Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. David Feldman is the Chief Medical Officer at Dimer Health, a virtual care medical practice designed to improve patient outcomes during the critical 1-3 days following hospital discharge, outpatient surgery, or emergency room visits.  The company addresses the gap in post-acute care between hospital care and primary care follow-up by proactive monitoring, medication management, and pain control. Inspired by the hospitalist model, Dimer is defining a transitionist model that is tailored to each patient's needs and home environment, intervening early on minor complications to reduce emergency room revisits and hospital readmissions.  David explains, "Dimer Health is a health tech company. It's a medical practice deliberately built to better serve patients after any post-acute care event. And what I mean by that is patients go to the emergency room and are discharged, patients are admitted to the hospital and are discharged, maybe they have surgery. And it's in those first 1 to 3 days after that when the trajectory of their recovery is really determined. As an emergency room physician, I see a lot of those complications that come in. A couple of our founders were also emergency room providers, and so we wanted to be deliberate about building a medical practice, a virtual care medical practice that fits right into that window to prevent those patients from coming back to the hospital." "And I think a good example of that is a very realistic scenario: a patient has joint replacement surgery, and it's a couple of days later. Their pain medications are changing. Maybe they're transitioning to different types of pain medications, or they're just starting to utilize their pain medications. They're adjusting to new mobility issues. Maybe they're learning different kinds of injections or blood thinners. They're not sleeping well. Families are trying to help, and there are just changes to their home life that occur because of the procedure that happened. And when you're outside the four walls of the hospital, it's sometimes difficult to understand what's normal post-op healing and what's more concerning than that." #DimerHealth #JointReplacement, #PostAcuteCare, #PatientSafety #HospitalReadmissions, #PostDischargeCare, #SurgicalRecovery dimerhealth.com Download the transcript here  

Sharon Blank, CEO of RxTran, highlights the value of certified translations of prescription dosing instructions in 26 languages to ensure that limited-English-proficient patients can understand dosing and medication risks.  The organization works with pharmacies to deliver translations created by native-speaking pharmacists rather than by automated systems or untrained interpreters. As this LEP population grows, RxTran advocates for standardized, human-verified translation practices to ensure healthcare access and patient safety across all populations. Sharon explains, "So RxTran's mission is to provide certified translation of the dosing instructions on prescription labels and ensure that LEP patients have the ability to understand their dosing instructions. And our primary clients include both small individual pharmacies as well as large chains." "Truthfully, everybody needs the exact same standard of care, whether you are proficient in English or not. And we always say that good enough is not good enough. So it is our belief that you absolutely must have the translated SIGS be done by a pharmacist who is native in the language into which it's being translated. And then be stored in a bank. So it's not pre-written text dosing instructions. It is from a data bank of certified translations." "So, right now, there are sort of three real issues in that situation. And the dangerous outcomes include the patient won't take the medication because they're fearful. Or they take the wrong dose or at the wrong time. And what we hear time and time again is that they rely on an untrained relative, neighbor, or friend to translate. And all of these just really potentially cause great harm." #RxTran #PatientSafety #HealthEquity #Pharmacy #LimitedEnglishProficiency #LEPpatients #MedicationSafety #LanguageAccess #HealthcareInnovation #PatientAdvocacy #HealthcareInnovation #EmpoweredPatient #MedicationAdherence #PharmacyInnovation #WomenInHealthTech #HealthTech RxTran.com Download the transcript here

Craig Ahrens is the CEO of Worki, a healthcare workforce management platform that aggregates fragmented HR records by unifying disparate data sources and deploying AI agents to streamline workflows. To address anxieties, the focus needs to be on reducing administrative burdens through intelligent scheduling, not on eliminating jobs. Transparency is key for employees in this integration of legacy systems with AI-powered tools, so that healthcare organizations can improve resource allocation, enhance retention, and improve patient care while maintaining human oversight.       Craig explains, "Worki is solving the fragmentation tax that is plaguing the HR and workforce components of the healthcare industry. And when I say the fragmentation tax, what I'm talking about is that within healthcare, there are a number of legacy systems and non-legacy systems, meaning just spreadsheets and pieces of paper that are part of the HR workforce picture. These are leading to what I call visibility gaps or blind spots, as well as high administrative friction or burden for frontline clinical workers."   "So the ability to manage the workers, the ability to engage them, the ability to efficiently deploy AI in a meaningful way through a combination of data, has been hampered. And what we do is we solve for that by unifying that fragmented information and then putting it into action around key HR workforce roles. Specifically, we start with usually access scheduling roles as well as career amplification roles." "What I mean by clear career amplification could be retention, could be upskilling in the face of the evolution of work around how AI is impacting their tasks associated with their roles. We're basically helping organizations, particularly healthcare organizations, address these fundamental fragmentation issues and then activate in a way that empowers HR to solve for the evolution of work." #Worki #HealthcareWorkforce #AIinHealthcare #WorkforceInnovation #HealthcareOperations #HealthcareTechnology #FutureOfHealthcare #Healthcare #Nursing #HealthcareHR #WorkforceManagement #HealthIT #Staffing #Upskilling #PatientCare #DigitalTransformation worki.us Download the transcript here

Sonia Garcia, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Amae Health, an integrated care company specializing in the treatment of severe mental illness that operates community-oriented clinics to deliver comprehensive psychiatry-led care. They provide continuity of care across multiple acuity levels, recognizing these conditions require long-term management. Amae is also advancing psychiatric care through research and partnerships by deploying wearables for health monitoring and investigating biomarkers and pharmacogenomics to improve treatment outcomes. Sonia explains, "Amae Health is an integrated care company that exists to treat the most complex mentally ill. So those that are suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder. And we do so through these community-oriented clinics that deliver comprehensive care that's psychiatry-led, but also incorporates therapy, primary care, social services, peer support specialists, dieticians for a lot of nutrition guidance, and health coaching. Then clinic care coordinators manage all the in-between things that need to happen to get somebody back on track and living a healthy, stable life."   "Another core pillar within the company that I'll just add is getting into technical research and innovation, with lots of work we can do to uncover what is causing this, what interventions we can deploy. How can we partner with others in the ecosystem, whether that's pharma or life sciences, to advance psychiatric care and see if we can get towards putting many of these conditions into remission?" #AmaeHealth #MentalHealthCare #SevereMentalIllness #IntegratedCare #MetabolicPsychiatry #Schizophrenia #BipolarDisorder #ValueBasedCare #ContinuityOfCare #HealthcareInnovation #Psychiatry amaehealth.com Download the transcript here

Sarah Lowe, Global Clinical Operations Director at XVIVO, develops technologies to preserve, assess, and transport organs for transplantation. With advanced assessment of donor lungs, the mission is to evaluate marginal organs better to address the critical challenge that only 2 out of 10 available lungs are currently accepted for transplant. With their first in-house ex vivo lung perfusion program, the goal is to increase organ utilization and expand access to transplants. Sarah explains, "At XVIVO, our vision really is that nobody should die waiting for a new organ. As a company, we develop technologies that allow our clinicians to preserve, assess, and transport organs. So, in doing so, we're able to be part of the solution by helping increase the number of organs available for transplantation. In my role at XVIVO, I get to work closely with clinical teams and partners to support the implementation of our technologies and their programs, not only in the US but around the world. So really everything that we do is centered around helping more patients receive those lifesaving transplants."   "So this collaboration is so incredibly important, not only for XVIVO. I think for the transplant community as a whole, it brings advanced lung assessment directly into the organ recovery process. XVIVO lung perfusion- you'll hear me say EVLP. It is placed into the workflow at the organ procurement organization level rather than in a separate step later in transplantation." "So Indiana Donor Network, I'll call it IDN, is the first organ recovery organization in the US that has an in-house lung perfusion program. And through this partnership, IDN can assess donor lungs using EVLP before transplantation decisions are finalized. So for us, it does matter for a few reasons. And I think it's important to emphasize that two in 10 lungs are transplanted, which means that 80% of them are declined." #XVIVO #OrganTransplantation #HealthcareInnovation #MedTech #PatientOutcomes #TransplantMedicine #LungTransplant #EVLP #OrganDonation #TransplantInnovation #IndianaDonorNetwork #PerfusionSolution #HealthcareInnovation #OPO #PatientCare XVIVOgroup.com Download the transcript here

Vin Singh, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Bullfrog AI, is applying proprietary AI technology to drug development, with a focus on drug target discovery and phase three clinical trials. The company's platform is derived from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and is designed to pinpoint drug targets, identify the root causes of disease, and match patients to appropriate treatments based on genetic profiles. Bullfrog AI aims to reduce clinical trial timelines, improve success rates, identify more accurate biomarkers, and improve patient outcomes. Vin explains, "We are in the AI innovator category, and we're applying our proprietary platform to the challenges that exist in the world of drug development for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Primarily our focus is on the first and the last stage of that process. So the first stage is what you call drug target discovery. So when you take a medication, it targets something in your body. So we're trying to identify novel targets that we believe are the root cause of certain diseases. And then we are also focused on the final stage, which is phase three clinical trials. That's where we have our experience. And that's obviously a very critical and pivotal point in the process and the final stage of a long 10- to 15-year, one- to two-billion-dollar drug development process."   "You need to have the right tool for a certain problem and then data, and they go together. I think on the data side, getting access to rich, deep data sets is critical. And fortunately, the cost to generate that type of data has come down pretty significantly over the past, say, 10 years. So now, for example, we have a project where we have brain data, and it's the type of data where you can really make discoveries and insights and so forth. And so that's a really critical part of this process. The other part is: what tool do you have, and what problem are you trying to solve? Our technology is unique. I'd say most companies use technology that comes from NVIDIA and AWS. So they're all kind of using the same tools from the same toolbox." "Our technology comes from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, which is a world-renowned institution. We have IP around our platform, and we've continued to innovate over the years. It definitely has unique capabilities, and it is specifically designed for the types of problems that exist in drug development." #BullFrogAI $BFRG, #AI, #AIinBiotech, #MachineLearning, #DrugDevelopment #AIinHealthcare #PrecisionMedicine #Neuropsychiatry #Oncology #DigitalHealth #ClinicalTrials #Biomarkers #bfLEAP bullfrogai.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Greg Carroll, emergency physician and Co-Founder and CEO of ClinNEXUS,  a data-first healthcare company addressing social drivers of health in underserved communities by breaking down data silos. Integrating clinical information with social, behavioral, and environmental factors and using AI to augment human care coordinators enables them to identify patient needs proactively and provide personalized support.  The model emphasizes building trust through in-person engagement while leveraging digital tools to enhance the care manager's ability to process complex data and deliver real-time insights. Greg explains, "We're a data-first company that is focused on improving healthcare outcomes for underserved communities. That's pretty broad. But if you think about traditional healthcare, especially in the United States, if you look at 20% of patients or individuals driving about 80% of costs in healthcare. And traditional healthcare has not been able to really put a dent in this over time. And really the reason is that traditional healthcare has not addressed the true drivers of people's health, especially in underserved communities."   "Traditional healthcare has not done a good job of addressing those non-clinical issues, and it's done an even worse job of orchestrating and ensuring that across all those dimensions, we're addressing people's health. And so, in terms of the mission, it's about breaking down the silos in people's care and in the data available to those who support them. Making sure we're looking at all dimensions of people's health and helping them navigate to live happier, healthier lives, especially for communities facing many of the challenges I've mentioned."  #ClinNEXUS #HealthcareInnovation #PopulationHealth #SocialDriversOfHealth #CareCoordination #AIinHealthcare #Medicaid #ValueBasedCare  clinNexus.com Download the transcript here

Susan Wood, CEO of VIDA, develops AI-driven imaging-based biomarkers that quantitatively measure biological processes and disease states using imaging modalities such as CT, MRI, PET, and ultrasound. Unlike traditional visual image analysis, VIDA's technology extracts approximately 25,000 measurements per imaging timepoint, enabling detection of therapeutic responses at the sub-millimeter level. This convergence of advanced scanner technology, high-quality imaging data, and AI-powered analysis represents a significant new frontier in precision medicine and drug development. Susan explains, "I'll start with what VIDA brings in. Our background has been the development and validation of AI-driven imaging-based biomarkers. I'll start by defining a biomarker, specifically an imaging-based biomarker. It's a quantitative measurement derived from an imaging modality. An imaging modality can be a CT scan, an MRI, a PET scan, or an ultrasound, and the measurement reflects a biological process, a disease state, or a response to therapy. VIDA's formation was focused on the production and validation of those imaging-based biomarkers and on incorporating them into provider-based clinical workflows as well as clinical trial or drug development workflows." "I would say that in general, traditionally radiology has relied on radiologic images, those imaging modalities have been read visually. And if you read an image visually, there's just a fraction of information that you can get from those images versus reading them with these AI-generated processes. So there's less than 1% of that image you'll be able to understand the extent and the complexity of the measurements that image can offer. We read, or we combine that visual reading with a highly quantitative process. So for each imaging time point, we'll measure 25,000 measurements per imaging time point. Obviously that's well beyond what a human eye could do just from an efficiency standpoint, but certainly from a precision standpoint, they wouldn't be able to measure that level of precision in the imaging by an eyeball alone." #VIDA #AI #DigitalBiomarkers #MedicalImaging #Radiology #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #PrecisionMedicine #HealthcareInnovation #RespiratoryCare vidalung.ai Download the transcript here

Luis Voloch, Co-Founder and CEO of Jimini Health, focuses on mental health through the Sage platform, which provides continuous AI support for patients while keeping clinicians informed and in control. The approach addresses the problem of patients turning to general-purpose AI for behavioral health support by offering a HIPAA-compliant, purpose-built alternative with proper safeguards and clinician supervision. The platform improves patient adherence to therapy and provides valuable information about progress between appointments, which is particularly important in mental health care where outcomes are non-linear and diagnostic precision is limited. Luis explains, "Right now, the AI healthcare environment is, I'd say, largely split when it comes to clinical AI between largely clinician-facing and back-office capabilities. So things like AI scribes and RCM tools and clinician coaching tools and products like that on one hand, with on the other hand, things that are primarily for patients. You may see things on the app store that are like AI therapists or products that are standalone for patients. And where Jimini stands is really as unifying both of these, where the core thesis for the company is that the right way to help patients and to build helpful clinical AI products is by integrating with the clinician as well, where the clinician has the ability to oversee what the AI is doing and to guide what the AI is doing."   "The company's belief is that we need to build purpose-built AIs for mental health that are HIPAA-compliant and safe, with all the right guardrails. And most importantly, where clinicians are in the loop and where the clinicians can oversee and guide what the AI is doing." "We primarily work with large behavioral health provider organizations interested in improving the quality of care they deliver. One specific big opportunity we bring is bridging the time between sessions so that patients have additional support. The core of the product is what we call Sage. Sage is an app that engages with patients in various ways, with the guidance of the clinician, so that Sage knows what is happening in the therapy sessions or whatever other appointments the patient is having. It is then able to follow the clinical priorities of the clinician when the clinician is not there, and Sage supports these patients on a daily basis." #JiminiHealth #MentalHealth #DigitalHealth #BehavioralHealth #AIinHealthcare #PatientEngagement #CareAdherence #Telehealth #HealthTech #AI #MentalHealth #PatientSafety jiminihealth.com Download the transcript here

Lew Bender, Founder and CEO of Intensity Therapeutics, has developed a novel approach to treating solid tumors through direct intratumoral injection of existing chemotherapy drugs. The company uses a proprietary formulation containing a special molecule that makes water-based drugs soluble in fatty tissue, allowing cisplatin and vinblastine to penetrate tumor cells effectively. Beyond direct killing of cancer cells, the approach triggers an immunological response that trains the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells throughout the body, including metastatic tumors that were not directly injected. Lew explains, "We're injecting directly into the tumors, and we have identified a formulation that allows for water-based drugs to become soluble in fat and water. Effectively, a tumor is fat and water. And while it has been tried before to inject water into fat, I helped to develop a chemistry that allows for water-based products to be absorbed by fatty tissue like tumors." "We are injecting our formulation, which is a special molecule called SHAO, that makes things soluble in fat and water, and two very well-known potent anti-cancer agents, cisplatin and vinblastine, that are able to kill cancers when they get into the cancer cells. So we dose based on the size of the tumor, check into the tumors, and the tumors in an immunological way. So what does that mean? It means that as the tumor cells die, they create chemicals that allow for the influx and recognition of the immune cells that this is not a good entity to be in the body." "We are killing the cancer with the drug, but at the same time training the immune system on the tumors so that the immune system can recognize the cancer as not self and attack the cancer in a more precise way." #IntensityTherapeutics $INTS  #CancerResearch #Oncology #Biotech #CancerCare  #ClinicalTrials #BreastCancer #TargetedOncology #IntratumoralInjection #OncologyInnovation #ImmunoOncology #IntratumoralTherapy #SolidTumors #TNBC #Sarcoma #HealthcareProfessionals intensitytherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Erin Palm, medical lead at Infinitus, specializes in agentic AI for healthcare, leveraging voice technology to facilitate actions and execute tasks on behalf of providers, payers, and patients to coordinate administrative functions and patient-facing applications. These agents can handle appointment booking, medication inquiries, and emergency triage within an environment with rigorous quality controls and guardrails to mitigate  AI errors. The platform supports seven languages, adapts communication to technical levels, and integrates with patient systems to maintain clinical consistency and regulatory compliance. Erin explains, "We focus on agentic communications for healthcare, which means building AI agents that can have conversations and execute on tasks on behalf of patients, pharmaceutical manufacturers, providers, and health plans. And our thesis in all this is that the care exists. It's the coordination layer that sometimes falls short and fails patients, and Infinitus makes sure that that care arrives."   "It's a reality that we're holding AI to a different standard than we hold humans performing the same tasks. That said, I actually see it as an opportunity to improve quality across the board. And I think it's reasonable to hold AI to a higher standard. And we measure those things closely using continuous evaluations of agent performance even before we put them into production. And then once they're live with patients, we continue to closely monitor their performance."  "We have benchmarks that show improved performance on tasks versus human agents doing some of those same tasks, such as appointment booking. That said, we know that generative AI DRs make mistakes and it predicts things that don't end up being true. And we call those hallucinations. In the clinical world, we like to call them confabulations. It tends to be more clinically correct." #Infinitus #AIinHealthcare #VoiceAI #DigitalHealth #HealthIT #PriorAuth #PatientAccess #HealthcareInnovation #AgenticAI #PatientSafety #HealthcareAutomation infinitus.ai Download the transcript here

Jimmy Chang, Chairman and CEO of TaiMed Biologics,  is approaching critical unmet needs in HIV care, particularly for aging patients with comorbidities who face risks from drug-drug interactions with multiple medications. The company is advancing the next-generation antibodies designed for bimonthly injections and an alternative to daily oral medications, while minimizing enzymatic metabolism and associated drug interactions. While successful treatments for HIV have shifted the focus from survival to quality of life and managing a chronic condition, new challenges have emerged to ensure patient convenience and adherence.  Jimmy explains, "TaiMed is a biotech company based in Taiwan. Our focus is to develop innovative product for the HIV. And actually, over the years we have developed the first CD4-directed antibody for HIV treatment, and the product was approved in the US. And today we are currently focusing on developing the CD4-targeting antibody in a combination for long-acting HIV treatment."   "So in today's world, HIV therapies, HIV patients, or the people living with HIV, the field is HIV as a chronic disease. The patient can live longer and healthier just like everybody else. However, it requires dedication and commitment to medication because there's no cure today. HIV, the virus keeps mutating. So if the disease is not under control, this could be problematic, and basically one day the patient may run into a situation where most of the drugs do not work for the patient." "So in the earlier days, the innovations or the medications were mainly trying to have the virus under control, with the focus of the medications. And so nowadays, because people living with HIV actually have a very good health condition, just like typical individuals live longer and healthier. So this comorbidity, or we call it the polypharmacy drug-drug interaction, is really the challenge that the physicians or patients have to face every day. And with our innovations, we believe we have the opportunity to offer another innovative medication to specifically address those challenges." #TaiMed #HIVCare #LongActingTherapies #AntibodyTherapeutics #CD4 #Polypharmacy #InfectiousDiseases #TaiMedBiologics #EmpoweredPatient #HealthcareInnovation taimedbiologics.com Download the transcript here 

Dr. Katherine Hockman, Director of the Division of Hospital Medicine at NYU Langone Health, and Dilshad Marolia, System Director of Hospitals and Regulatory and Policy Management at NYU Langone Health, are co-leaders of the Patient Experience Book Club for the hospital employees.  Operating since 2012, the program has grown from six books to 12 books per year, with sessions offered in-person and virtually to reach across the entire health system and, in addition, hosts pop-up sessions with visiting authors. The club helps break down departmental silos within the hospital, fostering connections among employees by creating a safe space for intellectual and emotional engagement while helping to combat workplace burnout. Katherine explains, "So my feeling is the Patient Experience Book Club is so much more than just a club where we read books and talk about them. It's really become a community of individuals who get together and share their experience in caring for some of our sickest patients. And it's also become a great venue for the faculty and staff to get to know each other a lot better and to share some of their vulnerabilities. And Dilshad and I, we've really taken it in many, many different directions. So we started off just reading six books a year, and now we're doing 12 books a year and two sessions a month, one in person and one on video for people who are in all parts of our system who can't make it in person."   Dilshad elaborates, "But now also as a community of 53,000 people in our own health system and part of the wider community of New York City and New York State even, how do we view our communities and ourselves, and what books are transforming us, and what are we taking away from each experience? And the level of intellectual engagement is one thing, but there's a high, high level of emotional engagement that I think is rare to find in the workplace to create these safe spaces where you have a vehicle, and I'll use that word, through which you can have a discussion about a very pointed topic beyond, say, an academic journal." #NYULangone #Bookclub #PatientExperience #HumanityinHealthcare #HealthcareLeadership #EmpathyInHealthcare #BurnoutPrevention #HospitalCulture #MedicalHumanities nyulangonehealth.org Download the transcript here

Nate Stasko, CEO of Vast Therapeutics, is developing a novel nitric oxide-releasing therapy to treat chronic respiratory diseases, particularly fibrosis bronchiectasis, which is frequently misdiagnosed as asthma or COPD. Their lead drug candidate is a dual-mechanism therapy that is delivered to the lungs via a nebulizer to target both infection and inflammation with the potential to eradicate pathogens rather than just suppressing them. This approach, in early trials, is showing excellent tolerability and eliminates the need for chronic antibiotic use, which carries the risks of toxicity and contributes to antibiotic resistance.  Nate explains, "At Vast Therapeutics, our main idea and goal as a company is to come up with better solutions for the 500 million people worldwide who suffer from chronic respiratory disease. And there is a new disease getting a lot of attention that we're targeting with our lead program called bronchiectasis, and it's often been misdiagnosed as asthma or COPD. And now over a million patients in the US are being diagnosed with bronchiectasis. And the whole campaign is to teach physicians and the whole medical community to suspect this disease over some of these other misdiagnosed diseases."  "Traditionally, patients have been managed with either antibiotics to calm down the infection, but you know the problems of chronic antibiotic use- the liver toxicity, kidney toxicity, and hearing loss associated with long-term antibiotic use are just bad for these patients. Not to mention we have the global problem of antibiotic resistance. And so giving a 52-week course of therapy of antibiotics is less than ideal. And then recently, just last year, there's some hope for these patients where there was a new drug approved called brensocatib, which was the first drug ever approved for bronchiectasis by the FDA. And so now it targets the inflammation." "Having the ability to target two mechanisms of action would be the best therapy. And that's actually what Vast is developing. We're using the body's own ability to make and produce nitric oxide, which is a miracle molecule. And we're delivering nitric oxide back to these patients to target both the infection and inflammation at the same time and improve the overall standard of care for these patients."  #VastTherapeutics #Bronchiectasis #Pulmonology #NitricOxide #RespiratoryMedicine #AntimicrobialResistance #ALX1#ChronicLungDisease #HealthcareInnovation #ClinicalTrials vasttherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Scott Walter is Director of Technology Transfer and Transition for the 59th Medical Wing of the Defense Health Agency located in San Antonio, Texas. The development of freeze-dried blood is a ground-breaking technology aimed at enabling medics to administer lifesaving blood transfusions at the point of injury. Scott highlights the logistical challenges of current blood products such as short shelf life, blood matching, and the need for cold storage, which this new technology would overcome. One of his current missions is to launch a prize competition to accelerate research, development, and commercialization of this technology, shifting the financial risk from the government to industry and expanding the uses of this product to dramatically improve survival rates and reduce long-term complications.   Scott explains, "Donated blood is very perishable lasting only about six weeks from the date of collection, and it must be maintained just above freezing until it's needed. And then it has to be warmed to body temperature before it can be infused. That makes it really difficult to impossible for medics to carry blood products with them when they're treating patients in remote austere locations like battlefields, for example."   "Well, the key is that freeze-drying enables the donated blood components to be collected, stored, and stockpiled for years after collection. The freeze-dried blood products can be carried by EMS units and medics. Then, once reconstituted, it can be given anywhere without the need for refrigeration." #TraumaCare #EmergencyMedicine #PrehospitalCare #CriticalCare #TransfusionMedicine #MilitaryMedicine #Innovation #FreezeDriedBlood #PatientOutcomes #GlobalHealth DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this podcast transcript are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Defense Health Agency, Department of War, nor the U.S. Government. Find out more about the competition Download the transcript here

Dr. Panicos Shangaris is from King's College London, where he is a senior clinical lecturer and consultant in maternal and fetal medicine.  He discusses the treatment options for sickle cell disease, an inherited blood condition, and his work on the Pericles project, which aims to treat it before birth. In-utero gene therapy offers a third option for parents of an affected fetus alongside postnatal treatment or pregnancy termination. Panicos emphasizes key advantages of fetal therapy within the first 16 weeks of gestation, the need to address ethical concerns, and ensuring the safety of both the mother and fetus during the procedure.  Panicos explains, "So sickle cell disease is an inherited condition that affects the blood and the molecule in the red cell, which is basically the red blood cell that carries oxygen. So what happens is the red cell has a biconcave shape, and for people who have sickle cell disease, that biconcave shape is lost, and the erythrocyte red cells are sickle-shaped. So because of that, the sickle-shaped red cells have difficulty going through small capillaries and small vessels. They can cause strokes, they can cause pain because they block the blood flow to the small capillaries." "Yes, so the cause is because of an abnormal gene, which basically makes the hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen around the different organs and around the body, instead of there being a problem in the genetic code, if I can put it like that. And that's why the erythrocyte, the red cells, have an abnormal shape. Very well-known what's causing it: a genetic problem." "So Pericles stands for prenatal therapy for Sickle Cell Disease. And what we are trying to achieve is to offer a third option to people who might carry a fetus affected by sickle cell disease. At the moment, the two options are stopping the pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, or having an affected fetus and an unaffected baby and sick postnatal care. So our aim is to offer a third option, which is correcting the disease inside the womb so that the parents have a healthy baby. So correct the gene while the baby is inside the womb. And this is the main aim of the project." #KingsCollegeLondon #KCLResearch #GeneTherapy #PrenatalCare #Hematology #Genomics #EmpoweredPatient #PERICLES #SickleCellDisease #SickleCellAwareness #PreconceptionCare #BeforePregnancy #PregnancyPlanning #CarrierScreening #GeneticCounselling #ReproductiveChoices #PrenatalDiagnosis #PrenatalTherapy #InUteroTherapy #GeneEditing #StemCellTherapy #FetalMedicine #MaternalFetalMedicine #HighRiskPregnancy #IVFJourney #PGTM #PatientVoice #PatientEmpowerment #SharedDecisionMaking #HealthEquity #PrecisionMedicine #PersonalisedMedicine #FutureOfMedicine  kcl.ac.uk Download the transcript here 

Mark Larkin, Founder and CEO of Vitaccess, leverages real-world patient data captured through mobile devices and wearables, combined with EMRs, claims data, and registries, to generate insights beyond the scope of traditional clinical trials. The company maintains proprietary disease registries, notably in myasthenia gravis, enabling researchers to compare treatment efficacy, side effects, and patient adherence to therapies in their daily lives. By linking diverse data sources and identifying comorbidities, the platform informs drug development, regulatory decisions, and the personalization of treatment matching. Mark explains, "Our mission is about patient-centric, science-driven research. That's how we do real-world research. We think that's a powerful way to combine scientific rigor with putting the patient at the heart of what we do. People are probably familiar with the idea that real-world data and real-world evidence are complementary to clinical trials. They don't have the same levels of scrutiny or the same designs, but nonetheless, if we do it properly, we should make it as rigorous as possible so the data can be used by many different audiences. Putting the patient at the heart of our designs means we can be in the best position to quantify the patient experience. That's really what we do, perhaps in the simplest terms."   "Well, I'd say that real-world data is a very broad church. There's lots of different types of data. Where I think you are referring to is data generated directly from patients, the patient-reported data. And I'll come back to that in a second, but it also includes a wide range of other data types and sources. So it could be electronic medical records. In the United States, very commonly it's claims data. There are registries."  #Vitaccess #RealWorldEvidence #PatientCentricity #ClinicalTrials #DigitalHealth #PatientReportedOutcomes #Wearables #RareDisease #HealthData #PatientInsights #RWE #HEOR #MyastheniaGravis #CIDP vitaccess.com Download the transcript here

Nadav Cornberg, CEO of Eve Security, highlights the need for real-time security for agentic AI in healthcare environments to enforce policies and map agentic activities within an organization. There are unique risks posed by AI, such as ambiguity from natural language commands, the potential for unintended or malicious actions, and the amplified impact of a single AI error compared to human error. Nadav points out that many hospitals are likely unaware of the extent to which agentic AI is already active in their systems, and of why conducting risk assessments and policy reviews should be a priority. Nadav explains, "Eve Security provides two main services. One is our runtime security solution, which allows us to enforce policies when you connect any type of AI agent to a critical data source or system. The other solution that we provide is our AIDR, where we give you a full topology of what agentic activities are running in your organization. We do that by connecting to security systems like an EDR, NextGen Firewall, or your SIM."   "Just like we'll see a manager in the employee environment, in the physical world, that's why we have managers as well to guide employees on the work they want to do. How that works is we sit either on top of existing gateways or proxies, and that's how you will connect those agents to critical systems, or we connect to hooks."   "At the end of the day, the reality of how we're communicating and engaging with agents brings that new necessity. Existing security tools do not deal well with natural language. In addition to not dealing well with natural language, they're not doing well with trying to understand the true intent behind an action, and it's more built on static parameters. And that's the real gap that introducing AI agents into environments has brought. The risks are ambiguity and the unpredictable, non-deterministic behavior." #EveSecurity #AgenticAISecurity #SecurityatRuntime #AISecurity #HealthcareAI #PatientSafety #HospitalSecurity #AgenticAI #CyberSecurity #HealthIT #DataProtection Eve.security Download the transcript here

Michalis Papadakis, CEO and Co-Founder of Brainomix, is developing AI technology to automate the analysis of brain scans of stroke patients, addressing the critical clinical gap where a majority of patients who should receive treatment are not being identified. The platform identifies stroke location, blocked vessels, and at-risk brain tissue on CT scans, enabling faster diagnosis and treatment decisions by a broader range of front-line clinicians who may lack stroke care expertise. In a large-scale evaluation, Brainomix demonstrated that it can save an hour in reaching treatment decisions and dramatically increase the number of patients who achieve full recovery. Michalis explains, "Brainomix started quite a few years ago now, and, as you noted, I'm one of the founders. And back then, I was the scientific director of the preclinical stroke lab at the University of Oxford here in the UK, doing research in stroke. And together with the other founders, what made us establish Brainomix and create Brainomix as a spinoff from the university was starting with the clinical unmet need. "As we were all experts in stroke, we knew that stroke is a devastating disease. It ages the brain by 3.6 years every hour a patient remains untreated. And although we have lifesaving treatments, up to 80% of patients who should be treated are missing out. And when we created Brainomix, we knew that imaging, which means the interpretation of the brain scan of patients who have strokes, is a barrier that is leading directly to this big number of patients missing out on being selected for treatment." "The idea was that if we used the AI and automated the analysis of the brain scans of those patients, we could help frontline clinicians with diagnosis and treatment decisions. So, since we started, we have been developing a technology that aims to increase the uptake of existing treatments in clinical care, but we are also working with pharma companies and biotech companies that are developing new treatments to increase the success of the trials." #Brainomix #Brainomix360Stroke #StrokeCare #AcuteStroke #StrokeTreatment #Neurology #MedicalImaging #ImagingAI #AIinHealthcare #DigitialHealth #HealthcareInnovation #Neuroradiology #PatientOutcomes #Thrombectomy #DigitalHealth #ClinicalDecisionSupport brainomix.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Ryan Beal, Founder and CEO of Dyve Biosciences, has developed a transdermal delivery approach that uses the skin to deliver agents into circulation, where they selectively neutralize the acidic tumor microenvironment. By correcting acidity, the immune system is reactivated to better recognize and attack cancer cells, as acidity serves as a natural immune checkpoint that allows tumors to evade immune surveillance. Unlike previous oral delivery approaches that cause gastrointestinal side effects, this non-invasive lotion-based technology delivers the same pharmaceutical safety and efficacy. Ryan explains, "What led me there is that tumor acidity has driven cancer biology for decades. The science has settled. What was missing was a way to actually fix it in patients and do it safely, broadly, and at scale. And that's what Dyve built. In 2026, the goal is to bring it into humans with trials at Moffitt Cancer Center."   "The core at Dyve was developing the delivery system. It could bring molecules through the skin. And one of the approaches that we got quite excited about early on was delivering buffering agents through the skin. The natural application was in oncology and going after the acidity of the tumor microenvironment."   "So it's a topical. In many ways it will look and feel like a lotion, and it's applied to the skin but delivered systemically. So we're essentially turning the skin into a delivery portal for these drugs. And that's important, especially important in the case of tumor acidity.  Because we and others have shown that while in animals you can deliver these therapies orally, it's a big delivery challenge for humans to take these agents orally. So you needed another way to circumvent those problems, and the skin gave us a really convenient path to do that." #DyveBiosciences #MoffittCancerCenter #CancerResearch #Oncology #CancerTreatment #Immunotherapy #PrecisionMedicine #DrugDevelopment #ClinicalTrials #TumorMicroenvironment #TransdermalDelivery #Biotechnology #OncologyInnovation #TransdermalTherapy #DrugDelivery #CancerCare #HealthcareInnovation DyveBio.com Download the transcript here

Joe Hickey is the Vice President of Provider Markets at Verato, which is a healthcare-focused identity management company. Identity fragmentation has been treated as a technical afterthought rather than a strategic infrastructure priority, resulting in denied claims, poor patient experience, and unreliable analytics. The Verato master data management approach uses AI to handle name variations, incomplete data, and complex matching to identify errors before they cascade throughout the enterprise. By addressing issues early, healthcare organizations can improve patient satisfaction, strengthen provider directories and referral management, and save money and increase revenue. Joe explains, "A big part of my role is to help executive teams think about identity not as a technical afterthought, but really more as a strategic infrastructure. When identity works the right way, everything downstream, like clinical care and digital engagement, analytics, and all-important AI, all of that works better. And that's becoming increasingly important as healthcare organizations invest more in digital engagement, analytics, interoperability, etc. And if that identity layer is wrong, everything built on top of it really becomes less reliable." "So Verato's been around for over a decade. We're purpose-built for healthcare, and at our core, we solve identity. We unify and manage patient, consumer, and provider identities. We do that across multiple systems so that organizations can operate from a single trusted identity layer and foundation." #Verarto #IdentityIntelligence #PatientIdentity #ProviderIdentity #IdentityInfrastructure #MasterDataManagement #MDM #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #PatientExperience #CustomerExperience #HealthcareInnovation   #TrustedIdentity #DigitalHealth #HealthIT #AIinHealthcare #PatientEngagement #DataQuality Verato.com Download the transcript here

Mark Saxton, CEO of Baird Medical, highlights their microwave ablation technology, which is being used to address a significant treatment gap for benign thyroid nodules. This minimally invasive approach is an alternative to radiofrequency ablation, accommodates patients with pacemakers or other cardiac devices, and provides faster recovery. Unlike surgery, microwave ablation preserves thyroid function, eliminating the need for ongoing hormone replacement therapy Mark explains, "It's very interesting that we're focused on thyroid tumors because they're an extremely prevalent issue. Most of those tumors are benign, and for many of those patients, active surveillance, or what we call watchful waiting, is appropriate. But a portion of those may need more than that. Their nodules are growing, they're becoming symptomatic either cosmetically or they're compressing on their throat, and that becomes extremely bothersome for them."   "A minimally invasive option, like a microwave, may be more appropriate for those patients than a surgery would be. The bottom line is there's still a huge gap between diagnosis and treatment, and that's an exciting problem for us to want to solve." "So surgery is extremely safe and very appropriate in many patients, but there is a scar, it's a surgery, you're under general anesthetic. The other thing that surgery does is if we do a thyroidectomy, we may be destroying the thyroid's ability, obviously, then to provide the hormones, T3 and T4, that regulate some of our metabolism. So with the microwave, we just destroy the nodule. We don't impact thyroid function in that way, so patients don't need that hormone replacement. So that's another great reason to move forward with something more minimally invasive." #BairdMedical #MicrowaveAblation #ThyroidMWA #MWA #ThyroidCare #ThyroidNodules #MinimallyInvasive #InterventionalEndocrinology #Endocrinology #PatientCare #MedicalDevices BairdMed.com Download the transcript here

Aaron Timm, CEO of Openwater, is driving the shift from single-purpose, room-sized equipment to multi-purpose, portable, light-weight medical devices designed on an open-source platform. Some tools use infrared light to measure blood flow in real time for applications such as stroke detection. Another device uses focused ultrasound to modulate tissue in the brain for treating neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric conditions. The platform is designed so that a single hardware device can run multiple applications, allowing researchers to adapt and develop applications specific to their work, bringing innovation into the marketplace similar to the smartphone app environment. Aaron explains, "So we have two primary devices. One uses infrared light to measure blood flow and blood volume in real time. So that one is being used, for example, to measure blood flow to the brain to help determine whether someone is having a stroke. At the University of Pennsylvania, there was a study done using that device, where our device outperformed the existing stroke scales. The other device that we have is a focused ultrasound device. And what that device does is it uses sound waves or focused ultrasound to target and modulate tissue in the brain and elsewhere in the body. That's being used in research today for all sorts of neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric diseases. And there's just a lot going on in the world of focused ultrasound, including using our devices."   "So this focused ultrasound device and the science behind it eliminates the need for drugs or surgery and just uses focused ultrasounds to modulate or stimulate things within the brain, for example. It's used for everything from depression, anxiety, Alzheimer's disease, and addiction. Many different indications are being addressed in research using these kinds of devices, including ours." #OpenwaterHealth #MedTech, #NonInvasiveCare, #PortableHealthcare, #PatientAccess, #HealthcareInnovation #FocusedUltrasound #LIFU #Hemodynamics #Openwater #OpenLIFU #OpenMotion #DigitalHealth #Neurotechnology #StrokeCare #AIinHealthcare #OpenSourceMedicine #ClinicalResearch #WearableMedicalDevices #HealthcareInnovation openwater.health Download the transcript here

Jack Silberstein, CEO of Deck Bio, is developing next-generation T cell engagers designed to activate the patient's immune system to shrink tumors. These T cell engagers are bispecific molecules that alert immune cells to recognize targets on cancer cells and kill them by binding to both the cancer cells and the T cells.  While earlier T cell engagers have succeeded in treating blood cancers, Deck Bio focuses on solid tumors where previous approaches have failed. Their lead molecule demonstrates strong potency and high safety, showing a response in patients with treatment resistance across lung, gastric, esophageal, liver, and head and neck cancers. Jack explains, "At Deck Bio, we're focused on next-generation cancer immunotherapies called T cell engagers and are working to engage a patient's immune response to shrink tumors, extend patients' lifespan, and deliver durable benefits in treating cancer. For T cell engagers, there's been a lot of excitement recently because, in 2022, we had the first-ever T cell engager approved for solid tumors. We're looking to build on these learnings, expand the reach of T cell engagers, and drive greater durable benefit."   "As you mentioned, these T cell engagers have been around for a while. With liquid tumors, there's a little bit of an easier problem to solve because, in terms of the cancer cells there, you're able to deplete them, and if you have any type of healthy tissue recognition of cells in your blood, that's not that terrible of a toxicity." "But in solid tumors, there's been a lot of failures in the field where people have tried to develop something against a solid tumor target that they thought was cancer-specific. Then, because of expression on other healthy tissues throughout the body, there were these dose-limiting toxicities. And just to level set in terms of what a T cell engager is, and help explain that, it's a bispecific molecule. What it most typically looks like is what people think of as an antibody, with that classical Y shape."  #DeckBio #TCellEngagers #Immunotherapy #Solidtumors #TumorHeterogeneity #ImmunoOncology #TCellEngagers #SolidTumors #CancerImmunotherapy #OncologyInnovation #MultiTargetTherapy #HemOnc deck.bio Download the transcript here

Professor Linda Macomber, a healthcare tech consultant at Renaissance Health, highlights the transformative potential of AI and digital health solutions, as well as the shift from siloed, symptom-focused care to holistic, personalized medicine. AI applications in healthcare have moved from deterministic expert systems to generative AI models that use genomic and longitudinal data from wearables for continuous monitoring and preventive care. Linda emphasizes that successful AI implementation requires viewing technology as a strategic investment rather than an expense, with a focus on actions that improve patient outcomes and clinicians' quality of life. Linda explains, "Well, I've certainly been involved in all areas of the healthcare ecosystem over the past 40 years. For the past 16 years, I have been a professor at National University, starting the Master of Science and Health Informatics program. The 30 years prior to that, working in different areas of software design and development in the early days with SAIC and the Department of Defense, then Kaiser Permanente, University of California systems, and then some work with community health centers as well. I'm a life fellow in HIMSS, which is only a few people who have been around long enough to have that designation. But started my career as an ICU nurse and still hold on to the clinical informatics side, look at it from the lens of a healthcare professional, as well as the tech, educator, and startup perspective. Most recently, I have been working with a number of different startups."   "Well, certainly when it comes to the opportunities with AI in particular, things are moving so fast and looking at lots of different priorities and opportunities. When it comes to incremental change, it is always a little easier, but I think that opportunities are much bigger now for much more significant advancement of the care delivery system. Bringing care to people instead of people always having to travel to facilities for care, using digital systems in new ways to empower all of us, informing choice, and being much more proactive and personalized."  #LindaMacomber #HealthcareInnovation #DigitalHealth #HealthInformatics #AIinHealthcare #ClinicalInformatics #Genomics #Wearables #PopulationHealth #Interoperability #MedicalEducation Renaissance.Health National University Download the transcript here

Alec Ford, CEO of Karius, has developed an innovative approach to diagnosing infections in immunocompromised patients, using DNA sequencing of blood samples to identify over 1,300 causes of infection within 24 hours. Traditional diagnostic methods rely on hypothesis-driven testing and the cultivation of organisms. At the same time, the Karius approach enables faster, more targeted antibiotic treatment, reduces unnecessary broad-spectrum antibiotics, and can identify infections that may not be included in the initial diagnosis. Time to proper treatment is essential for vulnerable populations, including cancer patients, HIV-positive individuals, organ transplant recipients, and those undergoing autoimmune therapies.  Alec explains, "These are patients going through cancer treatment, patients with HIV, people going through solid organ transplantation, or people being treated assertively with autoimmune therapies for autoimmune disorders, where it may compromise their immune system. That really vulnerable patient is our exclusive focus as a company."   "So, a patient gets admitted to the hospital for an infection. They take a sample of that patient's blood. And what we can do is diagnose over 1,300 causes of infection by sequencing the patient's blood for viruses, parasites, bacteria, and fungi that could threaten the success of their cancer treatment or solid organ transplant. There's never been a test in the history of infectious disease that can test for any DNA-based organism, and we do so. We can return a result 24 hours after we receive the sample."   #Karius #InfectiousDisease #Diagnostics #Metagenomics #MedTech #KariusSpectrum #KariusFocus #NextGenSequencing #ImmunocompromisedCare #Oncology #TransplantMedicine #AntimicrobialStewardship #Genomics #MolecularDiagnostics #KariusTest #PatientSafety #HealthcareInnovation Kariusdx.com  Download the transcript here

Lisa Gurry, Chief Business Officer at GeneDx,  is transforming the diagnosis of rare diseases in children by providing comprehensive genetic testing. Using exome and genome sequencing, they deliver rapid, accurate results that enable early intervention and access to therapies. Through partnerships and a network of genetic counselors, GeneDx connects patients with specialists and clinical trials to ensure equal access for children and has established a comprehensive database that supports clinical care and drug development and helps identify previously undiagnosed or misdiagnosed conditions. Lisa explains, "The average diagnostic odyssey, or the time it takes to get a diagnosis, is tragically far too long for most families. It can take five years or more to get that diagnosis. And it's typically because the system tends to wait and see to provide the genetic tests that could give a diagnosis very quickly. At GeneDX, we've focused on exome and genome testing, which enables us to have a very comprehensive view across variants of potential diagnoses. And so that's our recommendation: any family that is experiencing a developmental delay has concerns with epilepsy, autism, or any number of genetic potential conditions. The beautiful part about a genetic test is that it can give you the answer you need to know what action to take." "It's remarkable how much science and technology have evolved. So we did our first exome test in 2011, and since then we've sequenced over one million exomes and genomes. So, a tremendous amount of progress has been made in the number of children that we've diagnosed. That's possible because science and technology have advanced, the cost of the test has dramatically reduced, and our ability to deliver that at scale is something that we've been investing in for the last 25 years."  #GeneDx #RareDisease #Genomics #Pediatrics #PrecisionMedicine #GeneticTesting #Epilepsy #GeneTherapy #RealWorldData #Biopharma #ClinicalTrials #HealthcareInnovation genedx.com Download the transcript here

Kelvin Cooper, CEO of Lakewood-Amedex Biotherapeutics, has developed a novel class of antimicrobials that operate by disrupting bacterial and fungal cell membranes, rapidly killing the microorganisms. Traditional antimicrobials work by inhibiting bacterial growth, but bacteria have evolved resistance mechanisms against all drug classes, with multidrug-resistant strains becoming increasingly common. The company is focused on treating infected diabetic foot ulcers with a topical gel formulation that locally delivers a high drug concentration while minimizing systemic side effects. Kelvin explains, "You can go back all the way to the discovery of penicillin a century ago, and there was tremendous excitement around that. And then through the 40s, when they figured out how to deep tank ferment the antibacterials, the beta lactams, as it was then, again, there was no real indication that resistance was going to be that big of a problem."   "What we have done at Lakewood-Amedex Biotherapeutics is we've discovered a completely new class of antimicrobials, and it's probably good to give some context of how most antimicrobials work. Typically, what they do is they will stop the bacteria from dividing and growing, and that prevents the bacteria from causing an infection. Now the bacteria and fungi have figured out ways to mutate around that. So they have a different way of building cell walls, for example. And that has become the big problem. Our class of agents hits a completely different type of mechanism. We believe that what happens, and we have good scientific data to show this, is that this class of agents attacks the membrane of bacteria and fungi. It disrupts the membrane, which allows the contents of whatever microbe it is to spill out, and it immediately kills the bacteria extremely rapidly." #LakewoodAmedex #AntimicrobialResistance #AMR #InfectiousDiseases #Antibiotics #Antimicrobials #DiabeticFoot #DiabeticFootUlcer #HealthcareInnovation   #DiabeticCare #Biotech #PublicHealth #MedicalBreakthrough $LABT lakewoodamedex.com Download the transcript here  

Harith Rajagopalan, Co-Founder and CEO of Fractyl Health, is developing innovative therapies that target the root causes of obesity and metabolic diseases to achieve durable, long-lasting patient outcomes. Their drug is designed to address post-GLP-1 rebound weight gain by treating the underlying gut damage.  Unlike GLP-1 medications that manage symptoms through appetite suppression, the aim is to modify the disease driving the obesity and change the paradigm from a symptomatic treatment to one of disease modification.  Harith explains, "Our focus at Fractyl is all about how to achieve durable results for patients, long-lasting benefits. And the way in which we try to do so is by targeting root causes of obesity and metabolic disease and developing innovative therapies, targeting those root causes that offer the potential for long-lasting benefit for patients."  "I think that GLP-1s have been transformative, as you say, but they have in many ways created an altogether new problem called post-GLP-1 rebound. What we are seeing in the United States right now is that there are a million people a month who are stopping a GLP-1. The more effective GLP-1 was for them in weight and metabolic control, the more rapidly they rebounded to whatever their weight and metabolic control were prior to treatment." "Whereas what we are doing is with our lead asset, Revita, we are targeting a root cause of obesity in the gut, a region of the gut that becomes damaged by chronic lifetime exposure to high-fat, high-sugar diets that we think is actually driving the obesity in the first place. And so if you can fix the underlying obesity, then we think that you can prevent the rebound that inevitably occurs upon the discontinuation of the medicine." #FractylHealth #Revita #Rejuva #PopulationHealth #ObesityMedicine #Endocrinology #MetabolicHealth #GLP1 #Gastroenterology #DiabetesCare #GeneTherapy fractyl.com Download the transcript here

Lior Shaltiel, CEO of NurExone, is addressing the unmet needs of those with spinal cord injuries, as current therapies only treat symptoms and do not regenerate damaged nerves from accidents or disease. The NurExone technology aims to stimulate nerve growth by targeting a protein that inhibits cell proliferation. Using exosomes, which are secreted by cells, to deliver the drug in a localized manner is possible because of the ability of the exosomes to home in on damaged tissues and cross the blood-brain barrier. Lior explains, "At the moment, the medicine can only treat it by treating the symptoms. There are a few attempts to try to regenerate the nerves that are broken and to have the reconnection of the spinal cord injury or any damage in the central nervous system. And this is a huge challenge for medicine, so far not solved. And when we solve it, we prepare to answer and give hope to so many patients, not only in spinal cord injury, but also in other injuries, such as traumatic brain injury, optic nerve, and ophthalmology. So many nerves that we have so far not been able to restore the function after the damage." "So traumatic, meaning we are talking about injury, the acute phase of a disease or illness. In most cases, let's say, spinal cord injury is due to injury, car accidents, or sports accidents. But, for example, ophthalmology, glaucoma, which is a chronic disease, can also cause damage to the optic nerve that cannot be restored. So it can be due to another illness, as a side effect of the illness, or due to injury."   "So we discussed the RNA. This is one part of the technology here. Second, the technology of using our natural transmitter in our body, which is how cells communicate with each other, is called exosomes. Exosomes are tiny vesicles secreted from cells with tiny envelopes that a healthy tissue sends to a damaged tissue, a cell that is affected, or a cell that doesn't feel good. And when we understand this mechanism, we can use those exosomes as a drug delivery system." #NurExone #Exosomes #SpinalCordInjury #NeuroRegeneration #PTEN #siRNA #DrugDelivery #Neurology #RegenerativeMedicine #Nanomedicine  nurexone.com Download the transcript here

Peter Swimm, Founder of Toilville, is a conversational AI pioneer, and he describes the transformation in healthcare resulting from the use of AI and large language models to address clinician burnout and improve patient outcomes. He emphasizes that technology should adapt to practitioners' workflows rather than forcing practitioners to change their behavior. Human oversight is essential to ensure accuracy and transparency, and Peter advocates for a culture shift where time saved through the use of AI is reinvested in higher-quality patient care and clinician satisfaction. Peter explains, "I think a lot of people think of their problems as a unique snowflake in the world. I think if we boil the ocean down to its elements, it is an understanding of the system of its inhabitants. And so we do a lot of work with small businesses and clients who typically have worked for big companies, and they've chafed at all the rules and the boundaries and the problems. They leave the big company and want to run their own show, but they lose that infrastructure."   "A lot of times, they turn to tools like AI and automation, or they buy software products that don't entirely fit their thinking. And so we help them negotiate that pattern where the technology molds to what the presentation layer is and how you want to treat things and handle your data. And you don't change away from what your competitive advantage is, which is being a unique and talented person who runs the show the way they see best." "So I think the challenge is, don't let your FOMO be FAFO. Just because everyone's telling you to do AI and you don't really understand it and you don't see the positive outcomes, don't assume it's like a lack of training on your part." #SPELWork #Toilville #OptInPodcast #ResonantDiversification #AIGovernance #ResponsibleAI #ConsentFirst #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #HealthIT #ClinicalAI #HealthcareAI #PatientAdvocacy #ClinicianBurnout #HealthEquity #SDOH #AIAccountability #AIEthics #AISafety #ConsentFirst #DataSovereignty #HumanInTheLoop #HealthcareInnovation#DigitalHealth #PhysicianBurnout #HealthIT #ConversationalAI #PatientCare toilville.com Download the transcript here

Richard Garr, CEO and General Counsel of Curative Biotechnology, discusses the company's work in repurposing the diabetes drug metformin into an eye drop for degenerative eye diseases. The goal of the therapy is retinal preservation, aiming to slow or stop disease progression by acting at the cellular level in the back of the eye to protect it from damage, offering a non-invasive alternative to current treatments. Using a repurposed drug allows the company to build on well-documented safety data and reduces the size, cost and duration of clinical trials. Richard explains, "We are currently focused on repurposing the drug metformin, which is an FDA-approved drug that diabetics take. And as it turns out, we have reformulated it into an eye drop. This is licensed from the National Eye Institute. We have worldwide exclusive rights. The first patent in that estate was allowed about two months ago in Canada. We would expect it to be issued this summer. It's being prosecuted around the world." "We believe that it is a platform drug and that we'll be able to treat a wide range of degenerative eye diseases. It's repurposed because it is an approved FDA drug. It's been taken for decades orally by literally tens of millions of patients, mostly with type two diabetes. And really, the importance of that is that we know it's a safe systemically. So, everything you could want to know about the metformin systemically is known. What we have to show in our clinical trials is that it's safe in the eye and that it does, in fact, do what we suspect it does to treat degenerative eye disease." #CurativeBiotech #Ophthalmology #Retina #Neuroprotection #DryAMD #EyeCare #DrugRepurposing #Metformin #HealthcareInnovation #ClinicalResearch #CurativeBiotech CurativeBiotech.com Download the transcript here  

Zach Henderson, CEO at MindMaze Therapeutics, has designed a precision neurotherapeutic solution designed to offer a scalable, engaging and immersive platform for patients recovering from strokes or managing Parkinson's disease. The solution is deployed across the entire care continuum from hospital to the patient's home, providing high-intensity therapy during the neuroplastic window. The emphasis is on augmenting therapists' care by equipping them with tools to encourage therapy adherence and with data to deliver precise, personalized care. Zach explains, "So at a very high level, there are millions and millions of people across the neurology spectrum who need this type of neuro rehabilitation, neurotherapeutic solutions, either with a therapist or without, but there are only so many therapists to go around. So there's a massive supply-demand imbalance that frankly cannot be, despite the efforts of the great therapists out there, it can never be filled without resorting to technology. And that's the exact gap that we're trying to fill in the marketplace."   "So MindMaze Therapeutics has a suite of solutions that are deployed across the whole continuum of care. So from acute care to the hospital to inpatient rehabilitation facilities, IRFs, to long-term acute care, to skilled nursing facilities, to outpatient, and all the way even patients taking the technology home. And then in that way, we're meeting the patient wherever they may happen to be. We're supporting the health system around the world. And importantly, we're giving therapy in this important neuroelastic window, which, in some studies, is the first 90 days following, say, a stroke, and in other studies, it goes all the way up to six months. And we're helping the health systems around the world scale their ability to treat even more patients at a very high and even improved rate." #MindMaze #ParkinsonsDisease #DigitalHealth #Neuroplasticity #PrecisionMedicine #Physiatry #Neurology #PhysicalTherapy #OccupationalTherapy #RehabInnovation #HealthTech MindMazeTherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Daniele De Mari, Founder and CEO of Neurogram, points out the significant problem of non-standardized data formats in EEG (electroencephalography), compared to the universal standard used in radiology.  Neurogram has developed a hardware-agnostic, cloud-based solution that standardizes EEG data from various manufacturers, integrates with EMRs, significantly improves clinical workflows, and is accessible from any computer. With improved data security and the ability to analyze large datasets, this platform can support advances in biomarker development for neurological conditions and stimulate more clinical research and collaboration.  Daniele explains, "So the problem is not 100% on medical exams. It happens exclusively on EEG, and that makes it worse, because it doesn't happen everywhere, it's actually worse for EEG scans. So, knowing a parallel between EEG scans and radiology, every data point in radiology is DICON. So DICON is a universal file format that is standardized. I can send you a DICON over email or to your phone, WhatsApp, and you can open it on your phone. That's how universal it is. That's how open the file type is. It's compatible with EMRs. And so that's awesome. And that's one of the reasons why radiology grows so much. And EEG, it's an electroencephalogram. We have, I would say, 15 different brands around the world. In Brazil, we have seven. In the US, we have top like four or five companies, and they all export data in a different file format. So brand A has its own format, brand B has its own format, brand C, and so forth." "So we managed to be compatible with most of the brands out there, most of the EEG brands out there. We have a solution that is 100% agnostic and 100% in the cloud, which means we can read from multiple EEG devices out there. If you record in brand A, and I'm not going to say the brands in the podcast, but if you require data from brand A, brand B, brand C, all of it gets standardized into one unified system. So the physician no longer has to log into multiple devices in multiple systems, and it's all in one place. As I said, it's 100% in the cloud, so they can access from a Mac computer, which is now impossible to read EEGs from a Mac computer. Now you can do this. It's compliant. It's HIPAA compliant. We're moving towards the FDA approval process right now for the system, although we're actually selling in Brazil." #Neurogram #EEG #HealthcareIT #ClinicalNeurophysiology #DigitalHealth #HealthDataStandardization #EMRIntegration #MedicalAI #PatientSafety #HealthcareInnovation neurogram.com Download the transcript here

Dan O'Toole, Founder and CEO of Arrive AI, is bringing asynchronous autonomous delivery systems to healthcare environments, enabling robots and drones to make deliveries without the recipient needing to be present. The goal is to automate logistical tasks to solve major inefficiencies in hospitals, freeing skilled workers from moving samples and supplies, which in turn improves the quality of care and reduces clinician burnout.  The system is presented as a way to make processes better, faster, fresher, cheaper, greener, and safer by eliminating bottlenecks and ensuring sample integrity through features such as temperature control and a security chain of custody. Dan explains, "I love that you started out with the term asynchronous. Nobody ever even knows what that is. So I applaud you. Thank you. That is the key to autonomy. Without it, you're not unlocking the full value of autonomy. So basically here at Arrive AI what we are doing is we're building the next network and platform to support and scale all kinds of autonomous delivery, whether it's robots, drones, unmanned vehicles, and still supporting conventional delivery, UPS, US Postal Service, and others. So we're excited about that." "But right now, anytime autonomous delivery happens, two things have to happen. You have to be there to meet the mode of delivery, and it has to be there to meet you. When you have an Arrive Point™ in that ecosystem, you've unlocked all the value of autonomous delivery because now the robot can beat you there. It can drop off the item that you're expecting at your Arrive Point and go on to its next mission without being held up."  #ArriveAI #AutonomousDelivery #HealthcareInnovation #HospitalRobotics #FutureOfHealthcare #DroneDelivery #HospitalOperations #ClinicalWorkflow #DigitalHealth #PatientSafety #LabMedicine #HealthcareLogistics #AIinHealthcare arriveai.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Matthew Goldberg, Senior Vice President for Medical at Castle Biosciences, discusses the uncertainty clinicians face when determining treatments for skin cancer due to the limitations of traditional pathology reports. Castle's gene expression profile tests were developed to improve the accuracy of risk stratification for patients with cutaneous melanoma and high-risk cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. These tests provide prognostic information by analyzing the tumor's RNA, offering more granular and accurate risk assessment and informing about the intensity of follow-up and long-term risk management strategies. Matthew explains, "So this is an important topic for dermatologists who are really on the front lines of skin cancer diagnosis and management for patients who are confronting skin cancer today. I'm a board-certified dermatologist and dermatopathologist by training. And to me, I think that the core uncertainty is centered around some of the known limitations around the prognostic accuracy of pathology. That's kind of worth unpacking here, but I think what it comes down to is that dermatologists are involved in identifying concerning skin lesions, identifying and, through biopsy, taking a skin sample, and finding skin cancers."   "Dermatopathologists are the collaborative colleagues who interpret the skin biopsy samples and return the pathological diagnoses to the dermatologist. For the treating clinician, the key task is to understand the implications of the types of skin cancers identified in this process to determine the most appropriate, risk-aligned downstream management for patients with these skin cancers." "So Castle Biosciences has developed a range of tests that are really focused on impactful skin cancers that are some of the biggest challenges for dermatologists and the patients that we serve in the clinic, specifically around cutaneous melanoma with the DecisionDx-Melanoma gene expression profile test and also high-risk cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas with the DecisionDx-SCC test." #CastleBiosciences #SkinCancer #CancerCare #HealthcareInnovation #Dermatology #MolecularDiagnostics #PrecisionMedicine #RiskStratification #ClinicalDecisionMaking #DigitalPathology #Oncology #Melanoma #SquamousCellCarcinoma #GeneExpression #SharedDecisionMaking castlebiosciences.com Download the transcript  

Sten Sörensen, CEO of Cereno Scientific, discusses work on epigenetic modulation to treat the rare disease Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, a progressive and fatal condition for which current treatments primarily manage symptoms. Core pathological processes of PAH include inflammation, fibrosis, and the growth of muscle cells in the pulmonary artery. Cereno's approach aims to be disease-modifying by targeting these conditions with HDAC inhibitors to regulate the production of essential proteins, potentially preventing or reversing disease. Sten explains, "We are working with something called epigenetic modulation. You know what DNA is, the map for our body and the protein production in our cells, that's the map. But the map needs guidance to produce essential proteins that are important for the body's function. The regulation of the production of essential proteins from the DNA map is regulated by epigenetic modulators. So sometimes that regulation can go wrong, and then it needs to be adjusted. And we are working with molecules with a mode of action that has epigenetic modulation. And these molecules are called, in this case, HDAC inhibitors."   "Well, the rare disease pulmonary arterial hypertension has a number of characteristics that propel the disease forward, and for the patient, that is very detrimental. And as we know, pulmonary arterial hypertension mostly affects women, and in the end, the disease is that you actually pass away. So you die normally of right heart failure, and the survival time is approximately seven to seven and a half years from diagnosis. So it's a very severe, rare disease, and current therapies are more directed to relieve symptoms than actually act to slow down, halt, or even reverse this detrimental progression of the disease." #CerenoScientific #RareDisease #PAH #PulmonaryArterialHypertension #PulmonaryHypertension #PatientCentricity #ClinicalDevelopment #Biotech #CardiovascularResearch #RightHeartFailure #RareDiseaseAwareness #PHawareness #HDAC #HDACinhibitor #Epigenetics #Cardiology #Pulmonology #CS1 #DiseaseModification #ClinicalTrials cerenoscientific.com Download the transcript here

Joseph Pandolfino, Founder and CEO of Cabbacis, is focused on reducing harm caused by smoking cigarettes by developing cigarettes made from a blend of low-nicotine tobacco and hemp.  This approach is intended to help smokers reduce their nicotine dependence and increase the success rate of those who are looking to quit smoking. Their products are targeted to established smokers by providing the taste and sensory experience of a traditional cigarette while providing significantly less nicotine and a path to less harmful non-combustible products. Joseph explains, "So our products in development are called iBlend. We'll stick with the cigarette right now. So iBlend is predominantly very low-nicotine tobacco, and you add hemp to the product. Hemp became legal at the federal level in 2018 for farmers. So every iBlend is the merger of very low-nicotine tobacco and hemp, which really creates the taste and sensory characteristics of a cigarette that just has very little nicotine tobacco."   "As I mentioned, currently nicotine is reduced by about 95%. They give you a little bit of nicotine but not enough to really sustain addiction. So the result is that people smoke less cigarettes and it has greatly increased their quit attempts. And while they reduce their nicotine exposure and dependence, if they choose to switch to a non-combustible, we consider that a win as far as we're concerned." #Cabbacis $CABI #EmpoweredPatient #HarmReduction #TobaccoHarmReduction #SmokingCessation #QuitSmoking #iBlend #FDA #PublicHealth #TobaccoControl #PublicHealth #Healthcare cabbacis.com Download the transcript here

Brian Robertson, Founder and CEO of VisiQuate, describes the relationship between payers and providers, noting that payers have the advantage due to unified data and lower complexity than providers face. He emphasizes that providers could level the playing field by unifying their data and leveraging AI to predict and prevent claim denials and solve systemic problems. The ultimate goal of using data and AI in the revenue cycle should be patient-centered, ensuring that the technology leads to more accurate billing and better outcomes for patients, providers, and payers. Brian explains, "I would say in general, and I think a lot of us in the industry know this, the payer or the health plan has the edge, partly because they have fewer jobs to be done every day. They manage a financial risk engine for the most part. And if you consider that the other side of that is the provider who has to have all the upfront labor, all of the upfront dollars, they have to think about every permutation of care and patient satisfaction and physician satisfaction. So good care benefits for patients. So there are a thousand jobs to be done on the provider side, and I'll just say fewer jobs to be done on the health plan side. And the health plan side controls the money."   "I think in today's world of AI, he who has the more unified data has the edge. And I think there's little debate that the payer right now has the edge because they have a unified dataset and are a financial risk engine. So, I think the opportunity is for providers to use the power of data now to begin to bring a little bit more balance to that question. And they've got a hard job ahead of them, for sure."  "So our core value proposition is really centered on data unification. We're getting into many case accounts, transactions, charges, claim files, remittance files, and third-party data sets from providers who sometimes are on one system of record. Often, they're on many systems of record. So we have to get all of that fragmented data, normalize, cleanse, unify, and curate that data for action."  #VisiQuate #HealthcareFinance #RevenueCycleManagement #AIinHealthcare #DataUnification #DeniedClaims #HealthIT #PayerProvider #PatientExperience VisiQuate.com Download the transcript here

Debra Berenson is Chair of the Fundraising Committee at the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research and author of two books- I Have WHAT and You Have WHAT, based on her personal experience and the expertise of her husband, Dr. Jim Berenson, a myeloma expert. Multiple myeloma and related bone cancers are increasingly common, and her books are designed to help patients and caregivers understand the diagnosis and treatment options. Debra emphasizes that treatments have advanced significantly, leading to much longer, higher-quality lives for patients and transforming these diseases into chronic, manageable conditions. Debra explains, "I thought, "If I had this disease, what would I do?" And I used to be a reporter, so that's how I told my husband I wanted to write these books - like interviews. I wanted to interview different patients with these diseases. I wanted to get the real stories out there of what it was really like having one of these diseases - the good, bad, and the ugly of dealing with all of them, and what helped these patients and what didn't help them." "I also thought it would be cathartic for the patient who could share their journey, and also helpful for the new patient. That's the first part of the book - interviews with the different patients who have the four different diseases that Jim treats. The second part of the book is made up of the medical professionals who treat these diseases. I interviewed Jim about myeloma and its related diseases and asked him to weigh in with his medical opinions in a general sense. So complications do arise as we discussed earlier. I interviewed a cardiologist targeting amyloidosis, and there's a periodontist talking about osteonecrosis of the jaw, which means part of the jaw dies. And so you have to have a special periodontist who knows how to replace a tooth or take a tooth out. Dental health is so important. So, that's the second part of the book. And I learned so much going out with these medical professionals who treat the complications." #IMBCR #MultipleMyeloma #MGUS #Waldenstroms #Amyloidosis #Hematology #Oncology #BerensonCancerCenter #sBCMA #ClinicalResearch #PatientCare #LiveBetterLiveLonger IMBCR.org Download the transcript here 

Anthony Tardi, head of ultrasound and radiology CT at Samsung HME America, is developing non-invasive, portable tools such as quantitative ultrasound to enable earlier detection of diseases that can be reversed if caught early. AI is being used to automate tedious, clerical tasks in imaging, allowing clinicians to focus more on the patient and clinical assessment.  Improving gateway imaging, such as ultrasound and X-rays, is seen as a way to benefit the entire healthcare system by potentially reducing the need for more expensive scans. Anthony explains, "We're developing technologies that use ultrasound to have a non-invasive tool that reduces the ionizing radiation and is able to quickly identify different levels of hepatic steatosis using quantitative ultrasound. So we're developing tools that, instead of getting a patient needing to have a biopsy or maybe another modality that may be more expensive or not accessible, such as MRI, we're able to develop tools using ultrasound to be able to acquire that information. So that would just be one example."   "So technology continues to evolve. I would say in the case of this particular technology, it's a combination of automation being implemented. We have access to some of the best hardware and semiconductor innovation, and we integrate those into the ultrasound systems. That gives us a little more power and automation, enabling us to access new levels of information beyond the traditional norm, I would say, in imaging." #SamsungHMEAmerica #SamsungHealthcare #MedicalImaging #HealthcareInnovation #ImagingInnovation #PatientCare #MedicalEquipment #UltrasoundInnovation #HealthTech #Ultrasound #Radiology #AIinHealthcare #DigitalHealth usa.samsunghealthcare.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Heather Bassett, Chief Medical Officer at Xsolis, is using AI to reduce friction between healthcare providers and payers in the utilization management and mid-revenue cycle space. Their Care Level Score is a data-driven metric derived from patient data to reduce manual processes, denials, and administrative costs for both hospitals and insurance companies. The system enables automated approvals for clear-cut cases, reduces repetitive administrative work, and reduces delays in patient diagnoses and treatment initiation.   Heather explains, "We're an AI company at heart. We work with acute care hospitals across the US. We live in what's called the utilization management and mid-revenue cycle space, which, to put that in layman's terms, is we make sure that hospitals get paid appropriately for the care they provide their patients."   "We recognized fairly quickly that there was just a tremendous amount of complexity in manual processes and saw an opportunity to layer in automation and AI to help decrease a lot of the friction, get rid of the manual processes. And then a larger opportunity we saw was to ease much of the friction between hospitals and providers and payers. And that's really where we've helped our clients solve that problem and move the needle forward." "Unfortunately, there is an increase in the number of denials, and that requires a lot of rework and submission on the hospital side. And also, when you look at what's happening, when the hospital is submitting information to get authorization for that inpatient hospital-level of care, they're doing a manual review and sending information to the payer. Well, there's a UR, utilization review, nurse on the payer side who is doing exactly the same thing, and a good percentage of the time they're coming to the same conclusion."  #Xsolis #HealthcareAI #UtilizationManagement #RevenueCycle #PriorAuth #PayerProvider #ClinicalAI #HealthIT  xsolis.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Houda Hachad, Vice President of Clinical Operations at Aranscia, highlights the importance of regular medication reviews in an age of growing polypharmacy and advancements in the use of pharmacogenomics to identify potential risks. The key goal is to use the minimal effective dose of a medication and determine which drugs are most effective for treating identified conditions without causing unintended side effects. Adopting a preemptive pharmacogenomic testing approach for patients taking more than 5 drugs is noted as a way to reduce hospital readmissions, emergency room visits, and adverse drug events. Houda explains, "So polypharmacy is becoming more and more common. I think the data shows that up to 40% of adults now take a lot of medications. And polypharmacy is typically defined as the regular use of five medications or more. But in some settings, we're seeing what we call excessive polypharmacy, which is using nine or more." "So there are multiple patient cohorts, as you can imagine, that take these medications, definitely patients in hospital settings, older patients, patients that suffer from behavioral health issues, and any chronic conditions, patients with diabetes, hypertension, and obesity are going to be your typical polypharmacy patients. So our tools, which span genetic testing, medication reviews, and the use of various patient information to provide precision care, allow us to simplify and help doctors mitigate the risks associated with polypharmacy."   "Each time you add a medication to a patient, you're increasing the risk of having these adverse drug events. We have tools that can reduce the risk of polypharmacy, including pharmacogenomics." #Aranscia #Polypharmacy, #DrugGeneInteractions #dpydTesting #MedicationSafety #Pharmacogenomics  aranscia.com Download the transcript here

Selena Freisens, Head of Global Medical Affairs at Merz Therapeutics, is focused on increasing access to tools to support neurological health. They have developed a digital app iFlexo, which is designed to provide at-home physiotherapy for stroke survivors.  The app has been tested in Nigeria and Sierra Leone in partnership with the World Stroke Organization and is designed to operate offline as well, to serve users in rural areas with limited internet connectivity. Selena explains, "Our company is family-owned and in its fifth generation, so we have a rather long-term legacy, and the newer part is Merz Therapeutics, and our focus in Merz Therapeutics is on neuroscience. So we practically cover the number of movement disorders such as Spasms, Dystonias. We also have a focus on Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis."   "We continuously work on building this awareness and knowledge. One example is Parkinson's disease. And when I started working with Parkinson's disease, most of the patients would have off episodes, which are exacerbations of their symptoms, but many of these off episodes are underdiagnosed, and they're not really treated optimally. So it's really a lot of attention is needed to educate not only HCPs and, of course, some other stakeholders, but particularly patients."   "So the time also matters for stroke survivors. So it's very important that they start as soon as possible all the therapies, but also the physiotherapy at the same time. What this digital tool does is give two options. One is education on the one side, and on the other hand, a guided exercise that will enable people and stroke survivors to exercise at home. And with that, obviously, the personalized goals have been worked out together with the experts and HCPs so that they can achieve those goals faster, while working from home." #MerzTherapeutics #StrokeRehab #DigitalHealth #NeuroRehab #AccessToHealth #WorldStrokeOrganization #Physiotherapy #HealthEquity #TeleRehab #HCPs #Africafirst #AccesstoHealth #EquitableAccess #PostStrokeRehabilitation #PatientDrivenInnovation Merztherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Cara Altimus, the CEO of BD², and Emily Baxi, the Program Director of BD²'s Integrated Network, are focused on integrating research and clinical care to improve outcomes for people with bipolar disorder.  They emphasize the gaps in diagnostics and effective treatments and the need to collect comprehensive biological and clinical data to enable a precision medicine approach. Their Integrated Network is a longitudinal, large-scale study that complements their investments in new therapeutics, moving away from a trial-and-error approach to effective interventions for individuals. Cara explains, "When we think about the mission of BD², it's that we're bringing innovators and patients and the world together to drive new discovery, new understanding, and improved outcomes for people with bipolar disorder so that all people with bipolar disorder can thrive. And that thrive piece is critical to what we do. We're not just thinking about how we will change symptom outcomes, but we are thinking about how we engage across the whole life and all of the components of life, with science at the forefront of what we do." Emily elaborates, "I think it's important to acknowledge here that the tools and the technologies that we have today are quite different from even those that we had 20, 15 years ago, and they've really set the stage for how we can bring research and clinical care together. So we didn't have electronic health records in the past. We didn't have the ability to understand both from a phenotype level, meaning, can we understand the biology? Can we understand the clinical trajectory, the course of somebody's illness?" "We just didn't have the same tools to really bring clarity and understanding to that. So one of the reasons we're so excited about the Integrated Network is that it represents a framework where we're bringing those components together so that research and clinical care are really sitting side by side. So, in practice, that looks like a longitudinal cohort study." #BipolarDiscoveries #BipolarDisorder #MentalHealthResearch #PrecisionPsychiatry #LearningHealthSystem #IntegratedCare #Psychiatry #HealthcareInnovation #ClinicalResearch #DataDrivenCare #PopulationHealth bipolardiscoveries.org Download the transcript here

Sundar Subramanian, CEO of Zyter, points out that the primary issue in healthcare is not a lack of AI intelligence but a failure in AI execution.  He advocates for a vertical AI integration approach that solves entire domain-specific workflows rather than horizontal or point solutions that automate existing, often inefficient processes. To ensure safe and effective use of AI, implement guardrails that promote transparency and augment clinicians by reducing friction, helping reduce errors, and building trust. Sundar explains, "You see a lot of AI companies around, but when you look at healthcare, especially the problem we have in healthcare, it is actually not an AI intelligence problem. What we have is an AI execution problem. The models are really growing fast and can do all kinds of tasks, but if you look at healthcare and the overall healthcare economy, trillions of dollars are still spent on lots of manual processes because doing things at scale and executing things at scale is not easy. And so Zyter is a company that's trying to solve that problem, which is really how do you coordinate and execute workflows end-to-end safely, transparently, and with humans trusting it and still in control. And so that's what we intend to do and are doing at Zyter."   "So what we mean by that is that problems get solved at the domain level. And when you solve problems at the domain level, it's not a single decision problem. You can embed horizontal tools to enable convenience and do things slightly better than they are today by embedding point solutions, and lots of platforms can help do that. But when you solve for a domain workflow end-to-end, you need a lot of domain intelligence. You need to understand how the regulatory context works. You need to understand how policies and the governance of those policies need to be done. So it's not a single decision problem. And to do that, you need to orchestrate across lots of tools and data that span many domains to solve for outcomes like healthcare access, total cost of care, or quality." #ZyterAI #AIinHealthcare #HealthIT #ClinicalWorkflow #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #CareDelivery #HealthSystems #Payers #ValueBasedCare Zyter.ai Download the transcript here

Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, Director of the Integrative Medicine Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He's also co-lead author of a study on whether biofield therapy can impact pancreatic cancer. The study demonstrated that biofield therapy could decrease cancer cell proliferation, disrupt mitochondrial function, and reduce metastasis in both cell cultures and animal models, with results comparable to chemotherapy without the side effects. He highlights the challenges to the wider acceptance of this therapy, given the lack of understanding of its mechanism of action and awareness about this growing area of integrative medicine. Lorenzo explains, "So biofield therapies fall into this category of, let's call them treatment modalities in the field of integrative medicine. So integrative medicine can be things like acupuncture, massage, yoga, meditation, nutrition counseling, exercise, things that you could say fall outside of the conventional traditional medical treatments that are within hospital systems. Now, integrative medicine as a whole and integrative oncology in particular have had a huge uptake in hospital systems because of the evidence base in those areas that I just described. The one area that probably remains the most controversial is this area of biofield therapies or often known as energy medicine. I don't actually really like using the term energy medicine because that implies that we know it has something to do with energy, and we're actually not sure exactly what the mechanism is of these therapies. And so what are these? So many of the listeners will have heard of things like Reiki, healing touch, or therapeutic touch."   "External Qigong falls into this category. These are modalities where a practitioner has been trained to be able to work with their own consciousness or their own intention, potentially the biofield of their body. And it is not controversial to know that we as human beings are energetic beings, and we actually do emit biophotons by the nature of being human. But the controversial part is that they are doing that towards a target, whether that be a human being, or, in our case, cells or animals in a laboratory.  And we, in particular, worked with a biofield therapy called the Bengston Cycling Method." #MDAnderson #IntegrativeOncology #BiofieldTherapy #PancreaticCancer #Metastasis #FOXM1 #Mitochondria #PreclinicalResearch #EnergyMedicine #OncologyResearch.  Biofield Therapy Anticancer Living: Transform Your Life and Health with the Mix of Six Download the transcript here

Geoff Rhyne, Co-Founder and CEO of IDefine, discusses the mission to advance research into Kleefstra syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, and to find a treatment where there is currently none. This organization of parents of children with KS is advocating for broader genetic sequencing to identify KS patients and differentiate the condition from other possible diagnoses, such as autism. Their research strategy is to first build the necessary infrastructure, including real-world data, model systems, and clinical guidelines, to de-risk the process for researchers and directly fund drug development. Geoff explains, "We're dedicated to advancing research, building community, and driving progress for Kleefstra syndrome. And the inspiration behind it is that a bunch of parents had impacted children. And, namely, for me, my daughter Ella received her diagnosis on February 26th, 2019. You asked a rare disease parent. Their diagnosis day and odds are they'll be able to rattle off pretty quickly because it is life-altering and changing. And once we looked around the landscape of Kleefstra syndrome and what was being done, we identified a need. And so a group of other parents and I came together and founded the organization in 2020."   "KS is one of these rare genetic disorders, and it affects brain development and basically every aspect of a child's life. And it could encompass developmental delays, feature delays, seizures, kidney issues, and cascading other conditions. So what happens with KS is that when you get the diagnosis, folks have often gone on a diagnostic odyssey. It's very rare that folks are being identified early on. And so we're part of that cohort that believes there are many more patients out there with KS, but the diagnostic odyssey is a real challenge. And so we typically will see kids receiving their diagnosis from three years to we've had someone diagnosed at 40 before, which is just a crazy experience as you can imagine." #IDefine #KleefstraSyndrome #EHMT1 #RareDisease #RareDiseaseResearch #NeurodevelopmentalDisorders #GeneticDisorders #PatientAdvocacy #CaregiverSupport #FamilyLedResearch #RareDiseaseCommunity #PrecisionMedicine #Genomics #MedicalResearch #ClinicalResearch #TranslationalResearch #DiagnosticJourney #PatientSupport #ResearchFunding #InclusiveCare #PatientVoices #RareDiseaseAwareness IDefine.org Download the transcript here

Philippe Pouletty, M.D., CEO of Truffle Capital and Founder of Carvolix, describes the evolution of heart valve replacement and the significance of AI-guided robotics in expanding access to transcatheter procedures. The company's biomimetic mitral valve and AI software that guides valve placement using a mini robot are making these procedures safer and easier for less experienced cardiologists to perform.  The technology is also being adapted to treat brain strokes by enabling a larger pool of cardiologists to quickly perform necessary interventions. Philippe explains, "At Truffle Capital, are what we like to call ourselves Business Builders, which is to say we're not just going to start small companies, we are going to try and build world leaders to revolutionize medicine. For Carvolix, this means interventional cardiology as well as the treatment of brain strokes. As you know, replacing heart valves is a major medical need. We have four heart valves that open and close 50 to 100 times per minute, which can get calcified and dysfunctional with time and need replacement. So 40 years ago, you would go to a skilled surgeon who would say, "Okay, I'm going to open your chest. I'm going to stop your heart, and I'm going to sew a new valve."   "But recently we decided to lead the new revolution, which is a small robot based on artificial intelligence, that could autonomously, under the clinical supervision of a cardiologist, replace a valve. We think that this new revolution is going to allow many more patients to benefit from aortic, mitral, and tricuspid valve replacement, even in smaller cardiac centers and among younger cardiologists. A similar revolution happened in the cockpit of Boeing and Airbus planes when the autopilot, the GPS systems, and satellite systems brought autonomy to planes." #Carvolix #CardiacNews #PatientCare #HealthTech #Cardio #AIinHealthcare #InterventionalCardiology #StrokeCare #MedTechInnovation #RoboticsInMedicine #TAVI #Thrombectomy #DigitalHealth Carvolix.eu Download the transcript here

Colin Lawlor, CEO of Sleep ai, is focused on exploring sleep intelligence and sleep as a vital sign of health. The Sleep ai platform measures sleep longitudinally using data from consumer wearables and smartphones, with an emphasis on night-to-night variability, which is not captured in a single-night sleep lab. Poor sleep and variation in sleep patterns have been identified as highly predictive indicators of over 130 chronic diseases and have an impact on mental well-being and the effectiveness of medical treatments. Colin explains, "What we're doing is we're measuring sleep longitudinally, over the long term, and we're measuring it from whatever device the consumer has. For some consumers or patients, it may be wearable, and there are many, many different wearables, or for others, it's simply from their phone. We have the ability to collect high-quality sleep data from everyone every day. And that's really important because when we get into this, we'll talk about why longitudinal measurement is really helpful in dealing with sleep challenges themselves, but also in seeing sleep as a window into literally everything to do with our health."   "There are several factors going on here. The first one is that globally, four billion people wake up tired almost every day. We do not have, and we will never have, a sufficient number of sleep labs to send all of them for a one-night study. And if we collect data for only one night, we're only getting one picture of how that person is sleeping. But as we all know, life gets in the way. We may have had a stressful day, or we may have had an argument with our significant other. We may be suffering from a cold."   "Whatever it is, all of these multiple factors influence sleep. So if we over-rely on one data point to understand what's going on, it's just not sufficient. So what we are finding is that, actually, the variance night to night is probably the most useful and insightful thing we can see. Because when we look at the variance across many nights, we have a much more accurate picture of what's happening with the person's sleep, and that's highly predictive of many, many other conditions, issues, and challenges."  #SleepAI #DigitalHealth #SleepAsAVitalSign #ChronicDisease #PopulationHealth #AIinHealthcare #Wearables #LongitudinalData #SleepHealth, #SleepScience  sleep.ai Download the transcript here