Empowered Patient Podcast

Ophir Tanz is the Founder and CEO of Pearl, a company utilizing AI to revolutionize the dental industry. Their FDA-cleared product can detect nine different dental conditions. The diagnostic assistance device analyzes radiography images in real-time to identify pathology, existing restorations, and natural anatomy. Their Second Opinion tool is designed to be used by the practitioner to design a precise course of treatment that the patient understands. Ophir elaborates, "We think dentistry is particularly ripe for the infusion of AI and particularly what we do, which is a form of AI called computer vision, into the category. So first off, dentists capture more x-rays and radiography than any other form of medicine does on an annual basis. And if you look at the levels of concurrence across different practitioners and how they're detecting pathology, you have a disease like interproximal caries or periapical radiolucency or calculus. These are very, very easy to miss, especially at the early stages. So, if you're able to provide a level of assistance and point out areas of interest chairside in a patient-facing manner, that tends to dramatically increase the quality and precision, and accuracy of the diagnosis." "Computers are able to identify something like 1,000 shades of gray. I think humans are able to identify something like 30 to 50 shades of gray. So it's just much, much more sensitive. And obviously, given that it is a machine, it is entirely consistent and precise in the kind of output that it reveals. We're not going to magically identify anything that is just fundamentally not visible in a radiograph. It's not magic. We are identifying elements that are visible in the radiograph but with a lot of sensitivity." @Hello_Pearl #Dentristry #Dentist #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ComputerVision #DentalCare hellopearl.com Download the transcript here

Nicole Broadhurst, CEO and Founder of Tennessee Health Advocates, is an expert on the world of independent Health Advocates, including clinical, cancer, rare disease advocacy, and medical billing and health insurance. She emphasizes the risks patients face when they do not understand how their health insurance works and the role an independent advisor can play in sorting out details and solving problems. Nicole explains, "I would say the top risk for patient financial safety is that most patients don't understand their health insurance and the associated cost-sharing responsibilities. The words seem very simple, and we hear a lot about the deductible, coinsurance, copay, maximum out-of-pocket, and the total cost of coverage, which includes your maximum financial risk. Most people don't understand exactly how that all works." "The second one, I would say, is not understanding how to utilize our healthcare options. A lot of people don't understand when it's appropriate to use their health insurance or if it would be beneficial for them to waive their insurance benefit and pay cash instead. Also, they don't know, and they don't understand what facilities to choose and what providers or their real options are." #tennesseehealthadvocates #medicalbills #healthinsurance #reviewyourbills #understandyourbills #reviewyourmedicalbills #billingerrors #medicalbillingprofessional TennesseeHealthAdvocates.com Download the transcript here

Dr. David Huang is Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer at Peptilogics and working to change the approach for treating and reducing reinfection rates of periprosthetic joint infection, PJI. Their lead highly charged peptide PLG0206 has been shown to be broad spectrum and active against multi-drug resistant bacteria, common causes of PJI. Peptilogics' AI/ML platform is accelerating peptide discovery to reach better clinical candidates in therapeutic areas such as rare diseases, immuno-oncology, and immunology. David explains, "Peptilogics' approach to changing the treatment paradigm for treating PJI is by treating PJI directly at the site of infection. Instead of administering an antibiotic systemically or by mouth, as mentioned earlier, Peptilogics has an engineered cationic peptide and an irrigation solution that can be administered directly to the site of infection in the wound cavity of the knee, for example. The knee does not have a great blood supply. Therefore, antibiotics given intravenously or by mouth have a difficult time getting to the site of infection in the knee." "Peptilogics' lead peptide called PLG0206 is an engineered cationic antibacterial peptide, which has orphan drug QIDP, which stands for qualified infectious disease product, and fast track designation from the FDA. And the way that PLG works is by its novel mechanism of action. It selectively binds to and disrupts the integrity of the bacterial membrane by altering the physical characteristics of the membrane, leading to a rapid loss of the bacterial cell membrane potential that results in cell death." @Peptilogics #Peptilogics #PJI #PeriprostheticJointInfection #Peptides Peptilogics.com Download the transcript here

Virginia Halsey, Vice President of Product Management at FDB,  First Databank, is focused on helping pharmacists use drug interaction information, drug alerts and dosage data in smarter, more efficient ways.  WIth patient safety in mind, FDB is arming pharmacists with relevant content to determine the clinical impact of a specific drug on a specific patient. Virginia elaborates, "First Databank is drug content, but a very specific niche of drug content in that it is structured in such a way that it's built into the workflow of other systems. So, for instance, if a patient goes into a retail pharmacy, the pharmacist behind the counter is using their system to basically fill the prescription, adjudicate the claim, and so forth. But that drug content that's within their system comes from First Databank. Content that describes the products that are available, the pricing, and most importantly, clinical information about the drug, such as what's the appropriate dose or what are the drug interactions." "It's saving time, and it's addressing cognitive overload. So yes, the pharmacist can read this list of potential safety issues and interpret it, but there are a couple of problems. One is that then you have to take that time to sort through and think about the alternatives, maybe look something up. The other is, then, you get a lack of standardization because one pharmacist may come to one conclusion. Another may come to another conclusion instead of having standardized practice protocols and alternatives." @FDB_US #FirstDatabank #Pharmacy #Healthtech #Pharmacists #MedicationGuidance #HIT fdbhealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Jason Cohen, Senior Director of Clinical Solutions at Qventus, is addressing the problems that hospitals face regarding discharging patients. Much of care planning starts during hospitalization or at the last minute, so patients and caregivers are often left confused about the next appropriate care environment. Qventus is deploying AI to build a model with hundreds of different data points to predict highly-individualized discharge plans. This benefits patients, hospitals, and care teams by keeping track of progress, identifying bottlenecks, and making necessary adjustments to the care plan. Jason elaborates, "We look at patients, for example, who get an early discharge plan, which we define as being an estimated date of discharge and a disposition where they're likely to go. Those patients that have their care team aligned around that early plan by the second midnight in the hospital experience have significantly fewer excess days in the hospital. They're more likely to leave on time and get to their next most appropriate care environment, whether that's a skilled facility, rehab, home with home help, et cetera. And then on the other side of that, again, is that tension with the dynamically changing nature of that patient's health, and things can change from day to day." "Our solution has multiple different components, which hopefully we'll get into, but one of the core parts is our AI machine learning model that is able to help care teams align on that early discharge plan as soon as possible. And in the case of our models, the majority of patients, we're able to populate that plan directly into the EHR so that there's transparency across all those teams after the first midnight in the hospital." @Qventus #Qventus #HospitalDischargePlanning #HospitalDischarge #Hospitals #AI #BigData Qventus.com Download the transcript here

Robert Hoffman President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board at Kintara Therapeutics, is developing a drug to treat glioblastoma, the most common and deadliest form of brain tumor. The only drug temozolomide, TMZ, was approved in 1999 and the overall survival rate is very limited. The Kintara drug VAL-083 crosses the blood-brain barrier and is also showing promise for pediatric brain tumors and some ovarian cancers. Robert explains, "The mechanism of VAL-083 differs from other key chemotherapeutic agents, including TMZ. It induces interstrand cross-links at guanine N07, causing DNA double-strand break and cancer cell death. If you compare that to TMZ, it only induces a single-strand DNA break at N07, and the tumor cells can repair them. That's really an important distinction of our mechanism of action. So, we're really, really excited." "So, I could imagine once it's approved, physicians would potentially combine it with TMZ, potentially which still may happen. Or Avastin, potentially. So, yes, there is a possibility for that. We're looking at, coincidentally, ovarian cancer with VAL-083 with some PARP inhibitors. So, there are other potential combinations that we're looking at down the road, as well." "Another underserved area is pediatric brain tumors. We're looking at DIPG, which is a pediatric indication, as well as medulloblastoma" @Kintara_Thera #Kintara #GBM #Glioblastoma #Cancer #BrainCancer #BrainTumor kintara.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. Sean Bohen, President and CEO of Olema Oncology, is looking for a better endocrine option, alone or in the context of a CDK 4/6 inhibitor, to treat ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. Their oral pill OP-1250 does not have chemotherapy-like side effects and could be better tolerated than chemotherapy to aggressively target and turn off the estrogen receptor. Sean explains, "In that respect, I'd say the estrogen receptor is probably one of the most validated therapeutic, molecular therapeutic targets in cancer, with tamoxifen first being approved in 1977. That said, that progress here has been relatively slow. Tamoxifen, approved in 1977, is not a complete antagonist. It turns on the receptor in some contexts, and turns it off in others. Fulvestrant is a complete antagonist. It has to be injected. That was approved in the early 2000s, and here in 2022, we're still working on getting a better estrogen-receptor targeting therapy." "What happens, as is often the case in cancers, is that the ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer cell co-ops that normal growth and proliferation signal to promote an abnormal growth and proliferation of the cancerous cells. So that's why we are able to go back and try to turn that signal off and help treat the cancer, prevent progression and, sometimes, cause regression of the tumors by turning off that inappropriately-used estrogen receptor signal." "We are currently treating three cohorts, 50 patients with measurable tumors, 15 patients without measurable tumors. In the context of ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, that is usually bone-only involvement. Then we also have an interesting property with OP-1250. It crosses the blood-brain barrier, so which raises the possibility of being able to treat brain metastases. We have a cohort of 15 central nervous system metastasis patients that we are working on enrolling right now." #OlemaOncology #Oncology #BreastCancer #WomensHealth #SERD #CERAN olema.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Tim O'Connell is a practicing radiologist and CEO and Co-Founder of Emtelligent, a medical natural language processing company. Their software converts unstructured text in medical documents into structured data to allow a variety of clients to get access to information that in the past has not been available. Tim explains, "The problem was that the NLP engine just wasn't good enough. If there was a family history item, it would misidentify it as belonging to the patient. Sometimes it would get negation wrong, and it would miss important terms or have a hard time dealing with ambiguous words or acronyms. I knew that the premise was correct. As a clinician, I needed better access to patient data, and I needed access to the unstructured data, but I needed a better NLP engine in order to get it." "What we've done is really brought together medical experts and NLP experts and built a system that understands the very unique medical language. Just to take one example, you take something as simple as the word PT. It could mean patient. It could mean physiotherapy. It could mean physiotherapist. It could mean prothrombin time. It could mean posterior tibial, referring to a tendon or a blood vessel. So, dealing with these very special and unique problems, you need to do it on a medical basis." @emtelhealth #Emtelligent #NLP #MNLP #MedicalNaturalLanguageProcessing #UnstructuredText emtelligent.com Download the transcript here  

Marcus Dorstel Head of Operations at Turquoise Health, is part of a team of engineers and healthcare experts focused on the price transparency data that started coming out in 2021 on the hospital side and in July 2022 on the payer side. These prices were previously kept secret and in data silos so that the full picture of costs was not possible. Their aim is to support the No Surprises Act, which requires providers to create a good faith estimate of all medical services ahead of actual service.  Marcus explains, "At Turquoise Health, ultimately, we want to simplify the way healthcare gets paid. I think we're all keenly aware of the complexities of the healthcare space, a lot of that around the payment structure and even just what the price of healthcare is. And so, we're a startup focused on price transparency in the healthcare space and helping all parties within the healthcare ecosystem really simplify those payments and bring more transparency into healthcare." "Hospitals are certainly taking a look at their prices compared to their competitors. There's a chance to see if you're contracting with a major national carrier and what they're paying your competitor down the street. We're already seeing that this data is being used by both hospitals and also by the payers in these contract negotiations." @TurquoiseHC #TurquoiseHealth #PriceTransparency #Healthcare #NoSurprisesAct #GoodFaithEstimate #Hospitals #HealthcareCosts #MedicalBills turquoise.health Download the transcript here

Nate Maslak is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ribbon Health, which is a healthcare data platform to power patient care decisions, including price transparency for all services. Their unique technological approach incorporates data from across the entire healthcare ecosystem. It uses predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning to determine accurate information while allowing patients to contribute data back into the system. Nate explains, "The overall technology focuses on being able to provide the right information on a provider at the right moment in time, so whenever/wherever somebody's seeking care. And the number of problems that exist in provider data is shocking, and sometimes I feel like they are infinite. So just starting with something as basic as the provider directory, so phone numbers, addresses. What is the specialty of this provider?" "That information out there today is about 45% accurate, which is terrifying because that doesn't even start to hit on some other elements that are hard to get across. So Ribbon helps solve that. We're also then enabling other solutions to be able to show which insurance plan a given provider accepts down to the plan name and network level. And then, we layer on provider performance and cost-effectiveness, and price transparency." @RibbonHealthAPI #RibbonHealth #Healthcare #DigitalHealth #MedicalBills #AffordableHealthcare #PriceTransparency #HealthcareProviders #Healthtech #MachineLearning #AI #EmpoweringPatients RibbonHealth.com Download the transcript here