Empowered Patient Podcast

Mark Newman, CEO of Nomi Health, focuses on building an operating system for self-insured healthcare to lower costs, remove friction, and simplify the transaction process for employers and providers. Nomi emphasizes holistic preventative healthcare by eliminating barriers like deductibles and copays to encourage the utilization of primary care, mental health, and other services.  The company leverages technology, AI, and asynchronous care to improve access to diverse communities, including Spanish-speaking and low-income workers. Mark explains, "Our model, starting from scratch and starting from a blank sheet of paper, is focused on getting providers out of the collection business so they can focus on the care business. Simplifying the entire transaction of buying and paying for healthcare has been a revolutionary way for our customers to cut their healthcare costs by 20% to 30%. And someday, I think we can hit 50%." "Last time I checked the cost curve in American healthcare has not slowed down and has done nothing but accelerate. So, in my book, I think value-based care has pretty much failed and has been more of a pipe dream versus reality. Our world is how do we take the same doctors, same care and cut 25% of the cost out of it by removing all the friction and pain points and ambiguity and noise as it relates to what an employer pays for healthcare and what a provider collects for delivering that healthcare. We're betting on our model and hope for the best on things like value-based care or other models, but we haven't seen the results delivered yet."  #NomiHealth #HealthcareIndustry #HealthInsurance #Healthcare #HealthcareCEO  nomihealth.com Download the transcript here

Maureen McBeth, Senior Medical Affairs Liaison for ImpediMed, a company that develops bio-impedance spectroscopy technology for the early detection and monitoring of lymphedema. This swelling, a common side effect of breast cancer surgery, is often overlooked until it impacts the quality of life of the patient. Using this advanced diagnostic technology,  objective data on the risk and progression enables personalized intervention at the mild stage to prevent progression to severe, irreversible stages. Maureen explains, "Breast cancer-related lymphedema is an underappreciated side effect. Most people think that it's not an issue anymore because we do sentinel node biopsy. Still, we know that any time lymph nodes are removed, damaged, or radiated, they can cause problems with the plumbing system in that area of the body. And inflammation starts, and that's the first thing. People don't feel that, but over time, it starts to impact the lymphatic vessels, and those lymphatic vessels don't pump as well, and a fluid buildup starts to occur. Finally, a patient may start to have symptoms like an aching or a fullness, or they notice things don't fit right, and by the time they notice it, they're likely well into stage one lymphedema, which has noticeable symptoms." "And 20 years ago, when we didn't have these methods to detect it early, we often didn't see patients even with that at stage one. We wouldn't see them until the arm got really big and noticeable. If you can imagine, the guidelines said that the arm had to be 10% larger than the other side before we would diagnose it with lymphedema. Imagine your arm being 10% bigger on one side."  "One of the important things about our technology is that it's about a 30-second test. In terms of non-invasive, the patient doesn't feel it. It gives us this L-Dex score, and we can get other things like body composition. And so, at the start of someone's treatment, it can be used not only for surveillance of lymphedema but also for other side effects of cancer treatment." #ImpediMed #EarlyDetectionMatters #LymphedemaAwarenessMonth #Survivorship #SurvivorshipCare #PatientEmpowerment impedimed.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Sam Clark, Founder and CEO of Terran Biosciences, is developing a long-acting once-daily formulation of a new class of antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia. The use of a prodrug approach to modify the new drug Cobenfy allows for improved bioavailability and has been shown to have fewer side effects than traditional antipsychotics. This novel class of antipsychotic drugs targets the muscarinic receptor system, which is a different mechanism of action compared to existing treatments.  Sam explains, "Schizophrenia is a very severe disease. It has both hallucinations and delusions. It also has a set of symptoms called negative symptoms, which encompass social withdrawal and symptoms that can resemble depressive symptoms, cognitive dysfunction, and memory issues. So, with this patient population, there are a number of drugs that are approved to treat schizophrenia called antipsychotics. But until now, there hasn't been a new drug approved with a new mechanism. So, all drugs have the same mechanism to treat the disease since the 1950s."  "But we just got, right now in the space, a new drug approved from Bristol Myers. It just got approved, and Cobenfy is the first new mechanism to treat schizophrenia since the 1950s. But there are some downsides to that drug in that it's dosed twice daily as an oral drug, and there's currently no long-acting injectable. And so, twice daily can be difficult for patients with schizophrenia to take. The space is moving towards long-acting injectables, which can last just one injection for several months." "Now, that strategy has been used with other anti-psychotics on the market, such as Invega, to improve their bioavailability and make long-acting forms. So we took that same approach and created the long-acting prodrugs of Cobenfy, which are TerXT, those long-acting prodrugs. We believe that that will enable a once-daily form and a long-acting injectable that can go multiple months from a single injection and thus improve options for patients with schizophrenia."  #TerranBio #Prodrug #Antipsychotic #Schizophrenia #MentalHealth terranbiosciences.com Download the transcript here

Joe Tucker, CEO of Enveric Biosciences, is developing non-hallucinogenic psychedelic drugs that aim to induce neuroplasticity and beneficial changes in the brains of patients with mental health disorders. The FDA rejected the approval of MDMA for PTSD treatment due to concerns about the inability to run blind trials to separate the placebo effect from the effects of the drug. Enveric addresses the promise of neuroplastic drugs that stimulate the neural connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala without hallucinations. Joe explains, "And the problem, endemic to hallucinogenic psychedelics, is that there's no question in the patient's mind, in the doctor's mind, in everybody's mind whether or not they got an hallucinogenic agent. And so when everybody knows whether they got it or not, that's what you call functional unblinding. And so the FDA was very concerned about this. They said you must be able to separate the placebo from the actual drug. Until we see data that gives us confidence that you separated it, we can't approve it, even though it looks like a very positive impact for the patients." "We were looking precisely to see if we could remove the hallucination without removing the benefit. So that's the field we're in. What's it being called right now? It's a very, very new field being called the non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogen- neuroplastogen indicating that it induces neuroplasticity, in other words, rewiring of the brain, but does so without inducing hallucination. We saw two challenges coming: How do you separate placebo from non-placebo effect and the treatment?" "Then the idea would be, hopefully, this psychedelic treatment was so impactful, you didn't need to take any other treatment again for a long period of time. And that seems pretty aspirational, honestly, and likely to get in the way of real patient acceptance that you want something which is not so sort of rock your world. Most people don't want that. They like to be able to have a drug that is like, take an aspirin. You take it every day. You don't have a big impact. You can go about your life. You don't really notice it other than you feel better. And that's the idea behind the non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogen. It fits much more in line with what patients are looking for and expecting and doctors, the whole healthcare system. It just makes a lot more sense." #MentalHealth #MentalHealthDisorders #MentalHealthEpidemic #Depression #Anxiety #PTSD #Neuroplastogens #Psychedelics  enveric.com Download the transcript here

Ray Jordan is the principal at Putnam Insights, a strategic communications and policy consulting firm, and a partner at Echo Research. The core elements of reputation building are consistent across large and small companies. Many companies mistakenly think that a good reputation comes naturally, but building and maintaining a strong reputation requires a clear mission statement and an authentic voice to reinforce the company's message. Ray elaborates, "In particular, when I've worked on reputation matters, including a lot of reputation on companies, smaller companies are more instinctual rather than based on data. The core elements of reputation are still there. What you need to do is build it, what you can do to lose it, and how it adds value to what you're doing. All of those elements are consistent in some respects. Very different situations, but they have much of the same core elements. That's true from the clinical side, the regulatory side, and the patient care side. From the opinion leader side across the spectrum, including reputation communication." "So, to my mind, building it involves first knowing who and what you are and having a clear definition of yourself. The second is acting consistent with that characterization of who and what you are. The third is being seen acting that way, so being visible in those actions. Those are simple steps. They're not easy steps to accomplish, but they're simple. Who you are, how you behave, and whether you behave accordingly and are seen in that behavior."  #CorporateCommunications #LeadershipInHealthcare #CrisisManagement #ESGStrategy #ReputationManagement #HealthcareLeadership  putnaminsights.com echoresearch.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Shankar Musunuri, Chairman of the Board, CEO, and Co-Founder of Ocugen, is developing gene therapies for rare blindness diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt disease, which have significant unmet medical needs. The modifier gene therapy approach aims to reset homeostasis and create a healthy environment for photoreceptors to stabilize vision loss. Ocugen is also working on a gene therapy for dry age-related macular degeneration, which has the potential to address the late-stage geographic atrophy form of the disease. Shankar explains, "Vision is the most important part for all of us. Many years ago, when we founded Ocugen, it was based on targeting the ophthalmology disease area. We looked into many blindness diseases related to the back of the eye/retina. We have diseases such as AMD- and many people get into that – age-related macular degeneration. Then, there are diseases that are inherited in nature, like retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt disease. A lot of these diseases impact many families globally. Therefore, our passion for patients has driven that. If there is a significant unmet medical need, we want to take that as a challenge and provide solutions for patients and provide that hope." "There are two rare blindness diseases. One is retinitis pigmentosa. There are about two million people globally who struggle with it. About 300,000 patients are in the US and EU. Effects in about 100 genes can cause retinitis pigmentosa. With our modifier game-changing gene therapy technology, potentially, our one product, which is currently going through a Phase 3 clinical trial, can target this entire population, rather than building or developing 100 products with the traditional gene therapy gene. The second inherited retinal disease we are working on, Stargardt, affects about 100,000 patients in the US and EU. Similar to RP, there are no therapies today to treat these patients’ significant unmet medical needs." #Ocugen #CourageousInnovation #GeneTherapy #ModifierGeneTherapy #BlindnessDiseases #RetinitisPigmentosa #GeographicAtrophy #Stargardt ocugen.com Download the transcript here

Allen Cooper, President, CEO, and Co-Founder of ReadyList, highlights the challenges environmental services (EVS) leaders face in hospitals: controlling healthcare-associated infections, managing facility maintenance, and meeting patient expectations. Ensuring efficient room turnover for patient rooms and operating rooms is critical to maintaining workflow and avoiding delays. Real-time tracking, task management, and data-driven insights help EVS managers and staff eliminate outdated, inefficient methods and improve patient outcomes and safety in hospital operations. Allen explains, "When you look at it from a patient's perspective, I think meeting and exceeding patients’ expectations of getting great quality care is probably at the forefront of everyone's mind. There's a lot of competition out there between hospitals and health systems. I think, looking from a patient's point of view, making sure that the patients are delighted is number one. A close number 2, if not number 1, is making sure that the hospitals themselves are controlling and reducing their healthcare-associated infections. I think that's been such a hot topic in the last 10-plus years, making sure that the patients are safe and taken care of, and when they leave, they're in a better spot than before they came." "We have four core modules of ReadyList. One is called ReadyList Room Care, which empowers the EVS cleaners to understand what's expected of them to turn over a room in a given day or hour. And it details out what's expected in a given room. Each unit in the hospital typically has different requirements and ensures that the equipment is what is actually supposed to be in place and that cleaning is done appropriately and done repeatedly the same way every single time. So the tool provides almost like a script for the cleaners so they understand exactly what their expectations are. On the flip side, for the supervisors, it also allows them to understand exactly what is going on, which rooms are cleaned or being cleaned, and who's doing what." #ReadyList #HospitalOperations #EVSManagement #EVSLeader #EnvironmentalService #EVS #HospitalFloorcare #FacilityOperation #Healthcare #HospitalSafety #HospitalInfectionPrevention ReadyList.com Download the transcript here

Sheila Phicil, Founder and CEO of Phicil-itate Change, works with innovators in healthcare to apply new technologies to solutions that incorporate the patients' voice. One goal is to reduce resistance to change, which often stems from the desire to avoid adding more complexity, by listening to patients, physicians, and community organizations. Data analytics and awareness of social determinants of health can provide insights to develop effective and sustainable solutions. Still, the data must be collected and analyzed in a way that preserves the context and individual experience. Shelia explains, "Well, the simplest way I can put it is helping the helpers and in this case, it's helping people who want to bring forward good innovation in healthcare. To do it well by focusing the work around the patient's lived experience through understanding their stories and their health data. So what I'm aiming to do is to, one, put out great frameworks and strategies around how to do this well and efficiently and effectively. We are building a platform utilizing blockchain and AI to automate some of this work in collecting patient stories and data and generating insights into how to design health tech solutions that meet their needs." "So all forms of social innovation, where we're trying to solve human problems, should always start with the people who have lived the experience of the problem and understand through their lens what their perspective is. What I often tell people, especially in the healthcare space, is that someone who has a lived experience of having diabetes or lost a loved one to cancer or is dealing with a rare disease, they become the expert. They become the expert in what that looks like for them, how that affects their life, and what they can tolerate in terms of coping or treatment and other things." #SocialDeterminantsofHealth #SDOH #MedTech #DataAnalytics Phicil-itateChange.com Download the transcript here

Lisa Ricciardi, CEO, and Dr. Tony Caggiano, Chief Medical Officer at Cognition Therapeutics, are developing effective treatments for neurological disorders, particularly Alzheimer's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). While DLB is related to Parkinson's, sharing symptoms include hallucinations, sleep disorders, and cognitive dysfunction, there are no good diagnostics to identify DLB and effective treatments. Cognition Therapeutics' lead drug candidate, an oral treatment, has shown promise in protecting neurons from the toxic effects of the pathological proteins involved in Alzheimer's and DLB. Lisa explains, "This company started in 2007, so we've had a long number of years to burnish our mission. One of the things we say is we're the beginning of the end of neurologic disorders and the start of hope for an improved future for patients. So Alzheimer's disease, in particular, has been long studied with little success, and in the last few years, we've seen some successes with monoclonal antibodies. There are a number of other approaches in clinical trials, but we have recently generated very positive data in two different trials with an oral once-a-day drug." Tony elaborates, "Lewy body dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies is a disease very much related to Parkinson's disease that's believed to be, in part, caused by pathological levels of a certain protein called alpha synuclein and particularly small oligomers of misfolded alpha synuclein." "And in Alzheimer's disease, this is largely a cognitive memory disorder as it presents. So, those two diseases are very different. Now, the idea of treating them with a single drug is somewhat unique to what we have here at Cognition Therapeutics. So our company started around the idea of developing therapies for Alzheimer's disease, and our lead molecule CT1812 or zervimesine was developed out of a screening assay where we were looking for molecules that could protect neurons or brain cells from the toxicities of this pathological amyloid protein. So, we identified CT1812 and have been developing it."  #CognitionTherapeutics #BrainHealth #DementiaCare #LewyStrong #Livingwithlewy #Alzheimers #EndAlz #Alzheimersdisease #DLBAwareness #NeurodegenerativeDisease #Dementia #DementiaWithLewyBodies  cogrx.com Download the transcript here

Arielle Smith, the President of Life Science at Event Cadence, discusses the changes in the event technology landscape and the expectations of pharmaceutical companies and attendees for a hybrid approach, including participation in person and virtually. There is an increased demand for insight capturing and analytics to measure the return on investment in conferences and the time attendees spend there. The platform includes scheduling, appointment management, and lead generation with tools to encourage networking and interaction to enhance the event experience.   Arielle explains, "Medical conferences are held all over the world, as you know, and there's not always going to be a time where you can physically put boots on the ground and travel for them. So we're seeing a lot more of a hot tier point, a hybrid model approach to it where, let's say, the majority of the team will be in a meeting room face to face with some of their HCPs, but then even that HCP might decide to dial in their counterpart. Or if a pharmaceutical client is not able to participate in person for many different reasons, we're looping them in from a virtual perspective as well. And our platform can help coordinate all of that." "So there's a lot of talk in the industry about insight capturing and gathering and exactly how that can be done but how best to make it actionable. Many great platforms are spinning up recently that are meant for capturing recordings or recording a conversation like the one you and I are having now, but then using AI to transcribe it all. A lot of our accounts are playing with technology like that, and then our platform is being used to set those conversations up."  #EventCadence #MedicalConferences #ConferenceManagement #HybridConferences eventcadence.com Download the transcript here