Empowered Patient Podcast

David Vivero is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Amino Health. He brings his experience from Zillow to make Amino a convenient site where employer-based healthcare plan members can find information about their healthcare options, make appointments, and access understandable cost estimations. The Transparency in Coverage Rule says that beginning January 1, 2023, every health insurer in the U.S. has to ensure that their members have access to the price of at least 500 services inside their health plan. That will become all services by January 1, 2024. David explains, "Our clients are the sponsors of these health plans, these employers, the labor unions, and the health plans themselves. And the reason they partner with Amino is that we're provably able to support their members and help them make the right choice at three times the rate than if they didn't have Amino. This is part of the reason that there is this push for greater transparency so that people make better decisions. That's what we do. T

Dr. Shrujal Baxi is a medical oncologist and the Chief Medical Officer at Iterative Health pioneer in precision medicine technologies for gastroenterology. The Iterative SKOUT polyp detection tool provides algorithmic assistance to physicians during a colonoscopy to improve the ability to detect and remove polyps. With colon cancer getting diagnosed at a younger age, it is increasingly important to detect polyps as early as possible. Shrujal explains, "I think there's a lot of science in the space for detection of precancerous tumors throughout the body. In colon cancer currently, it's still very anatomic, which is we look for polyps, we look for abnormalities, dysplasia, we look for things that we can see on the end of the camera that's a colonoscopy. We flag them, and we try to remove them. Now, many of those lesions may never have gone on to become cancer. Part of this is our learning, over time, that there are certain polyps or certain lesions that are more likely to become cancerous, and can we target ou

Teodora Pavkovic is a youth psychologist and Director of Community Engagement at Linewize, whose mission is to protect every child's digital journey and to keep students safe at school, at home, and everywhere in between as they engage with the online world. The pandemic changed how students learn and socialize. The increased use of online devices, social media, and suspect websites impacted the mental health and well-being of students, and changed the responsibilities of teachers and parents to ensure safe digital behavior.   Teodora explains, "On the one hand, we are a technology company. We provide tech-based solutions in the form of filtering, classroom management, of safety monitoring. And then, more recently, a well-being assessment tool as well. And then the second piece, which is particularly relevant for me and for my work, is that community support and education. So really making sure that the staff and the parents, and the students themselves are educated around all the topics within the online saf

Lisbeth Votruba, Chief Clinical Officer at AvaSure, reflects on the challenges for nurses and hospitals in these times of nursing shortages, burnout, and expedited retirements. The AvaSure solutions provide virtual nursing, safety monitoring, and expert virtual nursing to monitor critically ill and high-acuity patients. Experienced nurses and those trained as virtual nurses embrace this solution as a way to care for patients while supporting the efficient use of hospital resources for bedside care. Lisbeth explains, "The first model that I'll talk about is the Telesitter® solution, which supports nurses indirectly. This involves using mobile devices or sometimes fixed cameras with really amazing audio in patient rooms. We are using that to keep patients safe, prevent falls, prevent elopement. This also was used to protect nurses from COVID because patients were ripping off their oxygen masks because they were confused and reminding them to put their masks back on again." "Prior to this revolution in virtual p

Rayne Guest, the Founder and CEO of ArrowClean, raises the alarm about the lack of effectiveness of traditional disinfectants to eliminate superbugs and other contaminants. Some of the most vulnerable people are in hospitals where patients and staff are exposed to germs, many of which are not treatable. ArrowClean is bringing a hypoallergenic, environmentally safe solution to the disinfectant industry. Rayne explains, "We have hand sanitizers that take forever to work. Nobody's using them properly. We have people that are not disinfecting properly. They're not letting disinfectants sit long enough on surfaces to kill bugs. Most disinfectants don't kill superbugs because there are different types of pathogens. And a lot of disinfectants also cause harm to human and environmental health. So, it's kind of like we're stacking the cards against ourselves in a lot of ways." "We have a patented device that creates hundreds of gallons of disinfectant and cleaner in a day. It has that capability. The products that com

Dr. Mark Sumeray is the Chief Medical Officer of Amolyt Pharma, focusing on rare diseases that affect the endocrine system, the hormonal system that regulates essential body functions. Despite the surgeon's best efforts, the parathyroid glands may be damaged or removed when operating on the thyroid gland creating permanent hypoparathyroidism. As a result, the body does not produce sufficient levels of the parathyroid hormone, which regulates the level of calcium in the blood. Current treatment includes large doses of calcium tablets and vitamin D, which does not address disabling symptoms and long-term complications for the kidney, heart, and brain. Mark explains, "If you have a deficiency of a hormone, in this case, the parathyroid hormone, then the most obvious thing to do is to replace the missing hormone by giving the hormone or something very similar to the hormone to the patient. So instead of the glands producing the hormone as they should do in the normal situation, in this case, we give something tha

Rick Hawkins, CEO and Chairman of Lumos Pharma, is developing an oral compound to treat idiopathic pediatric growth hormone deficiency. Currently, the only treatment for this condition is an injection of recombinant growth hormone. The small molecule drug LUM-201 increases the amplitude of the 23-25 peak releases of growth hormone during the day and night and stays within the normal physiology of the endocrine feedback loop. Rick explains, "Although we are a drug that we're starting with pediatric growth hormone deficiency, there are actually 11 different diseases of growth hormone deficiency. PGHD happens to be one of the largest ones, which is why we are starting there. In addition to the fact that the burden of care, kids taking lots of injections for that period of time, having an oral alternative is a huge step up in not just compliance and ease of use, but the overall burden of care improves dramatically." "First of all, this is another one of those examples in the pharmaceutical industry where Big Phar

Ophir Tanz is the Founder and CEO of Pearl, a company utilizing AI to revolutionize the dental industry. Their FDA-cleared product can detect nine different dental conditions. The diagnostic assistance device analyzes radiography images in real-time to identify pathology, existing restorations, and natural anatomy. Their Second Opinion tool is designed to be used by the practitioner to design a precise course of treatment that the patient understands. Ophir elaborates, "We think dentistry is particularly ripe for the infusion of AI and particularly what we do, which is a form of AI called computer vision, into the category. So first off, dentists capture more x-rays and radiography than any other form of medicine does on an annual basis. And if you look at the levels of concurrence across different practitioners and how they're detecting pathology, you have a disease like interproximal caries or periapical radiolucency or calculus. These are very, very easy to miss, especially at the early stages. So, if you'

Nicole Broadhurst, CEO and Founder of Tennessee Health Advocates, is an expert on the world of independent Health Advocates, including clinical, cancer, rare disease advocacy, and medical billing and health insurance. She emphasizes the risks patients face when they do not understand how their health insurance works and the role an independent advisor can play in sorting out details and solving problems. Nicole explains, "I would say the top risk for patient financial safety is that most patients don't understand their health insurance and the associated cost-sharing responsibilities. The words seem very simple, and we hear a lot about the deductible, coinsurance, copay, maximum out-of-pocket, and the total cost of coverage, which includes your maximum financial risk. Most people don't understand exactly how that all works." "The second one, I would say, is not understanding how to utilize our healthcare options. A lot of people don't understand when it's appropriate to use their health insurance or if it wou

Dr. David Huang is Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer at Peptilogics and working to change the approach for treating and reducing reinfection rates of periprosthetic joint infection, PJI. Their lead highly charged peptide PLG0206 has been shown to be broad spectrum and active against multi-drug resistant bacteria, common causes of PJI. Peptilogics' AI/ML platform is accelerating peptide discovery to reach better clinical candidates in therapeutic areas such as rare diseases, immuno-oncology, and immunology. David explains, "Peptilogics' approach to changing the treatment paradigm for treating PJI is by treating PJI directly at the site of infection. Instead of administering an antibiotic systemically or by mouth, as mentioned earlier, Peptilogics has an engineered cationic peptide and an irrigation solution that can be administered directly to the site of infection in the wound cavity of the knee, for example. The knee does not have a great blood supply. Therefore, antibiotics given intravenously or by mouth

Virginia Halsey, Vice President of Product Management at FDB,  First Databank, is focused on helping pharmacists use drug interaction information, drug alerts and dosage data in smarter, more efficient ways.  WIth patient safety in mind, FDB is arming pharmacists with relevant content to determine the clinical impact of a specific drug on a specific patient. Virginia elaborates, "First Databank is drug content, but a very specific niche of drug content in that it is structured in such a way that it's built into the workflow of other systems. So, for instance, if a patient goes into a retail pharmacy, the pharmacist behind the counter is using their system to basically fill the prescription, adjudicate the claim, and so forth. But that drug content that's within their system comes from First Databank. Content that describes the products that are available, the pricing, and most importantly, clinical information about the drug, such as what's the appropriate dose or what are the drug interactions." "It's savin

Dr. Jason Cohen, Senior Director of Clinical Solutions at Qventus, is addressing the problems that hospitals face regarding discharging patients. Much of care planning starts during hospitalization or at the last minute, so patients and caregivers are often left confused about the next appropriate care environment. Qventus is deploying AI to build a model with hundreds of different data points to predict highly-individualized discharge plans. This benefits patients, hospitals, and care teams by keeping track of progress, identifying bottlenecks, and making necessary adjustments to the care plan. Jason elaborates, "We look at patients, for example, who get an early discharge plan, which we define as being an estimated date of discharge and a disposition where they're likely to go. Those patients that have their care team aligned around that early plan by the second midnight in the hospital experience have significantly fewer excess days in the hospital. They're more likely to leave on time and get to their nex

Robert Hoffman President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board at Kintara Therapeutics, is developing a drug to treat glioblastoma, the most common and deadliest form of brain tumor. The only drug temozolomide, TMZ, was approved in 1999 and the overall survival rate is very limited. The Kintara drug VAL-083 crosses the blood-brain barrier and is also showing promise for pediatric brain tumors and some ovarian cancers. Robert explains, "The mechanism of VAL-083 differs from other key chemotherapeutic agents, including TMZ. It induces interstrand cross-links at guanine N07, causing DNA double-strand break and cancer cell death. If you compare that to TMZ, it only induces a single-strand DNA break at N07, and the tumor cells can repair them. That's really an important distinction of our mechanism of action. So, we're really, really excited." "So, I could imagine once it's approved, physicians would potentially combine it with TMZ, potentially which still may happen. Or Avastin, potentially. So, yes, there is a possibi

Dr. Sean Bohen, President and CEO of Olema Oncology, is looking for a better endocrine option, alone or in the context of a CDK 4/6 inhibitor, to treat ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. Their oral pill OP-1250 does not have chemotherapy-like side effects and could be better tolerated than chemotherapy to aggressively target and turn off the estrogen receptor. Sean explains, "In that respect, I'd say the estrogen receptor is probably one of the most validated therapeutic, molecular therapeutic targets in cancer, with tamoxifen first being approved in 1977. That said, that progress here has been relatively slow. Tamoxifen, approved in 1977, is not a complete antagonist. It turns on the receptor in some contexts, and turns it off in others. Fulvestrant is a complete antagonist. It has to be injected. That was approved in the early 2000s, and here in 2022, we're still working on getting a better estrogen-receptor targeting therapy." "What happens, as is often the case in cancers, is that the ER-positive,

Dr. Tim O'Connell is a practicing radiologist and CEO and Co-Founder of Emtelligent, a medical natural language processing company. Their software converts unstructured text in medical documents into structured data to allow a variety of clients to get access to information that in the past has not been available. Tim explains, "The problem was that the NLP engine just wasn't good enough. If there was a family history item, it would misidentify it as belonging to the patient. Sometimes it would get negation wrong, and it would miss important terms or have a hard time dealing with ambiguous words or acronyms. I knew that the premise was correct. As a clinician, I needed better access to patient data, and I needed access to the unstructured data, but I needed a better NLP engine in order to get it." "What we've done is really brought together medical experts and NLP experts and built a system that understands the very unique medical language. Just to take one example, you take something as simple as the word PT

Marcus Dorstel Head of Operations at Turquoise Health, is part of a team of engineers and healthcare experts focused on the price transparency data that started coming out in 2021 on the hospital side and in July 2022 on the payer side. These prices were previously kept secret and in data silos so that the full picture of costs was not possible. Their aim is to support the No Surprises Act, which requires providers to create a good faith estimate of all medical services ahead of actual service.  Marcus explains, "At Turquoise Health, ultimately, we want to simplify the way healthcare gets paid. I think we're all keenly aware of the complexities of the healthcare space, a lot of that around the payment structure and even just what the price of healthcare is. And so, we're a startup focused on price transparency in the healthcare space and helping all parties within the healthcare ecosystem really simplify those payments and bring more transparency into healthcare." "Hospitals are certainly taking a look at the

Nate Maslak is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ribbon Health, which is a healthcare data platform to power patient care decisions, including price transparency for all services. Their unique technological approach incorporates data from across the entire healthcare ecosystem. It uses predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning to determine accurate information while allowing patients to contribute data back into the system. Nate explains, "The overall technology focuses on being able to provide the right information on a provider at the right moment in time, so whenever/wherever somebody's seeking care. And the number of problems that exist in provider data is shocking, and sometimes I feel like they are infinite. So just starting with something as basic as the provider directory, so phone numbers, addresses. What is the specialty of this provider?" "That information out there today is about 45% accurate, which is terrifying because that doesn't even start to hit on some other elements that are hard to get acros

Dr. Shafiq Rab is the Chief Digital Officer and System Chief Information Officer at Tufts Medicine and an advocate for cloud-based health ecosystems. Healthcare is one of the last industries that has not moved into the cloud to integrate the entire ecosystem of patient data, clinical trial updates, provider information, and payer processes and allow for research and advanced analytics. The cloud provides the flexibility to scale operations and reduce costs related to physical space and administration. While it is hard to get the variety of electronic health record databases and applications to work together, it is even harder to get the humans involved to adjust to new technologies in the workplace. Shafiq explains, "So in the world that we live in, where everybody wants an Amazon-like experience, healthcare has to go a little forward. On paper, things are still a little less efficient. To make that happen, there are three stages that everybody has to go through. One is digitizing everything, then digitalizat

Dr. Harvey Kaufman is the Senior Medical Director at Quest Diagnostics and Director of the Quest Diagnostics Health Trends Research, and he raises the alarm about the impact of delayed diagnostic testing for cancer due to the disruption of the COVID restrictions. While progress has been made on more effective treatments, early-stage cancer diagnoses significantly contributed to the 32% decline in cancer deaths between 1991 to 2019. The delay in cancer screening can turn one public health crisis caused by the pandemic into another crisis, with more advanced-stage cancers requiring more aggressive therapy and having worse outcomes. Quest Diagnostics is the leading provider of diagnostic testing services and information in the United States and a leader in cancer diagnoses and testing. Harvey explains, "We looked at people who had missed testing for diabetes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis, and a host of other conditions, including cancer. And we showed that in the early months of the pandemic, particularly Mar

Dr. Charlotte Jones-Burton is the Senior Vice President of Product Development and Strategy at Chinook Therapeutics, which is on a mission to change the course of kidney care by discovering and developing precision therapies to maintain kidney function in people who have rare, severe chronic kidney diseases. Charlotte explains, "Our lead clinical program is atrasentan, a highly potent and selective endothelin receptor inhibitor. We believe that it's going to be a best-in-class molecule that's going to target the endothelin pathway. And the condition for which we are developing it is IgA nephropathy. Now, IgA nephropathy is an autoimmune disease that attacks the kidneys, and it affects how our blood is filtered in the small blood vessels of the kidneys that I spoke about. And what happens with IgA nephropathy is that immune complexes can deposit in the kidney and really damage those filtering units inside the kidneys. And when this happens, individuals can have symptoms such as protein spilling into their kidn