Raise the Line

Dr. Amin Azzam, Faculty Engagement Coordinator at Osmosis, discusses the power of active learning and engaged learners in medical education. He shares his experience of creating a medical school course on improving health information on Wikipedia, as well as Osmosis initiatives to support medical students in Syria and refugees. The podcast also explores the role of human oversight in healthcare and provides advice on gratitude and the power of curiosity.

“When we say ‘treatment for menopause,’ it implies that menopause is a disease, when really it’s a normal and expected time of life,” says Dr. Anna Barbieri, an integrative medicine physician and specialist in menopause certified by the North American Menopause Society. That attentiveness to word choice is reflective of a new perspective that’s driving Dr. Barbieri and her peers to see menopause more holistically than in the past and to forge new approaches to the care they provide. "Menopause care is not checkbox medicine. We have to work with our patients individually," Barbieri shares with special guest host Dr. Deborah Enegess, herself a practicing gynecologist as well as a clinical content writer for Osmosis. A personalized approach involves tailoring care plans that take exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management and other lifestyle and psychological factors into account in an effort to help patients feel better in the short term and longer term.  Providers also have to contend with a shift in long-held thinking about the use of hormone therapy and a bewildering array of supplements that are touted as effective remedies for various symptoms.  To help sort through all of this complexity, new resources have come on the scene in recent years, including the digital platform Elektra Health -- of which Barbieri is the founding physician -- that describes its mission as “smashing the menopause taboo.” Check out this engaging exploration of what looks to be a promising time for women in search of individualized, integrated and informed care during their menopause journey.Mentioned in this episode: https://www.elektrahealth.com/ If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Dr. Mary 'Bit' Yaden, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the unique aspects of administering psychedelic-assisted therapy and the importance of a therapeutic relationship. She explores the potential of psychedelics in psychiatry, highlighting the transformative power of psychedelic experiences. The chapter also emphasizes the need for safety and evidence-based practices in psychedelic therapy.

“I really have challenged the students that have graduated from Duke the last couple of years to consider being ambassadors for science and for communication of what is good science,” says Dr. Mary Klotman, executive vice president for Health Affairs and dean of the School of Medicine at Duke University.  She notes that the stakes of disinformation are too high to do otherwise, as up to 300,000 COVID-19 deaths can be attributed to unfounded fears about one of the safest vaccines ever produced. It's just one of many educational imperatives Klotman is pursuing to prepare future clinicians for a constantly changing healthcare landscape. Others include helping students put new tools such as AI in the context of patient care, creating more opportunities to learn in ambulatory settings where 90% of healthcare is now delivered, and more multidisciplinary training to reflect a growing team approach to medical care. To help develop those interprofessional habits, Klotman has championed a “One Duke” approach. “Whether you're a student, senior investigator or a clinician, take advantage of the broad expertise here to solve a problem whether it's engineering in medicine, or it's data science. That is the nature of scientific problem solving today.” Join host Shiv Gaglani on this episode of Raise the Line for a wide-ranging look at how a leading academic center is innovating to adjust to dynamic changes in society, technology and healthcare.Mentioned in this episode: Duke University School of MedicineDuke's Program on Medical Misinformation If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Dr. Nigam Shah, Chief Data Scientist at Stanford University, discusses embracing the power of AI in healthcare. He encourages using AI to augment human abilities, not replace them. He emphasizes the need for systematic verification and testing of AI in medicine. The podcast also explores the confusion and misapplication of AI, and highlights the importance of understanding problems rather than solely focusing on AI. Dr. Shah calls for training AI with proper instruction-tuning data, and urges listeners to avoid fearmongering.

“What's really exciting and scary in medical education right now is we're seeing large language models enter the scene,” says today’s Raise the Line guest Dr. Adam Rodman, who is well-placed to make such an assessment. As co-director of the Innovations in Media and Education Delivery Initiative (iMED) at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Rodman is witnessing, and influencing, how new technologies are shaping both medical education and the future of healthcare.  In his view, AI can’t replace a doctor right now, but it can make remarkable insights into how humans think. “We need to start to grapple with what it means when a lot of these cognitive processes that medical education is designed to train for get offloaded to a machine,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. He summarized his thoughts on AI, with co-author Dr. Avraham Cooper, in a piece for the August issue of the New England Journal of Medicineentitled “AI and Medical Education: A 21st-Century Pandora's Box” and invokes another concept rooted in ancient Greece as he describes AI as a ‘pharmakon.’ “There really is a way these technologies could dramatically improve what it means to be a patient -- and hopefully what it means to be a physician -- but the same technologies could be used to make things worse.” The ancient references are not surprising coming from Rodman, a medical historian who enjoys exploring the roots and evolution of the field on his long-running podcast Bedside Rounds. Don’t miss this richly informed conversation on how humans perform when interacting with AI, the advent of virtual tutors, and how AI might be used to improve student assessments and enhance the doctor-patient relationship.  If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

When Munjal Shah and his colleagues chose to use Hippocratic in the name of their new AI-based company, it wasn’t just about signaling their product was involved with healthcare, it was also intended to leverage the ‘do no harm’ philosophy associated with the term. After all, formerly fanciful fears of ‘robots’ replacing doctors have become more realistic since the advent of generative AI last year.  Shah addresses that issue up front in this revealing Raise the Line episode with host Shiv Gaglani. “We're going to be restricting the product when it comes out. It's not going to be able to do diagnoses.” Instead, the platform will focus on serving the needs of patients after their diagnosis, especially for those with chronic conditions.  Shah sees his healthcare-specific chatbots answering questions about symptoms, medications, post-op care and other routine matters as a vast, virtual and low-cost expansion of the healthcare workforce. “What would happen in the world if we could have 30 million nurses? How much would America's health improve? That's the vision we're after.” And he argues that healthcare expertise available in every home in every language, 24-7 would be a major factor in improving access. “We want to really solve health equity for everybody.” Tune in to find out how Hippocratic AI plans to establish itself as a trusted source of accurate healthcare information, how they intend to manage AI’s ‘hallucination’ problem and how his system could actually improve patient engagement.  Mentioned in this episode: https://www.hippocraticai.com/ If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“I have coaching involved in all of my programs. It's just done wonders not only for the work I do, but for me personally,” says Dr. Rachel Salas, a professor of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University and certified strength and life coach. It wasn’t always this way. Salas was well into her career as a sleep specialist and clerkship director before being introduced to a strengths-based approach to personal and professional development. As she tells host Shiv Gaglani on this episode of Raise the Line, focusing on her strengths was a transformative shift and she is committed to sharing this powerful technique with students, colleagues and even patients. “If a patient is a learner, I know they’re going to like some materials to read about their diagnosis. If someone has a strength of being analytical, I'll probably need to spend a little bit more time talking about the different numbers in their sleep study report.” Knowing yourself and your strengths, she says, is also a valuable tool in helping medical students decide what specialty to pursue. “We want people to be their authentic selves. Who are they? Who do they want to be? How can we help you match your strengths with the meaningful career you want to have?” Based on the success she’s seen at Johns Hopkins, Salas is helping to spread the philosophy to other medical schools. Check out this enlightening conversation that also includes insights on applying precision medicine to treat problems with sleep. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

You’re going to hear something in this episode of Raise the Line that you most likely have never heard before: what DNA sounds like.  Our guests today all had an interest in musically representing DNA for different reasons, and have come together to pursue this theme as a way to raise awareness for rare diseases. Dr. Aditi Kantipuly had used the arts once before to achieve that goal by writing the children’s book The Zebra Alphabet. After coming across music based on genetic sequences composed by University of Chicago professor Stephen Taylor, a new idea formed. “Can we make a song for rare genetic conditions?” She expanded the possibilities by connecting with Casey McPherson, a Texas-based musician who had written a song based on his daughter Rose’s rare gene mutation. How do they do it?  “DNA consists of four letters -- A, T, C, and G -- and you can map those to anything,” explains Taylor. McPherson built melodies based on the amino acids involved in Rose’s condition. “Being a pop artist, I was looking for patterns. I was looking for motifs.” The aim is to engage people emotionally and intellectually in the fight against rare diseases. As McPherson puts it: “We have the technology to cure many of these diseases, we just don't have the structures to do it at scale. Music is a huge way of inspiring us to think differently.” Don’t miss this fascinating discussion with host Michael Carrese on a unique intersection of art and science.Mentioned in this episode:To Cure a Rose Foundationhttp://stephenandrewtaylor.net/https://thezebrabook.com/ If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast