Empowered Patient Podcast

Sam Meraj is the Senior Director of Quality, Safety, and Reporting at Walmart, including their in-store pharmacies, optical, primary care, dental, and other health services. Sam explains, " We do keep in mind the social determinants of health. We provide a lot of linguistic support, language translation services, and we always keep health equity in mind when we are providing these services." "I think a lot is being done to address health equity, but yet we have an opportunity to do a lot more. In terms of addressing the language barriers that I was talking about or the cultural barriers to continued education, one thing to keep in mind is that negative experiences with healthcare are unfortunately more common in these groups. And some social determinants of health, again, have historically made it difficult for them to have equal access to healthcare. So I think that it's important for individual providers as well as systems to be aware and intentional about addressing these gaps and sharing the right information to build trust and address some of these disparities." #Walmart #SDOH #SocialDeterminantsofHealth #HealthEquity #COVID19 #PopulationHealth Walmart.com Download the transcript here

Ali Dianaty is Vice President of Product Innovation at Medtronic Diabetes and reflects on the explosion of developments for treating diabetes that has allowed patients to manage their diabetes in a way that fits their lifestyle. Ali explains, "We also make smart insulin pens, which allow people to do a better job of dosing their insulin. Of course, one of the big fears is that insulin can be a very dangerous drug. Think of it as if you give yourself too much, you can put yourself into harm's way. If you don't give yourself enough, it's the same thing. So, dosing that properly is super important." "We offer pumps that help do that more automatically, as well, in terms of dosing that insulin. And then, we also offer continuous glucose monitors that measure how much glucose is in someone's body. Then ultimately, we bring all of that together into some sophisticated algorithms as a system to automatically dose people's insulin. So again, with the premise of forgetting their disease. All of these things are intended to try to minimize the work going into managing diabetes, and quite frankly, to make things easier for them." @MDT_Diabetes #Medtronic #Diabetes #t1d #t2d #Diabetestech #DiabetesManagement #Type1 #InsulinPump #CGM #medtech MedtronicDiabetes.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Heidi Jannenga PT, DPT, ACT, is the Co-Founder and Chief Clinical Officer at WebPT. She points out that healthcare providers should be more aware of the benefits of physical therapy and how technology and telehealth are making PT more accessible for a broader audience. Heidi explains. "This past year, with the whole COVID thing that's going on and continues to go on, we also launched a virtual visit platform. We can do telehealth with patients while they're at home so that it doesn't always have to mean that you have to get yourself to a clinic, especially those in rural areas and such. It really now has expanded our reach in terms of connecting with more patients who could benefit from physical therapist care. "I think that it's going to take a little while for us to find the happy medium between in-person visits and virtual. By no means do I think that 100% of care from a physical therapist can be done virtually because of the nature of our clinical expertise." @WebPT #PT #PhysicalTherapy #RehabTherapy #Telehealth #COVID19 WebPT.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. Harvey Kaufman is the Senior Medical Director at Quest Diagnostics and has recently published a study on cancer diagnoses during the pandemic.  Data points to a significant impact of COVID-19 on the rate of cancer screenings and the need to better identify those most at risk for a wide range of cancers. Harvey explains, "There's a couple of things that we can do differently. One is we learned through the pandemic, the power of telemedicine, that we can do a lot of things through Zoom, and even without the visual, we can do the audio portion and engage people in questionnaires and asking about their health and such." "We can't do certain things remotely like a mammogram or a colonoscopy or biopsies and other procedures, but there are things that we can do. We can try to identify people who are at higher risk and prioritize them over other individuals. If we don't re-engage in healthcare, there will be more and more people who will present at more advanced stages, require more aggressive therapy, and have a higher rate of death." @QuestDX #QuestDiagnostics #cancer #CancerAwareness #COVID19 #CancerDiagnosis #ReturntoCare #CancerScreening QuestDiagnostics.com Download the transcript here

Alana McGolrick DNP is the Chief Nursing Officer at PeriGen and focused on reducing preventable maternal and newborn deaths using technology and AI to support labor and delivery activities. The PeriWatch Vigilance platform removes bias and provides objective assessment to those clinicians and physicians monitoring the physiological changes in patients and their fetuses. Alana explains, "I have been a fetal monitoring geek for my entire life in labor and delivery. I've always been fascinated with the labor and delivery process. When we do monitor our patients, we put these monitors on the patient's abdomen, so on their pregnant belly, and we're looking at uterine contractions, we're looking at the fetal heart rate. Then we're also monitoring mom's vital signs and how she's progressing in labor." "There's a number of different factors that we analyze while we're in the intrapartum stage, labor, and delivery, watching how our patient is progressing. One of our patients happens to be invisible, right? We only have the fetal heart rate as a sign of wellbeing or some sort of duress. They can go in the exact opposite direction for us." @PeriGen #PeriWatch #PeriWatchVigilance #MaternalMortality #NewbornMortality #AI #LaborandDelivery PeriGen.com Download the transcript here

Rosemary Kennedy is the Chief Health Information Officer at Connect America, where data collection, predictive analytics, remote monitoring, human intervention, and promotion of patient care circles are all part of the solution for keeping seniors out of the hospital and independent as possible. Rosemary explains, "There are probably three areas in terms of them achieving your goal and living independently and safely in your home. And you've identified one of them, this connected care management platform in the home that involves a system of integrated technologies." "We see that one in every ten admissions to the hospital are related to the fact that individuals are not adherent to their medication regimen. The second area is in interaction with their care circles and using technology for that. We have seen with COVID that individuals want to be connected to family, friends, neighbors. They want to do it in an easy way, and this includes voice video chat that they can interoperate with the people that are important to them in terms of needs related to food, support, transportation." #ConnectedHealth #SeniorHealthcare #ConnectedCare #RPM #COVID19 #HealthTech ConnectAmerica.com Download the transcript here

Andy Kidd MD is the President and COO and soon to be CEO of Aptinyx.  With a focus on Pain Awareness Month, Andy provides a view into the world of treating long-term chronic pain and the necessary innovations to treat the cause of chronic pain in conditions like diabetic peripheral neuropathy and fibromyalgia. Andy explains, "So we've discovered and are developing a new drug that has a new mechanism for chronic pain. And actually, it really takes that problem of what is happening in the brain head-on because our drug works in the brain, particularly in the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. That is really responsible for how we control and regulate our behavior, what we pay attention to, what we don't pay attention to, how our emotions are affected by things that we're sensing in the environment, and things like that. So we are really trying to tackle this part of the chronic pain problem that has been probably under-recognized in the past and for which there really aren't any good therapies right now." "The goal would be that our drug works as it is supposed to, and it works on a receptor called the NMDA receptor in the brain, which is basically responsible for how the brain cells communicate and connect to each other. By boosting its activity, the goal would be to restore normal function, some of these parts of the brain that may then help the patient reduce the perception of pain. It may help the patient with some of the consequences of the pain around those things like sleep and mood and cognition." @Aptinyx #PainAwarenessMonth #NMDA #CNS #Brain #Innovation #PainTherapies #PTSD #ChronicPain #CognitiveImpairment Aptinyx.com Download the transcript here

Jessica Magana is the Product Manager of Lightbeam Health Solutions, a population health management company. Jessica shines a light on the biggest changes coming from CMS in risk adjustment for Medicare Advantage in 2022. Organizations need to understand the technical requirements behind the way diagnosed base risk scores will be calculated and the impact of delayed healthcare due to COVID-19. Jessica explains, "Lightbeam is a platform that facilitates end-to-end population health management for our ACOs, payers, provider groups, health systems, and some other healthcare organizations. Just some highlights about the platform and what it provides are provider alignment, tools for engagement, and satisfaction rates. It allows for some two-way information sharing. It has been proven to lower utilization rates and improve risk and coding opportunities; it also helps to improve quality scores for HEDIS and Star measures." "Another important change that I think is very important is around some of the quality bonus program changes. Due to COVID-19, a public health emergency has been awarded. CMS is now promoting some new changes that are going to impact some of those Star ratings." @LightbeamHealth #LightbeamHealth #assessment #caremanagement #Healthcare #HealthIT #Payer #PayerProvider #PopHealth #PopulationHealth #referral #VBC #MedicareAdvantage #MA #COVID19 Lightbeamhealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Hugh Rienhoff is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Imago BioSciences.  He and his team are developing their lead asset bomedemstat for the treatment of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) which are rare blood cancers. Hugh explains, "So MPNs, myeloproliferative neoplasms, are actually a family of diseases that include myelofibrosis, polycythemia vera, and essential thrombocythemia. And they're all characterized by an elevation of one element in the blood or another different cell type." "But they're all related in the sense that they share a family of very limited mutations. And those mutations, in one of three genes, typically arise in patients who are in their 50s or 60s and those mutations occur in the blood stem cells." "They're not hereditary, typically. They're what we call somatic mutations arising in blood stem cells. And they are called neoplastic diseases, which is a Greek name for cancer, but they typically are much more indolent than your typical bone marrow cancers, like leukemia, which are almost fulminant by comparison." @Imagobiorx #ImagoBioSciences #MPN #MPNSM #EssentialThrombocythemia #myelofibrosis #bomedemstat #LSD1 #BloodCancer #RareDisease ImagoBio.com Download the transcript    

Eric Rock is the Founder and CEO of Vivify Health and a pioneer in the application of remote patient monitoring, consumer electronics, and biometric devices combined with virtual visits to connect patients and providers outside the hospital setting. Eric explains, "Fortunately, Vivify, from our beginning days, created a solution that encompassed a connected tablet with a very unique and simple experience that spoke to the patient and connected to the provider. It made it incredibly simple regardless of your age. With an average age of 77 across our customer base, where that product was applied to, we knew this market well. And many were entering the market saying, "Okay, well, I can just give them an app to download." Well, that's a very quick failure in that population." "So, understanding the complexities of distributing devices to patients that we're all responsible for and even getting those devices returned in most cases is a big part of the services and value that Vivify brings to the table. So it is a very simple solution for seniors with all of that backend technology support logistics, and an incredible experience for the provider as well. It's simple for everybody involved as it would be for an in-person visit, while at the same time we manage all of that technology headache. And we've done that very well for over a decade." @VivifyHealth @ericlrock #DigitalHealth #telehealth #telemedicine #remotepatientmonitoring #RPM #VirtualHealthcare VivifyHealth.com Download the transcript here