Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Michael Sherling, Co-Founder, Chief Medical Officer, and Strategy Officer at ModMed, aims to save time for physicians and patients by reducing administrative burden through technology. Their AI-based solutions focus on automating mundane tasks like fax routing and documentation and can passively transcribe doctor-patient conversations to generate structured notes. The interface is designed to be simple and unobtrusive, minimizing extra clicks or steps for the doctors to review and accept the AI's recommendations. Michael explains, "Our approach to AI is focused on curing the drudgery of healthcare. What I mean by that is using any kind of tool to reduce the burden of documentation for staff, providers, and people in the back office. That's really what we're focused on. We're not so focused on how to improve diagnoses or any of the clinical aspects of healthcare but more on the administrative burden." "We're still in the development phase of our AI strategy, but there are two products that we're pretty far along on. One is around AI fax routing. It's how we can basically recognize faxes that come in and then route them to the correct patients and the correct category in the chart. It's amazing today that medical practices in 2024 rely on faxes as much as they do, but they do." "The truth of the matter is there's just so much burden on doctors. If they have a 15-minute visit, they may be spending half the time or more just trying to capture all the information. Some of it has to do with the patient's complaint in front of them, but some is just administrative stuff. We're trying to reduce that so that doctor-patient relationship can be center stage. How is it different? Well, our solution is on an iPad, which I think is great because it's unobtrusive. It's a great form factor that brings the patient and the doctor together. The model itself is specialty-specific."   #ModMed #Healthcare #HealthTech #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #EHR #ElectronicHealthRecords #Physicians #PatientExperience modmed.com  Download the transcript here

Dr. Eric Siemers, Medical Officer at Acumen Pharma, is developing a monoclonal antibody called sabirnetug that targets a specific toxic form of amyloid beta, Aβ oligomers. These oligomers are now believed to be a key driver of neuronal damage in Alzheimer's disease. The drug is in phase 2 clinical trials to evaluate its ability to slow cognitive decline in early-stage Alzheimer's patients and demonstrate the accuracy of biomarkers in identifying pathology before symptoms appear.   Eric explains, "We've identified, and this is a monoclonal antibody, a monoclonal antibody with a unique mechanism of action in that it targets what are called Aβ oligomers. And without going into all the details, these Aβ oligomers are now really felt to be the toxic species, the ones that cause the neurons to die, and the two drugs that have recently gotten approval sort of indirectly get at those toxic species, maybe one more than the other. But in our case, we're directly targeting what we think is the most toxic species. And so the progress in the field is wonderful, and nobody can say that it's not, or take anything away from that, but nobody's cured the disease either. Now we know we've got a toehold, we know an approach, and Acumen is using an antibody because of this unique target. We think of it as a next-generation treatment for Alzheimer's disease." "We've known about these Alzheimer's plaques for a long time, but what's more recent is understanding some of these intermediate species. And so these Aβ oligomers we target are oligo, meaning a few. So, anywhere from 2 to 200 of these Aβ stuck together. The Aβs are basically inherently sticky. And so the things we're most interested in are probably 10 of the Aβ together up to say 50, which seems to be the sweet spot." #AcumenPharmaceuticals #Alzheimers #ALZ #EndALZ #Sabirnetug #DrugDevelopment acumenpharm.com Download the transcript here

Rob Abbott, CEO and Executive Director at ISPOR, the Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research, focuses on defining and measuring value in healthcare, including accessibility, affordability, effectiveness, and patient outcomes. HEOR (health economics and outcomes research) can provide data-driven insights to guide healthcare decision-making, reduce bias in research, and consider a broader range of factors like social determinants of health. This can improve treatment adherence, align therapies with what matters most to patients, and support the evaluation of technology used for treatments and predictive analysis of new therapies.   Rob explains, "I'm excited at both the legacy of work that health economics and outcomes research has contributed to, but I'm particularly excited about the extent to which health economics and outcomes research can provide data-driven insights to highlight health interventions that provide the best health outcomes for the investment made. This is good for managing the expenditure of public resources. Still, even more so, data-driven insights can help us lead to better health outcomes, better treatment protocols, and better health outcomes for patients." "As health economists and a professional society representing health economists and outcomes researchers, I think we know that historically, we have defined value quite narrowly in terms of a person's physical health, for instance. But we know that increasingly the concept of whole health or a more holistic approach to health is gaining a lot of traction. So, we are actively engaged in expanding the definition of health to include access to housing, social connections and networks, healthy food and lifestyle choices, and things of that nature. So, I think we are beginning to bring some new ideas to the table in terms of how we think about health."  #ISPOR #Patients #Healthcare #DigitalHealth #GlobalHealth #HEOR #RWE #HealthEconomics #HealthAI #DrugPriceNegotiations ISPOR.org Download the transcript here

Tony Goodman is the Chief Operating Officer at Adial Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a personalized therapy for alcohol use disorder based on a genetic biomarker. This unique approach combines the therapeutic AD04 with the biomarker AG Plus to identify a specific AUD patient population that responds well to this drug. Insights from this work could potentially lead to a broader understanding of the genetic and neurobiological connection underlying addiction.  Tony explains, "What makes us unique is that we're out in front of where the current prevailing wisdom of science is going in the addiction space. There's a renewed interest in personalized medicine or genetics, the study of genetic biomarkers, and things of that sort in addiction. As you know, we've been doing this for a long time. And so I think the uniqueness comes into the fact that we've coupled a therapeutic with a genetic biomarker, in this case, known as AG Plus, which we believe can produce results for patients that have this specific genotype. And you may recall that there's a lot of individual variability in addiction, and particularly at AUD, you have gender and genetic differences. You have sort of history of genetic patient history, differences, environmental factors, comorbid conditions including major depression, and you have trauma." "A lot of patients in the AUD space have a history of PTSD or negative experiences. There's a lot of variation in severity levels, which is something else we find unique about our program because we have stratified patients into less than ten drinks per drinking day and greater than ten drinks per drinking day. We know there is a difference in the responder analysis of the patients who fall into the less than ten drinks per drinking day. And a lot of theories have been postulated as to why that may be the case." #Adial #AlcoholUseDisorder #AUD #HealthcareInnovations #AddictionTreatment #BiotechSolutions #GeneticBiomarkers #PrecisionMedicine adial.com Download the transcript here

Shai Shen-Orr, the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of CytoReason, is developing computational disease models powered by AI to improve the probability of success in phase 2 clinical trials. Their goal is to more precisely develop drugs using AI to analyze large amounts of biological and clinical data and overcome the challenges of the complexity and uncertainty in medical information. Working with large pharmaceutical companies, CytoReason is supporting companies in their drug development efforts and helping them choose the right drug target and patient populations to study.   Shai explains, "There are many challenges. I would say that CytoReason right now isn't tackling images. And there are certainly companies in the field that have been doing this. We've been focused more on the molecular side of the data, the genes, the proteins, the cells, the genetics. But the challenge is that when you work in this field and try to do AI in biology, it's very difficult for us to know the ground truth. We don't know when we're wrong or when we're right." "We strive to support as many diseases as we can. Where we've placed the focus now has been immunology and oncology and, particularly, immuno-oncology. We kind of grew up as a company that really can specialize in the immune system. While the immune system plays a role in almost every disease, there are particular diseases, autoimmune diseases, and oncology, where it plays a very large role."  "So now when we develop drugs, drug developers are thinking very much across the board, they're thinking about the mechanisms of the disease. They keep asking themselves where are there similar mechanisms that are triggering diseases that may be ultimately, from a physiological perspective, from a disease perspective, the patients may look very different, they may even have a different disease. Yet, from the drug perspective, what the drug is hitting, the mechanisms are similar. And so we need to support that. We need to support the ability of drug developers to think across the board. That also plays into the role of which models we prioritize." #CytoReason #PharmaAI #AI #DrugDiscovery #DrugDevelopment #ClinicalTrials cytoreason.com Download the transcript here

Josh Hix, the CEO of Season Health, has developed a food as medicine platform that combines registered dietitian services, food delivery, and medical nutrition therapy. This makes it easier for patients to access food benefits and eat healthier. The rise of GLP-1 agonist medications for weight management has highlighted the need to develop personalized nutrition plans to help patients maintain a healthy lifestyle. There is growing interest in food as medicine as it is increasingly recognized that improving nutrition can help prevent and manage many chronic health conditions.   Josh explains, "I think many people, if not most, do better with a GLP-1 and some form of medical nutrition therapy, dietician services, etc. We hear from a lot of folks that GLP-1 helps turn down the cravings and the food noise. While they're on the drug, whether that's for a month or a year, that's the best time to start to figure out how to eat better and to form some new habits, to eat more whole foods, to find things that they like in the absence of some of the cravings for more processed foods or otherwise. And start building habits around these new choices." "What we hear from a lot of people, both patients and doctors, is that many folks are not able to stay on GLP-1s for all that long. Sometimes, their insurance coverage is short, and the insurance company will only pay for a certain period of time. Sometimes, folks are non-responders. I'm not sure that there are more studies on seniors than others that don't respond to the drugs. Some people have side effects, and some don't want to be on them forever. So, the number that I've heard most frequently cited is that only about 25% of people who start on a GLP-1 are still on it a year later. So I think that it may turn out that these are very, very powerful interventions for a quarter of patients or so, but that many people need more. It's either GLP-1 and a lifestyle intervention, some other form of therapy, or just something altogether different." #SeasonHealth #FoodasMedicine #ChronicDiseases #Nutrition #NutritionTherapy #GLP1 #GLP1Agonist seasonhealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Philip Räth, Managing Director at Palleos, discusses the advantages of a mid-size contract research organization compared to a large CRO. Customized solutions, strong cross-departmental cooperation, and fast decision-making are key to addressing the most significant unmet needs of clinical trial sponsors. This nimble clinical trial model, supported by machine learning, emphasizes collaboration and transparency. Philip explains, "In the end, we are a service industry, so it's always about time, costs, and quality. So, certain structures have been established in terms of project management and how you set up trials. We have regulations in place that are very clear on how things should get done. So, I think what collaboration enables is getting something done together. Collaboration between sponsors and CROs can transform the landscape and situation where collaboration enables trust and, therefore, change is possible." "I think that's always the biggest challenge for collaboration. You have change in the project, you have change in the clinical trial landscape in terms of maybe IT or information systems which become more prominent, or there are changes in regulation. So tackling these changes is mostly done through collaboration with a big foundation and trust so people can make bigger jumps and quicker decisions instead of just looking at what's on the contract regarding the deliverables."  #Palleos #ClinicalTrials #CRO #ContractResearchOrganization palleos.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kristin MacGregor, a clinical psychologist and senior clinical director of Integrated Behavioral Health at LifeStance Health, the largest outpatient mental health practice in the U.S., employing nearly 7,000 clinicians across 33 states to provide therapy, psychiatry, and psychological/neuropsychological services both in-person and virtually. They work with large medical practices and health systems to help build integrated behavioral health programs using the collaborative care model. Integrating mental health into primary care settings can help address early warning signs of cognitive decline, reduce stigma, and improve collaboration between providers to address both mental and physical health needs better and manage chronic diseases. Kristin explains, "I think anything that removes barriers to people accessing mental health care when they actually need it is a positive thing. The research shows that it takes 11 years, on average, between the time someone experiences a mental health symptom and the time that they get connected to care. And that is just far, far too long. There are, of course, many reasons for this. Still, one of them is that the longer time a person has to wait between the time they get referred to a mental health provider to the time that they have an appointment, the longer that time, the more likely it is the patient might actually talk themselves out of the appointment." "It's very challenging to do that in the way that the physical healthcare system and the mental healthcare system are currently set up. We're very siloed. There's not a lot of shared data that goes back and forth between PCP and mental health providers. However, in these integrated care settings, which I feel very strongly about, collaboration is incredibly important because there is something to learn. There's something to learn as a mental health provider about how physical symptoms can manifest themselves and about how chronic conditions can impact a patient." "But, bi-directionally, PCPs also really need to understand how mental health symptoms can present in different age groups and different cultures and ethnicities, and things like that. And when you're working side by side together on shared treatment plans, it's just so much easier to learn those things from one another as opposed to continuing to perpetuate these sorts of silos that we currently operate in with very little to no collaboration between the two parties."  #LifeStanceHealth #MentalHealthMatters #LFST #MentalHealth lifestance.com Download the transcript here

Meri Beckwith, Co-Founder of Lindus Health, aims to transform clinical trials by changing the CRO model to leverage technology to improve patient recruitment, retention, and the experience of the sponsors and trial participants. While the compensation model for contract research organizations is often not aligned with trial outcomes, Lindus ties compensation to hitting milestones and outcomes. They emphasize the need for more flexible trial design and a decentralized and hybrid approach to reduce participant burden and bring drugs to market sooner.   Meri explains, "This comes back to how contract research organizations are paid and compensated where they’re typically paid per hour of input, and it’s not at all tied to the outputs being speed, patient experience, or quality of data. And so we’ve created this monster over the last 10 or 20 years where the cost of clinical trials keeps going up. Patient experience certainly seems to be getting worse. Above all, patients suffer because the direct experience in clinical trials is worse. Still, they have to wait longer and ultimately pay more for new treatments as the cost of those clinical trials is ultimately passed on to patients." "So essentially, we’re responsible for running the entire clinical trial end to end, but we do that in a very different way and with a very different business model from that of industry incumbents. On the business model front, we provide completely fixed costs for everything and our customers, the companies developing the drugs, only pay us when we hit milestones. In other words, our compensation is tied to the actual trial outcomes, moving the trial along, et cetera. The second difference is under the hood, we have the same level of concierge service - folks who oversee and design the clinical trials, medics and clinicians who are looking after patients. We also have our technology platform to help us find the right patients, get them enrolled in the right trial quickly, and monitor and capture the data as we go – leading to higher quality data." #LindusHealth #ClinicalResearch #CRO #ClinicalTrialRecruitment #DrugDevelopment lindushealth.com Download the transcript here 

Greg Hamilton, CEO of io9, aims to enable precision oncology treatments for patients globally.  The company has developed an AI-powered biomarker analysis platform called OncoGaze that can rapidly analyze digital pathology images to identify cancer biomarkers. This enables pathologists to efficiently and quickly digitize and analyze tumor samples and oncologists to start patients on the appropriate targeted therapy much faster.   Greg explains, "For many of these cancers, determining the right cancer treatment is the difference between life and death. When we look at how we treat cancer today, what hasn’t changed is that there’ll be a biopsy. So, they take a piece of the tumor out and send that tumor to a pathologist. Pathologists will take that tumor and put it in a glass slide. They usually use what’s called H&E, they kind of stain it to read it better. But basically, a pathologist is looking under a microscope at the cells, and that’s how we diagnose cancer. That’s the formal way that we diagnose cancer. And so the pathologist will send a report back to the oncologist at that point saying, yes, your patient has cancer."  "Now, once the pathologist has diagnosed the cancer, they can just scan that slide or take a picture of the slide and upload it to our cloud-based software. They get an immediate result on the presence or absence of the particular biomarker." "For instance, like ovarian cancer in the guidelines in ovarian cancer, if the patient is positive for ovarian cancer, she’s supposed to get a biomarker test for a biomarker called HRD. Now, we can do that immediately. When that pathologist gives the report back to the oncologist, now it can say your patient has ovarian cancer, she’s stage three, and she’s positive or negative for HRD. And the oncologist, on the day they tell the patient that they have cancer, can also tell them, you have this biomarker, and based on the guidelines, here’s the treatment we’re going to start you on tomorrow. In essence, we can get the patient on the appropriate frontline therapy weeks ahead of time. And at the end of the day, cancer is a race against time." #PrecisionOncology #PrecisionMedicine #AI #Cancer #BioMarker #Pathologists #Oncologists #Tumors  io9.ai Download the transcript here