Empowered Patient Podcast

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

Dr. Shafiq Rab is the Chief Digital Officer and System Chief Information Officer at Tufts Medicine and an advocate for cloud-based health ecosystems. Healthcare is one of the last industries that has not moved into the cloud to integrate the entire ecosystem of patient data, clinical trial updates, provider information, and payer processes and allow for research and advanced analytics. The cloud provides the flexibility to scale operations and reduce costs related to physical space and administration. While it is hard to get the variety of electronic health record databases and applications to work together, it is even harder to get the humans involved to adjust to new technologies in the workplace. Shafiq explains, "So in the world that we live in, where everybody wants an Amazon-like experience, healthcare has to go a little forward. On paper, things are still a little less efficient. To make that happen, there are three stages that everybody has to go through. One is digitizing everything, then digitalization, and finally, digital transformation, which is a cultural thing." "Why into the cloud? That ecosystem means all the applications that you want to use to deliver healthcare. You have it in a place in the cloud because the cloud has the computing power. It allows you to compute things faster and quicker. In the world of healthcare, the consumer consumes on a phone, on an iPhone or Android, at the edge, which is known as edge computing. The connectivity depends upon the strength of the internet and the interoperability between the different systems. So, if you do not have an ecosystem up in the cloud with your major electronic health record, it becomes hard to deliver that information." "We also benefited by decreasing the number of portals for our patients, for our consumers. We now have one app. Before, we had about 84 different portals and different ways of getting the information, and it was not in one place. So the North Star is how to make it easier and more welcoming, the access to care for the consumers and the communities we serve. Simultaneously, making it also easier for care providers to provide the care, and the employees who work here, and the vendors who are part of the ecosystem, because that's how we complete the ring of healthcare." @TuftsMedicine @CIOSHAFIQ #TuftsMedicine #DrShafiqRab #AWS #DigitalHealth #HealthIT #HealthTech #Cloud #EHR  #DigitalTransformation #HealthcareInnovation  #DigitalHealthEcosystem #PatientExperience tuftsmedicine.org Download the transcript here

Dr. Harvey Kaufman is the Senior Medical Director at Quest Diagnostics and Director of the Quest Diagnostics Health Trends Research, and he raises the alarm about the impact of delayed diagnostic testing for cancer due to the disruption of the COVID restrictions. While progress has been made on more effective treatments, early-stage cancer diagnoses significantly contributed to the 32% decline in cancer deaths between 1991 to 2019. The delay in cancer screening can turn one public health crisis caused by the pandemic into another crisis, with more advanced-stage cancers requiring more aggressive therapy and having worse outcomes. Quest Diagnostics is the leading provider of diagnostic testing services and information in the United States and a leader in cancer diagnoses and testing. Harvey explains, "We looked at people who had missed testing for diabetes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis, and a host of other conditions, including cancer. And we showed that in the early months of the pandemic, particularly March, April, and May of 2020 when a lot of healthcare was shut down other than for caring for COVID-19-affected individuals. During that early period, it was hard to get care because everyone was in essence, shut down. And sure enough, there were dramatic declines in people who were diagnosed with a host of conditions, including cancer." "Now, there was a study done in Japan, clearly different patients, clearly different approach. And they found virtually the same thing that in the early part of 2020, there was a 30% decline in newly identified patients with cancer. And that in early 2021, there was a 17% decline, matching our data, confirming that different approaches and different countries had the same impact from the pandemic." #QuestDiagnostics #CancerDiagnostics #CancerScreening #COVID #Pandemic #CancerDeaths questdiagnostics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Charlotte Jones-Burton is the Senior Vice President of Product Development and Strategy at Chinook Therapeutics, which is on a mission to change the course of kidney care by discovering and developing precision therapies to maintain kidney function in people who have rare, severe chronic kidney diseases. Charlotte explains, "Our lead clinical program is atrasentan, a highly potent and selective endothelin receptor inhibitor. We believe that it's going to be a best-in-class molecule that's going to target the endothelin pathway. And the condition for which we are developing it is IgA nephropathy. Now, IgA nephropathy is an autoimmune disease that attacks the kidneys, and it affects how our blood is filtered in the small blood vessels of the kidneys that I spoke about. And what happens with IgA nephropathy is that immune complexes can deposit in the kidney and really damage those filtering units inside the kidneys. And when this happens, individuals can have symptoms such as protein spilling into their kidneys. And we know that proteinuria, as we call that, is a strong risk factor for those who will then develop end-stage kidney disease, which means that they may need dialysis or a kidney transplantation to survive." "Now, we know that there are few treatments that are available, and that's why it's really important for patients to also ask the question if there are any clinical trials. And we at Chinook Therapeutics are enrolling patients into clinical trials who have IgA nephropathy. We also are enrolling patients into our AFFINITY clinical trial if they have FSGS, which is also a type of kidney disease, Alport syndrome, or diabetic kidney disease." #ChinookTherapeutics #KidneyDisease #ChronicKidneyDisease #Atrasentan #BIO1301 #PrecisionMedicine #Nephrology #ClinicalTrials #IGAN #RareDisease chinooktx.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Sonia Chopra, endodontist and Founder of Ballantyne Endodontics is an expert on alleviating tooth pain. Sonia points out the advantages of using the Sonendo GentleWave procedure to change outcomes and expectations of root canal pain. Not only is this procedure more effective and faster, but it also requires just one dental appointment instead of multiple visits, freeing up resources to handle more patients and respond more quickly to emergencies. Sonia elaborates, "It's really important to understand our world of endo because we deal with tooth pain. And I would say about 80%, a good majority of patients seek us, dentists, out when they have pain, so having that deep understanding of tooth pain is really important. Plus, we are the specialty that saves teeth, and in my opinion, just based on my own experience and being born without eight teeth, saving teeth has really become a very important topic for me." "I started my practice back in 2008 before GentleWave came onto the scene. I implemented GentleWave back in 2018, and so I've been working with this technology for about four years. And what I can honestly say is that it has allowed me to provide my patients with an elevated experience, elevated cleansing of the tooth, and just an overall better experience altogether." "I also noticed a decrease in the amount of pain my patients were having aftercare. I wasn't having patients call my practice so often afterward. I would call them on the post-op call, and they would be fine, and then that was the end of the story. I didn't have patients calling me after the fact saying, "Hey, I'm still pretty sore. I think I need an antibiotic." Those conversations started to dwindle drastically, and I think that's a huge benefit of the technology." #Endodontics #Endodontist #RootCanalTherapy #RootCanal #Sonendo #GentleWave #GentleWaveProcedure BallantyneEndo.com Download the transcript here

Keri Yale Head of Patient Centricity and Engagement at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, brings deep understanding of the need for pharmaceutical companies to be patient-centric in their culture and focus, including all the employees who do not deal directly with patients. Patient engagement is defined as engaging and listening to patients while integrating their input into the design of clinical trials and the development of products and resources for patients and doctors.    Keri elaborates, "I was just thinking recently about how much the work that I've done over the past two decades has come full circle to the work that I just mentioned that I do today. I started at BI in sales. I was working in Los Angeles, and it was the height of the AIDS epidemic. I was calling on AIDS service organizations because we had HIV/AIDS medications, and I was meeting a number of people who were truly inspirational. One of those people who inspired me the most was the director at the time of an organization called Being Alive. And he was the first of many advocates that taught me how much I didn't know." "We knew there were pockets of excellence, and we knew there were a number of people working in this way, but we wanted to make it across all employees, even those working in IT or HR or finance. We set up an approach where each leader is responsible for having a patient-centricity plan. These plans identify objectives and activities, and they should look very different because we want them to be authentic to the nature of their work. I think it also shows that our leadership recognizes that being patient-focused is everyone's job." @boehringerus #BoehringerIngelheim #PatientEngagement #PatientCentricity #PatientInput #PatientAmbassador #PatientPartner boehringer-ingelheim.com Download the transcript here

Gregg Church is the President of 4medica, a 24-year-old company that is in the business of aggregating datasets to create an accurate longitudinal view of a patient's health record. The number of different legacy systems that were not initially designed for interoperability is only part of the problem. In the current environment, there is an average 20% duplication rate creating confusion for care providers and payers and potentially causing harm to the patient. Gregg elaborates, "It's going to depend on the organization and how much effort they place into it. But when we look at data coming in from different disparate systems and silos, believe it or not, most of what we see is still double-digit, meaning it's above the 10% duplication rate. We've seen use cases that get up closer to 25%, 30%, especially in the commercial lab and laboratory arena because they deal with so many different outside systems. You've got practices on their own EMRs. You've got other laboratories that may use that lab for reference testing." "Imagine coming into the ER, and maybe you're unconscious because you've been in a car accident. You're at one of the facilities that maybe has a 20% duplication rate, not because there's no effort to try to maintain, it's just the sheer volume of records that are created on a daily basis. So, in this case, one in five patients is at risk of having their records commingled on another patient's record or with another patient's record. If you're unconscious and you're not able to verify things about your identity or even things about your healthcare background and medications, you may be incorrectly treated. You may be prescribed the wrong medication." @4medica #4medica #DataIntegrity #InteroperabilityRule #AccesstoMedicalRecords #ElectronicHealthRecords #EHR #EMR 4medica.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kent Smith, the Chief Executive Officer at Sleep Dallas, raises concerns about the impact of sleep disorders and untreated sleep apnea. He emphasizes that physicians don't always ask patients about the quality of their sleep and that dentists have more time with patients to explore the underlying reasons for inadequate deep sleep. Kent explains, "I think many in healthcare aren't aware that poor sleep or ineffective sleep or lack of sleep, or unhealthy sleep, can have a severe impact on someone's health. I mean, just cutting the number of hours of sleep can increase cardiovascular disease." "So then, when you start talking about unhealthy sleep, yes it can lead to diabetes, sudden cardiac death, high blood pressure, depression, and acid reflux. The body needs oxygen. And if the body's not getting oxygen during sleep, then all kinds of bad things can happen." "I ask every one of my patients, how many hours of sleep do you get? What time do you go to sleep, and what time do you wake up? It's amazing how many only get five or six hours. And it's just routine. And they wonder why they have the health problems they do. So at least we educate them, but I'm afraid sometimes it's too late, and they've already had their first heart attack, or they've already got type two diabetes." #SleepDallas #SleepPhysicians #SleepApnea #SleepDisorders #APAPDevice #AutoPAP #InspireSolution sleepdallas.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Tomasz George, Chief Scientific Officer of Virax Biolabs, has developed a novel test process that assesses adaptive immune responses to viruses. This information can inform decisions by patients and doctors on how to most effectively produce an immune response and boost personal protection from the next virus outbreak. An app delivers data about how an individual might respond to a virus and sends notices of specific viruses in a geographic location, along with links to diet and lifestyle suggestions. Tomasz explains, "We also distribute and sell other viral testing products that look at viruses at different stages of infection and also your immunity at different stages. We intend to provide a subscription service in the next few months that actually allows you to test for these viruses on an ongoing basis, depending on which new viruses are at the moment. And this allows you to determine whether you would expect to cope with these viruses or not if you came in contact with them." "We have a number of different avenues for selling our tests. We sell direct to consumers because it's a very informative test for people in general population groups. We also are looking to sell to governments, healthcare organizations, and pharma groups who will use our tests in different ways for population health management and management of governmental strategies. And also, for healthcare groups to identify patients who are most at risk and for pharma groups who can help to optimize the population that they study for things like drugs and vaccines by identifying patients who might respond better or worse to specific viruses." @ViraxBiolabs #ViraxBiolabs #VRAX #ViraxCare #InfectiousDiseases #HealthTech #MedTech #BioTech #RealTimePCRDetection #RTPCR #PCRTest #AntibodyTest #BiomarkerTesting #COVID19 ViraxBiolabs.com Download the transcript here

Asaf Zviran is the CEO, CSO, and Co-Founder of C2i Genomics which is both a technology company and a diagnostic company. C2i is providing a decentralized, cloud-based platform that allows global genomic labs, health centers, and pharma companies to do whole-genome sequencing on cancer patient tissue or blood. This technology uses the genomic data to determine the best options for treatment and to monitor treatment response. Asaf explains, "The way that we look at the cancer detection is in a holistic way. We're actually detecting huge amounts of features across the genome in a very, very sensitive and accurate manner. Many clinical trials have been showing that the C2i whole-genome approach is much more sensitive and accurate than any other technology that is currently in development." "Whole-genome, I think is a new category in medical genomics in general. Whole-genome allows us to very comprehensively extract everything, all of the variants, all of the genomic changes, in the patient blood. And then the challenge again is how to use this very comprehensive information to create insight, to create applications. This is exactly what C2i is doing. Basically, we are building out clinically validated software applications that can take the whole-genome data, the whole data from the apps that are working with us, and allow very sophisticated AI signal processing to detect cancer, to monitor treatment response, to predict recurrence." "And we are doing that on a global scale. I can tell you that besides our CLIA-equipped lab in the US, we are working in partnership to deliver these services to other health systems in the US. We are a clinical-approved product in Europe, and starting to do clinical testing and working extensively in Europe. We also have a very strong distribution in the Middle East and Asia. So Israel, Singapore, India, and now going into a new location in Asia." #C2iGenomics #WholeGenome  #WholeGenomeSequencing #PrecisionMedicine #Cancer #Tumors #AI #MedicalGenomics C2i-Genomics.com Download the transcript here