Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Noura Abul-Husn is the VP of Genomic Health, and Amy Sturm the Director of Population Health Genomics at 23andMe. With over 13 million customers, 23andMe has built a database that can provide customized and personalized genetic information to individuals that can indicate health predispositions. This kind of information can lead to strategies to reduce the risk of diseases, manage diseases more appropriately, and even prevent diseases. Noura explains, "Well, 23andMe has been delivering results that could lead to critical healthcare decisions, as you said, for a long time now. And the way people are using that today is typically to bring that information to their trusted healthcare provider to find out what next steps they ought to take based on that information. It could be information that indicates they're at a higher risk for cancer, for example, or for high cholesterol. I think in most cases, we do deliver, from the 23andMe side, information about what that result means for the person, for their health, for their potential risks. And then, they can take action based on that and based on shared decision-making, hopefully, with their healthcare providers." Amy elaborates, "All doctors want to do the best thing for their patients, but they are honestly limited in many ways. Time, potential lack of reimbursement for having a genetic counseling type conversation, lack of education, and ongoing education to make sure that they are remaining cutting-edge in any genetics or genetics expertise. That's why we're really excited about the acquisition of Lemonade Health to build out genomic healthcare more broadly under 23andMe. As Noura said, 23andMe has been giving back really important health-related genomic risk results for years that really do need to be taken seriously to prevent diseases like heart disease and cancer." #23andMe #DNATest #GeneticTesting #WelcomeToYou #PrecisionMedicine 23andMe.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Jamie Colbert is the Senior Vice President of Care Delivery at Memora Health, a technology company automating manual tasks and administrative functions that take up so much time for healthcare providers. It is creating an environment that promotes interoperability with existing electronic medical record systems and other sources of patient data to improve patient care and provide guidance for patients to self-manage their complex conditions. Jamie explains, "In terms of the support that patients are receiving, Memora is really helping to provide a lot of additional support that you just couldn't get from having to rely on manual phone calls from your provider's office because providers just don't have the time. The providers are overwhelmed, and they're trying to get through their day and just see the patients that are in front of them in the office. But with Memora, you can automate a lot of those check-ins and support such that you, as a provider team, know that your patients are still well cared for and supported. You don't have to worry about carving out the time during your day to make those phone calls and check in and see how those patients are doing." "And only those patient questions and symptoms that are concerning would be the ones that would actually go directly to the provider and still require the provider to then message the patient themselves. What we've seen is that it's generally, anywhere from 50% to two-thirds of the patient messages and questions that are coming in today can be safely handled through Memora's AI. And that's a significant burden that's being lifted from providers. When they get home at the end of the day, they're not spending nearly as much time going through all of those messages because Memora was able to answer many of those messages for them." @MemoraHealth @jcolbertMD #MemoraHealth #CareDelivery #DigitalHealth memorahealth.com Download the transcript here

Christian Lillis is the Executive Director of the Peggy Lillis Foundation -PLF - is on a mission to raise awareness about the highly contagious disease Clostridium difficile and to get C. diff recognized as a nationally notifiable disease. The Foundation is also providing a nutrition and lifestyle guide to give patients the ability to know what to eat to prevent recurrence and help prevent C. diff and other infections. Chris explains, "We've had some polls done that show about a third of Americans have heard of C. diff. They've heard the term. That doesn't necessarily mean that they understand it. Just because we hear a lot of things doesn't mean we have great knowledge about them. So, I'll address just a little bit about the disease itself, so people have a sense of it. C. diff is the most common cause of infectious diarrhea in healthcare settings. There are about half a million infections every year, and at this point, there are about 25 to 30,000 deaths each year. And something that I find remarkable is that in 2011, C. diff was considered the 17th leading cause of death for people 65 years and older. So, it has a huge impact, causing a lot of harm, a lot of death." "The guide contains a wealth of information about foods that you can probably tolerate during an acute infection, as well as the foods that promote a healthy gut microbiome. That includes a lot of probiotic-rich foods, fiber-rich foods, and prebiotic-rich foods. And then something that we're particularly excited about is that the guide contains 30 recipes that are grouped into what is most likely to be tolerated and what foods will help restore the microbiome. And all of those recipes were developed or adapted by people who have battled C. diff based on what they found most helpful." #PeggyFoundation #Cdiff #ClostridiumDifficile #Microbiome #PatientAdvocacy #CdiffAwarenessMonth peggyfoundation.org Download the transcript here

Jim Pursley is the President of Hinge Health, which offers a digital musculoskeletal solution to help individuals alleviate pain, avoid surgery, and reduce the need for opioids for acute and chronic pain. Hinge is also shining a light on those struggling with neurological and mental health challenges and how those conditions are exacerbating chronic pain and driving abuse of opioids. Jim elaborates, "We have developed a solution that offers virtual physical therapy. It's the elegant integration of hardware, software, and clinical services delivered by exceptional clinicians, physical therapists, health coaches, orthopedic surgeons, dieticians, registered nurses, et cetera. We use sensor technology and advanced computer vision, as well as the Hinge Health software, to deliver physical therapy remotely and virtually in the convenience of somebody's home or wherever they find most convenient." "Low-income populations, for example, are 40% more likely to use opioids for MSK pain relief than high-income groups. At the same time, 25% of people earning less than $30,000 a year rely on opioids for pain or relief, compared to just 17% of people making over $90,000 a year. So, it gives you some sense if you're living in rural America, if you're in a lower income bracket, people of color, just lack of accessibility to clinically validated alternatives, lead people to opioids. So first and foremost, we have to address the accessibility issue and close that accessibility gap for those at-risk populations." @HingeHealth #MSK #Musculoskeletal #DigitalHealth #AcutePain #ChronicPain #PainRelief #OpioidCrisis #NationalRuralHealthDay hingehealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Arthur Suckow is the Co-Founder and CEO of DTx Pharma, in search of an approach to administering sRNA therapeutics using a solution of fatty acids, which every cell in the body has a mechanism to take up. Leveraging those mechanisms, receptors, and transporters, the DTx concept is to trick the cells into bringing the sRNA molecules in so they can repress the expression of disease-causing genes. Arthur explains, "Well, the one that everyone is familiar with now because it's on the front page of the news almost every day are mRNA modalities where you put a gene essentially back into cells. The poster child for that is putting the spike protein in to generate a vaccine response. But that's not what we do. We actually inhibit the expression of disease-causing genes. When you have an extra copy or a mutant protein that mucks up cellular function, we try to inhibit the expression of those genes. And those are called sRNA or antisense therapeutics. We specifically focus on the flavor called siRNA as our kind of modality of choice." "The bigger challenge and the challenge that DTx is trying to take on is to enable this class of therapeutics beyond the liver to other tissues. We focus on the peripheral nervous system, muscle, brain, etc. Where they're most effective from a disease perspective is if you have expression of a gene or the expression of a mutation. We usually think dominant gain of function is kind of our bread and butter. So those kinds of lesions are where these are particularly effective." @DTxPharma #RNATherapeutics #mRNA #siRNA #sRNA #FattyAcidMolecules #DominantGainofFunction #RareDisease #CharcotMarieTooth #SanDiego dtxpharma.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Carl Cameron is the Chief Medical Officer at MVP Health Care, a health services company in the northeast, developing innovative solutions for Medicare enrollees to help them get the care they need by thinking of patients as consumers.  Using Care Guides, MVP is solving problems and clarifying benefits for consumers to keep them healthy and out of the hospital. Carl explains, "One thing we did in trying to understand the customers, the potential customers of the health plan, is we tried to put our biases behind us. We then tried to think in advance about what the customers' needs were. We went out, and we did a large survey of over 1,000 potential customers to really try to understand, for a health plan that they were going to join, or potentially going to join, what are the most important things that they would consider, and what were their fears about changing health plans." "Through our Care Guide, we proactively call each customer and connect with each customer ahead of time to encourage them right from the outstart. Before you even join the plan, you have these great benefits that are available to you. We want you to have them, and we want to help you get them." "It's reinforced by many of the doctors that we've worked with in Vermont through UVMHN that support the plan and are working with us to have this wonderful experience for the customers." @MVPHealthCare #CareManagement #Medicare #MedicareAdvantage #SeniorHealth #COVIDBooster mvphealthcare.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. Ray Lee is the CEO of Teclison, focused on overcoming the limitations of existing immunotherapy for treating liver cancer in part caused by the fact that the liver is a highly immunotolerant organ. The key is to make the tumor a low-oxygen environment and delivering a drug that only works on the tumor. Ray elaborates, "First, let me explain what the TATE represents. It stands for the Trans-arterial TEC-001 Embolization. TEC-001 is the pipeline compound we've been trying to develop. This compound is a so-called prodrug. In other words, by itself, it has a low activity. But once in the low-oxygen environment, the drug is going to be activated. What we're trying to develop is to create a very innovative way to convert the tumor into an environment with low oxygen. And this low-oxygen environment is exclusive within the tumor but not in the normal liver nor in the systemic organs." "So once they have this catheter in place, they will inject our drugs, the TEC-001, directly through the catheter into the tumor and then follow by the embolization. And what I mean by embolization is injecting a special kind of material, like a block in the tumor vessel, and cutting off the blood flow. So that means the tumor is no longer able to receive any blood, so they are not getting enough nutrients or oxygen, which makes the tumor be in a very low-oxygen environment. And that is how our drug is going to be almost immediately activated within the tumor after the embolization procedure, and that's how it works." #Teclison #LiverCancer #Cancer #SolidTumors #Immunotherapy #CancerImmunotherapy #LiverMetastasis #LungCancer #ColorectalCancer Teclison.com Download the transcript here

Clark Lagemann is the CEO of Avidon Health, developing technologies for healthcare providers and payers in order to deliver personalized health improvement plans for employees.  Health coaches deploy digital tools to address the challenges of substance abuse and stress in order to find the root causes of problems and find paths to behavior change. Clark explains, "Well, the first thing is you need to create a culture in which your employees feel comfortable sharing and speaking about the challenges they're facing. Absenteeism, everyone knows when Billy's not at work, but presenteeism is much more difficult to identify. There are so many employees right now that are back at the office that aren't able to effectively deliver objectives and outcomes for the organization." "Everything connects into the overall person. If you look at some of the data, the chronic healthcare conditions that we see today, it's a problem. But if you look at the root cause, it's stress. It's bad sleep, poor nutrition, and lack of physical activity. Those typical root causes are at the origin of all chronic healthcare costs and diseases. So we're talking about $3.8 trillion worth of annual healthcare costs that are contributed by these factors. Obviously, we need something different, unique and special to engage those employees to treat those types of conditions and those root causes." "Wellness coaching, I consider the tip of the spear in the healthcare spectrum. There is a shortage of primary care providers, and there is a lack of available appointments currently. People don't want to go into an office. There are all these different challenges. The idea of health coaches and wellness coaches, it's about creating behavior change and being that first step that enables people to be engaged and to understand the risks and factors that are contributing to their healthcare. It also creates the right behaviors that allow them to see long-term health improvements." @AvidonHealth #HealthCoaches #WellnessCoaches #CognitiveBehavioralTraining #CBT #DigitalHealth #SubstanceAbuse #Stress avidonhealth.com Download the transcript here

Amir Jafri is the CEO and Founder of Immunicom, targeting the molecules and proteins produced by cancer. Using a subtractive approach, Immunicom has developed technology intended to remove the elements that are suppressing the immune system and allowing the tumor to shield itself from the immune system. After treatment, patients in clinical trials are seeing immune cells infiltrate their solid tumor cancers. Amir explains, "What we will do is then design our own molecules that will neutralize what the molecule of cancer is producing. But instead of making our molecule into a drug, which is normally what would happen, we actually put it into this proprietary liquid cartridge that we have. It's got a liquid chemical matrix, and there's like a little cartridge, and our molecule goes in there. That cartridge attaches to what's called a plasmapheresis machine." "Now, that machine is very similar to a dialysis machine. These machines exist all over the world and they've been around for 30 years. The patient sits down, and their blood and plasma attach to the machine. They just sit in a comfortable chair, and their plasma is then taken by the machine and sent through our cartridge. And then we will pull out, in a very, very exquisite way, the molecule that the cancer is producing that is suppressing the immune system." @Immunicom #ImmuneSystem #Immunotherapy #MedicalDevice #HealthTech #MedTech #Oncology #Cancer #Tumors Immunicom.com Download the transcript here

Ming Li is the Chief Strategy Officer at Alvotech, a biosimilar-only company developing biosimilar drugs to provide lower-cost alternatives in the global marketplace. Biosimilars are analogous to generic medicines, but these drugs are complex molecules developed and produced out of living systems, requiring sophisticated manufacturing processes and often litigation. The bulk of success in biologics has been in oncology, immunology, gastrointestinal diseases, asthma, and osteoporosis. Ming explains, "Biosimilars are somewhat analogous to generic medicines in that they are slightly less expensive to develop than it would be to develop a new molecule. They can be offered at a lower price to patients and healthcare systems. So, we are focusing on developing these more affordable biosimilars. We really think that there's an opportunity here because as biologics have become the standard of care across many different areas, they've also become a large portion of the costs when you look at pharma more broadly." "In the US, as an example, I think it's almost 45 cents of every dollar spent on pharma is on a biologic. It's complex to develop biosimilars, and they call them similar because they're not exactly the same in the sense that these molecules are so complex you cannot create the exact same molecule. You have to control your process and develop your process and your product and your molecule within certain parameters that are accepted from regulatory agencies. We do aim to navigate those globally, navigate the regulatory environments globally and launch these products in almost every market in the world. That's our aim." #Alvotech #Biosimilars #Biologics #Immunology #Oncology #GenericDrugs #Iceland alvotech.com Download the transcript here