Raise the Line

In this super insightful conversation with host Shiv Gaglani, Dr. Karim Lakhani breaks down the difference between “strong” and “weak” artificial intelligence, and how the healthcare world can not only adapt to it, but harness its full potential. But, he stresses, the system has some important groundwork to do before that can happen. “Process change is the biggest work that has to happen in healthcare, from discovery to the clinic and beyond. Otherwise, we're basically pouring digital and artificial intelligence asphalt over old cow-paths." As professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, founding director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, and the Principal Investigator of the NASA Tournament Lab at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Lakhani is a powerful intellectual force in understanding AI, open-source software and crowdsourcing. He’s also the author of the book Competing in the Age of AI. If you’re curious about how artificial intelligence might transform the healthcare system, this is a can’t miss opportunity to hear from a leading expert in the field. 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

As a young girl, Dr. Maria Guevara was inspired by her parent’s volunteer medical missions in the Philippines where they helped repair cleft lips and palates. The deep impression that work created led her on a path to medicine and eventually to her role today as International Medical Secretary at Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders). In her eighteen years with the agency, Dr. Guevara has traveled the world tending to the needs of people who have been victimized by armed conflicts, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks such as Ebola. Founded in 1971 in the wake of the Biafra war in Nigeria, Médecins Sans Frontières now operates as an independent medical organization in over seventy countries with more than forty-six thousand members. Join host Shiv Gaglani for this riveting conversation with Dr. Guevara in which she shares her experiences in the field, provides her thoughts on global health as a discipline, and shares lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic with an eye on the looming challenge of climate change. “We’re getting dress rehearsals on a regular basis to see how we can fix ourselves. It's like Mother Earth is saying, ‘We’re going to teach you. Learn!’” 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

“From the beginning, my approach was that we need to challenge the system,” says Dr. Ronald Harden, General Secretary of the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE). In the 1970’s as a young medical professor in Scotland, this mindset led Harden to create the Objective Structured Clinical Examination, or OSCE, which dramatically improved the way medical students are evaluated. Many years and contributions later, he continues to push the field through AMEE, which is holding its popular annual conference starting August 27 in Lyon, France. As he tells host Shiv Gaglani, his latest focus is on the evolving role of the student, which will be described in a book being published by Elsevier next year. “The student has a changing role as a partner in the learning program. They're not just there as a client or consumer, but as a partner.” This partnership could extend to the area of helping to assess peers on resilience and problem-solving -- qualities newly recognized as important due to COVID -- and ones that students might be in a better position to observe than professors. Check out this inspiring wisdom drop from a veteran educator who has not lost even a wee bit of enthusiasm for his work.  “I think we have an exciting future ahead in medical education. There are so many things still to be done.”For more information on the AMEE conference, visit https://amee.org/Conferences/AMEE-2022 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

“So much of healthcare actually does have parallels to the business world, insofar as much of our job is to help align people to the next steps that are in their best interest,” Dr. Robert Lord tells host Shiv Gaglani.  Dr. Lord, who recently completed his medical degree at Johns Hopkins, understands the parallels between the business world and the healthcare world better than most. As a Partner at early-stage digital health venture capital firm LionBird Ventures, Dr. Lord works with all sorts of exciting companies focusing on elements of healthcare that can range from the back office of compliance, to front-end clinical devices. Prior to LionBird, Dr. Lord co-founded Protenus, which provides healthcare organizations with risk reduction solutions.  Robert’s insights have been featured in Forbes, The Baltimore Sun, and many national conferences, and he has briefed the U.S. Senate on cybersecurity threats to our nation's healthcare systems.  Tune in to this insightful conversation to get an inside-look into some of the exciting new start-ups Dr. Lord and his team at LionBird are working with, as well as many take-aways for aspiring medical professionals and entrepreneurs alike.  (Dr. Lord’s comments reflect his personal views and do not represent those of the organizations with which he is affiliated.Mentioned in this episode: https://www.lionbird.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

“It's a strange odyssey being a rare disease parent. It sort of forces you to question everything about life,” says Philippe Pakter, whose daughter Lysiane was born with Pierre Robin Sequence, a condition that impedes normal breathing and feeding. In this compelling interview with Shiv Gaglani, he shares the wrenching details of his family’s daunting emotional, medical and legal journey. “It's tough, but you just have to keep going and from the hardship can potentially come very beautiful things.” Among the brighter spots of their story are finding a non-surgical treatment that helped with part of Lysiane’s condition, and connecting with a network of dedicated clinicians focused on improving treatments for Pierre Robin Sequence. (Pakter recently interviewed one of those doctors, Stanford’s HyeRan Choo, about non-surgical approaches. Listen here.) Don’t miss this opportunity to hear hard won wisdom about ways clinicians can approach their work to be mindful of rare diseases and how they can be a resource for patients and families who are often desperate for answers.  Pakter is a great example of how well-informed rare disease family members are, and why clinicians should listen closely to what they have to say. 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

Ryan McQuaid was facing chronic back and joint pain so intense he could barely stand up in the morning.  Without a primary care doctor to reach out to about his symptoms -- and little experience navigating the healthcare system -- he turned to a friend, James Wantuck, who happened to be a Stanford-trained physician.  Through this relationship, which was largely conducted via text messages and FaceTime calls, Ryan’s condition was diagnosed and he received effective treatment.  It was out of this experience that PlushCare was born. “We said let's take that experience, this human-centric personalized care done digitally, and democratize it and give it to every American.” Today, the company provides nearly instant access to primary care from a desktop or smartphone, making it easy for patients to get the care they need without ever having to leave their home.  The company has grown considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now has provided primary care and behavioral health care to hundreds of thousands of people in all fifty states.  Tune in to this conversation with host Michael Carrese to hear where the future of virtual care is headed, and how PlushCare’s team is tackling a major problem in the U.S. in an innovative way. Mentioned in this episode: https://plushcare.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

With its mission to bring the benefits of modern medicine to places that have been impacted by poverty and injustice, Partners In Health has been at the forefront of the battle for global health equity since it began in 1987.  Founded by a group of like-minded physicians and philanthropists, including the late Dr. Paul Farmer, it has focused on strengthening health systems in the communities that need them most. “Paul really saw that the link between academia and clinical and the community had to be a deliberate and authentic one," says Dr. Sheila Davis, CEO of Partners In Health. Dr. Davis began her work as a nurse fighting the HIV pandemic in the 1980s and has since built an amazing career in healthcare and philanthropy, holding multiple leadership roles at Partners In Health over the past decade. In this informative conversation with host Shiv Gaglani, she gives us an inside look at the organization's current work, provides insights on what it takes to strengthen healthcare systems, and stresses the importance of taking a community-grounded approach.  Mentioned in this episode: https://www.pih.org/ 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

Like many academics, Dr. Peter Decherney wears many hats, but in his case you can also add a virtual reality headset.  That’s because in addition to being a professor of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, he’s also a filmmaker working in both the traditional “flatty” format and virtual reality, with subjects ranging from artists in Puerto Rico to a Jewish community in Ethiopia. Choosing which medium to use to tell which story is a newer part of the process he enjoys. “Filmmaking is often about this kind of obsessive control. It's a challenge to be able to give up some control and create lots of different opportunities and learning experiences for audiences,” he tells host Michael Carrese in this episode of Raise the Line. Using technology to create learning experiences is also a big part of his job as the Faculty Director of UPenn’s Online Learning Initiative, a role that put him at the center of perhaps the largest, quickest, and most significant change in higher education in modern times when the pandemic forced the universal use of remote learning. “The pandemic was a moment of reflection and it was kind of amazing to see people across campus just think about education and pedagogy in a really deep and new way.” Check out this wide-ranging conversation to find out what that new thinking is leading to, what he likes about online instruction himself and one of the most important things universities learned about themselves during the pandemic.Mentioned in this episode: Information on Film About Ethiopia: https://www.dreamingofjerusalem.orgKalobeyei Refugee Settlement Video: https://youtu.be/1y-FM5o1xdUPersonal Website: decherney.org 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

“Curriculum is at the heart of everything a university does, so it only makes sense to architect the solution we provide based on the core offering of the universities,” says Greg Vanclief, President & CEO of Elentra.  The tech industry veteran and his team are on a mission to transform the delivery of higher education and nurture life-long learners through an end-to-end platform featuring a wide range of tools to support everything from scheduling to curriculum mapping to testing and accreditation management. The global reach of Elentra’s advanced education management system is growing in part because it allows universities to consolidate multiple existing software tools into one.  Join host Michael Carrese as Vanclief provides a peek into the tech support underpinning successful student journeys, and shares his passion for entrepreneurship and transforming higher education.Mentioned in this episode: https://elentra.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

In the last decade, a projected physician shortage drove the establishment of new medical schools across the country. Among these was the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, where Dean Dr. Paula Termuhlen is working to forge an identity for the young institution. She says they’ve settled on “health equity” -- a vision that emphasizes teaching and practicing among the undeserved in the local community. This, she tells host Michael Carrese, doesn’t just mean more people get care, but it also shores up public trust in doctors, and brings new potential populations into the medical education pipeline. “We've come to recognize that you really have to reach down into elementary school to inspire young people to continue their education,” she says. Tune in to hear about what it means to build a medical school from scratch, why communicating clearly with the public is among the great medical challenges of our time, and how the pandemic has opened up new possibilities for emerging health care professionals to shape the field for the better. 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