Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Nick West is the Chief Medical Officer and Divisional Vice President of Global Medical Affairs at Abbott's Vascular Business. Nick points out the need to make sure the blood vessel is properly closed up at the end of a procedure to ensure no complications.  While the Abbott device Perclose™ has been around for quite some time, the ProStyle™ is the new version of it and is a unique suture mediated closure system. Nick reminds us that, "The old way of doing this is simply to press. Now pressing on the artery, usually, you have to press for at least 10 minutes. If it's done properly, that seals things very nicely, but there are many, many factors that affect the availability of what we call manual compression to seal these punctures. They include where the puncture was, how many times the physician needed to attempt to puncture the vessel before they got into it." Nick confirms this is the way bleeding has been stopped for hundreds of years and that pressing on the groin is medieval.  We talk about how this new approach is a way to effectively close the puncture site in an artery or vein with sutures that allow for primary intentional healing. @AbbottCardio #AbbottCardio #Perclose #ProStyle #VascularClosure #VascularRepair Abbott.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Marc Semigran is the Chief Medical Officer of Renovacor and shines a light on BAG3-associated cardiomyopathy and the cardiac gene therapy in development to treat this rare genetic disease. Marc explains, "So, what we are focusing on are patients who have a genetic or familial origin of their dilated cardiomyopathy. Our first target is a gene described as BAG3, which is an important protein within the cardiac muscle cells. And some patients with heart failure have the heart failure because the gene that they have is mutated and is not able to fully express a functional protein." "We are studying our lead asset, which is REN-001, a modified virus that we believe will specifically target the heart. This will insert into the cardiac muscle cells a good copy of the BAG3 gene, which can then be expressed and allow those cardiac muscle cells to begin to function normally." #Renovacor #GeneTherapy #DilatedCardiomyopathy #DCM #BAG3 #RareDisease Renovacor.com Download the transcript here

Koenraad Wiedhaup, Founder and CEO of Leyden Labs, and his team have taken a proactive approach to overcome the challenges of protecting people from known viruses and new viruses. They are developing intranasal sprays containing biological molecules that can temporarily protect against a broad range of viruses.  This approach is between a vaccine that often gives long-term protection and a therapeutic necessary once someone is infected.  Koenraad says, "This actually gives people the autonomy to protect themselves and to take the nasal spray. And with that, they protect themselves but also others by not transmitting the virus. And indeed, therefore, the additional benefit is that you don't need a healthcare professional to do that. So, which of course, makes such a rollout also easier in the developed world, in places like the US and Europe. But also in more remote areas, where that might be even more important because of the limited availability of healthcare professionals." @LeydenLabs #LeydenLabs #PandemicPreparedness #coronaviruses #COVID19 #IntranasalMedicine #antiviral #viruses LeydenLabs.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Ryan Mathis is the Vice President of Commercial Strategy at PolarityTE, focusing on bringing regenerative medicine into clinical practice, particularly for treating diabetic foot ulcers and other forms of complex wounds. Ryan says, "So, we're trying to solve this problem by developing SkinTE, which is revolutionizing the science for these hard-to-close wounds. The product itself is an autologous product, meaning we use a patient's own skin to produce the product.  Within your skin, there are regenerative cellular populations themselves, most highly focused around your hair follicles, that have the ability to heal wounds. And so, when you normally get a cut, those cells mobilize and move up towards the surface of the skin and heal the wounds." Listen to the podcast or read the transcript to find out how this innovative treatment creates a paste that gives the wound the ability to heal from the inside out. @PolarityTE #regenerativemedicine #tissueengineering #skin #woundcare #woundhealing #complexwound #diabetic #diabeticfootulcers PolarityTE.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Rob Rohatsch is the Chief Medical Officer at Solv Health and is building an omnichannel strategy for patients, providers, and payers. This approach enables the patients to get urgent or on-demand care from a telehealth visit or the next available in-person visit at a convenient location.  The Starbucks model of making it increasingly easy to get the drink of your choice informs the model to meet patients where they are in their lives. Bob says, "So, we answer three fundamental questions for the patient, which is where should I go? How much is it going to cost? And when can I be seen? So by answering those three fundamental questions really unlocks a lot of power for the patient in the marketplace." @solvhealth #digitalhealth #urgentcare #telehealth #outpatient #ambulatorycare SolvHealth.com Download the transcript here

Bill Hagstrom is the CEO and Founder of Octave Bioscience, looking at ways to dynamically assess patients with multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases to manage their treatment plan better. Bill says, "There's an enormous opportunity to take a personalized approach to managing these patients. MS and these other neurodegenerative diseases are known to have a lot of heterogeneity and have trajectories that can vary dramatically." At the same time, Octave is developing pathway models so a physician can see where a patient is in their overall journey and look at acute decision nodes, and access decision support tools. #OctaveBioscience #personalizedmedicine #MS #multiplesclerosis #neurodegenerativediseases #bloodbasedbiomarkers #biomarkers #symptomology #digitalhealth  OctaveBio.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Andrew Newberg is a doctor at the Thomas Jefferson University's Institute of Integrative Health and the author, along with Dr. Daniel Monti of the new book Brain Weaver: Creating the Fabric for a Healthy Mind Through Integrative Medicine. This engaging book shines a light on the connection between brain health and diet, the need to take advantage of weaknesses and strengths in each individual, and the value of mind-body practices. Dr. Newberg says, "The first thing that we always talk to our patients about is that we really function as human beings. We have four different dimensions. We have a biological dimension, a psychological dimension, a social dimension, and a spiritual dimension." "When we talk about brain health, while the brain is arguably more in our biology domain, we really have to understand brain health in a very integrative way and take all of these different dimensions of who we are as individuals into account if we are going to keep our brain as healthy as possible." Find the book online or at your local bookstore. #brainhealth #mindbody #integrativemedicine #neuroplasticity #microbiome #gutmicrobiome Brain Weaver: Creating the Fabric for a Healthy Mind Through Integrative Medicine Download the transcript here  

Sheila Talton is the Founder and CEO of Gray Matter Analytics, a healthcare-focused company that offers analytics as a service (AaaS) to healthcare systems and insurers to help them manage their quality measures, metrics, and risks related to value-based care. To be the best provider of care requires the ability to measure, predict and improve services based on medical and behavioral data, combined with social determinants of health, to ensure that all data is leveraged to provide better outcomes. Sheila says, "Whether those metrics are tied to the admissions or length of stay and other components of the clinical treatments, most health systems are actually managing how well they're performing on Excel spreadsheets. As you can imagine, you cannot manage multiple risk-based contracts because the average provider will have at least 20, 30, sometimes even 50 different contracts with different metrics." @GrayMatterData #DigitalHealth #SocialDeterminantsofHealth #SDOH #AaaS #ValueBasedCare #WholePersonCare GrayMatterAnalytics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Jennifer Gudeman was hired for the newly formed role of Vice President, Medical and Clinical Affairs at Avadel Pharmaceuticals. We talk about the clinical development of their lead investigational product FT218 to treat the rare disease narcolepsy. Optimized the drug delivery release of sodium oxybate with their proprietary controlled-release technology allows for a single bedtime dose. While the FDA nearly 20 years ago approved sodium oxybate to treat cataplexy and excessive daytime sleepiness, the drug was an immediate-release medication requiring a middle-of-the-night dose. After a successful Phase 3 clinical trial, Avadel's ongoing open-label study, RESTORE, is providing evidence that points to more restorative sleep across a broad audience. @AvadelPharma $AVDL #narcolepsy #cataplexy #sleepdisorders #sleep #EDS #neurotwitter #rarediseases Avadel.com Download the transcript here

Greg Miller is Vice President of industry strategy for healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk. We talk about the role of contact centers in personalizing inbound and outbound encounters with patients. Integrating the Talkdesk software with the Epic EHR platform gives hospitals and health systems the ability to get a complete picture of a patient. Talkdesk makes it easy for patients to use the web, email, text, mobile apps, and virtual and live agents to schedule appointments, ask clinical questions, fill prescriptions, and coordinate billing and claims processing. It also gives healthcare enterprises the ability to be proactive with patients and build stronger relationships using artificial intelligence and human interaction. @talkdesk #talkdesk #contactcenter #patientexperience #healthcareIT #digitalhealth #AI Talkdesk.com Download the transcript here