Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Tom Milam is the Chief Medical Officer at Iris Telehealth, which focuses on providing in-person and digital support to community mental health centers, Federally Qualified Health Centers, and rural health clinics that don't have enough access to behavioral health providers. The populations they treat are often underserved and have social determinants of health that are barriers to accessing timely care. Tom elaborates, "We're also working a lot in emergency rooms and hospitals around the country. Seeing patients there with behavioral health issues, again in organizations that don't have enough providers. And that seems to be par for the course around the country for a lot of hospitals and health systems. They need additional providers, and we're happy to provide those through telepsychiatry at Iris." "The positive thing about telepsychiatry really is that it eliminates the geographic barriers that are huge barriers for people getting care. So we can get our excellent providers into areas that have a reall

Scott Gray is the President and CEO of Clincierge and is focused on streamlining clinical trial recruitment, retention, and completion and improving the results of trials to speed time to approval. Clincierge is most concerned about the challenges presented by travel needs and logistics for patients, caregivers, and family members. Scott explains, "Our mission is to lead the global clinical trial performance improvement market. So a lot of my experience has been in leadership development with my pharma customers and performance improvement. And as we created Clincierge over the last seven years, we felt that what we could do in the space, being non-medical in our approach, that we could help with the patient experience and thereby influence the overall outcome to the improvement of clinical trials." "We positioned it in the space of clinical trials and helping those who want to conduct clinical trials, especially sponsors, to better understand what patients are asking for or to better understand the challenge

Dr. Thomas Young is the Founder and Chief Medical Officer of nView Health, a behavioral health technology company providing tools for physicians and researchers to help diagnose psychiatric disorders accurately and efficiently determine treatment options. In addition, the nView Health tools allow tracking and following outcomes to determine if the right drugs have been prescribed and if the cognitive behavioral therapy intervention is working. Thomas elaborates, "Mental health is a large category. I think what people have to understand is, kind of the old rule when I was teaching in medicine, is that 50% of the people that come into a doctor's office for some sort of physical ailment also have a mental health disorder. One in five Americans has depression at some point in their life, and that's a significant number of people. Anxiety is climbing in children. Eating disorders are shooting up at hockey stick rates." "What nView Health does, we believe strongly that the system requires the ability to create an i

Shuo Qiao is the Co-Founder and CTO of Moving Analytics, a digital health company focusing on cardiovascular health and providing alternatives to traditional cardiac services. While many devices measure blood pressure and monitor activity, using them can be time-consuming and provide inaccurate readings. Shou points to clinical evidence that home-based cardiac rehabilitation with remote sensing support is as safe and effective as in-person care. The challenge is getting providers and payers to understand how this approach can significantly benefit them as well as patients. Shuo explains, "What we are using currently is from one of our device providers. They provide a heart monitor and weighing scale that basically just does the measurements. They will automatically transfer the data through 3G network to our server. I would say there's zero set-up for the patient. They just get the device, and they just measure their blood pressure and weight. That's it. When it's done, data automatically uploads. No set-up w

Dr. Anthony Japour is the Chief Executive Officer and President at iTolerance, an early-stage privately-held regenerative medicine company. Currently, if a patient receives a pancreatic islet transplant to treat type 1 diabetes, there is a need for lifelong immune suppression. The technology that iTolerance is developing leverages the protein Fas Ligand to enable implantation without the need to be immune suppressed to suppress the body from rejecting the foreign tissue. Anthony explains, "Our treatment does allow for local immune tolerance, so around the area of the cells, organoid, or tissue. It allows it to be accepted without the body rejecting it by inducing what's called local immune tolerance. This does not affect the systemic immune system, only the local immune system. And it has not been done in humans yet. It's been tested both in rodent model rats as well as in monkeys. And in both models, we can cure type 1 diabetes." "The technology of our product came from Georgia Tech University in Atlanta, as

Spiro Rombotis is the CEO of Cyclacel, which is identifying biomarkers relevant to their drug fadraciclib's mechanism to increase the chance for success in trials for a wide range of cancers. Cyclacel has seen activity of fadra as a single agent in phase one patients with women's cancers like endometrial, ovarian, and breast cancers, and lymphomas, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer. Spiro explains, "Before the pandemic, we had an intravenous version of fadra administered to patients in a single center study at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. And although the drug was active in these patients, it is clear during the pandemic and now, at hopefully the tail end of the pandemic, that oral therapies have dramatic advantages. Not only because patients don't have to be exposed to the virus, which is not a very good idea for a cancer patient who is more vulnerable than the general population, but also because of the ability and convenience of receiving a drug orally and staying at home." "We take patients r

Jim Pursley is the President of Hinge Health, the leading digital health musculoskeletal (MSK) clinic that aims to reduce joint and surgical pain by deploying wearable sensors and computer-vision technology and clinical care teams. Hinge is addressing chronic and acute MSK pain with a mission to reduce the use of opioids and bring lasting relief to patients. Jim explains, "We have the goal of alleviating pain for millions of people, not just here in the United States but around the globe. Musculoskeletal challenges, whether they be acute or chronic, account for a significant amount of the cost in today's healthcare system and also have a significant detrimental effect on the quality of life." "As a result, what they do is they turn to other things like opioids, and surgery, which again has both a detrimental impact on their quality of life and also is a big cost driver in the country today. And so our job is to reduce the friction in this system. Whether it's the access challenge, whether it's the cost challe

Dr. Jessica Grossman is the CEO of an early stage biotech, IgGenix, the world leader in discovering and characterizing IgE antibodies which have been identified as the cause of allergies.  With an initial focus on peanut allergy, IgGenix is developing a plan to use a subcutaneous injection to block specific allergic reactions immediately. Jessica explains, "At IgGenix, what we do is start with whole blood donations from allergic donors. And we take that blood and isolate out the single B cells that are making the IgE antibodies. We get those IgE antibodies, and we transform them into an IgG antibody that's actually protective. And I'll use again, peanut as an example. That's our lead program, which we're the furthest ahead. We have done some pre-clinical work, some animal studies, which look remarkably promising, and I'm excited about it. But what we envision our therapy looking like is an antibody therapeutic that would be given to an individual, and the antibody would immediately protect them from any accid

Bret Scholtes is the President and CEO of Guardion Health Sciences and is in the business of bringing medical foods and dietary supplements to the market. Formulating products with ingredients with solid science behind them, Guardion is also focused on creating good-tasting products that people want to continue to use for good health. Bret explains, "So, for example, we have an omega-3 gel bite that we'd recently formulated and started selling. There are a tremendous number of studies that are done on omega-3s. We put it in a format that's a little bit different than a soft gel. We'll be doing clinical work to basically prove the efficacy of not only omega-3 but also, what it looks like in that gel bite format, and how that would compare to other options that a consumer would have." "We think that there's the opportunity to look at the role that calcium plays in order for a person to benefit, from a bone perspective. We think that omega-3s are an excellent opportunity for someone to get essential nutrients th

Robbie Hughes is the Founder and CEO of Lumeon, which is deploying its care orchestration platform to personalize the treatment plan and follow-up for patients while guiding care providers to make the right decision at the right time. Robbie elaborates, "We decided that there was a need for a solution that would proactively coordinate care algorithmically and do so at a very low cost. Thus, you could use that system to coordinate care everywhere. What we see now from our providers and our partners is that they use it to coordinate everything from elective surgery to discharge planning to hospital-at-home and everything in between." "I need to do all of this in real-time. What we are doing is we're combining all of these things together into a single solution, and it really allows us to do something transformative in terms of the personalized scaling of care. It's tasking the care team specifically with activities, and it's automating those, and that's engaging the patient and making them an equal participant

James Hammer, the Senior VP at Harmony Healthcare IT and Dr. Colin Banas, the Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst join me to discuss their recent partnership to accelerate the transition of care providers and payers to a digital environment. Faced with clinician burnout, organizations are even more pressed to find efficient methods to treat patients and reduce the need to struggle with outdated information systems and data silos. Jim explains, "The farther back or historical, the older legacy applications are, the less the data is actually what's called discreet or codified. And today's EHRs, obviously require codified data to alert triggers and have to be codified to be able to interact and be interoperable with other systems. What's exciting about this relationship between DrFirst and us is they've got years of technology and the ability to look at medications, for example. And, to take literally descriptive text and convert that into codified data, meaning translate that to an NDC code, or a drug name, as wel

Rajatesh Gudibande is the Co-Founder and President of GraphWear Technologies, which has taken lessons from earlier self-monitoring blood glucose device development to come up with a patient-friendly system for continuous monitoring of glucose in people with diabetes. Using a needle-free device, this smart device is attached on the wrist, on the lower abdomen, or on the side arm. Raj explains, "The principle of operation is fairly simple and also unique, in a way. Let's look at what is our source first. Skin is the largest organ in the human body, and it has access to interstitial fluid, which is the fluid just underneath the skin and a few layers off it, so underneath the stratum corneum. And so, if we are able to somehow put a device that can taste molecules by pulling them out a little bit just on the surface of the skin, then we can access whatever's there in the blood." "But that requires a device that's very sensitive. So the first key principle operation is we have a sensitive material that is electroni

Jeff Beck is the Chief Development Officer at BioCareSD, a specialty pharmaceutical distributor. The field of specialty drugs has grown from the first drug for hemophilia in the 1980s to today, with about 50% of the drugs in the pipeline being specialty drugs. BioCareSD is an important component of the supply chain to ensure that these life-saving and life-sustaining drugs are available at the right time and in the right place. Jeff explains, "I'm actually right now at the World Orphan Drug Conference, and it's unbelievable the number of studies that are underway for diseases that maybe a hundred people have, or a thousand people. What we're seeing now is more, and more of these patients are being able to live a really great life, no longer worried about having debilitating conditions. Sometimes, it's life-saving medicine. Sometimes, life-sustaining medicines. At BioCareSD, we're an important cog in the wheel to get those products to the patients." "Specialty pharmaceuticals, it seems like the term has expand

Marty Gauvin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fertilis, an Australian-based company creating micro medical tools to be used in cell culture such as IVF to improve outcomes. There is a vast difference in outcomes of IVF across different clinics in part because of the human intervention that is required in the cell development process. Fertilis has developed a system that controls the environment around each cell and mimics what would happen in the body. Marty explains, "The first way it makes it cheaper is simply by having one less cycle. Patients are not paying for a baby. Patients are paying for a cycle. And so if it takes one less cycle, the average at the moment is three cycles, if you could have a baby in two cycles, that's a very major saving. A saving well into the five figures that you're going to make in any marketing in the world." "It further makes it efficient because, at the moment, IVF is so expensive because it's what the economist would call supply constraints. There aren't enough embryologists and

Jenny Ahlstrom is the Founder and CEO of the HealthTree Fouon and a multiple myeloma patient and patient advocate. The HealthTree Foundation was the winner of the GSK Target the Future Think Tank Challenge and will receive financial support and technical expertise to extend equal access and diversity in multiple myeloma research, clinical trials, services, and education. This effort includes patient navigators who are members of the Black community as well as Spanish speakers who can provide patients access to material translated into Spanish. Jenny explains, "I was diagnosed in 2010 and had some hypotheses about what I wanted in terms of my own therapy and my own types of support that I was looking for. And so, in 2012, we started the foundation, and we have been building up different patient programs for multiple myeloma over that long period of time. We've just gone to look and see what is available already in terms of support services. Then we identified different gaps that we saw as patients ourselves an

Dr. Tania Small is the Vice President and Head of Global Oncology Medical Affairs and Chair, R&D Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Counsel at GSK. To improve clinical participation and outreach to a more diverse multiple myeloma community, GSK created the Target the Future Think Tank Challenge to find partners to meet unmet needs. Tania explains, "This is where this whole Target the Future program stems from. It was really understanding what the needs are in the multiple myeloma community so that we get an earlier diagnosis so that we get improved access so that we get improved outcomes. What we did at GSK is we asked those questions. Then we paused and said actually the people who are best equipped to tell us is, are the patients themselves and their caregivers. And so, our goal was to take a grassroots approach to really understanding what are the key needs in this community to have the optimal outcome." "So, we launched something called Target the Future to your point, this think tank for anyone in the

Joe Landolina is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cresilon, the only fill-and-finish operation in the five boroughs of New York. Building on a discovery about the ability to stop all kinds of bleeding, Cresilon is using recycled algae, meaning algae or kelp that has washed up onto the shoreline. The vendors they work with are highly sustainable as they are not damaging kelp forests but salvaging material that has already washed up on beaches. Joe explains, "So I was very experienced in plant-based chemistries, and one day I was trying to run an experiment. The original intent of the experiment failed, but what I came across was this blend of two polysaccharides, long chains of sugar, that formed a gel that would immediately reassemble and stick to tissue, like skin or an open injury. It wouldn't let go until you wanted it to." "That's not quite what we do today, but that led to the technology that we now have commercially under the brand name VETIGEL, which is a hemostatic gel that immediately stops anything from th

JT Garwood, the CEO and Co-Founder of bttn, identified there was not a spot on the internet where healthcare providers could go and compare the price of their most frequently purchased products. The bttn mission is to build a system that allows for transparency through an online marketplace and digital platform. With excellent customer service, the platform allows each practitioner to save time and money when procuring key supplies, getting the quality they expect. When customers or suppliers work with bttn, the company digitizes multiple parts of the supply chain. JT elaborates, "On the healthcare distribution side, I see it as bifurcated between national distributors and local distributors.  There has been great organization to this entire process for many years. Healthcare distribution has been going on pretty flawlessly for the last 80-plus years in the United States. Group Purchasing Organizations have dominated it for a very long time, and healthcare providers are getting the supplies that they need. It

David Fontana is the Chief Business and Strategy Officer at Umoja Biopharma which is using a cocktail of their TumorTags to kill solid tumors.  This in vivo technology has the potential to streamline the gene therapy process by driving down costs, simplifying logistics, and increasing accessibility. David explains, "With in vivo, we don't deal with cells per se. We deal with cells in the body. So I'll focus on what we do. We have a very proprietary technology called VivoVec, which is a delivery system to deliver RNA through lentiviral vector particles. Our secret sauce is the ability to surface engineer these VivoVec cells to make them more specific, it's called tropism, to drive them to certain cell types. We're focusing on the T-cells, but also to transduce this RNA message, so all we're delivering is the components of an RNA message to get transformed into the target T-cells of the human. We're basically taking those T-cells and making them better killer cells by implanting these payloads, as we're calling

James Mackay is the Founder, President, and CEO of Aristea Therapeutics, a San Diego-based company that is applying its insights on neutrophils to develop a treatment for a rare inflammatory skin condition known as palmoplantar pustulosis, PPP. Most of the people who get this disease are postmenopausal females, and 90%+ of the patients either are current cigarette smokers or have a history of cigarette smoking.  James explains, "So neutrophils are cells that are part of the immune system. They sit in the bone marrow, and then when there's either an infection or an inflammatory response in the body, the neutrophils are attracted out of the bone marrow to the site of infection or inflammation. In inflammatory diseases, what you often see is extremely large numbers of neutrophils accumulating at the site of the inflammation, which obviously causes some challenges for the patients." "And in our particular case, we have a drug, it's called RIST4721, which is a CXCR2 antagonist which actually blocks the neutrophi