Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Quyen Nguyen, CEO and Founder of Alume Biosciences, is developing fluorescent-guided precision surgery technologies that enable surgeons to visualize critical structures, such as nerves, blood vessels, and tumor margins, more clearly during procedures. Alume is developing fluorescent dyes and imaging systems to support this approach, building on work by Roger Tsien who won the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. This technology has the potential to enable more complex surgical procedures to be performed safely in brain, head, neck, and abdominal surgeries and has the promise to transform surgery. Quyen elaborates, "I first met Roger Tsien Nobel Laureate for his work in fluorescence, in 2001. I had worked with green fluorescent protein, one of the things that he was working on for fluorescence, and he ultimately was awarded the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. And I asked him, ‘Roger, is there a way we can make nerves fluorescent in patients? We certainly have that in research, but surgeons don't have this tool now.’ And he said, ‘What, no one's done that yet?’ And so that's the beginning of our story together. I see that the use of fluorescence is going to be transformative in the field of surgery. Who wants to turn off the light and see if surgeons can see and operate in the dark? So I feel like fluorescence is just another level of light that allows you to see structures more precisely." "Of course, you want to see structures more precisely so you can continue to carry on your work, tumor resection, reconstructive surgery, or any other procedures that patients are undergoing. Of course, you want to see tumor margins more clearly. Of course, you want to see arteries and veins and so forth. Of all the structures that we work on, I would say that nerves are considered the holy grail of surgery, partly because they're so delicate. One or two millimeters can take away somebody’s ability to have urinary continence or erectile function or the ability to smile."   #AlumeBiosciences #FluorescentGuidedSurgery #PrecisionSurgery #HeadNeckSurgery AlumeBiosciences.com Download the transcript here

Rob Armstrong, CEO of Artax Biopharma, highlights the basic mechanism of action of Nck modulators and how they differ from traditional immunosuppressant drugs to treat autoimmune diseases. Taking this adjustable thermostat approach aims to modulate the immune response rather than completely suppressing the response, potentially reducing side effects. The oral, small molecule drug is an advantage over injectable biologics currently dominating the automimmune disease treatment landscape. Rob explains, "Nck stands for non-catalytic kinase, and what Nck is is an adapter protein that interacts with the T cell receptor. Its role is basically to amplify any signals when an antigen is presented to the T cell receptor. It's really interesting because it's called signal one. In other words, it's the beginning of the immune cascade when an antigen is presented. And what's interesting is that it's upstream of what the target of most other drugs are, which are the cytokines that are the offending entities for many of the autoimmune diseases. So what Nck does basically is it amplifies different types of antigens that are bound to the T cell receptor." "So, T cell receptors are a fascinating construct of proteins because they need to address the binding of antigens that are across an incredibly different range of avidity. In other words, it has to be able to be activated by both very strong avidity antigens and weak antigens. So what Nck does is it amplifies the signal when the antigen is a weak antigen, but when it's a strong antigen, Nck is really not necessary at all. And that particular distinction is why we modulate the immune system instead of suppressing it."  #ArtaxPharma #AutoimmuneDiseases #AtopicDermatitis #immunomodulation #NckModulators #TCellActivation #psoriasis #Dermotology artaxbiopharma.com Download the transcript here

Shyam Natarajan, Founder and CEO of Avenda Health, is utilizing the Unfold AI platform that combines imaging, pathology, and clinical data to provide a comprehensive 3D visualization of prostate cancer. This platform has demonstrated significantly higher accuracy than conventional imaging techniques, enabling physicians to make more informed diagnoses and treatment decisions. The technology has been integrated into the clinical workflow to provide real-time insights and precision-guided interventions, minimizing treatment-related side effects and preserving patient quality of life. Shyam explains, "Unfold AI is unique in that it's multimodal. We take in imaging biomarkers, pathology, and clinical information as input. And conventional imaging really doesn't show you exactly everywhere the cancer is. MRI today misses two-thirds of the disease by volume, and so imaging is really good at screening and that initial diagnosis. But when it comes time to decide how to treat patients, the standard of care is challenging today because, really, up to a third of patients end up having cancer left behind after treatment. So what we're trying to solve is this pain point where cancer is missed, and as a consequence, cancer is left behind."  "This product is really for patients who have a diagnosis of what we call clinically significant or cancer that you have to do something about. So, it’s not the very low-risk, where being on what's called surveillance, watch and wait, is probably more appropriate. But this product, you touched upon the value proposition where a lot of patients are coming to their doctor saying, Hey Doc, I don't want to get surgery because I'm scared of the quality of life outcomes or the side effect profile. They want to get a targeted therapy. Well, physicians really can't offer targeted therapy in a broad sense unless they know where the cancer is. And so, AI is empowering and enabling physicians to perform precision-guided therapy or focal therapy." #AvendaHealth #UnfoldAi #ProstateCancer #ProstateCancerTreatment #HealthcareAI #CancerAI #RadiologyAI #DiagnosticAI #MedicalAI #AIinHealthcare avendahealth.com Download the transcript here

Richard Mackey, Chief Technology Officer at CCS, focuses on the challenges faced by patients with diabetes and multiple morbidities, as well as their healthcare providers, in managing their conditions.  CCS has developed the Living Connected approach to connect patients, providers, and payers, and promotes the role that durable medical equipment companies and pharmacists can play in supporting patients and doctors. Recognizing that patients are more than their disease, CCS addresses social determinants of health to provide education and care coordination. Richard explains, "CCS is a company that is in the business of chronic care management. We focus on delivering products and services to patients with a variety of chronic care conditions. But foremost among these for us is diabetes. We're very focused on being able to provide solutions and services for folks who are managing their diabetic condition."  "On the machine learning side, we have a tremendous amount of data and information about how our patients will understand the devices they might be using. For example, continuous glucose monitors or CGMs are an important standard of care that we work with a lot of patients across the US to equip them, find the right device, help them begin using that device, and best understand what it can do and how it can help them make better decisions to manage their conditions." "We might talk to the patient once or twice a month. We might be talking to them multiple times within a quarter. In some cases, we're interacting with a patient more often than others in the ecosystem, maybe more often than even their physician in terms of the number of interactions per month or period, even their health insurance provider. So all that interaction helps give us information and data to draw insights on what those patients might need, what's most important to them, and how they interact with us. We can also work with a variety of other sources to bring information together. And by using the machine learning tools that we've developed, we can understand things that are important to them. So, it might be around the product or specific information related to the plan or the payer they're working with." #CCSMed #Diabetes #ChronicCare #CGM #Healthcare #DigitalHealth #MedicalAI ccsmed.com Download the transcript here

Catherine Richards Golini, Patient Resource Manager at Karger Publishers, is providing high-quality, accurate healthcare information to patients, addressing the need for trusted health information. Karger has a rigorous process in place to ensure the relevance of its patient resources, involving patients, clinical reviewers, and obtaining a quality mark. With the increasing use of AI and healthcare influencers, healthcare providers need these resources to have more productive conversations with patients and encourage health literacy. Catherine explains, "I will refer to the patient resources we publish. We also produce resources for healthcare professionals, as you know. But my job is patient resources, and I think we're quite proud of our patient resources in the sense that we have a very watertight production process that involves patients from the very beginning. So we're confident that we're producing relevant information that's very important, relevant to the patient community, and what they want. Accuracy. We always involve clinical reviewers, usually two for each patient resource actually, to make sure that the content is accurate." "We've also got something called the PIF TICK, which is a British thing, but I believe it's now spreading across Europe. It may even be known of in the States. And the PIF TICK is like a quality mark, a certification mark for patient healthcare information. We have to have our resources, our production processes, and our resources evaluated. When we pass the evaluation, and there are about 10 criteria with multiple sub-criteria, we get the right to use this PIF TICK on the back of our resources. So those are three ways to guarantee that we produce trusted, accurate healthcare information for patients."  #KargerPublishers #Publishing #Science #Research #HealthInformation #MedicalAI #AI  karger.com  Download the transcript here

Dr. Orit Wimpfheimer, Chief Medical Officer at Nanox, a medical imaging AI company using technology to detect early signs of diseases through opportunistic screening of CT scans. The AI platform identifies signs of diseases such as osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease that may have been overlooked by the radiologist. The tools are designed to be integrated into the radiologist's workflow to provide quantified measurements to guide clinical care decisions leading to improved patient outcomes.   Orit explains, "The number of CT scans over the last 20 years has risen astronomically. People are getting CT scans for many reasons, and there's a lot of data on the images that doesn't get translated into patient care. And what our AI tools do is to scan all those CT scans in the background unobtrusively, so they look for signs of chronic conditions and highlight those to the radiologists while they're reading the scans. This ensures that chronic diseases are commented on in the reports, initiating a clinical pathway to help treat those diseases at the early stages of their disease processes. Ultimately, we're trying to find diseases much earlier to treat them much better and therefore increase the quality of life and the length of life by treating these diseases before they become very symptomatic." "So our tools are actually measurement tools. When the radiologist looks at the images, they have their checklist in their mind, myself included. I'm a radiologist. Things we're always looking for on the scan, and then we pay attention based on the patient's clinical history or rule out pneumonia, rule out cancer, whatever it is. Sometimes these chronic diseases might be lurking in the background, but they don't get attention from the radiologist. And even if the radiologist is super careful and tries to find everything on the exam, we don't have time to start measuring things. And when you comment on something without giving a quantified measurement, it's very hard for the clinician down the line to know what to do with this patient. It's too vague. When we give quantified information, the doctor, after the radiologist, can take that quantified information and then know where to send the patient next and what to do next with the patient. And that's critical because we don't want to drop patients along the way, the clinical care pathway, because then it’s ineffective." #NanoxVision #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareAI #MedAI #RadiologyAI #HealthcareInnovation #Medical Imaging #Radiology #EarlyDetection #PreventiveCare #PatientCare  nanox.vision Download the transcript here

Chelsey Lindner, a pharmacist and Manager of Clinical Services at Shields Health Solutions, provides insights about the growing prevalence of oral and subcutaneous injection oncology medications, which is shifting the delivery of care from the clinic to at-home. This innovation in cancer care introduces complexities around accessing and affording these specialty drugs and requires the skills of a specialty pharmacy to support the patients and providers. In an integrated care model, there is also a growing need for attention to medication adherence and monitoring for side effects by these pharmacists.   Chelsey explains, "Shields is considered a specialty pharmacy integrator. We partner with health systems across the country to help them operate best-in-class specialty pharmacy programs. We are focused on improving patient outcomes through specialized pharmacy services and supporting the optimized use of specialty medications through navigation of access, care coordination, and comprehensive medication management. So those are three of the big services Shields offers as a company." "I would say that the number one component that these oral oncology medications offer is a level of patient convenience and maintenance of their quality of life. Because what was a cancer diagnosis 20 years ago meant they were going to have to come to the health center or be admitted to the hospital to receive their treatment. Whereas now, when a patient might be faced with a certain cancer diagnosis, they will be managing it like a chronic condition. They can stay at home, they can stay with their families. They can do all of those things that they want to do that help support that quality of life as they're going through active cancer treatment. And so with that certainly comes, I think, a level of popularity. And I think the pharmaceutical companies certainly would be incentivized to continue the research in this area and the development of these agents." #ShieldsHealthSolutions #IntegratedCareModel #SpecialtyPharmacy #CancerTreatment #MedicationAdherence shieldshealthsolutions.com Download the transcript here

Tamsin Chislett, CEO of Hyfe, highlights the importance of understanding coughs for healthcare providers, the lack of information about coughs, and Hyfe's advancements in building a database and developing biomarkers based on different kinds of coughs. Hyfe's AI technology, which can integrate with other devices and platforms for remote patient monitoring, enables passive, continuous tracking of cough patterns that can be used in research and clinical trials. Opportunities for digital therapeutics include chronic cough, COPD, lung cancer, respiratory infections, and cardiovascular diseases.  Tamsin elaborates, "Hyfe is the global leader in AI power. The problem we're trying to solve is that you have this really common symptom cough, which has been experienced by every human alive and is experienced daily by many people, yet to discuss it, measure it, monitor it, or even manage it, we're entirely reliant on subjective data. Everyone's had the experience of going into a primary care doctor, and saying I've got a really bad cough. The doctor says How bad is it, and is it getting worse?  We don't even have the proper language to describe it." "We want to get to the point where, in those situations, the doctor can start to get objective data about the patient's cough patterns and use that instead. The way we see it is that there was a time when to measure fever, we put a hand on a patient's forehead. We hope that within a few years, thanks to Hyfe's technology, we should not be in the same position with cough. So we're always looking to have objective data." "I think the interesting thing about cough is that because it's never been measurable, it hasn't been studied anywhere near as much as it probably should have. And even in the first five years of Hyfe's life, we've seen an explosion in cough-related science now that it's possible to monitor coughs with a smartphone, a smart watch, or anything with a microphone running Hyfe's technology. We've seen exciting science across a whole range, many of which are intuitive when you start thinking about cough, acute cough is a big one and respiratory infections, but there's also chronic cough."  "There's also COPD, there's IPF, there's lung cancer, there are so many respiratory and even cardiology diseases where cough is a cardinal symptom, a really clear sign of exacerbation of disease or worsening. However, to date, it has not been able to be measured, and cough monitoring with Hyfe allows you to monitor cough over time, see patterns, and use those patterns to optimize patient care in the future." #HyfeAI #ChronicCough #HyfeDTx #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #DigitalTherapeutics #MedAI #CoughMonitoring #RemotePatientMonitoring #HealthInnovation #RespiratoryAwareness #CoughAwareness #CoughScience #PatientCentricCare hyfe.com Download the transcript here

Geoff Nau, Senior Manager of Product Management for Paragon at Altera Digital Health, highlights how digital health solutions can address the challenges of nurse burnout and retention. AI and machine learning can help automate documentation tasks and streamline workflows to allow nurses better access to patient information. Improving nurse retention requires attention to factors like time-off policies and leveraging technology to give nurses more time to focus on patient care. Geoff elaborates, "I have been a nurse since 2004. I practiced at the bedside for approximately 15 years. I did pediatric and adult ER as well as NICU. So I started my nursing career on paper and transitioned to electronic. And so in that time, a couple of factors, in the beginning, there was not enough information, and click-intensive. And looking at my travels and going to hospitals and sites today, that challenge is still there as far as access to data relevant to that patient visit, whether it's trending labs, care plans, etc. My experience with most EHRs out there, most of all, is that it’s just click-intensive. A one-size-fits-all is tough to do nowadays." "There is still a considerable amount of paper out there. When you start getting into these specialized areas like behavioral health, IOP or intensive outpatient, a lot of that, especially if there's anything like a treatment plan, things that may have multiple people needing to touch it, I still see a lot of that on paper. My goal from a solutions perspective is to get as much of that electronic as possible, especially given where we're at with challenges with nursing and staffing. Today, your patient loads go from four to five to one nurse." "I'm a nurse. I also have a doctorate in organizational psychology. And this was a big study of my focus during my dissertation, where I looked at why people stay on the job as opposed to why they leave. When I first got into nursing, nurses would leave for a dollar. They would go up the street to another facility. But now, having support systems in place allows nurses to take time off, as you said. I know that here, where I live in North Carolina, a couple of institutions are taking a look at their PTO policies. They're looking at their holiday policies and trying to be more flexible. They're working with PRN staffing. In my research, I also found a community component to job embeddedness, if you will, in nursing." #AlteraDigitalHealth #DigitalHealth #Nurses #Nursing #NurseBurnout #NurseRetention #MedAI alterahealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Paul Moore, Chief Scientific Officer at Zymeworks, focuses on developing targeted therapies, particularly multispecific antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates for hard-to-treat cancers such as gynecological, thoracic, and digestive tract cancers. This approach can target multiple areas on tumor cells and immune cells, potentially overcoming tumor heterogeneity and allowing for immune system modulation. The platform allows for a plug-and-play approach, enabling the development of therapies for oncology and autoimmune diseases.  Paul explains, "So, multispecific antibodies are antibodies. Antibodies traditionally have a single target that they bind, so they're monoclonal and hit a specific target. A lot of excitement is generated for bispecific antibodies, which are engineered to bind two targets. Then with multispecifics, you are trying to broaden even further the number of targets or binding sites you've incorporated into your drug so that you can simultaneously interact with more than one target. The reason that can be important is that allows and facilitates new biology that is not possible for just a monoclonal antibody or a single antibody-targeting drug conjugate."   "Multispecifics open up the opportunity to take two targets that are on different cells, different cell populations. So, you can have a target on a tumor cell you're trying to target. Then you can have a target on an immune cell like a T cell, which you can co-engage. You can bridge a T cell to a binding domain that's on a multispecific with your second specificity, which can bind to the cell.  And what that allows you to do is bring the T cell into the environment of the tumor cell, and through that engagement, the T cell can kill the tumor cell.  So that is the foundation of a lot of excitement in bispecifics." #Zymeworks #Antibodies #MultispecificAntibodies #ADC #AntibodyDrugConjugate #Tumors #Cancer #ImmuneSystem zymeworks.com Download the transcript here