Empowered Patient Podcast

Robert Kim, the Chief Technology Officer at Presidio, works with providers, hospitals, payers, medical device companies, and digital health start-ups to refine and update the telemedicine model. Utilizing wearable and real-time data along with traditional medical data sources, Presidio is creating enterprise virtual care platforms that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, voice recognition, and data analytics to improve productivity and benefit patients, clinicians, and researchers.   Rob explains, "One of the things, and the keys to what we're trying to do in utilizing various different AI and ML techniques, is to increase that productivity. So you talk about generating emails, or you talk about taking notes, all of those things that we can do, utilizing natural language processing, which is really just components of technology that we would be deploying."   "Utilizing that data for a patient to be able to just track their own wellbeing, especially from a preventative care perspective, is very important. But the ability to then combine that wearable data in order to be able to get real-time access to what is pulse ox and what does the current EKG look like? Things of that sort really allow us then to combine that data with other outside data sources in order to be able to do much better prediction and forecasting around the potential for some sort of outbreak or the probability of somebody coming down with certain diseases. And in fact, a lot of the work that we're doing with a couple of our startups is to be able to do that across a much wider spectrum platform."  #DigitalHealth #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ML #MachineLearning #Telehealth #Telemedicine #VirtualCare #Wearables #MedicalDevices #Medtech #PrecisionMedicine presidio.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Peter Small Chief Medical Officer at Hyfe AI is doing for cough what the thermometer did for fever by allowing people to monitor their cough to identify underlying medical conditions. Using acoustic AI, Hyfe is able to measure cough rates and patterns and identify early warning signs of diseases. Hyfe is leading the way in acoustic epidemiology to better understand the determinants and distribution of disease. Peter explains, "Sound is extremely interesting because AI requires very data-rich signals, and so it's not surprising that in health, the early applications of AI have been in x-ray interpretations and dermatology in images. The next wave will be in sound because sound is equally rich. So there's a lot of information, for example, in the pattern of cough or the sounds of cough, and that's our focus. We're an acoustic health company." "Cough is interesting because it's not like blood pressure. There's no 120/80. There's a cough that's normal for you and normal for me. I just happen to have a bad, chronic cough. I cough 40 times, 80 times a day, that's normal. But if I go up to 800 coughs a day, as I did when I got COVID, that's an important red flag."  @hyfeapp #AI #Healthcare #Cough #DigitalHealth #ClinicalTrials #Innovation #AcousticHealth  #AcousticEpidemiology hyfe.ai Download the transcript here

Benjamin Lightburn, Co-Founder and CEO of Filament Health points out that up until now, research with psychedelics has been done with synthetically prepared psychedelic substances.  Filament is making a product through natural extraction that results in a medicine containing psilocybin plus over a dozen other active compounds from the magic mushrooms. This natural process does not require any toxic chemicals and can be distributed through non-medical distribution channels to treat a variety of mental health indications. Benjamin explains, "The psychedelics that have been showing a lot of promise recently in modern well-controlled clinical trials are being used for various mental health indications. Depression and PTSD are the ones that are most clinically advanced. But there's lots of very promising research in other areas, such as anxiety, substance use disorders, in particular alcohol use disorder, as well as in the areas of chronic pain, phantom limb pain, fibromyalgia, and things like that. Again, the list of indications for which psychedelic compounds can potentially be efficacious is still not yet known, and it is growing all the time as more research comes out." "Psychedelic medicine is always combined with therapy, so it's referred to as psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. And this means that you'll typically visit a professional, like a psychiatrist, for a number of preparatory sessions before your psychedelic experience. And then, on the day of your psychedelic experience, you actually consume the drug. In our case, we produce oral capsules, which look just like any other capsule, but there are other routes of administration as well." @FilamentHealth #PsychedelicTherapy #NaturalMedicine #Psilocybin #Mushrooms #MagicMushrooms #Microdosing Filament.Health Download the transcript here

Melanie Smith, Senior Manager of learning and developing at Air Methods, was a US Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot. She now trains clinicians, emergency medicine experts, pilots, first responders, mechanics, and corporate officials to respond to critical care needs, natural disasters, and accidents. The training program includes hands-on exercises with a high-fidelity manikin that talks back and can throw up,  gamification, and virtual reality to provide an immersive experience in different situations.  Melanie elaborates, "I flew Black Hawks in the Army for 12 years. Five of those years were spent in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and earthquake relief in Pakistan. After 12 years of service, I decided to get out of the military and join the civilian world. I still needed to serve my community. Instead of a life of service in the military, I wanted to serve my local community. So I joined Air Methods, and it really fulfilled that desire to help. I flew the line in Air Methods for 12 years, mostly North Carolina, flying all over the nation. Then I came to corporate Air Methods and decided to get into teaching." "Typically, to get into these roles, you have to have had some varied experience so that you're ready for it. Clinicians have to have an emergency room setting, emergency medicine, and maybe some ICU so that they can take care of every type of patient we would pick up. And then the pilots typically have a varied background as well. Maybe they were military, or maybe they flew all over the world. We have pilots from across the board. Maybe they flew in the jungle or in Alaska in the winter environment. We put all of our past experiences together and need it for every mission that we do now." #AirMethods #CriticalCare #ClinicalEducation #VR #CECredits #HealthcareCE #NursingCE #ParamedicCE #ClinicalCE #FlightClinician #CAPCE #CABRN #ClinicalSkills #ProfessionalDevelopment #DigitalHealth #RuralHealthcare AirMethods.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Bethany Doran, the CEO of Enabled Health, is using a healthcare model that identifies patients at high risk of hospitalization or who need help managing a chronic condition. With a focus on predominantly older patients, Enabled Health works with community partners and senior living facilities to allow patients access to remote monitoring systems, digital tools, and on-site visits. Bethany explains, "Our goal is to meet them where they are spiritually, holistically, and geographically and be able to provide them with the equipment to enable access to telemedicine and support their health. But also, to meet them in person, in some cases, and just be a good steward and guide to them on their healthcare journey."  "We spend a good amount of time just listening to their medical history, how they've been doing, any challenges, and reconciling any medications they have. Then we also provide them with equipment to enable telemedicine and telemonitoring. They have a tablet that can either link to wifi, or in some cases, it's cellular, but allows the patient to engage in telemedicine as well for those times that we can't be in-person." "Going in-person to the assisted living facilities we work with, we'll go once per month in person and set them up for telemedicine for the rest of their visits. But we think it's really important to maintain our relationships with patients, just serving as a partner in health. Not relying only on telemedicine or telemonitoring and thinking that will fix everything about a patient's health, but be there as a true partner and use that as a tool to expand instead access for patients." #Telehealth #Telemedicine #ChronicDiseases #HealthEquity #RuralHealthcare #DigitalHealth #ChronicCareManagement #RemotePatientMonitoring enabled.healthcare Download the transcript here

David Bearss the Co-Founder, CEO and President of Halia Therapeutics, points out that despite traditional thinking, chronic inflammation is not just an unresolved acute inflammatory response. It has been discovered that a different pathway leads to the activation of this inflammatory response in diseases with components of chronic inflammation, such as Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, COPD, psoriasis, IBD, and cancer.  Their potential drug target is the NLRP3 inflammasome which has been identified as being associated with the activation of inflammation. David explains, "We've gotten better and better at trying to narrow down on how we can block these inflammatory responses. But there's just been, in the past few years, a real explosion in our knowledge of what the root drivers of chronic inflammation are. At Halia, we're focused on trying to take out the root cause, not some of the downstream effects or the signaling molecules, but take out the responsible thing, the machine inside the cell that's activated, that's propagating these signals. If we can turn that off, we think we can get to the root cause of what's driving these problems and all these different diseases."  "It's just in the past few years that we've discovered that there are these cellular machines that get formed under the right conditions that help propagate or signal this inflammatory response. We call those machines inflammasomes, and there are five that we know of. There are probably a few more that are what we call non-canonical inflammasomes. But the inflammasomes have been a really hot area of research in lots of different diseases to try to understand how these protein complexes get formed inside cells and how they stay stuck on in chronic inflammation." @Halia_Tx #ChronicInflammation #Immunity #Neuroscience #AlzheimersDisease #InflammatoryDisease #DrugDevelopment #Biotech  haliatherapeutics.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. Tina Albertson is the Chief Medical Officer and Head of Development at Lyell, using cell therapy to fight solid tumors through epigenetic and genetic reprogramming methods. Tumors have their own mechanisms for suppressing the immune system. These are the types of pathways Lyell is targeting with their engineering to find ways to counter the exhaustion that the T cells exhibit so that T cells can stay functional and kill the solid tumor cells. Tina explains, "Our cell therapies are from the patient's own cells, so these are what we call autologous cell therapies. We take the cells from the patient and bring them, in our case to Seattle, to our manufacturing facility. We both genetically and epigenetically reprogram them during manufacturing so that the cells will be resistant to the suppressive microenvironment of the solid tumors."  " I think most people are familiar with the concept of stem cells, which can self-renew as well as make cells that are functional and can differentiate. So when we reprogram them, we make them more stem-like, and this allows us to infuse cells into the patient that should be more persistent and more functional."  "The second product we're also testing in trials is tumor infiltrating lymphocytes or TILs. This is a product where you need a piece of their cancer or their tumor and extract the T cells from the tumor itself. That requires surgery, then a piece of tissue is also sent to our manufacturing facility. Those T cells are extracted and expanded. That takes a little bit longer. But similarly, once those are expanded to the right cell number, we send them back to the site to be reinfused into the patient." #Lyell #CellTherapy #SolidTumors #Oncology #Cancer #TCells #TCellExhaustion #AutologousCellTherapy lyell.com Download the transcript here

Sam Lee is the Co-CEO and President of Cocrystal Pharma, focused on pandemic viruses and seasonal influenza to develop a drug that is cross-spectrum with a high barrier to drug resistance. Using computational data, as well as high-resolution X-ray data, their platform allows options for newly emerging viruses that also address potency and combination treatment options. Sam explains, "We just completed the Phase I study. In the Phase I study, we demonstrated the favorable safety and tolerability of this compound, CC-42344. We designed this compound for pandemic and seasonal influenza A infection. Particularly, this compound is highly sensitive to the avian influenza strain, potentially an emerging pandemic strain." "I think with antiviral drug development, you always have to think about three important things. One is the cross-spectrum, which covers the existing viruses. For example, in the influenza case, influenza H1N1, H2, and H3. And beyond seasonal influenza viruses are pandemic viruses, H5 and H7, and potentially emerging avian flu. So we want to cover all these viruses. That's a really important goal." "Once you achieve good potency and cross-spectrum activity, then you want to solve the pharmacology. It's going to be a once-a-day drug with the excellent drug resistance. Drug resistance is a really key contribution using our platform approach. " @CocrystalPharma $COCP #PandemicFlu #CC42344 #SeasonalInfluenzaA #Flu #Pandemic CocrystalPharma.com Download the transcript here

Gabriel Mecklenburg is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Hinge Health, the leading digital clinic for back, joint, and muscle pain. Hinge provides personalized physical therapy plans by pairing digital and advanced motion-tracking technology with clinical care teams, including doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and board-certified health coaches. Recognizing the value of in-person care, Hinge is rolling out an in-home option to meet the needs of a wide variety of patients. Gabriel explains, "Now, with Hinge Health, it's a digital program, and it's something that you can immediately access from the convenience of your home. You're getting an assessment of your condition right then and there. You can get started on clinically proven exercise therapy, education, coaching, PT type therapies immediately. It's a personalized, highly-tailored program for each individual, which, again, is very similar for a market-wide experience."  "We're excited to branch into what we call hybrid care, combining the best of both worlds of in-person and digital care. Our physical therapy house call service is a fully-integrated digital and in-person care experience for back, joint, and muscle health." "The reason why we're pursuing this is that many Americans of all ages prefer to have an option of in-person visits alongside the digital health experience. In particular, for the kinds of conditions that we are tackling, in-person evaluations for joint and muscle pain can substantially enhance the experience and the quality of downstream digital care." #HingeHealth #MSK #Musculoskeletal #DigitalHealth #PT #PhysicalTherapy #HealthandWellness #ChronicPain #HybridPT #VirtualPT #HomeHealthcare #HomeHealth hingehealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Paul Lammers, the Chief Executive Officer at Triumvira Immunologics, is developing personalized medicine to treat solid tumors using an autologous approach to arm the patient-derived cells with a vector that identifies and kills individual cancer cells.  At the forefront of the next generation of immune-oncology, Triumvira uses the Cocoon Platform made by Lonza to automate this process in a closed system to grow and harvest the cells. The ultimate goal is to have this technology available at the point of care in regional cancer centers to allow this cell therapy to be used by more cancer patients.  Paul elaborates, "The challenge with T cell therapy has been can we also use cell therapy to treat solid tumors? And that's where we feel that with our technology, known as TAC, T Cell Antigen Coupler comes in. We truly think we have an opportunity here, so we feel we are developing first-in-class medications based on that new T cell engineer platform, the TAC. We hope to have an opportunity to focus on different types of targets in solid tumors that will address high unmet needs in cancers like gastric cancer and colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer, and ovarian and endometrial." "Our first program is in the clinic targeting HER2, which is a well-known target, especially for breast cancer and also gastric cancer. But we're expanding that. In the second half of this year, we're starting a first clinical trial targeting claudin 18.2, which is an exciting new upcoming target in different solid tumors, especially for gastric, pancreatic, and gastroesophageal cancer. Followed then in the next two years by new targets known as GUCY2C, which is a great target for colorectal cancer, and GPC3, a target for primary liver cancer. So it's an exciting time to build a broad and strong pipeline based on that TAC technology platform." #Triumvira #TCells #TCellTherapy #TAC #Cancer #SolidTumorCancer #CellTherapy #BreastCancer #GastricCancer Triumvira.com Download the transcript here