Empowered Patient Podcast

Richard ‘RJ’ Kedziora, Co-Founder, CEO, and Chief People Officer at Estenda Solutions, emphasizes that usability is critical in developing successful digital therapeutics, and industry standards and interoperability are essential for data sharing and integration. A digital therapeutic can be prescribed by a physician and reimbursed by insurance companies. It is a digital health application that has undergone clinical trials and regulatory review to prevent, monitor, or treat physical or mental health issues. The future of digital therapeutics looks promising, especially with Medicare's introduction of billing codes for prescription digital therapeutics. Richard explains, " I think of the difference between a digital health application and a digital therapeutic as the difference between supplements and medications prescribed by a physician. So as you know, there are any number of supplements on the market. Some have more evidence than less about whether or not they can prevent, treat, or monitor a specific dis

Oren Gilad, President and CEO of Aprea Therapeutics, focused on the DNA damage response pathway, specifically targeting the ATR protein. ATR is a master regulator of DNA replication and is hyperactive in cancer cells, making it a potential Achilles heel for cancer therapy. By inhibiting ATR, cancer cells can be selectively targeted, while normal cells can tolerate lower levels of ATR activity. Synthetic lethality is applied when two genetic mutations are combined, leading to cell death, specifically in cancer cells. Aprea is conducting clinical trials for their targeted treatments, focusing on solid tumors with defined genetic mutations. Oren explains, "DDR, the DNA damage response pathway, is the broader terminology for the regulation of DNA synthesis. In order for cancer to grow, cells have to duplicate. In order for them to duplicate, they have to replicate their DNA. So what happens is that cancer cells get into this DNA replication phase very early and prematurely, causing a single-strand DNA to be expos

Dr. Marcy Carty, President and Chief Medical Officer of myLaurel, emphasizes the need to change the model where hospitals are the safest place for medical care. MyLaurel's acute care services include pre-hospital care to prevent emergency room visits, care-at-home to help patients get discharged earlier, and post-hospitalization care to smooth the transition. They work with primary physicians and other care providers to ensure a coordinated approach and use technology in the home to perform monitoring and diagnostics overseen by medical professionals and responders who can provide in-person and virtual visits. Marcy explains, "In the past, our health systems have looked at volume. I was a chief medical officer at a hospital, and I remember my CEO saying, "How many heads and beds can we get?" And so the system’s really driven towards reducing risk and putting people into hospitals, assuming that it’s the best place to be cared for. At myLaurel, we challenge that and work with communities to say, "How can we c

Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq, the CEO and Founder of Biotricity, focuses on remote patient monitoring for heart health with HeartSecure, the three-channel wearable device that collects continuous ECG data. This device provides a more comprehensive view of the electrical activity of the heart compared to other wearables like smartwatches and can help identify potential cardiac issues, especially those that are intermittent and asymptomatic. Used by cardiologists and now available as a home-based diagnostic, this technology is a tool to screen those with risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnea, and obesity.  Waqaas explains, "When we talk about wearables, we have to understand what those wearables are collecting. A typical watch, like an Apple Watch or Samsung Watch or these kinds of devices, collects data through a PPG, which is really looking at light refraction and basically looking at your pulse rate. Based on skin tone, it will have varying results. Based on how tight you are wearing the ba

Bill Padula, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics, and Dr. David Armstrong, professor of surgery and Neurological surgery, are both at the University of Southern California and are concerned about wound care and the impact of potential changes in Medicare reimbursement of skin substitutes. They discuss the importance of skin substitutes in chronic wound care and their effectiveness in reducing amputations and hospital readmissions. With current advancements in wound care,  there is an emphasis on the need for education and advocacy to ensure that Medicare understands the value of skin substitutes and their potential for improving patient outcomes. David explains, "The skin substitutes we are talking about have been really helpful over the past, maybe at least the last decade, maybe even the last two decades, and especially over the last few years. We’ve seen now in some studies from our group and others that we can not only reduce amputation, but we can also reduce hospital admissi

Gretchen Case, Managing Partner at The Wilshire Group a boutique healthcare revenue cycle consulting company that helps healthcare clients streamline workflows and processes. They work with hospitals, physician groups, and other providers to optimize their investment in technology and improve patient outcomes. Gretchen points out the various aspects of revenue cycle management, which include insurance benefit verification, explanation of costs, and identification of financial support. The middle revenue cycle includes the codification of clinical data and coordination with insurance companies and electronic health records. The third phase is the billing and payment.   Gretchen elaborates, "Some of the automation I’ve seen over the last several years has been designed to query the documentation and come up with suggested codes, called computer-assisted coding. And there is a lot of that in play. I think it expedites things and it makes things more efficient. I don’t know of anybody who’s just flipped that bu

Lynn Carroll, the Chief Operating Officer at HSBlox, focuses on payer-provider collaboration to mitigate risks related to the transition from a fee-for-service model to value-based care. Care coordination is critical to this model to reduce duplicative and unnecessary services and low-value providers by effectively sharing patient data. They are seeing an emphasis on high-cost categories, diagnostics, and disease management to rein in costs and improve patient outcomes. Lynn explains, "At HSBlox, we have built a platform for payer and provider collaboration around these types of arrangements, particularly for onboarding different types of alternative payment model contracts, bringing together the care continuum to align primary care with specialty care because primary care can’t go alone in achieving success under value-based programs. A significant amount of spend, particularly under the total cost of care programs, is driven by specialty utilization." "We have built a platform that allows for multi-partici

Dave Kerwar is the CEO and Co-Founder of Inbound Health, a hospital-at-home organization that offers an advanced primary care model for patients who would typically go to the emergency department and a secondary care model for post-acute patients who would typically go to a skilled nursing facility. With virtual care enhanced by data analytics, remote sensors, and on-site visits, Inbound Health's model has shown lower readmission rates than traditional facility-based care.   Dave explains, "We help health systems launch and scale advanced care models delivered from the home. So our flagship care model is a hospital-at-home model where we’re typically taking patients who are presenting in the emergency department or have been inpatient for less than 24 hours and who could otherwise receive the totality of their hospital stay from the comfort of their home. In that model, what we do is we bring forward the care model, so basically, the care pathways for how to care for those patients."   "We bring forward a tec

Michelle Clavecilla-Chan, Director of Behavioral Health at MVP Health Care, and Amanda Conway, Chief Growth Officer at Aptihealth, have partnered to expand access to mental health services for MVP customers. Aptihealth provides virtual behavioral health services that connect patients to comprehensive mental health and substance abuse support. Through their digital platform and behavioral health provider network, MVP customers have options for integrated care that remove traditional access barriers and provide virtual visits to engage this high-need population. The partnership focuses on serving complex patient populations with conditions such as psychosis, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and personality disorders with personalized care plans. Michelle explains, "MVP provides coverage for all lines of business, including commercial Medicare, Medicaid, Child Health Plus, and Essential Plan enrollees. We provide all of the healthcare needs of our customers, and our mission is to improve our customers’ health and provi

Martin Pytela is a functional medicine expert, metabolic typing coach, and fellow podcaster. He discusses the principles of functional medicine and its focus on finding the root causes of health issues rather than just treating symptoms. Understanding metabolic behavior and how it can affect emotional well-being and overall health highlights the need to better understand the connection between diet and health conditions. Martin emphasizes the need to personalize approaches to health based on individual genetics and endocrine dominance. Martin elaborates, "Functional medicine is a moniker developed to distinguish it from allopathic medicine in the sense that functionals are looking for root causes of things. In the typical medical setting, you are just looking at a symptom, and you address the symptom with some chemicals and let the patient manage or cope with life as is. With functional medicine, you try to find the cause of it and restore health. So, rather than treating symptoms alone, you’re trying to hea

Patty Hayward, general manager for healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk, talks about transforming the traditional call center into one that uses AI and large language models to make it easier for patients to get help and free up call center staff to focus on value-added tasks. The technology supports call center agents in their conversations with patients and helps avoid escalations. Outbound messaging prompts patients to take action, reinforcing conversations with call centers to improve patient outcomes.   Patty explains, "Because AI has been around for a long time, we’ve had AI infused in our platform for many years. But these large language models that have come speeding into the market have enhanced how we use AI in such a great way and allowed us to more easily support patients and agents in their journeys. We in healthcare do not make these journeys easy. They’re very complex. There are a lot of things going on, and quite frankly, deployment and training of these models can be really difficult. So

AJ Tesler, an award-winning producer and director who, along with his wife Jenny, is launching Magnolia’s Guide to Adventuring, a new documentary video series created with support from Acadia Pharmaceuticals, inspired by their daughter Magnolia’s experience with the rare genetic neurodevelopmental disease Rett syndrome. We’re also joined by Dr. Cary Fu, a pediatric neurologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who emphasizes the need for early diagnosis. The video series highlights the adventures children with Rett syndrome can engage in.  While Cary emphasizes the importance of safety and consulting with specialists before pursuing an adventure, AJ and Cary encourage people to recognize the capabilities of children with Rett and focus on what they can do.   AJ explains, "We made a documentary about that experience and those initial steps that we took called Magnolia’s Hope, which is available on iTunes and Amazon streaming, as well as a bunch of other places. And in that documentary, my wife so sagely

David Mazzo, President and CEO of Lisata Therapeutics, has a lead program focused on metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The Lisata CendR Platform and drug certepetide efficiently augment the effects of chemotherapy and immunotherapies in the tumor microenvironment. Based on early findings, the future of cancer treatment may involve combining existing therapies with certepetide to personalize treatment for most solid tumors. David explains, "At Lisata, we're developing therapies to combat a challenging problem in the medical field today, which is the effective treatment of solid tumors. Solid tumors are very difficult to treat for two very simple reasons. On the one hand, these tumors generate a layer of cells around them that acts as a physical barrier. It's called the tumor stroma, and it prevents the penetration of many anti-cancer medicines into the tumor, which is why you often don't get the kind of results that one would expect." "The other obstacle these tumors present is that they generate or

John Incledon, President and CEO of Hisamitsu America, the makers of Salonpas, has seen enormous growth in the acceptance of over-the-counter topical pain management options since introducing the Salonpas analgesic patch in the US market 37 years ago. This growth is partly due to television ads featuring doctors touting the benefits of Salonpas for mild to moderate nerve-related and muscle-related pain and the sampling program that aims to get doctors and patients to try out the products.   John explains, "Topical medications have only been around since the 1960s, with the introduction of the first OTC monograph by the FDA. Salonpas itself was formally introduced to the United States in 1987, so we’ve been around some 37 years or so as a brand in this country. And so, it’s been a challenge. I’ll give you a couple of fun facts: 85% of US households have a pill form of an OTC pain reliever in their house, and 30% have a topical analgesic of any sort, a cream, a roll-on, or a patch. So, there’s a great disparity

Dr. Doug Newton is the Chief Medical Officer at Rula Health, a tech-enabled provider group that offers therapy, psychiatry, care coordination, and other supportive behavioral health services with a whole-person approach. Mental health disorders are diagnosed and managed using a combination of sound clinical judgment and measurement-informed care, which involves using patient-reported data and other objective measures. Normalizing mental health and using objective measures can help doctors bring up the topic with people of all ages to develop a personalized plan to maintain good physical and psychological health.  Doug explains, "We do know that the behavioral health crisis was exacerbated by COVID. Still, unfortunately, for most demographic groupings, it was already starting before the pandemic hit.  Using adolescents as an example, because I’m a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist by training, I saw this trend, so I looked at the data. We saw that was already a problem for kids, adolescents, and adul

Professor Sir Peter Donnelly, Founder and CEO of Genomics plc, aims to use cutting-edge polygenic risk scores to identify inherited DNA mutations and genetic predispositions that could lead to common diseases. In partnership with the MassMutual life insurance company, Genomics offers a voluntary test that provides personalized risk measures and advice about conversations with clinicians. If the policyholder stays healthy longer, the insurance company will get paid more premiums before paying out to survivors. Win-win all the way around. Peter explains, "Until a few years ago, if I had the entire DNA sequence from a 40-year-old who’s currently healthy, I’d have learned something interesting and medically actionable in maybe 1% or 2% of cases. That’s because genetics has played into medicine through diseases where there’s a single change in our DNA, called a mutation, which often stops a crucial gene from working. Think cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease. Those are conditions that are individually serious

Oren Nissim, CEO and Co-Founder of Brook Health focuses on loneliness and its impact on individuals with chronic conditions, especially when access to support is limited. Societal stigma and guilt associated with chronic conditions often contribute to loneliness, which can include depression, lack of agency, and a sense of being alone. Brook Health provides nonjudgemental support to patients with chronic diseases using a combination of human interaction with health coaches and technology to help patients manage their conditions.   Oren elaborates, "I think that people who live at home with a condition need great support, and the reality is that they don’t always have access to great support. Even if they do have great support, they still go home and have to live with it themselves - it drives people to feel lonely. I can tell you from my personal experience that I’ve been living with diabetes for a very long period of time, and the reality is that living with a chronic condition is a very lonely thing to do

Kent Wakeford, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Form Bio,  a company that provides computational solutions to scientists who are focused on cell and gene therapy to accelerate drug discovery and development, reduce costs, and ultimately make treatments more affordable for patients. Form Bio's in silico platform utilizes computational biology tools, bioinformatics, machine learning, and AI to process large amounts of open source data to provide insights to scientists to help them solve critical challenges. They are committed to supporting the rare and ultra-rare disease community and offer their tools to patient advocacy groups for free. Kent explains, "There are a lot of bumps. The production, scaling up, and cost of gene therapies are major obstacles to their widespread success. As we’ve seen in small molecule, target identification is one of the key challenges, and there’s been a lot of breakthroughs in AI, and computational analysis that have helped scientists find those targets." "In cell and gene therapy, it’

Ram Krishnan, CEO of Valant, works with therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and nurse practitioners in the outpatient behavioral healthcare environment, which has significant unmet needs that can be addressed with technology. Scaling a mental health practice differs from other medical practices due to the frequency of visits and the need for individualized care with the most effective therapist. Virtual visits and telehealth are helping providers bridge the gap between physical and mental health, and generative AI is showing promise in diagnosing and maintaining behavioral health.  Ram explains, "This has been a market that has evolved over the last 25 years because so much has changed with our overall perception of the value and importance of mental health. This is a market that was primarily rarely covered by insurance, and employers rarely demanded coverage for their employees. Therefore, it was a cash-based business for most of its existence." "But over the last ten years, as the stigma for mental

Fadi Micaelian, CEO of Sparkdit, and Dr. Andrew Fang, Chief of Orthopedics at Kaiser South San Francisco, have joined together to help patients and doctors make better treatment decisions by considering trade-offs and patient preferences. The platform can help reduce bias and incorporate patient desires into care while considering comorbidities and other factors that may affect treatment decisions. Fadi and Andrew agree that collaboration between technologists and clinicians is essential for advancing the use of AI in healthcare to augment human intelligence and improve outcomes. Fadi explains, "At Sparkdit, our mission is to teach computers to think like humans. To do so, we've taught computers to think with trade-offs. So humans universally think the same way. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. We all think the same way. Whenever we have a decision, we have a set of criteria that we take into account. We think in a certain way of each criterion, and then we apply on top of that a set of trade-offs