Empowered Patient Podcast

Dave Lareau is the CEO of Medicomp Systems, which has spent 44 years working with providers to understand better the kinds of information that is most relevant to a diagnosis and therapeutic approach. With 400,000 concepts and tens of millions of relevancy links and mappings to data, Medicomp is prepared to handle the flood of information expected with the standardization of person-centered care. Just finalized in January, TEFCA, the Trusted Exchange Framework, and Common Agreement is expected to provide an infrastructure for sharing information. Dave explains, "So there's a new era starting in healthcare, which is the data belongs to the patient. It doesn't belong to the provider or the organization. And now there's a framework in place for sharing it, a trusted framework. It's right in the name, TEFCA. And I think it's going to open up new possibilities, new opportunities, new challenges. And for the first time, the patient will be able to participate in the viewing and managing of their own care. It will radically change the way that people interact with information all along the continuum of care." @MedicompSys #TEFCA #ElectronicHealthRecords #EHR #DataExchange #Interoperability Medicomp.com Download the transcript

Wei Escala is the founder and CEO of Eggschain, the first biotech on the Bitcoin blockchain. This blockchain-integrated approach brings order to the management of tracking patient and biospecimen information. Their goal is to bring the healthcare industry to Web3 through decentralization. Wei explains, "We're the first blockchain-enabled and blockchain-integrated inventory management and chain-of-custody solution for tracking all biospecimens. When I say all biospecimens, I mean sperm, eggs, embryos, genome, stem cells, tissues, organs, DNA and RNA, and more. So, essentially, we are the bridge between biology and blockchain. And our goal is to bring the healthcare industry to Web3 through decentralization." "Yes, a blockchain-integrated platform helps tackle the problem of centralized records. Let me talk about what might be some of the issues of centralized records. Centralized records can be lost or can become inaccessible in times of need. And we all have heard that centralized records can be corrupted and can also be hacked. So, a blockchain approach, through decentralization, brings an added layer of security or backup to the current system." @Eggschain #Eggschain #Blockchain #DigitalHealth #HealthRecords #Web3 Eggschain.com Download the transcript here

Bill Stilley is the CEO and President of Adial Pharmaceuticals, which is focused on developing medicinal therapies for the treatment and prevention of addiction. Their first drug is a genetically targeted drug to treat alcohol use disorder, otherwise known as alcoholism. Bill explains, "Yes, in the end, a lot of diseases are based on our genetics, and addiction seems to have some genetic components. I mean, for decades, it's been known that people that have had family members with an alcohol use problem have a much higher rate, and the numbers thrown around a lot are a nine times greater likelihood to have the problem themselves. Of course, some of that's going to be due to an environment, but it's clear that there's a genetic component." "So, we believe that we have identified some defects in the serotonin system of certain patients which will allow them to respond to treatment with our drug, which is a serotonin-3 receptor blocker. By that, I mean what it seems to indicate in clinical trials to date, is that we can reduce the craving that these patients have that's driven through their serotonin system to encourage them where they have a need to drink, rather than just a desire to drink." "In our phase 2 study, which is a 283 patient clinical trial that was run with our drug, patients that were on the drug that had the right genetics reduced the frequency of their drinking by almost 50%. When they drank, they reduced the amount they drank by almost 60%. So they picked up the bottle less often, and when they picked it up, they could put it back down. We think this is a really meaningful result for these people." @AdialPharma #Addiction #AlcoholUseDisorder #Alcoholism #AddictionTreatment #MentalHealth adialpharma.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Mark Berman is the Chief Medical Officer at Better Therapeutics, using a prescription digital therapeutic to treat diseases caused by human behavior, particularly type II diabetes. While PDT model might be expected to be effective with younger patients, clinical trial data is revealing that older patients 60+ are getting the most benefit in blood sugar reduction from this approach. Mark elaborates, "We are, at Better Therapeutics, trying to pioneer a prescription digital therapeutics platform with the intent of treating a whole host of cardiometabolic conditions, starting first with type II diabetes. Then moving on to other related cardiometabolic conditions that all share their roots in health behaviors that really drive the pandemic of disease that we're seeing in cardiometabolic health. And so, at Better Therapeutics, we're bringing about this platform to enable scalable means of treating those root causes of cardiometabolic conditions." "The notion of prescription digital therapeutic is that instead of prescribing yet another drug to help those types of patients, they're going to prescribe an FDA regulated mobile medical app, a prescription digital therapeutic, which is easy to fill, and it comes directly onto the patient's smartphone. And from there, it's the job of the digital therapeutic to really personalize the therapy for the patient. We don't believe that the providers have the time or the ability to really get very granular into the nature of the behavioral therapy. We really need to rely on the digital therapeutic to do that personalized work about what behaviors to target and how to be effective in each patient." @Better_TX #DigitalTherapeutics #DigitalHealth #PDT #PrescriptionDigitalTherapeutic #Type2Diabetes #MobileHealth BetterTX.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Tom Lendvay is the Chief Medical Officer of Tend, which addresses the gut microbiome of the severe intestinal infection Clostridium difficile CDIF. Currently, recurrent Clostridium difficile is the only FDA-regulated disease for the use of microbiome transplants outside of a clinical trial. Clinical trials are also underway applying microbiome transplants to intestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, and even other diseases outside of the gut. Tom explains, "Tend is focused on two types of offerings. One is a device called the CAP device, a collection processing device that allows a clinician or a researcher to collect a sample and process it, mix it, filter it and encapsulate it into orally ingestible capsules that can be stored in a freezer." "The other side is the data side, which is understanding. So, doing microbiome analyses on the donors, on the recipient ill patients and seeing how their microbiome changes over time and learning who's the best donor for the best recipient. Those two offerings do not exist today, and right now, the process for a clinician, for a researcher to provide microbiome transplants to their patients is extremely onerous and laborious." @Tend_Health #FMT #CDIF #Microbiome #GutMicrobiome #MedicalDevice #Healthcare #Patient tend-health.com Download the transcript here

Russ Thomas, the CEO of Availity, and Oron Afek, CEO and Co-Founder of Vim, join me in discussing the benefits of breaking down information silos of the payers and care providers and bringing real-time data to the point of care. By integrating actionable patient information at the right point of time, providers are better informed to improve patient outcomes. Russ explains, "Availity, for the last 21 years now, has been in the business of developing connectivity and relationships between health plans and providers. I know we're going to talk a lot today about the really cool program we've embarked upon with Oron and the Vim team. But at our core, we sit in the center of the relationship between health plans and providers and communicate all types of health information between these critical constituents." Oron elaborates, "One of the goals for the Availity-Vim partnership is to really drive behavioral change based on real-time decision-making. It is to intercept at the point of care, at the point of intent, intercept decision-making points that can influence things like downstream costs or administrative costs, like submitting prior authorization, or other components in the entire trajectory, and influence them. This is instead of doing some retrospect analysis for engagement that is usually more expensive, because when you don't catch a person at the point of intent, then you most often end up paying a lot more to engage them, in retrospect." @Availity @GetVim #PointofCare #PriorAuthorization #AI #ComputerVision Availity.com GetVim.com Download the transcript here

Avihai Sodri is the Co-Founder and CEO of Antidote Health, which takes a digital HMO approach to bring 24/7 healthcare to a broad audience. Their target patients include both insured people and those who are uninsured, anyone who requires a one-time service or care for a chronic condition. Avihai says, "So, in a very significant sense, we're not reinventing the wheel. So we're talking about processes and best practices in providing healthcare in a very traditional way, I would say. But we're injecting a lot of technology with our decision support systems and the way that our bot collects information from the patient, and we are adding more digital processes more on the administrative side of things. So, if you take all this together, with the alignment of interest, then we can create a real disruption. And without changing dramatically, the way that healthcare is being provided, but the fact that we are using telehealth to provide the healthcare." @AntidoteAI #AntidoteHealth #AI #DigitalHealth #Telemedicine #HMO #HealthcareProviders antidotehealth.ai Download the transcript here

Michael Boerner is the Founder and CEO of Engage Technologies Group, which uses short-form videos to educate and motivate patients. It might be for someone with a diagnosed disease or a surgical process where it's a need for pre-operative or post-operative information. Their mobile intelligence platform is designed to deliver content to patients at the moment when it makes the most sense on their preferred screen. Michael explains, "So when we transform lives by delivering wisdom, it's in the format of short-form video. What we find is people love video, they just don't want it to be long. So, we found that the best way to be able to educate someone is with kind of the three biggest consumer behavioral shifts." "But short-form video, what's tough about brief videos, about 90 seconds, is you can't really talk about anything super complex in 90 seconds, but you can if you put the videos together in what we call an arc or an arc of engagement, a sequence of video content. That allows someone to be able to tap next and go to the next key kind of chapter in that educational journey." #DigitalHealth #MobileHealth #PatientEducation #PatientEngagment #PatientRelationships #ShortFormVideo engagetg.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Sameer Berry is the Chief Medical Officer of Oshi Health, and he shines a light on the challenges patients face from gastrointestinal conditions and the lack of effective treatments available from doctors for GI-related symptoms. While the reimbursement and payment model discourages a team approach to treating these patients, Oshi Health is taking a multidisciplinary integrated healthcare approach with a focus on the enteric nervous system. Sameer explains, "Where this comes from is the understanding that anatomically, there's actually an entirely separate nervous system that exists in the GI tract, and it's called the enteric nervous system. So, these are nerve cells, the same types of nerve cells that are in your spinal cord, in your brain, those nerve cells are in your gut. And just like the nerves in your brain respond to environmental stressors that might cause you to feel anxious, depressed, sad, happy, these nerves that are in your gut can respond to environmental stressors. But instead of causing you to feel anxious or depressed, they can cause GI symptoms." "I don't see the use of drugs diminishing. I see us refining the molecular targets for the future of pharmacology and functional GI conditions. Where those drugs target, I think, will start to incorporate our understanding of the enteric nervous system and the interplay of the enteric nervous system with both the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system." @OshiHealth #GITwitter #MedTwitter #GI #IBS #GutHealth #MindGut #EntericNervousSystem OshiHealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Jacob Hascalovici is the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Clearing which is in the business of transforming chronic pain care. While some chronic pain has no cure, there are many strategies that can be used to manage the symptoms and improve the quality of life of a patient. One of the key goals of Clearing is to leverage the use of technology to help remove obstacles in the chronic pain care environment. Jacob explains, "When we think about individual treatments in isolation, we call that unimodal care. I'd say that on an individual basis, the effectiveness of a treatment is limited. I rarely see patients with chronic pain who have a 100% response to a single therapy. But when we employ multimodal therapies where we have home exercise or physical therapy, plus a topical, plus an oral, plus an injection, that's when we start to see a very effective treatment strategy and plan." "Pain is a very personal experience. It's highly subjective, it's deeply personal, and there is a multitude of factors that can affect our perception of pain. In order for us to manage something that is so personal and so subjective, we really need to consider all of the biological factors, the psychological factors, and the social factors that affect an individual to design a treatment plan that's best for them. We call this the biopsychosocial model for chronic pain care, and that is at the foundation of what we do at Clearing. Highly personalized therapies that focus on the mind, the body, and the social wellbeing of an individual who's suffering from pain." #ChronicPain #PainTreatment #PainCare #Opioids #NonOpioidTreatment #NociplasticPain #DigitalHealth clearing.com Download the transcript here