Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Karlene Kerfoot, Chief Nursing Officer at symplr, points out the challenges nurses and doctors face when dealing with technology in the workplace.  The disparate systems and lack of data integration make it difficult for clinicians to perform necessary duties and have moments that matter: time to provide the kind of care patients require. Karlene highlights the potential for AI and robots to alleviate some of the inefficiencies in the workflow and the need for frontline staff to be part of the decision-making process to ensure advanced technology solutions meet real needs.   Karlene explains, "We do have to deal with the technology to make it easier for people to work. For example, the nurse manager, when they want a staff and schedule, sometimes they have to go through six to eight disparate systems that don't talk to each other. So they have to go into one system and then out, and another system and out, and another system and out. So, at the end of the day, they're quite fatigued and have a lot of technology burden. They don't have time to do what they're supposed to do, which is look at the quality of work with patients and help new nurses."   "We have to run those systems by the people who use them because often, when you say to physicians, "Here's a great system." They say, "Well, that's not the way I think. That doesn't work for me." Or if you say to a nurse, "Here's a great system for you." They say, "Well, it doesn't work because we have to do all these workarounds because it doesn't really include everything we want." "We had a little funeral for all the fax machines and put a big black curtain over them so people couldn't use them, and we said, "It's dead." And so that, in a funny way, sort of forced people to see if they could use the computer and not use paper and not use fax machines."  #symplr #MomentsThatMatter #Burnout #HealthcareTech #PatientCare #Nurses #HealthTech symplr.com Download the transcript here

Retired Brigadier General Dr. Steve Xenakis is Executive Director of the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association, a group of clinicians who are interested in developing and promoting the mainstream use of psychedelic and plant medicines for the treatment of mental health conditions. APPA works to educate practitioners on best practices and explores AI's potential role in identifying patients who could benefit from psychedelic therapies.   Steve explains, "This is a multidisciplinary group. As the treatments unfold, we're seeing it's multidisciplinary. We have psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, advanced nurse practitioners, and physician's assistants because it's a team approach. When we look at the best treatments and therapies, these people come together. They can collaborate in terms of not only prescribing the medications but also conducting the therapy and supporting the patients who come to them for help." "They've come into this organization because they realize that to promote these treatments and therapies there needs to be a pathway to mainstream them into US healthcare. For many, for the past several decades, a number of practitioners have been using these medicines compounds and treatments. Still, they've had to be in the so-called underground because, since 1972, the use of MDMA and psilocybin has been illegal. And only recently have we seen ketamine be used. And there are other substances." "As we think about it, and particularly with the momentum with MDMA and psilocybin in getting approval from the FDA, there's an interest in now bringing this out upfront and getting them into US healthcare and to go through what the processes are to get that done. That's how this organization has come together and been conceived." #APPA #AmericanPsychedelicPractionersAssociation #MentalHealth #Psychiatry #Psychedelics #AlternativeTherapy #PTSD #MDMA #Psilocybin #AI appa-us.org Download the transcript here

Jeffrey Madden, Co-Founder and CEO of ADvantage Therapeutics is developing therapies for neurodegenerative conditions, particularly Alzheimer's disease.  Instead of pursuing the amyloid hypothesis, ADvantage is focused on neuroinflammation as the primary driver of Alzheimer's pathology. Trials for their lead compound AD04 show promising results in slowing hippocampal volume loss and stabilizing cognition.   Jeffrey explains, "The assumption that has been in play for more than 20 years is the amyloid hypothesis. And the idea behind that is if you could clear amyloid beta, this toxic protein, you could stop or even reverse Alzheimer's. The results are in. We're reading about Biogen and Lilly, the monoclonal antibodies that do a great job of clearing amyloid but only have modest slowing of cognitive decline." "What we offer is that the pathology of Alzheimer's is just incomplete. We take a biology of aging worldview and we know the biggest causation for Alzheimer's is aging. We know a lane of aging is chronic inflammation. We also know bad things happen in the brain with neuroinflammation. We offer that at the roots of Alzheimer's is neuroinflammation, and we train the immune system to reduce neuroinflammation in the brain." "The dogma of the amyloid hypothesis was very much focused on this toxic protein amyloid beta. More recently, this physical biomarker of the hippocampus is becoming more in vogue for very good reason. And we're at the cutting edge using the hippocampus as a biomarker. What we're doing in our confirmation study is mirroring the predecessor trial that I referenced going back to 2014. We can't think of a more rigorous downstream biomarker than the hippocampus, and others are following suit." #ADvantageTherapeutics #Neuroinflammation #AlzheimersDisease #AmyloidBeta #Biomarkers #Hippocampus advantagetherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Sam Lee, Co-CEO of Cocrystal Pharma, discusses novel antiviral therapeutics to treat norovirus. This highly contagious virus causes acute gastroenteritis, and there is no known treatment or vaccine.  Cocrystal is developing a compound that targets the essential enzymes of the virus, showing promising results in inhibiting norovirus replication and showing possible use in treating human rhinovirus and enterovirus. The goal is to develop a protease inhibitor therapeutic for norovirus that can alleviate symptoms and potentially prevent infection spread in high-risk environments. Sam explains, "Let me step back and tell you how we approach the noro antiviral drug development. So, we're focusing on what we call direct-acting antiviral therapeutics. We're targeting viral essential enzymes, and we initiated this noro program looking at the essential genes such as RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. We have really exciting hits, but we also look at the protease. Norovirus has this essential protease, which is absolutely required for viral replication."   "During the COVID time, we focused on coronavirus protease and developed the coronavirus protease inhibitors for COVID. But at the same time, we have this drug discovery platform technology that looks at various viral proteases, including norovirus, human rhinovirus, and enterovirus. The list goes on, and we recognize that computational analysis now is the people who use artificial intelligence." "But we had a pretty good prediction that norovirus would be actually a good target, that our coronavirus inhibitors should innovate the norovirus protease. That's how we started. Then, from there, we quickly applied our platform approach and demonstrated that, in fact, our coronavirus protease inhibitors for COVID treatment actually work well against the norovirus. I just want to point out that we also evaluated the approved drugs such as Pfizer, coronavirus protease inhibitors, and Shionogi protease inhibitors. Those compounds do not have any activity against norovirus. This is where we could differentiate compounds from existing protease inhibitors. So we're very excited about this." #CocrystalPharma #Norovirus #RNAVirus #SuperVirus #Coronavirus  #HumanRhinovirus cocrystalpharma.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Ruben Mesa, Executive Director, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses advancements in the treatment of myelofibrosis, chronic leukemia, a blood disease characterized by scarring in the bone marrow.  Current therapies include stem cell transplants and ruxolitinib, a drug that helps with symptoms and spleen enlargement but does not improve anemia. A new once-a-day pill, momelotinib, known as Ojaara, has been approved, effectively reducing spleen size, improving symptoms, and effectively addressing anemia.   Ruben explains, "What we've learned over time is that the origin of the disease is a chronic leukemia that occurs in the bone marrow that is driven by different changes in the genes that control the function of the bone marrow. And then there's a secondary scarring that occurs." "Patients with myelofibrosis might be afflicted with a drop in the blood counts and have anemia or a drop in the white blood cell count or the platelet count. They may have symptoms associated with the disease, such as fatigue, night sweats, and weight loss, and they can have enlargement of the spleen, which is a filter for the blood under the rib cage. The spleen can be enlarged and give its own set of symptoms. I mentioned it's a chronic leukemia, and it can progress to being an acute leukemia that can be concerning and potentially life-threatening with even more severe changes in the blood counts." #Ojjaarahcp #GSK #BloodCancer #Anemia #Leukemia #Myelofibrosis #MPN  atriumhealth.org Ojjaarahcp.com Download the transcript here

Beena Wood, Senior VP of Safety and Medical at ArisGlobal, highlights how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing patient-centricity in drug development, pointing out the factors drawing more interest in this challenge. The LifeSphere drug development platform aims to drive patient-centric guidance by providing access to real-world data and enabling patient collaboration. Beena emphasizes the importance of engaging a diverse universe of patients and leveraging AI, data analytics, and machine learning to reveal hidden insights from the data to improve drug testing and safety. Beena explains, "Before specifically diving into how AI helps, I want to step back a bit on what the forces that drive patient-centricity are. I don't think these forces are new. They had existed, but I think they have been accelerating that patient-centricity conversation, especially with patients increasingly taking charge of their health and becoming more empowered. I think that drives the life sciences companies to focus on that and strive harder to become more patient-centric."   "I think targeted therapies are accelerating the need to have that patient-centric mindset and strategy and operational model. For that strategy to be successful, it is important to leverage the right technology to be able to listen to those patients and to have that execution of that patient-centric digital strategy. That will be critical to achieving success." #ArisGlobal #PatientCentricity #PatientCentric #LifeSciences #Automation #AI #DrugDevelopment arisglobal.com Download the transcript here

Frank Forte, CEO of AnatomyIT, provides cybersecurity, IT, and value-based healthcare services to organizations that need help making an intelligent transformation to healthcare IT. Despite the prevalence of new technology, many providers and payers still rely on paper and fax machines, and data security risks and privacy issues still need to be addressed. Frank points out the need for change management and training to integrate generative AI and automate manual tasks to improve efficiency, clinician acceptance, and patient outcomes.   Frank explains, "But look, traditionally, when people thought of IT, they thought of a help desk. That was what came to mind. Networks, routers, cables, hardware, all those things that lived in the basement or the closet. And that's how I thought of IT. I would say that most IT initiatives were not received well, specifically from people who needed it the most, like clinicians, caregivers, and nurses, where it required a change in workflow, adopting new technology, or even remembering their passwords."  "So, they didn't particularly embrace IT initiatives. And I would say it hasn't really changed. It didn't change until the Affordable Care Act and HITECH and meaningful use requirements became the norm and drove the adoption of medical records, which transformed everything in healthcare and IT. Since then, there have been enormous evolutions, from medical records, clinical charting, and care plans to automated or technology-based revenue cycle billing applications. That's evolved into patient experience and population health. Now you have analytics and generative AI." #AnatomyIT #ITServices #ManagedIT #Cybersecurity #HIPAACompliance #DataBackup #DataBreaches #Hacking #Encryption #Malware #Phishing #Transomware anatomyit.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Barnaby Balmforth, Co-Founder and CEO of Biofidelity, has a mission to make genomic analysis simpler, faster, and more reliable for treatment decisions. Biofidelity addresses genome sequencing challenges by using a targeted approach and unique technology that allows for local testing using PCR rather than DNA sequencers. Thanks to COVID, an existing global infrastructure of PCR equipment provides an opportunity to target specific biomarkers and deliver actionable information to physicians and patients.   Barnaby explains, "The challenge as we see it is that in this modern oncology era, there is now a wide need for multi-gene genomic profiling of patients. The only solution that has been available to enable that is DNA sequencing. The media has quite widely covered how the genomics market is growing, and the cost of sequencing is shrinking. But sadly, in the clinical space, oncologists and patients are still failing to fully experience the benefits of this technology." "It is not a simple process to perform clinical diagnostics using DNA sequencing. That has resulted in the centralization of sequencing tests in very large laboratories with all of the associated logistical challenges of getting samples to those laboratories, processing them through these complex workflows, and then returning results to the clinicians." "We focus on delivering the clinically actionable information to physicians as quickly as possible. So, we are not forming very large whole genome sequencing tests. We are focused on what information is associated with approved therapies, what information is recommended for testing in the treatment guidelines, and what is needed to make these treatment decisions. So, we take a more focused and targeted approach." #Biofidelity #GenomicTesting #GenomeSequencing #Biomarkers #PCRInstruments biofidelity.com Download the transcript here

Devra Densmore, principal consultant at Elevate Advocacy, explains the FDA has released guidance to drive Diversity Action Plans to ensure that clinical trials are representative of affected patients. Emphasizing the need for a thoughtful and strategic approach to diversity, Devra highlights inclusivity includes accessibility and listening to patient advocates to meet the needs of marginalized communities.   Devra explains, "This is a very exciting time where, by releasing these guidance documents, the FDA is setting a standard for the expectation that industry and study sponsors have a very intentional approach to ensuring that their studies are representative. That the therapies or devices that are created are beneficial for all people affected by the conditions that those medications and devices are supposed to solve for." "So, for me, these Diversity Action Plans are a really exciting opportunity for industry to think about what it wants to do in this space. How can it contribute to making sure that health equity is realized within the clinical development space? Are studies actually reflective of the communities that are most impacted by disease? Are medications or devices that are created actually safe and effective for the people who need to use them, especially the people who need to use them the most?"  #ElevateAdvocacy #HealthEquity #PatientFocusedDrugDevelopment #PFDD #PatientsFirst #ClinicalTrials #ClinicalResearch #DiversityActionPlan  ElevateAdvocacy.com  Download the transcript here

Arthur Bretschneider, CEO and Co-Founder of Seniorly, a discovery platform and marketplace providing essential information to make informed decisions about senior housing options. The website brings transparency to the search process, including information about price, amenities, and care options, which have traditionally been challenging to determine. A network of senior living advisors, an AI-powered virtual advisor, and a recommendation engine all support finding the right senior housing community. Arthur explains, "One of the things about senior living that is so complicated is frankly understanding pricing. And so, why is it complicated? There are a few factors. One is that often, people don't understand the nuances in senior housing, the sort of segmentation of different properties. So you might hear assisted living, you might hear independent living, memory care, and Alzheimer's care. There are all sorts of nuances of the different types of care that these communities can support." "But the other piece, which is pretty challenging in this industry, is that very few senior living operators actually put their pricing online. If you are a consumer just browsing, maybe you're early researching, or maybe later on, you just want to do more on your own. For most senior living communities, you're going to have to call to get pricing, and we thought that was not a good experience. In our research, the majority of families, as they're going through this process, the number one thing that's a factor in their decision is, frankly, their budget. And if you think about any other shopping experience today, just imagine going on Amazon or Expedia or anything and being unable to see pricing unless you call. It's not a way that people are used to searching these days." #Seniorly #SeniorLiving #HealthTechnology #SeniorLivingTechnology #SeniorCare #PricingEstimate #AI Seniorly.com Download the transcript here