Raise the Line

“It seems counterintuitive, but I believe we can use technology to enhance the humanity in medicine and get back to the deep connection with patients we used to have,” says Dr. Eric Topol, one of the most cited researchers and influential thinkers in the field. In a series of bestselling books on the future of medicine, Topol laid out that digitization of health information would lead to democratization of data and patient empowerment, and that applying machine learning and other technologies in the right ways could actually create room to enhance the level of humanity in medicine – something he feels has been lost over the years. “The reason we went into medicine was to care for patients, and if you feel you can't provide care because of all of the demands modern medicine places on clinicians, that's when you get depressed, and you get disenchanted, and you lose your sense of your mission.” In this fascinating dialogue with host Shiv Gaglani, Topol talks about the potential of Artificial Intelligence and deep neural networks to “get us out of the mess we’re in and usher in the most exciting time in medicine.” They also touch on COVID and highlights of his career including starting a medical school, being editor in chief of Medscape, and his research work in genomics. 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. Kathy Winston's passion is to help the next generation be successful in the delivery of care. The key to nursing education, she says, is balancing the old with the new. As we embrace technological advances in the field, we need to also keep the basic tenets of safety and compassion at the forefront. Dr. Winston started her 30-plus year career at age 19 as a critical care nurse, and then, interested in the prevention of illness, moved to the public health arena before shifting to nursing education. In her view, the COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused educational institutions to become more agile, but has also revealed the need for greater focus on community and public health. In this conversation with Dr. Rishi Desai, she asks us to reach back over 200 years ago to Florence Nightingale for advice that is still applicable to the crises we face today. 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

“Nothing crosses borders in our polarized world like a willingness to care for critically ill children,” says Dr. Jeffrey Burns, a former medical liaison for the US State Department. In addition to leading critical care at Boston Children's Hospital and teaching at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Burns is also the founder and co-program director at OPENPediatrics, an innovative, open-access online community where healthcare professionals from around the world share resources and best practices. Join us for a treat as Dr. Burns talks with Osmosis Chief Medical Officer Dr. Rishi Desai, a former student of his, about the OPENPediatrics platform's international COVID-19 discussion group and how this collaboration brought about the discovery of the potentially fatal MIS-C inflammatory syndrome. In this episode, Dr. Burns not only shares critical information about MIS-C, but also reflects on his career and work with the CDC, addresses public mistrust of vaccines, and encourages others to join the healthcare 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

“If a patient feels like their doctor knows them as a person, they're eight to nine times more likely to follow through with their treatment instructions,” says Dr. Ken Johnson. Creating that kind of connection is more challenging in a virtual visit, he worries, not to mention the reduced opportunity to take the actual “hands-on” approach to care that osteopathic physicians practice. But schools of medicine like the one he runs at Ohio University are finding ways to teach telehealth skills, and Johnson has confidence the students will make it work. “Students have great ideas about how to evolve things, and I challenge every single class that comes in to give us feedback to improve the process for them,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. Embracing the sudden ascendence of telehealth is just one of the major adjustments today’s medical students are having to make in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, and Johnson sees building their resilience to manage the stressful and unpredictable nature of a career in medicine as a key objective, which he says can be accomplished if you create an “environment of support.” Catch this conversation with host Shiv Gaglani as Johnson discusses how that can be done, strategies for serving rural communities and why so many schools of osteopathic medicine are located in relatively small towns. 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

The “morass of healthcare misinformation” surrounding COVID-19 created the need for a clear, definitive voice to help fill the knowledge gap, says Dr. John Danaher. His company, Elsevier, stepped up. In response to the pandemic, Elsevier launched three COVID resource sites providing free information and research tools that were used by healthcare providers all over the world to help treat and manage the disease. Elsevier, an information and analytics company with roots in publishing, produces a quarter of the world's healthcare information. With this scope of impact, and a career that spans all sides of the healthcare delivery continuum, Dr. Danaher has some valuable perspective to share. Listen as he speaks with Dr. Rishi Desai about his own background, providing curated clinical guidance at the point of need, meeting the demand for clinical training opportunities, and the need for frontline providers to take care of their mental health. 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 time to change the narrative on menopause, says Jannine Versi. Women in their 40s, 50s and 60s aren't fading from relevance, they're discovering greater freedom and creativity, and looking to the future. Versi's company, Elektra Health, is facilitating this shift, offering a platform for women navigating hormonal health that features education-focused, highly individualized care. In this episode of Raise the Line, Versi speaks with Dr. Rishi Desai about the multifaceted nature of menopause and how underemphasized it generally is in physician education and patient care. Tune in to learn more about Versi's career, Elektra's approach, and the connection of menopause to long-term health outcomes. 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

Mental illness was on the rise in the U.S. even before COVID-19 hit, and studies show a majority of Americans say their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress over the coronavirus. In the absence of definitive blood or genetic tests for mental health disorders, and given the acknowledged limitations of self-reporting and questionnaires, there is certainly room for new screening and diagnostic tools. Work is underway to test the effectiveness of brain scans, mobile device data and other modern technologies for diagnosis, but turning to one of the oldest forms of communication might also yield valid clinical results: analyzing speech. That's the focus of Mainul Mondal, CEO and Founder of start-up Ellipsis Health, which is aiming to create a new vital sign for behavioral health by using AI to analyze just a few minutes of speech. "We want to be able to measure depression and anxiety objectively in a scalable, engaging way so you can quantify it and manage it," Mondal tells host Shiv Gaglani in a thoughtful discussion that also touches on the "trust factor" with AI, patient privacy, improving access to care and other potential applications for this approach. 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 can make purchases, travel plans and dinner reservations in a few clicks, but being able to pay your hospital bill with similar ease is a rarity. That's where Cedar comes in, a "fintech" start-up bringing personalization and transparency to the notoriously cumbersome world of healthcare, especially when it comes to billing and payment. Among the improvements Cedar enables are personalized reminders and payment plans, bill tracking, a customer service chat bot, and translation of indecipherable billing codes into understandable language. CEO Florian Otto, who holds an M.D., D.D.S. and PhD, started his business career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company and is a former executive at Zocdoc. Check out this episode of Raise the Line with host Shiv Gaglani to hear more about his fascinating career, his predictions for the post-COVID healthcare landscape, and how Cedar assisted healthcare systems communicate with patients during the COVID crisis. 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

Community colleges are often described as the gateway to higher education because they are often the most affordable option. But they’re also the gateway to careers because of the many internship, certificate and shadowing programs that are typically arranged with local organizations. The Maricopa Community Colleges District, which serves 200,000 students on ten campuses in Arizona, is a poster child for this kind of community-based access and career training. Two leaders in the Maricopa system join Raise the Line host Shiv Gaglani to share how the system rallied to retain students thrown off-course by COVID, describe new partnerships spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement, and talk about the innovations in their nearly 50 healthcare programs to keep learning on track despite a reduction in clinical training opportunities. 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 we do things right, this will be your last job." That's the message Dr. Bradley Younggren has for physicians applying to join his company 98point6, which offers a text-based, AI-powered mobile app for delivering primary care. For Younggren, getting it right involves making doctors full-time employees with equity in the company, and encouraging them to innovate. "Providers know what the problems in healthcare are," says Younggren. "The key is creating a physician workforce that's allowed to impact change." His own impact includes service as a decorated Army combat physician and being at the center of handling one of the first major outbreaks of COVID in the U.S. as medical director of emergency preparedness, trauma and urgent care at EvergreenHealth in Seattle. Check out this interview with Shiv Gaglani packed with insights on how telehealth can be leveraged to increase patient and provider satisfaction, and be utilized to achieve the goal of making primary care universally accessible. 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