Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Tom Milam is the Chief Medical Officer at Iris Telehealth, which focuses on providing in-person and digital support to community mental health centers, Federally Qualified Health Centers, and rural health clinics that don't have enough access to behavioral health providers. The populations they treat are often underserved and have social determinants of health that are barriers to accessing timely care. Tom elaborates, "We're also working a lot in emergency rooms and hospitals around the country. Seeing patients there with behavioral health issues, again in organizations that don't have enough providers. And that seems to be par for the course around the country for a lot of hospitals and health systems. They need additional providers, and we're happy to provide those through telepsychiatry at Iris." "The positive thing about telepsychiatry really is that it eliminates the geographic barriers that are huge barriers for people getting care. So we can get our excellent providers into areas that have a really hard time recruiting onsite providers. So other than that, one of the things I say is that telepsychiatry is a technology. That's all that it is." @IrisHealth #IrisTelehealth #Telepsychiatry #Telepsychiatrist #Psychiatrist #BehavioralHealth #EmergencyDepartments #RuralHospitals #MedicaidPatients #MedicarePatients #SDoH iristelehealth.com Download the transcript here

Scott Gray is the President and CEO of Clincierge and is focused on streamlining clinical trial recruitment, retention, and completion and improving the results of trials to speed time to approval. Clincierge is most concerned about the challenges presented by travel needs and logistics for patients, caregivers, and family members. Scott explains, "Our mission is to lead the global clinical trial performance improvement market. So a lot of my experience has been in leadership development with my pharma customers and performance improvement. And as we created Clincierge over the last seven years, we felt that what we could do in the space, being non-medical in our approach, that we could help with the patient experience and thereby influence the overall outcome to the improvement of clinical trials." "We positioned it in the space of clinical trials and helping those who want to conduct clinical trials, especially sponsors, to better understand what patients are asking for or to better understand the challenges that patients face when they want to participate in a clinical trial. As an example, 62% of patients and 59% of the caregivers said that travel stopped them from participating in a clinical trial. And 42% of patients and 47% of caregivers said financial issues stop them from participating." "Well, with patients having a better experience, there's a lot of building of trust. Because some other reasons that patients drop out are not only the financial and travel burdens, but they may feel underappreciated. They have work pressures, losing work, losing wages from not being at work." @Clincierge #ClinicalTrials #ClinicalResearch #ClinicalTrialRecruitment #PatientExperience #RareDiseases #Pharma #Biotech Clincierge.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Thomas Young is the Founder and Chief Medical Officer of nView Health, a behavioral health technology company providing tools for physicians and researchers to help diagnose psychiatric disorders accurately and efficiently determine treatment options. In addition, the nView Health tools allow tracking and following outcomes to determine if the right drugs have been prescribed and if the cognitive behavioral therapy intervention is working. Thomas elaborates, "Mental health is a large category. I think what people have to understand is, kind of the old rule when I was teaching in medicine, is that 50% of the people that come into a doctor's office for some sort of physical ailment also have a mental health disorder. One in five Americans has depression at some point in their life, and that's a significant number of people. Anxiety is climbing in children. Eating disorders are shooting up at hockey stick rates." "What nView Health does, we believe strongly that the system requires the ability to create an initial ability for people to be screened at every level including children. Providers of all types, primary care providers, nurse practitioners, pediatricians, and others, can give a simple screening test. I can ask a few questions, and I can get some information that helps me understand this patient's behavioral health status." "Secondary to that is the ability to then arm the primary care community with the right tools to be able to make the right diagnostic decisions. Our tools don't make diagnoses. Our tools help and assist a provider in collecting the right data so that they can make an appropriate decision. Because what we know is that early diagnosis leads to early treatment, which leads to better outcomes." @nViewHealth #BehavioralHealth #MentalHealth #ValueBasedCare #DigitalWorkFlows #ActionableData #HealthyMindsStartHere nviewhealth.com Download the transcript here

Shuo Qiao is the Co-Founder and CTO of Moving Analytics, a digital health company focusing on cardiovascular health and providing alternatives to traditional cardiac services. While many devices measure blood pressure and monitor activity, using them can be time-consuming and provide inaccurate readings. Shou points to clinical evidence that home-based cardiac rehabilitation with remote sensing support is as safe and effective as in-person care. The challenge is getting providers and payers to understand how this approach can significantly benefit them as well as patients. Shuo explains, "What we are using currently is from one of our device providers. They provide a heart monitor and weighing scale that basically just does the measurements. They will automatically transfer the data through 3G network to our server. I would say there's zero set-up for the patient. They just get the device, and they just measure their blood pressure and weight. That's it. When it's done, data automatically uploads. No set-up whatsoever. Those are the things that we usually use." "On top of that, we also have a smart activity tracker that you put on the wrist. It can help you monitor your daily tasks, how much you exercise, along with your heart rate, and things like that. It's super helpful as well." @MovingAnalytics #Telehealth #DigitalHealth #VirtualCare #CardiacRehabilitation #CardiacRehab #ActivityTracker movinganalytics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Anthony Japour is the Chief Executive Officer and President at iTolerance, an early-stage privately-held regenerative medicine company. Currently, if a patient receives a pancreatic islet transplant to treat type 1 diabetes, there is a need for lifelong immune suppression. The technology that iTolerance is developing leverages the protein Fas Ligand to enable implantation without the need to be immune suppressed to suppress the body from rejecting the foreign tissue. Anthony explains, "Our treatment does allow for local immune tolerance, so around the area of the cells, organoid, or tissue. It allows it to be accepted without the body rejecting it by inducing what's called local immune tolerance. This does not affect the systemic immune system, only the local immune system. And it has not been done in humans yet. It's been tested both in rodent model rats as well as in monkeys. And in both models, we can cure type 1 diabetes." "The technology of our product came from Georgia Tech University in Atlanta, as well as the University of Louisville in Kentucky. And the researcher that was there is now at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. This is Dr. Andrés García at Georgia Tech, who is a world-renowned expert in biomaterials. He's been developing the micro gel treatment for a period of time and is a very well-respected researcher. Also, Dr. Haval Shirwan, who is an immunologist, has been working with the FasL protein for roughly 20 or 25 years." @iTolerance_Inc #RegenerativeMedicine #Transplants #PancreaticIsletTransplant #Diabetes #Type1Diabetes  #ImmuneSuppressiveDrugs #ImmuneTolerance #Apoptosis #FasL #FasLigand iTolerance.com Download the transcript here

Spiro Rombotis is the CEO of Cyclacel, which is identifying biomarkers relevant to their drug fadraciclib's mechanism to increase the chance for success in trials for a wide range of cancers. Cyclacel has seen activity of fadra as a single agent in phase one patients with women's cancers like endometrial, ovarian, and breast cancers, and lymphomas, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer. Spiro explains, "Before the pandemic, we had an intravenous version of fadra administered to patients in a single center study at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. And although the drug was active in these patients, it is clear during the pandemic and now, at hopefully the tail end of the pandemic, that oral therapies have dramatic advantages. Not only because patients don't have to be exposed to the virus, which is not a very good idea for a cancer patient who is more vulnerable than the general population, but also because of the ability and convenience of receiving a drug orally and staying at home." "We take patients regardless of tumor type, the anatomy, or where the tumor started but based on biomarkers. Biomarkers are biological parameters that we test with patients' blood or tissue before they go on the study based on the drug’s mechanism. If they have a high level of these markers, they can enroll in the basket cohort, which allows us to have a shot at the goal by identifying patients who might have a higher chance of response than the population at large." @CyclacelPharma #Cyclacel $CYCC #Onco #Oncology #Cancer #CancerResistance #CancerDrug #SolidTumor #Tumor #Fadraciclib #Fadra #CYC140 #CellCycle #Mitosis #Apoptosis cyclacel.com Download the transcript here

Jim Pursley is the President of Hinge Health, the leading digital health musculoskeletal (MSK) clinic that aims to reduce joint and surgical pain by deploying wearable sensors and computer-vision technology and clinical care teams. Hinge is addressing chronic and acute MSK pain with a mission to reduce the use of opioids and bring lasting relief to patients. Jim explains, "We have the goal of alleviating pain for millions of people, not just here in the United States but around the globe. Musculoskeletal challenges, whether they be acute or chronic, account for a significant amount of the cost in today's healthcare system and also have a significant detrimental effect on the quality of life." "As a result, what they do is they turn to other things like opioids, and surgery, which again has both a detrimental impact on their quality of life and also is a big cost driver in the country today. And so our job is to reduce the friction in this system. Whether it's the access challenge, whether it's the cost challenge or the educational challenge, our goal is to reduce that friction and make it as easy as possible to get the care you need and the outcomes you're looking for." "So one of our missions is to really have an alternative to both opioid use and eventually elective surgery. Recognizing that sometimes surgery isn't the appropriate intervention, there's a lot of unnecessary surgery today. So we've developed Hinge with the idea that if we can deliver, again, that virtual physical therapy delivered by a physical therapist supported by a health coach and a comprehensive care team that includes orthopedic surgeons, nurse practitioners, and registered dieticians." @HingeHealth #MSK #Musculoskeletal #DigitalHealth #PT #PhysicalTherapy #HealthandWellness #ChronicPain Clinical Data: hingehealth.com/outcomes/ State of MSK: hingehealth.com/state-of-msk-report-2022-pdf/ Hingehealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Jessica Grossman is the CEO of an early stage biotech, IgGenix, the world leader in discovering and characterizing IgE antibodies which have been identified as the cause of allergies.  With an initial focus on peanut allergy, IgGenix is developing a plan to use a subcutaneous injection to block specific allergic reactions immediately. Jessica explains, "At IgGenix, what we do is start with whole blood donations from allergic donors. And we take that blood and isolate out the single B cells that are making the IgE antibodies. We get those IgE antibodies, and we transform them into an IgG antibody that's actually protective. And I'll use again, peanut as an example. That's our lead program, which we're the furthest ahead. We have done some pre-clinical work, some animal studies, which look remarkably promising, and I'm excited about it. But what we envision our therapy looking like is an antibody therapeutic that would be given to an individual, and the antibody would immediately protect them from any accidental exposure." "So we isolate these very rare B cells that produce IgE antibodies, and they're about 0.05% of the circulating blood cells. Because the IgE antibodies are so rare, they're also extremely potent, meaning they have a very high affinity. And when you are allergic, they seek out the food that you're allergic to and cause this immediate reaction. What we're doing is taking those very potent IgE antibodies, converting them to IgG antibodies to act as blockers." #IgGenix #FoodAllergyResearch #AllergicDisease #BCells #AntibodyTherapeutics #AirborneAllergies #EnvironmentalAllergies #SustainableInnovation #WomenInSTEM #Biotech IgGenix.com Download the transcript here

Bret Scholtes is the President and CEO of Guardion Health Sciences and is in the business of bringing medical foods and dietary supplements to the market. Formulating products with ingredients with solid science behind them, Guardion is also focused on creating good-tasting products that people want to continue to use for good health. Bret explains, "So, for example, we have an omega-3 gel bite that we'd recently formulated and started selling. There are a tremendous number of studies that are done on omega-3s. We put it in a format that's a little bit different than a soft gel. We'll be doing clinical work to basically prove the efficacy of not only omega-3 but also, what it looks like in that gel bite format, and how that would compare to other options that a consumer would have." "We think that there's the opportunity to look at the role that calcium plays in order for a person to benefit, from a bone perspective. We think that omega-3s are an excellent opportunity for someone to get essential nutrients that their body doesn't produce, which are proven for cognitive health and bone health. So for us, it's about living a more vibrant and active life, which is why we sell our products. And for us, it's about allowing the body to get the nutrients that it needs in sufficient form to continue to live that life as long as possible." @GuardionHealth #MedicalFood #ClinicalNutrition #Omega3 #Nutrition  guardionhealth.com Download the transcript here

Robbie Hughes is the Founder and CEO of Lumeon, which is deploying its care orchestration platform to personalize the treatment plan and follow-up for patients while guiding care providers to make the right decision at the right time. Robbie elaborates, "We decided that there was a need for a solution that would proactively coordinate care algorithmically and do so at a very low cost. Thus, you could use that system to coordinate care everywhere. What we see now from our providers and our partners is that they use it to coordinate everything from elective surgery to discharge planning to hospital-at-home and everything in between." "I need to do all of this in real-time. What we are doing is we're combining all of these things together into a single solution, and it really allows us to do something transformative in terms of the personalized scaling of care. It's tasking the care team specifically with activities, and it's automating those, and that's engaging the patient and making them an equal participant in that care. What's critical is that this isn't just patient engagement. We're not just sending notifications out to patients saying, do this or that. It's actually using the patient engagement loop as a way of understanding what's working and what's not and then guiding the care team appropriately." @Lumeon_ #CareOrchestration #CareAutomation #QualityImprovement #DigitalTransformation #Burnout #Productivity #ClosingCareGaps lumeon.com Download the transcript here