Empowered Patient Podcast

James Hammer, the Senior VP at Harmony Healthcare IT and Dr. Colin Banas, the Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst join me to discuss their recent partnership to accelerate the transition of care providers and payers to a digital environment. Faced with clinician burnout, organizations are even more pressed to find efficient methods to treat patients and reduce the need to struggle with outdated information systems and data silos. Jim explains, "The farther back or historical, the older legacy applications are, the less the data is actually what's called discreet or codified. And today's EHRs, obviously require codified data to alert triggers and have to be codified to be able to interact and be interoperable with other systems. What's exciting about this relationship between DrFirst and us is they've got years of technology and the ability to look at medications, for example. And, to take literally descriptive text and convert that into codified data, meaning translate that to an NDC code, or a drug name, as well as a CIG that's required for interoperable and usable data in the EHR." Colin elaborates, "Anytime you have the clinical team re-input data, it's tedious, but it also can introduce errors. I've been in informatics for over two decades now, and we've been talking about interoperability since the onset. I do think we've gotten a lot better, especially with solutions like Harmony's, but I still think that we have a way to go. Particularly, I would refer to semantic interoperability, which is what Jim was referring to. This is when the data not only moves from point A to B, but it arrives at endpoint B in the format that system is expecting and can be used immediately without that manual intervention that is so tedious." @DrFirst #Healthit #Interoperability #ValueBasedCare #EHR #ClinicianBurnout #PatientOutcomes drfirst.com harmonyhit.com Download the transcript here

Rajatesh Gudibande is the Co-Founder and President of GraphWear Technologies, which has taken lessons from earlier self-monitoring blood glucose device development to come up with a patient-friendly system for continuous monitoring of glucose in people with diabetes. Using a needle-free device, this smart device is attached on the wrist, on the lower abdomen, or on the side arm. Raj explains, "The principle of operation is fairly simple and also unique, in a way. Let's look at what is our source first. Skin is the largest organ in the human body, and it has access to interstitial fluid, which is the fluid just underneath the skin and a few layers off it, so underneath the stratum corneum. And so, if we are able to somehow put a device that can taste molecules by pulling them out a little bit just on the surface of the skin, then we can access whatever's there in the blood." "But that requires a device that's very sensitive. So the first key principle operation is we have a sensitive material that is electronically active. It is specific to the molecules we are targeting, and then it converts the molecular information into electric signals and then transmits via Bluetooth to your phone. Think about it, it's literally an electronic tongue tasting molecules like glucose that come out. The key is the sensor sits on the surface of the skin, so there's no breaking of the skin whatsoever. Still, then there's a peripheral device that converts, stores, computes, and has the battery in it, and that then is a housing for which the device operates together as a system." @GraphWear_Tech #GraphWearTechnologies #NotBlood #NeedleFree #Detection #Nanomaterial graphwear.co Download the transcript here

Jeff Beck is the Chief Development Officer at BioCareSD, a specialty pharmaceutical distributor. The field of specialty drugs has grown from the first drug for hemophilia in the 1980s to today, with about 50% of the drugs in the pipeline being specialty drugs. BioCareSD is an important component of the supply chain to ensure that these life-saving and life-sustaining drugs are available at the right time and in the right place. Jeff explains, "I'm actually right now at the World Orphan Drug Conference, and it's unbelievable the number of studies that are underway for diseases that maybe a hundred people have, or a thousand people. What we're seeing now is more, and more of these patients are being able to live a really great life, no longer worried about having debilitating conditions. Sometimes, it's life-saving medicine. Sometimes, life-sustaining medicines. At BioCareSD, we're an important cog in the wheel to get those products to the patients." "Specialty pharmaceuticals, it seems like the term has expanded a lot over the days. Sometimes you used to think that specialty pharmaceuticals were just infusible drugs, really high-cost drugs. There are specialty pharmaceuticals now that are pills, but they're unique. They're drugs that usually treat smaller patient populations, so I don't see them moving out of that niche or that term, so to speak." @BioCareSD #BioCareSD #BioCare #SpecialtyDistribution #MedicalSupplyChain #RareDiseases #Pharmaceuticals BioCareSD.com Download the transcript here

Marty Gauvin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fertilis, an Australian-based company creating micro medical tools to be used in cell culture such as IVF to improve outcomes. There is a vast difference in outcomes of IVF across different clinics in part because of the human intervention that is required in the cell development process. Fertilis has developed a system that controls the environment around each cell and mimics what would happen in the body. Marty explains, "The first way it makes it cheaper is simply by having one less cycle. Patients are not paying for a baby. Patients are paying for a cycle. And so if it takes one less cycle, the average at the moment is three cycles, if you could have a baby in two cycles, that's a very major saving. A saving well into the five figures that you're going to make in any marketing in the world." "It further makes it efficient because, at the moment, IVF is so expensive because it's what the economist would call supply constraints. There aren't enough embryologists and IVF clinics for the number of people that would like to become parents. And so, by making the process more automated, we can make it so that the best embryologists are not required for every single cycle. We can make it possible for an embryologist to be trained in much less time, for example. So the constraint that's on that capacity can then be removed." #Fertilis #IVF #IVFClinic #CellCulture #Embryologists #IncubatorMakers fertil.is    Download the transcript here

Jenny Ahlstrom is the Founder and CEO of the HealthTree Fouon and a multiple myeloma patient and patient advocate. The HealthTree Foundation was the winner of the GSK Target the Future Think Tank Challenge and will receive financial support and technical expertise to extend equal access and diversity in multiple myeloma research, clinical trials, services, and education. This effort includes patient navigators who are members of the Black community as well as Spanish speakers who can provide patients access to material translated into Spanish. Jenny explains, "I was diagnosed in 2010 and had some hypotheses about what I wanted in terms of my own therapy and my own types of support that I was looking for. And so, in 2012, we started the foundation, and we have been building up different patient programs for multiple myeloma over that long period of time. We've just gone to look and see what is available already in terms of support services. Then we identified different gaps that we saw as patients ourselves and tried to fill those gaps. And that's been the primary effort of our work, to fill those gaps for patients." "So, we are going to apply this funding to our equity and diversity program. And specifically on this blackmyelomahealth.org website. This website will do outreach to the African American community. Like I said, they are two or three times more likely to develop multiple myeloma. And it's really essential that they learn broadly about what multiple myeloma is." @HealthTree #HealthTreeFoundation #GSK #TargettheFuture #MultipleMyeloma #PatientAdvocate healthtree.org Download the transcript here             ************ Interview with Dr. Tania Small GSK Podcast and Transcript

Dr. Tania Small is the Vice President and Head of Global Oncology Medical Affairs and Chair, R&D Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Counsel at GSK. To improve clinical participation and outreach to a more diverse multiple myeloma community, GSK created the Target the Future Think Tank Challenge to find partners to meet unmet needs. Tania explains, "This is where this whole Target the Future program stems from. It was really understanding what the needs are in the multiple myeloma community so that we get an earlier diagnosis so that we get improved access so that we get improved outcomes. What we did at GSK is we asked those questions. Then we paused and said actually the people who are best equipped to tell us is, are the patients themselves and their caregivers. And so, our goal was to take a grassroots approach to really understanding what are the key needs in this community to have the optimal outcome." "So, we launched something called Target the Future to your point, this think tank for anyone in the community who could come up with innovative and impactful solutions to address these problems. We wanted them to let us know, and what we decided to do was fund their idea, not only fund the idea but give help to implement this idea." "Yes, and we were extremely impressed with all three of our finalists. But this one really checked all the boxes and what they pitched was a HealthTree Equity and Diversity program. When you go through it, it really shows me an optimal model because not only did they check all of the boxes, but they were creating a real, sustainable solution within the communities that they were trying to strengthen and trying to help." @GSK #TargettheFuture #MultipleMyeloma #HealthTreeFoundation gsk.com Download the transcript here    *************************** Interview with HealthTree Foundation Podcast and Transcript

Joe Landolina is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cresilon, the only fill-and-finish operation in the five boroughs of New York. Building on a discovery about the ability to stop all kinds of bleeding, Cresilon is using recycled algae, meaning algae or kelp that has washed up onto the shoreline. The vendors they work with are highly sustainable as they are not damaging kelp forests but salvaging material that has already washed up on beaches. Joe explains, "So I was very experienced in plant-based chemistries, and one day I was trying to run an experiment. The original intent of the experiment failed, but what I came across was this blend of two polysaccharides, long chains of sugar, that formed a gel that would immediately reassemble and stick to tissue, like skin or an open injury. It wouldn't let go until you wanted it to." "That's not quite what we do today, but that led to the technology that we now have commercially under the brand name VETIGEL, which is a hemostatic gel that immediately stops anything from the most traumatic of bleeding, like gunshot wounds, arterial bleeds, all the way down to small nicks and scrapes surgically, on contact, without the need to apply pressure, allowing the patient to produce their own healthy clot and heal the wound normally." @Cresilon #Cresilon #StoptheBleed #BleedingControl #Vertigel #Hemostatic #PlantBasedChemistries cresilon.com Download the transcript here

JT Garwood, the CEO and Co-Founder of bttn, identified there was not a spot on the internet where healthcare providers could go and compare the price of their most frequently purchased products. The bttn mission is to build a system that allows for transparency through an online marketplace and digital platform. With excellent customer service, the platform allows each practitioner to save time and money when procuring key supplies, getting the quality they expect. When customers or suppliers work with bttn, the company digitizes multiple parts of the supply chain. JT elaborates, "On the healthcare distribution side, I see it as bifurcated between national distributors and local distributors.  There has been great organization to this entire process for many years. Healthcare distribution has been going on pretty flawlessly for the last 80-plus years in the United States. Group Purchasing Organizations have dominated it for a very long time, and healthcare providers are getting the supplies that they need. It really comes back to this impact of lack of digital transformation. And since technology hasn't been at the forefront, the industry has suffered because of it. So, overall, lots of organization, but not a ton of focus on the technology side." "We talk a lot about these two key pillars of transparency and technology. I'll start with technology because you mentioned the fax machine. It really is still common practice in medical supply to fax in an order sheet or to need to call your sales rep to place any sort of order or track where your latest shipment is. That doesn't mean that tech isn't present; it just hasn't been the focus." @JTGarwood @bttnusa #MedicalSupplies #HealthcareSupplies #SupplyChain #MedicalSupplyChain #PricingTransparency bttnusa.com Download the transcript here

David Fontana is the Chief Business and Strategy Officer at Umoja Biopharma which is using a cocktail of their TumorTags to kill solid tumors.  This in vivo technology has the potential to streamline the gene therapy process by driving down costs, simplifying logistics, and increasing accessibility. David explains, "With in vivo, we don't deal with cells per se. We deal with cells in the body. So I'll focus on what we do. We have a very proprietary technology called VivoVec, which is a delivery system to deliver RNA through lentiviral vector particles. Our secret sauce is the ability to surface engineer these VivoVec cells to make them more specific, it's called tropism, to drive them to certain cell types. We're focusing on the T-cells, but also to transduce this RNA message, so all we're delivering is the components of an RNA message to get transformed into the target T-cells of the human. We're basically taking those T-cells and making them better killer cells by implanting these payloads, as we're calling them, which would really enable the body to create these cells in vivo and not have to deliver any cells ex vivo." "That's where we have a couple of interesting approaches at Umoja. The first one is our technology called TumorTags. These are really specific tags that hit the tumors. They bind with the tumors, they get absorbed into tumors, and then represent themselves on the surface in the small molecules, so they last there quite a long time. What our in vivo technology allows us to do is to bind to those receptors and basically form the T-cell synapse, then thus kill the tumor. The nice thing we like about our tumor tech technologies is we can use one in vivo CAR, so one called the universal CAR, and that will bind with several TumorTags." @UmojaBiopharma #CARTCells #Cancer #Tumors #InVivo #GeneTherapy #CellTherapy #Immunotherapy #Breyanzi Umoja-biopharma.com Download the transcript here

James Mackay is the Founder, President, and CEO of Aristea Therapeutics, a San Diego-based company that is applying its insights on neutrophils to develop a treatment for a rare inflammatory skin condition known as palmoplantar pustulosis, PPP. Most of the people who get this disease are postmenopausal females, and 90%+ of the patients either are current cigarette smokers or have a history of cigarette smoking.  James explains, "So neutrophils are cells that are part of the immune system. They sit in the bone marrow, and then when there's either an infection or an inflammatory response in the body, the neutrophils are attracted out of the bone marrow to the site of infection or inflammation. In inflammatory diseases, what you often see is extremely large numbers of neutrophils accumulating at the site of the inflammation, which obviously causes some challenges for the patients." "And in our particular case, we have a drug, it's called RIST4721, which is a CXCR2 antagonist which actually blocks the neutrophils moving from the bone marrow to the site of inflammation. And we believe that this is potentially a way to treat a whole range of serious inflammatory diseases." "So there's definitely a direct link to cigarette smoking. There's not much basic research been done on PPP, so the exact reason for that is not clear, but we believe, based on some of the research, that it's due to the nicotine receptor in the sweat ducts on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. And the sweat ducts on the hands and the feet are different structures from those elsewhere in the body, which is why this disease probably just affects the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet." @AristeaTx #PPP #PalmoplantarPustulosis #RareDisease #Inflammation #Neutrophils #SanDiego aristeatx.com Download the transcript here