Empowered Patient Podcast

Phillip Bogdanovich is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cipher Skin, developing wearable biometric monitoring technology for a wide range of applications. Their BioSleeve is providing data without the wires generally required to collect bio-signals. Development is underway for using this next-to-skin device to be embedded into clothing to capture a variety of biometrics. Phillip explains, "Cipher Skin is a hardware-enabled SaaS tool. We're focused on providing really good patient outcomes and strengthening the patient/provider bond in the interest of providing best-in-class care. The hardware piece to this is important because, as a hardware-enabled SaaS company, it means that we have significantly better control of the biometric collection device and so better control over the data that's produced." "The BioSleeve is a clothing-based tool, right now, to your point, in its current form and factor. It is a sleeve for the upper and lower extremity. We're working on devices for the rest of the body. It's a next-to-skin device. The intention is that we are directly embedding sensors into textiles in the form of clothing to capture a variety of biometrics. We're looking to generate the most accurate and precise tool on the planet for collecting motion data and then being able to transmit that in real-time anywhere in the world." @CipherSkin #Rehabtherapy #PhysicalTherapy #Wearables #RTM #PatientEngagement #HybridHealthcare #Biometrics Cipherskin.com Download the transcript here  

Mark Manfredi is the CEO and President of Ikena Oncology, which is exploring the Hippo Pathway and how it relates to the RAS Pathway and RAS Network in order to inhibit genes that are associated with cancer initiation, progression, and cancer cell survival. Ikena is learning a great deal about drugging these pathways for therapeutic intervention and therapeutic resistance for NF2 mutant cancers. Mark elaborates, "We're working on two interconnected pathways. One is called the Hippo Pathway, and the other is called the RAS Pathway. Together we call it the Hippo and RAS Onco Signaling Network because there's a connectivity between these two pathways. We built a deep institutional knowledge as well as tools to enable us to get the right drug to the right patient." "We follow the science from all angles, including the biologic, so a deep understanding of the mechanism and how it relates to cancer patients as well as chemical. So the best approach to targeting different nodes. This includes targeting individual targets or complexes and then translationally, importantly, understanding which patient populations could potentially benefit from our therapies." "One of the indications that we're going into is mesothelioma because of the high prevalence of mutations in NF2, and mesothelioma is an unmet medical need. Therefore, the FDA recognized the unmet need as well as the innovation around IK-930 and gave us Fast Track designation as well as Orphan Drug designation." #IkenaOncology #TargetedOncology #Cancer #MakeItCount #Mesothelioma IkenaOncology.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Peter Traber is the Chief Medical officer at Selecta Biosciences, which is enabling and increasing the effectiveness of gene therapy by inhibiting the body's immune response. Their drug platform ImmTOR is a nano-encapsulated immunomodulatory drug that causes the immune system to be tolerant of antigens and inhibits the immune response. This approach may overcome an important hurdle in gene therapy and biologic therapy by allowing repeated dosing. Peter explains, "Our immune response is very robust, and it's hard to get around it. So in order to make these therapies, either proteins or gene therapy, more effective and safer, we are tolerizing the individual to those therapies with this platform." "So I'll give you an example from our phase three program in chronic refractory gout. We're using an enzyme to treat refractory gout, which decreases the uric acid, but it's a yeast-derived enzyme. It's an enzyme that humans don't have, and therefore it's highly immunogenic. If you give it to a human, it's only effective with one dose. In fact, by 30 days, it's not effective anymore. In contrast, when we give it with ImmTOR, we're able to give the drug monthly for 12 months. So the ImmTOR reduces the immune effect of the drug but allows it to be active and be used over the course of an entire year." "We are collaborating with some groups on transplantation approaches. And certainly, inducing immune tolerance in that situation could be very important. And, of course, beyond that, we're also working in autoimmune diseases where the body turns against itself—so-called breaking of self-tolerance. Our program is also working on reestablishing self-tolerance in autoimmune diseases. There's a very long list of autoimmune diseases in the liver and joints and elsewhere that could be very important in this regard." @SelectaBio #MMA #GeneTherapy #ImmuneTolerance #ImmuneSystem #AutoimmuneDiseases #Transplanation selectabio.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Ryan Lee, Chairman of the Department of Radiology at the Einstein Healthcare Network, now part of Jefferson health, and Dr. Peter Seidensticker, the VP of Medical Affairs and Clinical Development at Bayer Radiology join me to talk about how Bayer's Calantic Digital Solutions is empowering radiologists. Applying AI to the workflow allows the radiologist to improve efficiency, reduce fatigue, and focus on the most important suspicious markers. Ryan explains, "You specifically asked about the role of the radiologist. I think traditionally, people think of a radiologist as somebody who looks at images and then generates a report. But these days, the American College of Radiology – ACR-- has something called imaging 3.0. What that really means is that we, as radiologists are much more than just a report. We're involved from the beginning of ordering of the study, all the way to the communication of the results. Not just the actual interpretation of the image themselves. So I think there is a much more holistic role for radiologists than maybe the general public really knows." Peter elaborates, "The Bayer angle is more to extract the important findings out of an image and make sure that the radiologist sees those in a pronounced way or in a marked way, making it easier for him to find them in an image. So it goes in a similar direction, but I think the key focus here is to mark findings that are tough to find in this jungle of workload and images that radiologists see every day." #Radiology #Radiologist #AI #BayerRadiology #BayerCalantic #MedicalImaging #MedTech #WorkflowPrioritization calantic.com Download the transcript here

Len Liptak is the Co-Founder and CEO of ProSomnus Sleep Technologies, which is providing new options for patients suffering from the chronic disease obstructive sleep apnea. This condition means that the airways are blocked while people are sleeping. The most common treatment is a CPAP device that pushes air through the blockage and down the throat to ensure the sleeper has access to oxygen. ProSomnus has designed a personalized noninvasive oral device that holds the jaw forward to create a precision jaw position and stabilization to aid in better breathing and improved sleep quality. Len explains, "It's serious but funny, but one of the most common ways it's diagnosed is what we call the elbow test. This is where someone's bed partner notices that their bed partner is having this pause in breathing at night, and they literally elbow the bed partner and say, "Hey, wake up. You're not breathing." At first, it can be cute, but then it becomes serious." "Oral devices for treating such sleep apnea have been on the market for a while. But the challenge is that those traditional oral appliances arbitrarily posture the jaw forward. They're not quite precision in their nature. The precision is really important because the function of an oral device is to protrude the jaw in a position that opens the airway and then stabilize the jaw in that position throughout the night." "It's our precision technology that allows us to do that because the airway is only 10 millimeters in diameter. So if the jaw is postured too far forward, it could be counterproductive. If the jaw is not postured far enough forward, it can be counterproductive and not generate efficacy. So it's really important to precisely position the jaw based on the treatment plan and the prescription that the provider draws up for the patient so that we get maximum efficacy." #ProSomnus #SleepApnea #ObstructiveSleepApnea #OSA #CPAP #DentalSleepMedicine #JawRepositioning #SleepMedicine ProSomnus.com Download the transcript here

Inessa Lurye is the Senior Director of Consumer Product at Hinge Health, a digital musculoskeletal clinic with accessible digital physical therapy and whole-body care. Recently, Hinge has launched a Women's Pelvic Health program to personalize treatments for pelvic floor disorder and to expand access to pelvic floor physical therapy for underserved communities. Inessa explains, "We span that entire continuum, and we offer individuals access to a personalized care team, which is in-house physical therapists and Board-certified coaches, and a digital product that includes exercise therapy and education to help free people from pain." "We have personalized the experience to women and those with vaginal anatomy. One in four women has a pelvic floor disorder, and pelvic health is musculoskeletal health, but for so long, we haven't treated it as such. And so what we've done is, knowing that our clinic is a digital clinic that serves the whole person, we have personalized the experience for pelvic floor disorders." "So instead of saying this is the way it is, this is so common, let's just make it normal. What we've done at Hinge Health is we've created a program that integrates pelvic healthcare into our digital clinic. It is a program that is created for women by women, and it allows women, those with vaginal anatomy, to enter the offering, to tell us what their needs are, and to get a customized experience for pelvic disorders in a holistic way." @HingeHealth #WomensHealth #FemTech #PelvicHealth #PelvicFloor #PelvicFloorTherapy #DigitalHealth hingehealth.com Download the transcript here

Jonathan Baktari MD is the Founder and CEO of e7 Health which specializes in seven areas of healthcare.  The common theme is that adult vaccinations can have a significant impact on reducing vaccine-preventable deaths in these areas. Leveraging digital technology, e7 is reducing friction in the healthcare system and allowing patients to draw on a repository of their vaccine records to quickly get appropriate, quality care. Jonathan explains, "A lot of times, for example, we see people who aren't sure if they had all their childhood vaccines. What we can offer people is to see if they have immunity to chicken pox varicella or if they have immunity to MMR or hepatitis B. And so, instead of just randomly getting the vaccines or not getting the vaccine, finding the people's status is helpful in making a determination of what they need. So we've offered that." "We also offer STD testing. And the reason we do is that we offer several STD vaccines. And so if we're going to offer the vaccine, we're going to offer testing around it and other services. We just thought giving the vaccine without an understanding of whether someone necessarily needed the vaccine or didn't need the vaccine would be helpful." "What we do is just remove all barriers. We write our own technology, our own software. So literally, you can, on your phone, get an appointment for that day and be seen that day. Whatever we do with you will be in your portal by the time you hit the parking lot. And that's our goal, that's what we try to do. And so, I think what we have noticed is if you reduce friction for the person, they're going to respond differently. A lot of people, say oh, I got to see my doctor, but there is a seven-week wait usually. And so I think those become barriers." @e7_health #Vaccinations #AdultVaccinations #COVID #COVIDTesting #HealthTech #PrecisionMedicine e7health.com Download the transcript here

Ram Sahasranam is the Co-Founder and President of Fold Health and building primary care delivery systems that focus on the experience of the physician and the patient. Fold has designed an operating system that works for primary care providers and their patients and folds all of the existing healthcare elements around these two individuals and their care delivery concerns. Sitting on top of existing electronic health record systems, Fold integrates legacy systems to bring real innovation to an environment originally built as a billing solution. Ram explains, "What we saw during the pandemic was the lack of primary care being at the center of care where America is concerned. If you look at how we designed our system, primary care was supposed to be the hub around which the spokes of healthcare were supposed to function." "But unfortunately, primary care was being looked at as traffic cops for specialty care. So we want to solve for that because about 80% of all care can actually be delivered at the primary care level. But the tools do not exist because the tools were built in a very different era. So, we've taken a complete full-stack approach so that where the providers and patients are concerned, the experience becomes the most critical aspect. Where automation is concerned, contextual intelligence becomes the most critical aspect to ensure that qualitative care delivery is happening across the continuum for the provider and the patient." @FoldHealth #FoldHealth #Telehealth #HealthTech #Healthcare #PrimaryCare #DPC #DirectPrimaryCare #CRM fold.health Download the transcript here

Jill Pellegrino is the VP of Recruitment and RWE at CVS Health Clinical Trial Services. Real-world evidence uses data collected in a real-world setting and can supplement data collected in the controlled setting of a clinical trial. It could be used to measure safety outcomes, the efficacy of treatments, or behaviors that impact the quality of life. Jill explains, "Most parties that are relying on real-world data are pulling it from claims or medical records. And this data is often de-identified, but it can be patchy because it needs to be pulled from multiple sources. At CVS, we have access to clinical data that's more cohesive because it spans across our different businesses and brings in data from payer, pharmacy, and provider in one set." "But we don't just rely on clinical data when we're thinking about real-world evidence. We invite our customer community to participate directly in research opportunities, which allows us to gather insights directly from the patients. That patient voice is really helpful in illuminating variables that may be impacting their healthcare decisions as well as the disease burden impact on their daily lives." @CVSHealth #RWE #RealWorldEvidence #RWD #RealWorldData #ClinicalTrial CVSHealth.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. Mukul Mehra is the Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of IllumiCare and firmly believes that cost transparency should be given to physicians so that hard clinical decisions can put the cost of treatment into perspective. By providing real-time data, IllumiCare is influencing clinician behavior to reduce waste, lower costs and improve decisions about appropriate treatments. Mukul explains, "So IllumiCare is essentially bringing in all of these constructs of different points in a patient's care journey in the inpatient setting, giving a cost definition to what that treatment is costing, and getting down to a real true cost. Then understanding that at different points in a treatment plan, that certainly there may not be proper adjudication. But if we don't start off with cost transparency, then we're not going to really get to define the cost of waste." "When you aggregate data and make it retrospect, it tends to have very little influence or impact on physician practice patterns. And in the end, IllumiCare is a behavioral change company. And we want to change behavior by reducing costs, but we want to reduce costs when you can decelerate good therapy when you now only need a pretty good drug because that's good enough. And so the nuances of all of that are only going to occur when you give this information at the point-of-care, contextually, in real-time. And that's occurring over the electronic medical record for many of us in that data assimilation and review mode." "It's most directly designed to influence physician/clinician behavior. It's EMR agnostic. It grabs EMR data. It works in harmony with any electronic medical record. And it has really three ways to influence providers. One, it's point-of-care. Two, it can detect what a provider's wasteful tendencies are. Of course, the provider is the ultimate adjudicator. It detects the context of the patient and the provider's prior behaviors and what's going on with the current patient. And it can nudge, preemptively, a suggestion, sort of a digital, hey, tap on the shoulder, but it doesn't stop or interrupt the physician's workflow." #IllumiCare #healthit #ehr #emr #hospitalpayers #payers #hospitals #patientcosts #patientprotection #costtransparency #lengthofstay #stewardship #patientcare #healthcaresystems IllumiCare.com Download the transcript here