Empowered Patient Podcast

Keith Palmer is the Worldwide Vice President for Hip Reconstruction at DePuy Synthes, which is the orthopedic company of Johnson & Johnson. DePuy Synthes is focused on adapting their technology, techniques, and implants to provide stability, flexibility, and durability to an ever more active patient population. Keith reports, "When we think about our surgeons and our patients and keep them in mind, we have solutions that address unmet needs in patients that lead to improved outcomes. So, through our anterior advantage, our portfolio solutions, in particular, patients benefit from shorter hospital stays, quicker recovery times, and reduced use of pain medication when they're surgeon implants or comprehensive systems for hip replacement surgeries." "Our patients today are highly educated on different surgical technique offerings. They even think about what's best in terms of meeting their needs, the quicker recovery, and even going to outpatient surgery centers and ensuring that the time is reduced to help them get back to their active lifestyle quicker. But they're continuously involved in goal planning with the surgeon to be able to address some of these needs." @DePuySynthes #HipReplacement #HipReplacementSurgery jnjmedtech.com Download the transcript here

Javier Szwarcberg, CEO of Spruce Biosciences, is developing a compound to address the needs of patients with classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia, CAH, a rare disease first diagnosed at birth. Only recently have companies started to explore innovative therapies to improve the standard of care discovered in the early 1960s. Currently, patients manage their conditions with glucocorticoids but often suffer from steroid-related complications. Javier explains, "What we're trying to do with our drug is to treat the disease. The compound is a small molecule that binds to a receptor in the pituitary and blocks the release of a hormone called ACTH or adrenal corticotropin hormone. By blocking that hormone, you reduce the amount, the stimulation on the adrenals, and the buildup of precursors that are going to lead to a hyperandrogenic state. So our drug treats the disease. Patients, of course, will still need to get steroids daily to supplement the missing cortisol. But the CAH piece of the disease will be well managed. That's the hope." "The whole pharmaceutical industry and academic community are starting to pay more attention to rare diseases. And back when I started my career in industry, it was all about addressing the totality of a population with, say, hypertension or diabetes or cancer, for that matter. Now there's a realization that companies ought to be more thoughtful, and research ought to be more thoughtful and address the needs of a subset of patients with rare diseases with more kinds of patient-targeted therapies." @Spruce_Bio #RareDisease #CAH #CongenitalAdrenalHyperplasia #Glucocorticoids SpruceBiosciences.com Download the transcript here

Richard Hague is the CEO and President of PolarityTE, creating a paste-like substance containing multicellular skin segments that can be spread on the patient's wound bed and engrafts into the wound. This stimulates healing from the inside out with wounds created by diabetic foot ulcer and venous leg ulcer. Richard elaborates, "We're very excited about our SkinTE platform. It's a very unique and novel approach for treating wounds. The goal here is to use the patient's own cells so that there's no risk of rejection of any kind, no introduction of anything foreign to the body." "The first thing that happens is a physician takes a very small, full thickness harvest from the patient's body, usually somewhere in the proximal calf area. So this is healthy tissue. It's a small harvest that's easily stitched up and closed. And that tissue is sent back to our facility in Salt Lake City. We have a proprietary process for processing that skin that allows us to utilize all aspects of that harvest. So we're using all layers of the cells and all the extracellular material that's in that full thickness skin." @PolarityTE #PolarityTE #SkinTE #DiabeticFootUlcers #Diabetes #PressureUlcers PolarityTE.com Download the transcript here

Greg Sturmer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Elysium Therapeutics and rethinking how to overcome the challenges of opioid abuse and addiction by reformulating the drug itself. Blending an understanding of chemistry and human behavior, Elysium questions why it takes 70 years for an opioid to lose half its potency and what would discourage patients from taking more opioids than their prescribed treatment plan. Greg explains, "When you look at Elysium's mission, just to step back briefly, it's all about relieving suffering from acute pain, from opioid use disorder, and from an opioid overdose. And our objective is to save thousands of lives each year and reduce the next generation of opioid use disorder sufferers while still providing patients with highly effective, proven pain relief." "O2P, again, which stands for Oral Overdose Protection, is expected to be the first-in-class immediate-release opioid that eliminates that incentive to take more. And it protects against fatal overdose, not only orally but also via injection and inhalation. So, it's a way that Tom has done using chemistry, has created a way to limit, self-limit, the amount of opioid that actually becomes activated. So regardless of how many you swallow, we're limiting the amount of opioid that will actually be active. And that'll protect, one, from incentivizing an individual to take more and, two, preventing an overdose." #Elysium #ElysiumRX #OpioidAbuse #OpioidOverdose #Opioids elysiumrx.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Alice Martin is the Co-Founder of Dermanostic, the largest teledermatology resource in Europe. Their vision is to give access to a dermatologist to everyone worldwide with a rapid diagnosis and suggested therapy, including prescriptions. While many skin conditions are not life-threatening and are often seen as unimportant by physicians, they impact the quality of life and are treatable. Alice explains, "We have a lot of patients with skin cancer, white and also black skin cancer melanoma, for example, and it's so easy to just make the pictures because we can see the criteria for malignancy. The patients don't want to go to the appointment because they don't have any symptoms. It's just skin, the area that is growing, and by having such easy access, they are sending the pictures. They are getting the diagnosis before it's starting to make any metastases." "So the application is available, for example, on the Apple Play Store or Google Play Store, and you can download it in your language. It's also available in English and after you are downloaded that application, you can just take three pictures of the area, for example, something on your skin or your hair and also on your nail. Afterward, you're getting a very small questionnaire, like since when do you have this problem? Does it hurt? And do you have any allergies or something like that? And then you are making the registration process, and afterward, you are making the payment process." "And normally it takes two to four hours and that time you can just enjoy your free time and our physicians are getting the pictures and the questionnaire, and on this basis, they are making the diagnosis, and the treatment and they are sending back a doctor's letter in PDF. Also, the prescription and the patient can get the prescription by just clicking on the button. So in Europe, it's working all over all European countries. Of course, we are also working on the other countries to get good access to the pharmacist and so on, but for the first step here in Europe it's working quite well." #Dermanostic #DermatologistApp #Teledermatology #Dermatology #Dermatologist #DigitalHealth #Germany dermanostic.com Download the transcript here

Patty Hayward is the Vice President of Industry Strategy for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk which is working with payer and provider organizations, life sciences companies, and other clients in the healthcare and life sciences areas. Its mission is to synchronize data streams so that there is a convenient way for care providers and patients to receive healthcare information and services using their channel of choice. Patty elaborates, "People are really looking for that kind of convenience, and I think that's a radical shift from where we've been in the provider space, where it's really, you hang a sign outside and people came to you. You didn't do as much of the big outreach and marketing unless you were in really congested marketplaces. Even then it was very traditional in how you went about marketing." "I think today that's really shifted. A lot of folks that we're talking to are really looking to digitize their contact centers, digitize their patient experience, and trying to look at things in a very different way to allow different kinds of conversations and communication styles." #Talkdesk #ContactCenter #DigitalHealth #Healthcare #HealthcareInnovation #HealthcareIT #PatientExperience Talkdesk.com Download the transcript here

Terry Weber is the CEO of BioTE and is on a mission to educate medical professionals about the need to address the hormone levels in patients as they age. With a personalized approach, BioTE focuses on providing hormone therapy to help patients maintain their quality of life and not just be dismissed as getting old when they report discomfort, sexual dysfunction, and loss of muscle mass. Terry explains, "At BioTE we don't just do hormone treatment. We try to optimize the individual's hormones, and that would be estrogen and testosterone, both for men and women. Testosterone's very important for women. Also, looking at the thyroid and adrenals. What we look to see is how do we balance those hormones in the individuals so that they really feel their absolute best. We take blood tests, and we have very in-depth questionnaires because everyone's reaction to hormone levels is very personal." "BioTE's history has been to focus on putting a light on testosterone for women because it's such a critical hormone. Most people assume that testosterone is just for men, and that's not true at all. What BioTE has brought to the market is a real focus on women's needs and the need for testosterone in women's bodies and how important that is in the long run for their general health. We've been disruptive in that way." #BioTE #HealthyAging #WomensHealth #HormoneTherapy #Hormones #HormonalInbalance #Testosterone #Estrogen BioTE.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Diem Nguyen is the CEO of Xalud Therapeutics, a DNA delivery gene therapy company striving to develop and deliver medicines for large, broad-based disease indications like chronic inflammatory diseases, particularly musculoskeletal diseases like osteoarthritis of the knee and as well as neurodegenerative diseases like MS and ALS. Earlier in her career, Diem was the global President of Pfizer, covering multiple therapeutic areas, and has joined Xalud because of their ground-breaking DNA delivery platform. Diem explains, "Gene therapy means a lot of things to a lot of people. And the first, I would say, is most people, when they think about gene therapies, think about viral AAV gene therapy. And a lot of promise is associated with that type of platform because you're seeing this potential, particularly in rare diseases. The challenges associated with AAV sometimes are the safety profile associated with that product. Our particular gene therapy is DNA gene therapy, so we do not have the challenges with genome integration, which allows us to have a potentially stronger safety profile." "I want to be very clear when I say disease modification because it can mean many things from a definition perspective to different audiences. What I want to say specifically about our product, XT-150, is we're not looking to treat pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee by just blocking the pain or masking the pain. What we're trying to do is help your body restore homeostasis." "What we're saying is we're supplementing your body with interleukin-10, which then allows you to have your body naturally reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines, which then reduces the inflammation." #XaludTherapeutics #GeneTherapy #InflammatoryDiseases #Cytokines #Inflammation #Osteoarthritis #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #ALS #MS XaludThera.com Download the transcript here

Sabrina Johnson is the Founder, President, and CEO of Daré Bioscience. Sabrina points out that there are several unmet needs in women's health and that many of the indications or conditions that women are dealing with are not life-threatening but affect their quality of life. Applying technologies created by smaller companies and academic institutions, Daré aims to become a pipeline for companies that have a global commitment to improving women's health. Sabrina explains, "Our business model is to really be that innovation accelerator that starts with finding and identifying that persistent unmet need. And that's where we start. What is that condition that is not adequately addressed today for her? Developing a target product profile, what would the product look like that might be best suited to address that condition for her? We then go out and look for a technology that has a proof of concept that it should address that and hit that target product profile. We bring that into Daré into our portfolio. We advance it through development, and then ultimately, we seek to bring that product to market in whatever way makes the most sense for that product. And sometimes that's going to be by being that pipeline resource to companies like Bayer and Organon. And I mentioned both of those because we have a collaboration with each of them now." @DareBioscience #WomensHealth #GenderInequality #Healthcare #ReproductiveHealth #SexualHealth #Biotech #DrugDevelopment darebioscience.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kimberly Kilby is the Vice-President and Medical Director of Health and Wellbeing at MVP Health Care. Trained as a family and preventive physician, Kimberly is focused on the patient journey and expanding the options for virtual care. MVP collaborates with virtual care providers and other digital health solutions, supporting virtual primary care, urgent care, chronic care management, and specialty care. Kimberly explains, "We want to be sure that patients are finding options for virtual care that are actually high-quality medicine but also thoughtfully integrated into the rest of their care continuum. That's part of the professional reason why a physician is dedicated to that key customer experience as you expand options in the virtual care space." "A lot of the data is showing that patient and consumer preferences within healthcare have obviously changed dramatically, and patients are looking for more convenience and availability. And I'm really charged with determining which of the innovative options people are migrating to are actually high value and improve care and don't really add waste to the system." @MVPHealthCare #DigitalHealth #Telemedicine #VirtualPrimaryCare #VirtualUrgentCare MVPHealthCare.com Download the transcript here