Empowered Patient Podcast

Amy Fan is Co-Founder of Twentyeight Health a telemedicine startup successfully expanding its model to provide affordable reproductive healthcare to women in underserved communities. Amy explains, "For example, many people coming from underserved communities, especially ones 30 years old or below, are living in multi-generational households, so privacy can be really difficult to come across. So being able to message your doctor directly is actually a more flexible model for them than, for example, doing a video consultation with the doctor." "The other piece we focus on is affordability. We are one of the only telehealth companies that accept Medicaid, and unfortunately for individuals with Medicaid, it's very difficult to see a doctor in person. One in three doctors do not accept new Medicaid patients, and 45% of women between 20-30 years old do not have a primary care provider. So when you have those two combined, it ends up being very difficult for someone with Medicaid to see any healthcare professionals." #WomensHealth #ReproductiveHealthcare #SexualHealthcare #BirthControl #Medicaid #Telehealth #Telemedicine TwentyeightHealth.com Download the transcript here

Karen Zaderej is the President, CEO, and Chairman of Axogen Inc. leader in the science of peripheral nerve regeneration and repair. Surgeons have always been challenged to restore feeling in damaged peripheral nerves due to accidents and surgical procedures. Karen says, "Traditionally, they've removed the nerves that give you sensation for your foot to allow you, for example, to move your hand or have sensation in your fingers. Obviously, there are downsides to that, but moving your hand is probably more important for the patient. So that would have been the gold standard." "So, you'd have two procedures, one to remove the nerve and another to fix the injury site. Today, what we're doing is providing surgeons an off-the-shelf opportunity to be able to do that same repair of the cut nerve and bridging of the gap, but to do it without taking another nerve from out of your body." @Axogen #RegenerativeMedicine #NerveDamage #NerveRepair #PeripheralNerves #Nerves AxogenInc.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Mike Dulin is currently the Chief Medical Officer for Gray Matter Analytics and a professor at UNC Charlotte in the Department of Public Health Sciences where he directs the Academy for Population Health Innovation. He emphasizes that almost 80% of health outcomes are driven by social determinants.  In addition to the traditional environmental determinants including access to food, transportation, a safe place to exercise, and health care, the strength of the patient's social network needs to be considered as well. Mike explains, "Perhaps most importantly, and one area that we don't consider a lot is the social network. But often, your behaviors are driven by your social network, your peers, your friends, your family members. Their behaviors are really important in terms of shaping and determining yours. We've even found things like depression and mood can run through a social network. Well, other important factors like smoking and exercise and a healthy diet are also determined by your social network." "The other component that I think is extremely important for us to remember as healthcare providers is that the data and the collection of the data can also cause stigma. People often may be embarrassed about not having access to certain services or unwilling to share it, or feel like it's not something that they can share directly with their physician." @GrayMatterData #SDOH #SocialDeterminantsofHealth #HealthcareAnalytics #PersonalizedMedicine GrayMatterAnalytics.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. Nicole Wulf is a clinical pharmacist at FDB and has recently published a study of the current evidence regarding iodine containing compounds and iodine allergy cross-reactivity.  Overall they found that there was a lack of evidence that iodine is an allergen and can cause hypersensitivity reactions particularly from contrast media used in imaging. Nicole explains, "In my job, I'm always looking for ways in which we can improve the allergy alerts for clinicians. This is one thing that I have some questions about, and it made a lot of sense because iodine is part of the thyroid hormone in the body. So to me, it didn't make any sense for us to continue to let people spread the myth that iodine could be an allergen." "I started pulling the literature and looking at it. It made a lot of sense that this was something that we needed to stop telling people that iodine was an allergen and that we shouldn't be putting it on patient profiles anymore because it was affecting patient care. People might not get the imaging studies they need or not the prescribed amiodarone, even though it's the best choice to treat their rhythm abnormalities." "Some of the goal was definitely to educate clinicians to stop asking patients, are you allergic to iodine. Or when you're doing an imaging study, stop asking, are you allergic to seafood or shellfish, because they are totally unrelated. The seafood and shellfish reaction is the result of an allergy to a protein, not the iodine." @FDB_US #ClinicalResearch #IodineAllergy #ImagingTests #MedSafety #PtSafety FDBHealth.com Download the transcript here

Palak Shah is a physical therapist and Co-Founder of Luna who is attacking the problem of providing physical therapy to the growing population of patients with the need to receive in-person care by a physical therapist. Palak explains, "What is super different about Luna is that we're not a home health agency. We're bringing out physical therapy to patient homes for all our patients in 19 states and 32 metro markets today. Having about 1,200 therapists on the platform now throughout the country, bringing technology and high-quality care from the therapists, is Luna's superpower. The vision here is what we're trying to bring with technology and these amazing quality therapists is to reimagine the physical therapy experience." "All of Luna's therapists are moonlighting with Luna, more than 95% and hence the name Luna. So they are working at outpatient clinics today that are in our community, but also have this amazing opportunity to participate with an organization like Luna that allows them supplemental income." @GetLunaCare #COVID19 #HomePhysicalTherapy #HospitalatHome #PhysicalTherapist #PT #PhysicalTherapy #Recovery #Rehab #RehabatHome #Rehabilitation #RehabTherapy #Treatment GetLuna.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Daniel Schneeberger is the CEO of Anebulo Pharmaceuticals and is determined to find an antidote to acute cannabinoid intoxication, a growing problem for people of all ages as well as emergency rooms around the country. Daniel says, "THC acts mostly in the brain, it crosses the blood-brain barrier and binds to the CB1 receptor, and it activates that CB1 receptor. Our drug also goes to the brain and binds to the same receptor, much more tightly, up to 100x more tightly, and blocks it so that THC has no chance to act on that receptor anymore. One of the most important properties of our drug, too, is rapid absorption with oral dosing. So we feel very good about the drug candidate." "These drugs, CB1 antagonists, were originally developed for weight loss in the treatment of diabetes back around 2007, 2008. They were never approved by the FDA because with chronic dosing, there was an increased frequency of depression, it was 9%, it was 5% with placebo. Back then, the FDA was very concerned that chronic dosing in such a large patient population might potentially be unsafe. For our drug, it's a one-time dose, and those mood effects only showed up with chronic dosing." @AnebuloP #CannabisIntoxication #AcuteCannabisIntoxication #Cannabinoids #SyntheticCannabinoids #SubstanceAbuseDisorders Anebulo Pharmaceuticals Download the transcript here

Gary Rotman and Bruce Barnet are Co-Founders of SiMPL Technology, a company designing and selling simple tech products for seniors and their caregivers. With a particular focus on people with cognitive challenges and discomfort with digital technology, SiMPL is bringing solutions to the market that solve such challenges as medication adherence and media access. Gary is an inventor and explains, "So, I've been in the timepiece industry for most of my career, over 35 years, so one of the products I developed was a talking clock, and you can set the alarm by voice. In the meantime, like many other people, my father was diagnosed with dementia back in 2010, Alzheimer's dementia, and I woke up one day with this aha moment to put personalized messages in the clock. So, when my mother isn't home, and my dad forgets his meds and doesn't want to end up back in the hospital, this talking clock would announce in my mother's voice, "Honey, take your pills now.". Bruce says, "So the things that we think are easy, are not easy for a person that's been afflicted with dementia. Even to the point of when a person grew up as I did, I'm 70 years old, grew up seeing an analog clock with a long hand and a short hand. Today, everything is digital. A person with dementia, who's remembering what it was like to be 14 or 20 years old, doesn't understand how to connect the dots on digital, so it needs to be LED if it's going to be in that type of form at all. You really have to think about what it is that they consider normal at a certain age." #SiMPL #SiMPLTechnology #GaryRotman #BruceBarnet #Rosie2.0 #DementiaCareProgram #Alzheimers #Dementia SMPLTEC.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Nick West is the Chief Medical Officer and DVP Global Medical Affairs for Vascular at Abbott.  With the launch of the Ultreon software 1.0, Abbott is bringing a new level of analysis to their Optical Coherence Tomography intracoronary imaging tool. Nick explains, "And the idea of this software package is, on top of this best-in-class in terms of resolution imaging technology to help physicians, the Ultreon software augments physician decision-making to effectively enable them to do a better job, but more easily."  "Optical Coherence Tomography already existed. A very powerful tool, as I said. A very high degree of precision and accuracy in measurement. However, one of the issues with OCT is that, as well as understanding how to actually physically use the catheter, which is reasonably straightforward, it's very similar to other devices that interventional cardiologists use, but they then have to learn to interpret the images you get out. So acquiring the pictures is relatively straightforward, but then how do you interpret these detailed pictures?" "You still need to know how to use the catheter, but the Ultreon 1.0 software uses machine learning algorithms. That's artificial intelligence, if you like, where we've taught the software over hundreds and hundreds of different OCT pictures. We taught it - what is calcification? What is that hardened narrowing? And also, where is what we call the external elastic lamina?" @AbbottCardio #OCT #OpticalCoherenceTomography #angiograms #UltreonSoftware #medicalimaging #Angioplasty #coronaryhealth Abbott.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Mike Dudley is President and CEO of QpexBiopharma and seeing drug-resistant infections occurring inside the hospital as well as outside the hospital. Qpex is developing IV and oral drugs that are designed to overcome resistance mechanisms in bacteria that render penicillin-like drugs inactive. Mike explains, "We deliver our drug in combination with existing antibiotics that have already been proven safe and effective as first-line therapies but have lost their usefulness due to resistant bacteria. And we want to be able to give them via vein for the sickest patients who can't take oral drugs. But also we want to be delivering them using an oral formulation in our product so they can be taken orally." "We call the IV product OMNIvance, which provides that coverage for very, very sick patients. And then an oral product, which we call ORAvance that can be then delivered orally, and it can be useful for stepping down hospitalized patients or even treating infections in the community setting where you don't have to go to the hospital and can remain at home." @QpexBio #QpexBio #AMR #AntimicrobialResistance #InfectiousDisease #SanDiego QpexBio.com Download the transcript here

Francesca Rinaldo MD Ph.D. is the Director of Clinical Quality and Innovation at Sharecare, a health and wellness engagement platform. Their SmartOmix solution allows researchers to build, launch, manage and analyze data from clinical studies using a participant-centric mobile application that leverages all the technological components of a smartphone including text-based reporting, photo, video, and audio samples. Francesca explains, "So, in my opinion, the future of clinical research is really three things: it's decentralized, it's digital-first, and it's widely inclusive. So, I think technology will impact researchers, patients, and doctors and a number of different ways. It will impact researchers because it will give them access to data that will provide a much more comprehensive view of health and wellness, as well as how disease trajectories change for study participants." "It will also impact patients because it will accelerate the cycle from research to care, fast-track insights, and novel approaches to therapy or new drugs into the system for participants. And as we said before, it will also decrease many barriers for patients to participate in clinical research and increase the validity of the evidence generated because the research will be conducted in much more diverse populations of patients." @SharecareInc #Sharecare #AI #ClinicalResearch #FutureisDigitalHealth #FutureofHealthcare #FutureofClinicalResearch #AIinHealth #TechinHealthcare #VirtualCare #Telemedicine #PatientCentric #HybridHealthcare #AllTogetherBetter Sharecare.com Download the transcript here