Empowered Patient Podcast

Ram Krishnan, CEO of Valant, works with therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and nurse practitioners in the outpatient behavioral healthcare environment, which has significant unmet needs that can be addressed with technology. Scaling a mental health practice differs from other medical practices due to the frequency of visits and the need for individualized care with the most effective therapist. Virtual visits and telehealth are helping providers bridge the gap between physical and mental health, and generative AI is showing promise in diagnosing and maintaining behavioral health.  Ram explains, "This has been a market that has evolved over the last 25 years because so much has changed with our overall perception of the value and importance of mental health. This is a market that was primarily rarely covered by insurance, and employers rarely demanded coverage for their employees. Therefore, it was a cash-based business for most of its existence." "But over the last ten years, as the stigma for mental health has started to fade, and people are more outspoken about mental health challenges that they’re facing, whether it’s celebrities or athletes, it’s just made its way to the forefront. So employers, first and foremost, have begun to demand that the payers offer their services, and that’s where it starts. Payers then, in turn, begin to look for coverage. Now you have a market that was built for cash working its way into the insurance model. Finding itself subscale, they are now looking to build to scale so that it can have the systems and structures required to be able to swim into the larger waters of the US healthcare system with the insurance and payer process. And so, you have a lot of practices that have a lot of catching up to do with respect to adopting technology, and quite frankly, just process."  #Valant #MentalHealth #BehavioralHealth #BehavioralHealthEHR #PracticeManagement #PatientPortal #Telehealth Valant.io Download the transcript here

Fadi Micaelian, CEO of Sparkdit, and Dr. Andrew Fang, Chief of Orthopedics at Kaiser South San Francisco, have joined together to help patients and doctors make better treatment decisions by considering trade-offs and patient preferences. The platform can help reduce bias and incorporate patient desires into care while considering comorbidities and other factors that may affect treatment decisions. Fadi and Andrew agree that collaboration between technologists and clinicians is essential for advancing the use of AI in healthcare to augment human intelligence and improve outcomes. Fadi explains, "At Sparkdit, our mission is to teach computers to think like humans. To do so, we've taught computers to think with trade-offs. So humans universally think the same way. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. We all think the same way. Whenever we have a decision, we have a set of criteria that we take into account. We think in a certain way of each criterion, and then we apply on top of that a set of trade-offs. Trade-offs are core to the way we make decisions. Now, when you apply that to healthcare, that's not a domain that I'm an expert in. There was a set of doctors led by Dr. Fang at Kaiser who discovered and invented a new way of applying that technology to healthcare." Andrew elaborates, "I think the potential benefits of AI are that they can augment the doctor/patient relationship. It's really important that we maintain this human connection with our patients, but is there a way that AI can help us make better decisions, achieve better outcomes, and incorporate some of the things that patients want in their care more easily?" #Sparkdit #MedAI #AI #DigitalHealth #MedTech #Orthopedics #PatientDecisions #DecisionIntelligence sparkdit.com Download the transcript here

Sufian Chowdhury, CEO of Kinetik, highlights how the non-emergency medical transportation industry, which has about 20,000 local transportation providers and over 400,000 drivers, plays a pivotal role in the healthcare continuum. Kinetik is bringing digital tools to this environment to provide scheduling and real-time information to an industry that currently relies on the phone. The goal is to make the system more efficient, reduce waiting times for patients and drivers, and ensure that drivers get paid promptly for these rides Medicaid covers. Sufian explains, "These are pre-planned rides. This industry is non-digital. You have to liken the state of this industry to what the taxi industry was in the '90s. It’s a lot of telephonic communication. Not a lot of these transport companies are using technology. Because of that, the scheduling becomes very cumbersome, and some members have to request these rides three or four days in advance, not by choice but just because of the broken structure of this industry. We’re trying to fix that with Kinetik by digitizing it so that these rides can become real-time rides." "One of the biggest challenges and how Kinetik started the genesis of Kinetik is to initially address the billing problem that transport providers were facing. They would send out claims and get paid every 60 to 90 days, yet they would have to pay their drivers every seven days. These are small businesses that struggled mightily when it came to cash flow management. So, the first problem we solved, as we entered this market about seven years ago, was to build a billing platform that allowed these transport providers to get paid on time or instantly. That was our initial goal." #Kinetik #NonEmergencyMedicalTransportation #NEMT #DigitalHealth kinetik.care Download the transcript here

Piotr Orzechowski, CEO of Infermedica, works with health insurance companies, technology partners, public payers, and ministries of health to provide digital care navigation tools that enhance the patient experience with a healthcare provider. The highlight is the development of digital front door technology to support patients in finding appropriate care. Using an AI-powered care interface, symptoms can be evaluated, questions answered, and guidance offered for care options, including self-care at home. When appropriate, AI-based decision support tools guide nurses through phone conversations to triage and determine immediate actions that should be taken. Piotr explains, "We have developed a clinically validated symptom-checking tool powered by AI. I will explain it in a second. But most importantly, it’s curated by a team of 50 physicians. So, every single day, our group of doctors performs different tasks related to clinical validation and content updates, and using this content, we create probabilistic models that try to resemble the way doctors would triage patients." "We’ve spent more than 12 years of joint work between our medical teams, data scientists, and algorithm developers to establish one of the most versatile and accurate probabilistic models for current primary diseases. We currently have more than 120,000 hours of doctors who work on this medical content that’s behind our technology." "The way it works is that there are two main use cases and two main ways we provide our technology, and it’s very straightforward. The first approach is we have a patient-facing app. So when you are feeling unwell, or maybe somebody in your family is feeling unwell, we guide you through a very simple process. You can provide your demographics, basic risk factors and chief complaints, and based on that, we engage in a sequence of questions to learn more about underlying causes. So, if you ever played 20 Questions, this is more like a 20-question flow, but, of course, for medical problems. After about 10 to 15 questions, our AI engine knows enough to propose the right triage level and even the most likely conditions." #Infermedica #DigitalHealth #DigitalHealthcare #HealthCareAI #DigitalFrontDoor #PatientEngagement #Triage #CallCenter #SymptomChecker #HealthTech Infermedica.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Oren Cohen, President of Clinical Pharmacology and Chief Medical Officer at Fortrea, a global CRO spun-off from Labcorp, discusses the contract research environment and how it continues to change to meet the need for increased productivity in the development and testing of new drugs, devices, and treatments. One key goal is to work in close partnership with clients to include the patient's voice in trial design to increase diversity, drive recruitment, and improve retention.   Oren explains, "I think with all the pressure the industry is under productivity pressure, that’s changed massively. It’s a very heavy responsibility because we are entrusted with developing very precious intellectual property that represents the next generation of therapeutics for patients affected by all the diseases out there, from rare diseases to cancer to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. It’s a very exciting time. I think the science is moving very quickly, and we have the good fortune to be working on some very promising and super interesting potential products." "There’s lots of innovation in every aspect of clinical trials, from design through process and execution to analysis. So yes, all that is on the table. I would say that our preferred method of engagement is to partner with our clients to get to the best place in terms of what advances science. What is necessary from a regulatory perspective to push a product along toward approval, to show its mettle? What is best for patients and sites responsible for recruiting them?" "It’s a natural marriage because our sponsors, the biopharmaceutical companies we serve, obviously have the best expertise for the particular molecule they’re studying. They’ve potentially discovered it, they have it in their portfolio, and they obviously know a lot about it." #Fortrea #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #PatientVoice #ClinicalTrialDesign #CRO #ContractResearchOrganization fortrea.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Will Chou, President and CEO of Passage Bio, is developing gene therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, with their lead product being PBFTO2, an AAV gene therapy for a specific genetic variant of frontotemporal dementia. They are also exploring the potential of raising progranulin levels to help patients with other neurodegenerative diseases. Passage Bio's gene therapy, utilizing AAV as the vector, is delivered through an ICM injection into the cisterna magna, bypassing the blood-brain barrier. Will explains, "What we’re doing is a little unique. We are starting in the normal way gene therapies approach this, which is we have a patient population with a specific genetic deficiency. They have frontotemporal dementia caused by a mutation in the granulin gene, in the GRN gene, which means they are deficient in creating a protein called progranulin. Our gene therapy product replaces that progranulin, and by replacing what they don’t have enough of, we hope to stop the neurodegenerative decline from this disease." "But what is interesting about progranulin is that a growing amount of research shows that progranulin and raising progranulin in general can be neuroprotective across other neurodegenerative diseases as well. We will be pursuing this progranulin-raising one-time gene therapy, not just in patients who have that specific genetic deficiency in the GRN gene. Also, in other patients, such as patients with ALS and patients with other gene deficiencies with FTD where progranulin and raising progranulin could help their neurodegeneration. So in that way, this is a unique approach to gene therapy. Usually, you have one product and can only help a limited group of patients. Here we’re looking to use the single product and try and help multiple populations of patients with neurodegenerative disease." #PassageBio #GeneticMedicines #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #AAVs #FrontotemporalDementia #Progranulin #GRNGene passagebio.com Download the transcript here

Ben Zimmer, CEO of Priovant Therapeutics, focuses on developing therapies for rare autoimmune diseases specifically dermatomyositis, which affects the skin, muscles, and organs, and non-infectious uveitis, a severe ocular inflammatory condition. While these conditions are symptomatically different, mechanistically, they have features in common related to the underlying pathology of the diseases. The drug in development is an oral once-daily therapy that addresses the inflammatory conditions and cytokines driving the pathology. Ben explains, "During COVID, there was a lot of talk about the cytokine storm and these are molecules involved in immune cell signaling. So, they’re basically ways that different types of immune cells signal to each other to do different things. There’s a large variety of different cytokines and some autoimmune diseases. There are only maybe one or two cytokines or a small number that are driving the pathology of the disease."   "Both dermatomyositis and non-infectious uveitis are highly inflammatory conditions with a lot of different pathogenic cytokines, a lot of different inflammatory axes involved. And so, one of the neat things about our drug, brepocitinib, is that it works on a set category of enzymes called JAKs, and then there are four different types of JAKs, JAK1, JAK2, JAK3, and you might guess JAK4, but it’s actually called TYK2. And our drug inhibits TYK2 and JAK1. And by doing that, it suppresses the signaling of a large number of different cytokines." "Uveitis and dermatomyositis have a number of overlapping pathogenic cytokines involved, as well as some different cytokines, but they are both suppressed through the inhibition of TYK2 and JAK1, which our drug does. So, our thesis is to find these highly inflammatory indications, highly inflammatory diseases with high morbidity, which can be expressed in many different organ systems." #PriovantTherapeutics #RareDisease #OrphanIndication #Uveitis #NIU #Dermatomyositis #JAK1 #TYK2 priovanttx.com  Download the transcript here

David Nichols, CEO of Orthobond aims to address the unmet need of medical device infection and contamination due to bacteria preventing devices from bonding to the bone or tissue. Orthobond's solution is the Ostaguard technology, which uses a molecule with a positive charge to attract and rupture bacteria. The technology is effective against common strains of bacteria and is primarily needed in the operating room, where medical devices can be exposed to bacteria before being implanted. This mechanical approach to fighting bacteria does not require a drug that can potentially create a superbug.  David explains, "Our bodies have great immune systems, and normally, it takes tens of millions of bacteria to cause an infection. However, numerous studies show that in the presence of an implant, a hip or a knee, or a pacemaker, it could take as few as 200 bacteria to cause an infection. When an implant goes in the body, it seems to overwhelm the immune system and can’t eradicate that bacteria from your body. It takes a lot fewer bacteria than we think." "Also, that may not manifest into an immediate infection that happens during the first week of the hospital. It may be, especially for mechanical devices like hip, knees, and spinal implants, that bacteria forms into a biofilm that causes implants to get loose. So one of the bigger problems is a long-term failure of function of these implants that sometimes happens in the first, second, or third year post-surgery." #Orthobond #Implants #MedicalDevices #OperatingRoom #Hospitals orthobond.com Download the transcript here

Anupam Girdhar, CEO of medical and life sciences at Ascential Technologies, provides contract manufacturing services primarily to Fortune 100 companies, focusing on solving the most complex drug development and manufacturing challenges. By aligning with customers early on to understand the scope and risks of a project, Ascential can save time and money when bringing drugs and medical devices to market. At the same time, Anupam reminds us that innovation and inefficiency are part of the process for those trying to explore the unknown. Anupam explains, "This is where I enjoy some of the interactions we have with our customers, because if you think about fundamentally what the industry is trying to do, it is about democratizing care to the patients. We are all in the business of serving them and improving patients’ lives. A lot of these challenges that we encounter are mostly in the areas of, how do we provide access to more and more patients, as well as, how do we lower the cost fundamentally for both the companies and consumers? That’s where the challenges we encounter are mostly." "You’ve probably heard of so many projects that were thought of as game-changing and did not do much in the world. I know when customers come to us, everybody thinks their idea is the best, and I don’t blame that. That should be the attitude, and that’s how big things happen, but they cannot close their eyes to the learning. I mean, there are times when they completely overlook what it takes to fully scale something. There are technologies that are just unfeasible, where we will try to do something that is just against what is possible based on the laws of time or how much cost it takes to get there. There are still areas where we look back into our own backgrounds and then go ahead and incorporate those in the design." "An example is our proteomics board. In the past, and even in my experience, we’ve had more focus on genomics, and there are companies that were focused on proteomics. Still, now we have enough technology to combine things and learn multi-omic processes and so on. That just gives me so much joy to be able to now integrate things that we could not do five to ten years ago." #AscentialTechnologies #AscentialMedicalLifeSciences #Ascential #ContractManufacturing #ManufacturingAutomation #CellTherapy #MedicalDevice AscentialTech.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Abu Abraham, Chief Medical Officer at Cloudbreak Pharma,  discusses the disease burden and gaps in care for patients with Pterygium, also known as Surfer's eye. Pterygium is an ocular surface disorder that creates a growth on the eye's surface that can cause vision problems. The condition is more prevalent in individuals over 40, but it can also affect younger populations exposed to risk factors from spending time outside in the sun and being exposed to UV light. Cloudbreak Pharma is developing CBT-001, an investigational therapy, a multi-kinase inhibitor administered as an eye drop that aims to stop the progression of Pterygium. Abu explains, "Pterygium is a relatively common condition. It’s an ocular surface disorder. It’s a growth. The word Pterygium derives from the Greek pteryx, which means wedge-shaped. This growth is also a wedge shape that grows from the mucous membrane that overlies the white portion of a person’s eye and grows in the direction of the cornea. The cornea itself is a curved structure that’s clear, and its function is to focus light or bend light to enter the right way into the eye." "But this can affect anybody who has exposure to UV light. A person working outdoors or even doing a lot of outdoor activities in their free time has the potential to have a Pterygium grow on their eye as one of the triggers. UV light is not the only trigger. There is the potential, possibly, that there are genetic factors. I think they have been identified but may not be fully understood, as well as the genetic factors that contribute to the growth of a Pterygium." #CloudbreakPharma #Pterygium #SurfersEye #OcularDisease #OcularExternalDisease #PatientBurden CloudbreakPharma.com Download the transcript here