers from the legacy healthcare system. So they go and see their doctor every six months. They do the same test, they get the same, we don't know what's going on, or it's just you're older and that's the way it is, sort of thing. And then the other end of the spectrum is on the preventative side and looking at being in front of your health as opposed to waiting until you have a problem, which unfortunately the legacy healthcare system kind of does - they wait till you have a problem, they give you a prescription, and tell you, that's the way it goes. Whereas if you're on the preventive end, the easiest way to stay healthy is to never get sick." #SaranaHealth #IntegratedHealth #Wellness #OptimalWellness #Wholebody #PersonalizedHealth sarana.health Download the transcript here

Muffy Walker is a psychiatric nurse, mental health advocate, and author with a focus on bipolar disorder and Alzheimer's disease. As a founder of the Bipolar Foundation and through her work with the Alzheimer's Association, Muffy is working to raise awareness, reduce the stigma often associated with these conditions, and bring resources to patients and caregivers. Based on her personal experiences with family members with bipolar and Alzheimer's, Muffy has published her latest novel, Memory Weavers to help others deal with the challenges of diagnosing, treating, and supporting complex mental conditions. Muffy explains, "I am a psychiatric nurse. I have a master's in psychiatric nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, and I worked in that space, mostly working in the PTSD area. And then I had a family member who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This was over 23 years ago. At that time, there were very few resources available, so three other women and I decided to launch what was then called the California Bipolar Foundation. As soon as we were up on the internet, we were getting requests, hits, and asks from all over the world. So we very quickly changed it to the International Bipolar Foundation. That foundation is 18 years old now, IBPF.org is globally accessible, and all of what we offer is free." "And now, because of my book, I'm very involved with the Alzheimer's Association and Us Against Alzheimer's, etc. But we do see, of course, we have this brand new blood test that just came out that I think is a game changer, helping people to determine if they're having some kinds of issues related to memory. And then a simple test, just like we should do a simple mental health exam when you go to your GP, ask you if you're depressed, ask you how you're sleeping, ask you if you have thoughts of suicide. A simple test, but more related to memory, can be given by the family doctor." #MuffyWalker #MemoryWeaver #IBPF #InternationalBipolarFoundation #BipolarDisorder #AlzheimersDisease #MentalHealth #Caregivers muffywalker.com Download the transcript here

Michael Reidy, a senior consultant at Interaction Associates, discusses the challenges and opportunities facing both new and experienced doctors, given the rise of virtual doctor visits and telemedicine, as well as the use of AI tools in the healthcare environment. While new doctors often possess strong technical skills, they may lack the interpersonal skills necessary to communicate effectively with patients. Experienced doctors may need a refresher on active listening skills to adapt to screen technologies. While technology and AI tools can enhance the patient-doctor relationship by providing data and insights, the human interaction remains essential. Michael explains, "We are a 55-year-old company that has worked with clients ranging from healthcare to nuclear power to finance services. So we're providing tools to organizations to empower leaders, managers, individual contributors, and coaches to encourage performance and enhance capability." "New physicians are such a brilliant audience for us. I think usually because they're technically very brilliant. They have come through an exhaustive training and passed through many, many hurdles and bridges in order to arrive at their calling or their vocation. At the same time, they arrive with some experience of being with people who are sick or who are ill or who are wondering what is wrong with me, but not a lot. And so our job, we find, is to enable, to empower, and to engage the human side of the younger doctor. In fact, it applies very often to older practitioners also." #InteractionAssociates #MedTech #VirtualHealth #AI #MedAI #DoctorPatientRelationship interactionassociates.com Download the transcript here

Allan Sheffield, Co-Founder of Gene By Gene, offers genetic testing to provide insights into an individual's risk for various diseases, including cancer and rare genetic disorders, allowing for more proactive and preventative healthcare. Analysis of pharmacogenomic data, which examines how an individual's genes influence their response to medications, also helps doctors prescribe the most effective treatments and avoid potential side effects. Integrating genetic data into electronic medical records and using AI to simplify the interpretation of results is enabling doctors and patients to improve patient outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and use polygenic risk scores to provide more comprehensive insights into an individual's health. Allan explains, "Gene By Gene is one of the largest genomic sequencing or genetic tech companies in the US, and we do everything from whole genome sequencing to offering hereditary cancer screening, predictive cardiovascular risk, and things like pharmacogenomic testing to see how people respond to different medications. So if you can think about genetic testing, we've got the capabilities to do it." "We're living in a really exciting time at the moment, where next-generation sequencing, or whole-genome sequencing, is becoming much more of a reality. I think 10 years ago, it would cost over a hundred thousand dollars to sequence your whole genome, which is the 3 billion base pairs of genetic code in your body. And so what we've had to do in the past is do very targeted tests to keep the costs affordable. But with the advancements in technology, we are now doing the whole genome sequence at Gene By Gene for in the hundreds of dollars as opposed to the thousands of dollars. And that's making it much more accessible and much more realistic in healthcare." #GeneByGene #GeneticTesting #NextGenerationSequencing #NGS #Pharmagenomics #CancerScreening #PredictiveScreening #CardiovascularRisk #PrecisionMedicine GeneByGene.com Download the transcript here

Sandy Saggar, CEO of Connexall, aims to solve the challenge of disparate and unconnected technologies in hospitals that lead to inefficient workflows, data silos, and increased cognitive load on clinicians. Connexall's connected care platform helps integrate hospital systems and medical devices to improve communication, automate workflows, save time for clinicians, and enhance patient outcomes. The need for a connected hospital is becoming increasingly clear, as it helps break down technical barriers and improve interoperability. Sandy explains, "So the challenge today and has been a challenge for some time is that hospitals have disparate technology pieces all over the place, and between technologies and medical devices, they're not connected to one another. It means less automation, silos of data, and just workflows that don't help clinicians and staff do their work around patient care. So when you look at all of these medical devices, clinical systems can be connected, which can really improve those workflows, improve communication, and lead to improved patient outcomes. So, how do we make it easier for nurses, doctors, and staff to do their day-to-day work? "Really, that's our purpose here, is to help with that and decrease things like cognitive load. Why do I need to go to multiple devices or multiple medical devices, multiple apps, multiple workstations to check on things around patient care, like vital signs, alarms, and messages? So, just helping to support patient care and improving the caregiver experience is really the heart of what we do." #Connexall #Hospitals #ConnectedHospitals #SmartHospitals #Healthcare #DataSilos #MedicalDevices #Interoperability connexall.com Download the transcript here

Dr. George Sledge, Executive VP and Chief Medical Officer of Caris Life Sciences, is using advanced molecular testing, including DNA, RNA, and protein analysis, to identify specific mutations and characteristics of a patient's tumor, allowing for more personalized and targeted treatment. The company is developing liquid biopsies to detect cancer early, identify minimal residual disease, and assess the potential for future cancer development. Caris has a database of over half a million patients whose tumors have undergone next-generation sequencing, allowing them to draw increasingly accurate conclusions. The future of precision oncology is expected to involve broader and earlier use of next-generation sequencing as the cost of the test continues to decrease significantly. George explains, "Caris Life Sciences is a molecular diagnostics company. Patients and their physicians send us tumor samples that can be obtained either from the primary tissue or from a distant recurrent site. When they come to us, we do several things. We look at DNA, what's called whole exome. We look at RNA, what's called whole transcriptome. We also frequently look at the protein level at immunohistochemistry, looking at slides that have been stained to look for particular molecular lesions that may be important from a treatment standpoint. Based on all of these, we're able to provide patients with information about which drugs represent the most appropriate treatment for their disease. This, of course, allows you to go to a drug that hopefully will be less toxic and more effective for your particular disease." "When we look at the very specific mutations that manifest themselves at the level of either DNA or RNA, this requires fairly high technology, what's called next-generation sequencing, which allows us to pick up all these individual mutations that make up a particular patient's cancer. And every patient's cancer is different. Every patient's cancer involves different combinations of mutations that result in different responses to different treatments." #CarisLifeSciences #CancerResearch #PrecisionMedicine #RealWorldData #AccestoCare #HealthEquity #NextGenerationSequencing #NGS #LiquidBiopsy #ClinicoGenomic #Biomarkers #PanCancer carislifesciences.com Download the transcript here

Kirk Huntsman, Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Vivos Therapeutics, is focused on the connection between obstructive sleep apnea and Alzheimer's disease, the challenges of diagnosing sleep apnea, and the importance of sleep testing in treating the root causes of sleep disorders. The Vivos oral appliance is a non-invasive way to address the breathing disorder OSA and resulting sleep issues. Proper nasal breathing and airway development from a young age can help prevent the onset of sleep apnea and help preserve brain health. Kirk explains, "Sleep apnea is an interesting condition that has only been actively researched for the last 60 years. It was really only identified and started showing up in the medical literature in the mid-1960s. And so we really have about a 60-year run at trying to figure out what this condition is, what it affects, what's comorbid with it, etc. We're now pushing 40 plus conditions, which are comorbid with sleep apnea, and every time we find another condition that is coexistent with sleep apnea or that is found in connection with sleep apnea, we just expand the horizon for that and we learn more about the sort of the biomechanical and the biological processes that are at work that drive the connection between these two. And you mentioned one of the main ones now that we've known about for a while, but the connection between obstructive sleep apnea in particular and Alzheimer's." "What we know is that there's a drainage system on the brain. Our brains need to get into a deep state of rest, and it's called REM sleep. And there are other parts to this. I'll keep it really high level, but the bottom line is that our brains flush. There's a sewage system that basically flushes the toxins out of our brains. It's called the glymphatic system. And the glymphatic system needs to be able to function, and in order to function, the patient has to be in a state of deep sleep. And so if sleep apnea has interrupted that sleep and caused various arousals or various interruptions to avoid a patient arriving at that, what happens is that the brain is not able to flush the toxins out of the brain, and those toxins build up." #VivosTherapeutics #SleepApnea #ObstructiveSleepApnea #OSA #SleepDisorders #CognitiveDecline #Alzheimers #OSATreatment #MedicalDevice vivos.com Download the transcript here

Marianne De Backer is the CEO of Vir Biotechnology, a company developing treatments that harness the power of the immune system to fight serious infectious diseases and cancer. Vir Biotechnology’s current clinical trials include a registrational program in chronic hepatitis delta, a rare, often fatal liver disease, as well as two Phase 1 trials of PRO-XTEN™ dual-masked T-cell engagers (TCEs), one targeting HER-2 and the other targeting PSMA, each in heavily pre-treated cancer patients. TCEs have shown tremendous potential but have been limited due to toxicity challenges. The PRO-XTEN™ technology keeps the TCEs masked until they reach the tumor microenvironment, potentially mitigating the toxicity of TCEs and allowing them to unleash their tremendous potential to destroy cancer cells. Marianne explains, “Vir Biotechnology is an immunology company, and that means that we are really developing treatments that take advantage of the power of basically the patient's own immune system to fight a variety of diseases. We have actually four clinical-stage programs in infectious disease and oncology, and a number of preclinical programs as well. And our most advanced program is to treat chronic hepatitis delta. That is actually a disease caused by a tiny virus, but it's causing liver cancer and is often fatal.” “We have recently initiated our registrational phase 3 program. It's called ECLIPSE. We had previously shown some very compelling data with one of our regimens for treating this disease. We're really excited about progressing that program. And the rest of our clinical pipeline includes a series of so-called PRO-XTEN™ masked T-cell engagers, or in short, TCEs, for the treatment of metastatic solid tumors.” Vir Biotechnology has exclusive rights to the PRO-XTEN™ masking platform for oncology and infectious disease. PRO-XTEN™ is a trademark of Amunix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. a Sanofi company. #VirBiotechnology #MaskedTCellEngagers #TCellEngagers #SolidTumors #MetastaticSolidTumors #Cancer #Immunotherapy #ChronicHepatitisDelta #MedAI #PatientsAreWaiting vir.bio Download the transcript here

Evan Steele, Founder and CEO of online reputation management company rater8, emphasizes the importance of online reviews for healthcare providers and how patients are increasingly relying on reviews to select a doctor. The key to generating reviews is to actively ask for feedback and acknowledge receipt of comments. Negative reviews and low-star ratings can encourage practices to respond to comments, improving the patient experience and demonstrating to patients that the practice cares. Evan explains, "Now, you look in your insurance guide to see which providers in your area accept the insurance. There's a Facebook group. You might ask, Who do I go to see for my shoulder that hurts for an orthopedic surgeon? You ask your friends and family, your PCP gives you some names, and you start going down the list. And what's changed is if you call that first doctor on the list and they don't have great reviews, you might not even call them, but let's say you call them and they have a convenient time, and a location is convenient, but the next doctor has 150 reviews, 4.9 stars." "You read the comments, patients love this doctor. Even if the appointment time is not convenient for you or the drive is a little further than the most convenient location, you're going to book an appointment with that doctor. Just like I would never even think of dining at a 3.8-star rated restaurant. I wouldn't trust my health, my life, and my well-being to a 3.8-rated doctor. So I think people are making decisions now based on online reviews and even going out of their way and being inconvenienced to make sure they get the right doctor." #rater8 #ReputationManagement #PatientFeedback #PatientEngagement #PracticeGrowth #TrustMarketing #PatientAcquisition #PatientProviderRelationship rater8.com Download the transcript here

Elli Kaplan, CEO and Co-Founder of Neurotrack, emphasizes the importance of early cognitive assessment and the potential of digital tools in advancing the screening process for cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases. Screen-based assessment tools can provide more efficient, accurate, and objective screening compared to traditional pen and paper tests. Integrating cognitive screening into primary care settings can lead to early intervention when lifestyle changes can help maintain brain health and slow the progression of conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Elli explains, "We are focused on screening for cognitive decline, and that includes mild cognitive impairment all the way through to Alzheimer's disease, working largely with primary care providers to help them then make a diagnosis of cognitive decline or Alzheimer's in their clinics and refer patients on to get better treatment." "Historically, there have been tests that have existed in the universe that are pen and paper tests that measure cognition. I would say quite poorly. But the other problem with these types of tests is that they have to be administered by a trained administrator, who is typically a doctor, and they take a long time. So they may take anywhere from 10 minutes to 25 minutes. And so the advantages of digital tools are that one, they don't carry that same bias. Some that would occur with one provider versus another versus another, with a different kind of style administering the test. So they're much more objective." "Our tests are quite short, so they can be administered, self-administered in about three minutes, depending on the patient. So, anywhere from three minutes up to about seven minutes, as we unlock additional tests as they may be needed for a particular patient. So they make it possible to standardize testing across a population and to integrate it into workflows in ways that haven't been possible before. So more efficient, more accurate, and more objective. And you take out a lot of the bias that has existed around both administration, as well as things like language or education levels, ethnicity, that type of thing." #Neurotrack #Alzheimers #HealthTech #AlzheimersAwareness #MemoryCare #SeniorCare #Aging #Cognition #CognitionScreening #Dementia neurotrack.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Sandra Silberman, Chief Medical Officer at CNS Pharmaceuticals, has developed new therapies for glioblastoma that can cross the blood-brain barrier to reach brain tumors. Their lead drug candidates have been modified to slip into the membranes to inhibit tumor growth and attack the cancer cells. The anthracycline-based and taxane-based drugs are showing efficacy in clinical trials and are not showing the cardiotoxicity associated with anthracyclines. Sandra explains, "Anthracyclines are characteristically cardiotoxic. And we have just conducted a study of over 160 patients who have received this, and some of them for quite a long period of time. And we have not seen any cardiotoxicity. So we have one of the anthracyclines that is the first to actually cross the blood-brain barrier without any help from other mechanisms, and it also doesn't cause cardiotoxicity. So we have a really open field to be able to further develop this drug. And we know that this drug, based on all of our preclinical studies, is very effective against glioma cells." "This is to the great credit of the chemists that we've been working with. Can I develop a compound that can not be a substrate for this, so it can't even bind to this efflux transporter and can slip by? But not only that, can it be lipophilic, meaning it can get through all those membranes, and it can be something that leaks into the brain itself. So the two molecules that we have are not substrates for these multidrug-resistant transporters. They're also very highly lipophilic, meaning they're very oily. And so I guess this has two meanings to it, but they're oily and then they slip into the brain and are able to do what they're supposed to be doing, which is the inhibition of tumor growth and killing the tumor cells." #CNSPharma #Glioblastoma ##BrainCancer #BloodBrainBarrier #NeuroOncology #CancerResearch #DrugDevelopment #BrainTumor cnspharma.com Download the transcript here

Kevin Caldwell, CEO, President, and Co-Founder of Ossium Health, discusses the opportunities for regenerative stem-cell therapies and the challenges of obtaining bone marrow from donors for bone marrow transplants. Ossium Health is collecting bone marrow from healthy, young donors and utilizing a cryopreservation process that enables long-term storage and on-demand availability of these cells. Ongoing clinical trials using allogeneic bone-marrow-derived cells to treat patients with acute leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome are showing promising results. Kevin explains, "Our mission is to improve the health, longevity, and vitality of human beings through bioengineering. We believe that regenerative therapeutics, which involve cell and gene therapies that can permanently and positively improve human biology, will be fundamental to the prevention of disease and the preservation of health as we age. One of the most powerful tools we have in achieving this goal is engineering the immune system. And in particular at Ossium, we develop therapeutics that enable us today in the clinic to treat life-threatening malignancies of the immune system, like leukemia, in patients with dire need. Into the future, the goal is to make it possible to reconstitute, reprogram, and replace a blood and immune system in a manner that can treat patients with chronic diseases and ultimately do so in a preventive manner." "Traditionally, the major application of bone marrow in the clinic is bone marrow transplants for patients with blood cancers like leukemia. And so the patient's native immune system is ablated or annihilated and replaced with a bone marrow infusion from a healthy donor, related or unrelated. And if that bone, new bone marrow from the donor in grafts in the patient, then it replaces or it constitutes their blood and immune system." "And so one of the things that we're working on at Ossium is, okay, how do we address these problems? How do we make bone marrow more available to deliver and deploy on demand and easily, without needing to track down a volunteer donor? What can we do to reduce the risk of rejection so that the transplant is safer? What can we do to improve the likelihood of engraftment the first time and the speed of engraftment so the patients aren't immunocompromised for as long? All of these are things that we're working on to really make it possible to bring this lifesaving procedure to more patients." #OssiumHealth #StemCellTherapy #RegenerativeMedicine #BoneMarrowTransplants ossiumhealth.com Download the transcript here

Ann Bilyew, Executive VP of Health and Group General Manager at WebMD Ignite, works with hospitals, health systems, and payers to provide technology that builds trust, reduces administrative burdens on providers, and personalizes engagements with patients and members. While AI-powered solutions are showing great promise, challenges arise in deploying new technologies due to legacy infrastructure, interoperability issues, and the need to balance innovation with potential risks and costs. A strong foundation of high-quality, clinically reviewed content is key to the ability to provide accurate information on demand. Ann explains, "We work with hospitals, health systems, payers, and essentially everybody involved in the provision or payment support in healthcare. And we work with 90% of US-based hospitals and health systems and about an equal percentage of all of the top payers in the United States." "I'd say one of the key themes that we hear time and time again across all of our clients and all of our partners is the need to build trust and the need to stay relevant and the need to personalize engagements with consumers, with patients, with members. I mean, let's face it, humans today, we've all been trained, or humans in the United States, at least, have all been trained to have a really personalized experience with their partners and their vendors. So they expect us to know them, they expect us to understand them, they expect us to know the needs, their unique set of circumstances that make them a human. And doing that within the appropriate confines of privacy regulation and requirements is really the job at hand for many of our clients." "And it's not just with hospitals, payers honestly have, for the most part, ancient care management platforms and ancient claims processing platforms. And look, there are good reasons for that. I mean, we like to sort of point to that as a thing, but it's not been because of negligence, or it's not been because people didn't want to improve and modernize their technology and their infrastructure. There are good reasons why what exists today exists, and part of it is resources and costs for sure. But part of it also is risk, and the risk associated with losing data or not being able to pay your clinicians if you're a health plan, or respond to your members in a timely way if you're a health plan, or not even being able to operate your ER effectively." #WebMD #AIforHealth #MedAI #PatientEducation #PatientEngagement #DigitalHealth #DigitalHealthInnovations #PersonalizedCare #EmpoweredPatients webmdignite.com Download the transcript here

Greg Farnum, Senior VP and General Manager at Audacious Inquiry, a PointClickCare company, brings expertise in health information exchange, public health, and health IT policy. Audacious is using AI to reduce administrative burdens and improve clinical workflows, facilitating data exchange, enhancing decision-making, and providing a better patient experience. Working with the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and other federal and state agencies, Audacious is developing tools to summarize lengthy test results, generate educational materials, and suggest relevant responses to public inquiries. Greg explains, "We have a full-stack engineering team, a managed services team, expertise in health IT policy and regulation, health IT standards, public health, and now artificial intelligence. So we work with ASTP (Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy), which is also known as the old ONCCDC, plus a bunch of other federal and state agencies, HIEs, and public health. We are part of PointClickCare, a leading health tech company with one simple mission -- to help providers deliver exceptional care across thousands of facilities." "ASTP has some really interesting challenges that are perfect for AI. They're dealing with some complex data analysis challenges and the creation of content for industry and the public. They also respond to thousands of public inquiries yearly. So we're helping them with all of those things and leveraging AI tools to do that." "I'll get a little more specific. Every year, hundreds of health IT organizations and developers submit these things they call testing results associated with their real-world test plans. But there's no standard format for this. So, ASTP staff have to manually read through each of these documents. And these are big documents. They can be 50 pages, they could be 200 pages, and the staff need to go through and figure out where the answers are to these specific questions. So we've built some AI tools that can read the entire document and automatically extract the answers using things like natural language processing and other AI components." #PointClickCare #AudaciousInquiry #AI #MedAI #ResponsibleAI #AdministrativeBurdens #DigitalHealth #Healthcare #HealthcareRegulation #ClinicianBurnout #Clinicians pointclickcare.com/audacious-inquiry Download the transcript here

Dr. Abe Delpassand, Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board at RadioMedix, is concentrated on the development of radiopharmaceuticals for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Advancements in handling radioactive materials and increased availability have enabled the growth of the use of alpha-emitting and beta-emitting radioisotopes in treating cancers that have been resistant to other therapies. Alpha-emitting radioisotopes are particularly interesting because they can cause double-strand DNA damage in cancer cells, making the probability of cancer recurrence much less likely. Abe explains, "Just a brief introduction related to what radiopharmaceuticals are. These are drugs that have three parts, basically. One part is the radioactive material. The second part is what we call a ligand. It's like a vehicle that takes the radioactive material to the target that we have. And there is a third component, which is like a chain attaching the radioisotope to the ligand. Radiopharmaceuticals qualify as a form of therapy because we target a specific receptor antigen metabolic pathway in cancer cells, and this is how we can reach the cancer cells. It has two components: one, diagnostic and therapeutic, which is very unique to this modality because in many other cancer therapies before the treatment, we don't have any way to make sure that the patient who is receiving the treatment, that actually the drug can reach the cancer the patient has." "We have been talking about the value of alpha-emitters in delivering high level of radiation in a targeted fashion to the cancer cells, but we in the last, I'd say 10 years or more, we have learned how to handle these isotopes. That's one aspect of the science part. The other aspect is the availability of these isotopes. Now the supply of these isotopes is becoming a lot more, and they are becoming more available." #RadioMedix #TeamRadioMedix #Radiopharmaceuticals #TargetedAlphaTherapy #OncologyInnovation #NuclearMedicine #CancerResearch #RadiogandTherapy #PrecisionOncology #Theranostics #SPICACenter #OncologyCommunity #AlphaEmittingRadioisotopes #BetaEmittingRadioisotopes radiomedix.com Download the transcript here

Kurt Lunkwitz, Chief Operating Officer at ProRx Pharma, describes the role compound pharmacies play in filling gaps when certain drugs are in short supply and providing personalized medications for patients. Compound pharmacies offer a wide range of customized formulations and delivery methods to meet the specific needs of patients, particularly in the areas of functional and preventative medicines. These pharmacies are enabling a shift towards precision medicine and individualized care, responding to the market demand for alternative and preferred formulations of medications. Kurt explains, "There's primary clientele and then there's secondary clientele. Our primary clientele includes a host of prescribers, medical clinics, and could be telemedicine-type companies, and med spas. There are tens of thousands of these types of practitioner offices across the country, and it's a wide and booming industry as it relates to functional medicine, alternative medicine, or as we like to refer to it, preventative care. And the secondary customer would be the patient themselves. So the medications that ProRx is compounding would be ordered through these physicians’ offices, these practices, and for their particular patient and customer base." "One of the primary functions in the role of a 503 B outsourcing facility, or a number of them across the country, is to step in and fill this gap. If the primary manufacturer, the pharmaceutical manufacturer, has a disruption in the supply chain, or simply just can't keep up with the demand." "If we want to take a look at one of the largest supply chain gaps that has existed, and it's been a very popular topic of conversation here more recently, this would relate a lot to some of the GLP-1 medications, both semaglutide and tirzepatide. So these were two medications that ProRx participated in and helped to fill the shortage gap. There were a handful of months where ProRx went into production, and we helped to fill tens of thousands of prescriptions for patients of medical necessity who badly needed these medications." #ProRxPharma #CompoundPharmacy #DrugShortageList prorxpharma.com Download the transcript here

Amanda Wiggins is CEO of cGP Lab, a New Zealand-based company that is commercializing cycline Glycine Proline, cGP, a dipeptide molecule that helps regulate blood vessel formation. The Lab is pursuing a medical food regulatory pathway to bring its cGP-based products to the market for the dietary management of peripheral neuropathy and other vascular complications of type 2 diabetes and is exploring the potential for Parkinson's disease and other dementias. The Lab sources cGP from a combination of New Zealand blackcurrant and beef bone collagen using a proprietary manufacturing process. Amanda explains, "The cGP Lab is a relatively new company. We were formed in 2020, and our mission is really to commercialize a really interesting dipeptide molecule called cycline Glycine Proline, or cGP for short. Although we're new to commercializing it, there's quite a huge body of evidence that sits behind where we've got today. Our Chief Science Officer, Dr. Jian Guan, has researched cGP for around 30 years. It's her life's work. What makes it really interesting is that cGP exists in all of our bodies. It's an endogenous molecule, but it also exists in some food sources. So we've identified those food sources and we've created a manufacturing process to create a standardized cGP ingredient that we use in our supplement range." "Like many companies, we were actually founded on somewhat of a serendipitous discovery. So, back in 2016, the founders of the company had done a clinical trial on Parkinson's patients. And in that trial, they'd given the patients capsules containing blackcurrant extract because they were interested in whether blackcurrant extract, which is high in anthocyanins, could address some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease." "What we've ended up with now is a proprietary manufacturing process that combines New Zealand blackcurrants together with beef bone collagen. And we put those two together through a prolonged heating process. And what happens is that the amino acids, glycine and proline, when subject to heat or, even better, heat and pressure, will cyclise and form the cGP. So it's really that manufacturing process that brings out the cGP. And in that initial Parkinson's study, the level of cGP was actually quite low because that heating process hadn't been done for long enough. So we've come a long way in learning how to make cGP, and it really comes from that combination of New Zealand blackcurrant together with the collagen peptides." "So, where we're seeing it being most useful is right at the start of a peripheral neuropathy diagnosis. So patients often, well, I know in the US anyway, foot checks are generally done annually for people with type 2 diabetes. It's a bit different here in New Zealand. And so that should hopefully pick up the first inklings that someone's starting to develop peripheral neuropathy. And what the path to market that we're seeing for our innovation is called the medical food category, which is a bit different." #cGPLab #cGP #MedicalFood #DiabeticPeripheralNeuropathy cGPmax.com Download the transcript here

Dan Nardi, the CEO of Reimagine Care, is using a technology-enabled platform to support cancer patients and clinicians to extend care beyond the clinic and address the unique challenges of cancer treatments. The evolving landscape of cancer therapies and rise of oral and subcutaneous methods of delivering drug has increased the need for remote patient support and medication management. The use of AI and digital tools provide significant opportunities to help triage patient questions and reports of side effects to provide necessary, timely support from clinicians. Dan explains, "At Reimagine Care, we focus on helping to support providers as they are providing care for patients going through cancer treatment. We built an on-demand cancer care platform that combines technology and an oncology-trained clinical care team. Then we partner with our providers, our oncologists around the country, to help them extend the really great care that they provide for patients in the clinic. We help them extend that and support those patients 98% of their time when they are outside of the clinic. And so that's what we've built, and we've been at this for a handful of years and are very excited about the continued progress." "The uniqueness really stems from the fact that we call it cancer, but it's a combination of so many different types of that disease, and there's so much uniqueness in each one of the diagnoses and the treatment plan. It's not an easy one-size-fits-all model that some of healthcare has. Knee replacements and hip replacements are fairly straightforward and have been done somewhat the same for decades now. But when it comes to cancer, there's so many different factors that go into it, and as we've had such an increase in more of the personalized medicine and the oral oncolytics and the other treatment plans, it's become a lot for not only the patients, but also the providers and the care team to keep up. And so being able to use technology to help bridge that gap has been really impactful." #ReimagineCare #EmpoweredPatient #DigitalHealth #AIinOncology #PatientCenteredCare #HealthEquity #MedStarHealth #PatientEmpowerment reimaginecare.com Download the transcript here