Empowered Patient Podcast

Loren Larsen, CEO and Co-Founder of Videra Health, is using AI-powered technology to improve the patient-provider connection and monitor patient health, particularly mental health, in an empathetic and conversational way. The video-based AI platform engages patients in regular check-ins to assess mental and physical conditions and detect subtle changes in behavior, tone, or language that could indicate issues like suicidal ideation or movement disorders. Data from patient encounters is also providing insights to clinicians and helping patients and providers better understand the connection between mental health and chronic conditions. Loren explains, "We started Videra Health recognizing this challenge that when a patient isn't with their doctor, they lose connection. You go to your doctor, you get good care, you leave. There's never been a good way to follow up or check in with patients to see how they're doing. And so we've really applied AI to this for the last six years since we started the company to check in with patients, finding out how they're doing in an empathetic, conversational, authentic way that replaces boring old assessments that require people to field lots and lots of multiple-choice questions, which no one enjoys. The whole goal here is how to build a better connection between the provider and their patient, even when the provider's too busy to check in on a regular basis." "Then, as they're answering, the AI is analyzing both their verbal and nonverbal responses to measure things that the clinician is interested in, such as their depression, their anxiety, PTSD, whether they are using suicidal language, etc. And then having this nice conversation. It usually takes a few minutes." "We think you often hear from doctors like, Oh, if I could just see my patients for a few minutes, I would know how they're doing. So there's this idea that we want to be able to see how a person is doing, not just verbally, but how they're presenting themselves, how they're communicating their facial expressions in addition to the words that they're using. So we're looking at their words, their tone of voice, and relevant facial expressions and movements that help us understand what's really happening." #VideraHealth #BehavioralHealth #MentalHealthTech #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #HealthTech #ClinicalTrials #RemotePatientMonitoring #HealthInnovation #PatientCenteredCare   viderahealth.com Download the transcript here  

David Fischel, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Stereotaxis, is advancing the ability of surgical robotics, particularly in the field of minimally invasive catheter-based procedures. Stereotaxis is developing the use of robotic technology to improve precision and accessibility in endovascular surgeries with a unique mechanism that allows surgeons to control the tip of the catheter. The adoption of surgical robotics for endovascular procedures will expand as remote access is made available and safety concerns are addressed for previously impossible-to-treat conditions.  David explains, "We build advanced robots that allow physicians to do minimally invasive catheter-based procedures with greater precision and safety. We're kind of pioneering that area of robotic surgery. We've seen other areas of medicine benefit significantly over the last decade or two from advanced robotic technologies. And there's a whole field of catheter-based endovascular cardiovascular procedures where we're still using handheld catheters that have limitations and weaknesses to them. And by improving that field of medicine, we think we can make care better for patients, and we can enable minimally invasive, effective care for many more patients." "Robots are improving surgery in many areas in a fairly dramatic fashion. Endovascular surgery is where you use endo within vascular, within the blood vessels, you use the blood vessels as a type of superhighway and you insert these little devices called catheters into the blood vessels and then usually through the leg or the arm, and then you can go anywhere you want in the body to the brain or to the heart or to the periphery and treat the patient kind of using that catheter."  "It's a strange area of medicine, particularly for trying to implement robots, because you're working in very small, delicate anatomy, and you have to think about flexible robots because the catheter has to navigate all the tortuosity of the patient's blood vessels. You can't think about a robot in the traditional way you would imagine a robot, if you think about industrial robots. And so that's where that area has been more difficult, and that's where we're really pioneering and bringing robotics to play in that field." #Stereotaxis #SturgicalRobots #RoboticAssistedSurgery #PrecisionMedicine #EndovascularSurgery #CardiacArrhythmias  stereotaxis.com Download the transcript here

Craig Limoli, Co-Founder and CEO of Wellsheet, is streamling workflows for clinicians by providing better access to patient data and improving care coordination across care teams.  Wellsheet is integrated into existing health records to provide a seamless experience to users and help to reduce "pajama time" for doctors by reducing the amount of end-of-the-day work needed to document patient encounters.  Wellsheet uses AI and natural language processing to surface the most relevant information for clinicians and generate documentation, reducing time spent and improving efficiency. Craig explains, "Wellsheet is a care team, co-pilot that serves physicians as well as other clinicians with better access to all of the data they need to make treatment decisions for patients, as well as easier coordination across the whole care team. So we're really designed as a company and as a product to support a broad array of clinicians, both physicians, nursing case managers, and surface the data most relevant to them in the way that they want to see it. We coordinate care across those multidisciplinary stakeholders in a way that is seamlessly embedded and integrated into the existing electronic health record systems to ultimately create a really seamless and cohesive experience for our users." "So our technology is embedded within Epic, Cerner, and other major EHRs. So physicians and other clinicians access it with the click of a button directly within their workflow in the EHR. They don't have to log in again, they don't have to reidentify the patient. It all feels like a native part of their EHR experience. And as soon as they click into Wellsheet, they are presented with a summarized view of the most relevant information from the entire patient's medical history and what pertains to that particular encounter, all in a single place."    #Wellsheet #ClinicalWorkflow #EHR #AI #ClinicalAI #MultidisciplinaryCare #PhysicianBurnout #DigitalHealth wellsheet.com Download the transcript here 

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