Empowered Patient Podcast

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

Pierre Pellier is CEO of CTMA and is driven to provide better access to innovative and potentially life-saving therapies to more patients. The key is to shorten the duration of clinical trials by more quickly and efficiently identifying and recruiting potentially eligible participants. Using the CT-Scout platform on a mobile device, doctors are prompted to ask, during a consultation, a few selected questions to determine whether a particular patient might be eligible for any of the numerous studies running at their site. Removing the need to remember major inclusion and exclusion criteria encourages doctors and investigators to broaden the search and increase recruitment. @CScoutTm #CTMA #clinicaltrials #patientrecruitment CTMA.fr Download the transcript here

Mike Rea is the Founder and CEO of IDEA Pharma and Founder of Protodigm, created to develop a new way of progressing drug development. With a fundamental understanding of what goes wrong in early-stage pharmaceutical development, Mike is eager to do more diverse opportunity-seeking for assets in early phase trials. The skunkworks model draws decision and data scientists as well as the pharma people to think outside the box. As Mike says "But I think often in drug development, you get the silos and people are encouraged to play nicely within the silos. The idea of taking a group of loosely structured, enthusiastic people creating an affinity group that focuses on what could you do differently for an asset, doesn't happen and it's quite hard to do within the confines of the organization." @ProtodigmLabs #Protodigm #skunkworks #NextGenCRO #drugdevelopment Protodigm.co Download the transcript here

Renee Agular-Lucander is CEO of Calliditas Therapeutics a Sweden-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the rare kidney disease IgA nephropathy. While there is a genetic predisposition for this autoimmune disease, it is still not clear what triggers the condition and there is no current cure. Renee talks about: Lead drug candidate Nefecon which starts at the top of the disease cascade in the ileum part of the small intestine. Delivering this disease-modifying agent directly interrupts and disrupts the beginning of the disease How clinical trial data is showing the value of addressing the gut-renal axis and treating this indication in an organ-specific way Other orphan indications that might benefit from this approach What the FDA priority review of Nefecon potentially means for the 1 in every 4 adults with IgAN who will eventually succumb to kidney failure. @Calliditas1 #IgANephropathy #IgAN #Kidney #KidneyDisease #EndStageRenalDisease #AutoimmuneDisease #Nefecon #RareDisease Calliditas.se/en Download the transcript here

Omri Shor is Founder and CEO of Medisafe and focused on bringing resources to pharmaceutical companies so that they can better manage the entire patient journey from prescription of a specific medication throughout their daily routines and lifestyle choices.  Integrating Medisafe into the engagement with patients allows key data to be collected about patterns of adherence and potential obstacles to drug adherence. Clinicians and pharmacists are also connecting through the Medisafe platform to help manage patients, particularly with comorbidities and to reduce time spent on routine tasks. Omri emphasizes the need for patients to receive a personalized plan of action that provides real-time real-life support combining the human and digital connections. COVID-19 further illustrated the benefits of digital health technology to connect patients with the kind of support necessary to keep them on track and connected to care providers. @medisafeApp #Medisafe App #MedicationAdherence #PatientExperience #YourHealthinYourHands #DigitalHealth #DigitalTherapeutics #COVID19 Medisafe.com Download the transcript here

Tom Hallam PhD is CEO of Palisade Bio a late stage biopharmaceutical company with a focus on gastrointestinal complications from major surgery and getting patients out of the hospital more quickly. With discoveries about how digestive enzymes can hurt a patient's gastrointestinal tract, their lead asset LB1148 is a liquid that the patient drinks prior to surgery. This drug coats the entire gastrointestinal tract and inhibits digestive enzymes preventing them from attacking underlying tissue. Palisade is also working on a breakthrough platform technology with the ability for the first time to measure the activity of digestive enzymes when they leak from the  gastrointestinal tract into the blood of patients. Since these enzymes belong in the GI tract, when they appear in the blood, they can cause long-term chronic diseases and severe health consequences for patients. @PalisadeBio #GI #gastrointestinal #ileus #adhesions #surgicalcomplications #microbiome Palisadebio.com Download the transcript here  

Adam Sachs is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vicarious Surgical a next generation robotics company that is developing a disruptive medical technology platform. Their goal is to increase the efficiency of legacy surgical robotics, improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare costs.  Vicarious Surgical's novel approach to surgery uses a combination of proprietary miniaturized surgical robots and virtual reality to transport surgeons inside the patient when performing minimally invasive surgery. The first indication being targeted is ventral hernia repair for which Vicarious has been granted Breakthrough Device Special designation from the FDA. The Vicarious system, with nine-degrees of freedom for each arm of the robot, can actually operate from inside of the abdomen out. Surgeons are enthusiastic about the ability to work facing any direction from any incision site. #VicariousSurgery #VR #VirtualReality #robots #surgicalrobotics #herniarepair #ventralherniarepair #SPAC VicariousSurgery.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kishlay Anand is a practicing cardiologist and Founder and President of Apricus Health, a healthcare provider with a focus on having a dedicated care navigator work with patients to help them on their healthcare journey.  This includes coordinating appointments with primary care physicians, specialists, remote monitoring, medication refills, updates on community resources and education about chronic conditions. Not only does this benefit patients but also doctors as it reduces paperwork and allows them to focus on transitioning from fee-for-service to value-based care. Apricus is developing digital health technology tailored to the unique challenges seniors and those with chronic conditions face. Of particular interest is the senior patient population which due to COVID-19 has had a chance to experience virtual doctor visits and telehealth interactions which have proven to be very popular. @Apricus_Health #digitalhealth #telemedicine #telehealth #personalizedmedicine #MedTech ApricusHealth.com Download the transcript here

John Schwartz is Chief Revenue Officer at HSBlox and he strongly believes that care coordination is essential for all patients. The challenge is how can healthcare stakeholders improve the delivery of Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) to better serve vulnerable people.  Aligning medical and social care needs is a messy issue and there needs to be a stronger recognition of how much the environment determines health of a population. HSBlox enables SDOH risk-stratification, care coordination and appropriate data sharing through its digital health platform.  It applies AI, machine learning and blockchain technologies to streamline SDOH processes of data exchange, patient consent management and referral optimization. @blox_hs #HSBlox #VBC #AI #valuebasedcare #healthcareAI #healthcaredata #patientadherence #SDOH #socialdeterminantsofhealth #populationhealth #precisionhealth #DistributedLedgerTechnology HSBlox.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Ian Walters is CEO of Portage Biotech is building a pipeline of novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer particularly for patients who do not respond to current therapies.  The key is stimulating a type of immune cell called invariant natural killer T-cell which works with the adaptive immune system to create a broad immune response and stronger immune surveillance to help stop cancer from forming in the body. Having contributed to bringing five new blockbuster cancer drugs to patients, Ian and his team are working to hit all key components for every different tumor type for a long-term response and possible cure.  They think their drug could have potential in settings that wouldn't respond to just pure NK cell therapy. #ImmunoOncology #Cancer #iNKT #biotech $PRTG PortageBiotech.com Download the transcript here