Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Jonathon Hill, VP of Science and Technology and Co-Founder of Wasatch Bio Labs has developed the Next-Generation Sequencing 3.0, NESSI-Seq platform, which can analyze blood to detect epigenetic changes and provide insights into current health and predisposition for diseases. This native-read third-generation sequencing tool can provide longer sequence reads and analyze epigenetic modifications to DNA. Epigenetics can change over time in response to diet, environment, and lifestyle. Advanced genetic testing has the potential to provide biomarkers to support personalized medicine for earlier detection and tailored interventions. Jonathon explains, "The biggest limitation with the Illumina sequencing was that it was only short sequences, so you had to get a lot of them to stitch them together and figure out what the human genome looked like. With this third-generation sequencing, we can get much longer reads, sometimes to the order of a hundred thousand nucleotide bases at a time. So we get these big comple

Bob Zemke, Director at Extreme Networks, provides network infrastructure and security solutions to help hospitals build resilient and secure networks. Critical security challenges hospitals face in managing networks include the proliferation of connected devices and the vulnerability of medical devices to cyber threats. In addition to education and collaboration between stakeholders, strategies for reducing security risks include network segmentation, AI-powered monitoring, and behavior analysis to help hospitals proactively address possible threats. Bob explains, "There are multiple factors that we take into play. First, how do we build a resilient network that can handle the amount of devices and traffic types? How do we prioritize the type of traffic flowing through, like the wires of the infrastructure and the wireless connectivity? And then how do we understand through analytics the behavior of those applications so that the healthcare organization, the security team can understand what is standard traf

Wardah Inam is the CEO of Overjet, which uses AI to analyze dental X-rays to help dentists provide more comprehensive and objective diagnoses and treatment recommendations for patients. The Overjet platform can quantify dental disease progression and provide visualizations to help patients better understand their oral health. The use of AI in dentistry can improve patient outcomes, practice workflows, and the ability of dentists to communicate with patients about personalized data-driven care. Wardah explains, "One of our main challenges is that the dentist and the patients speak different languages when talking to each other. For example, a dentist licenses dental X-rays to communicate. Patients don't read X-rays, so they do not understand what the dentist says. So, for example, they might say, Hey, I see a radiolucency on tooth number four. The patient doesn't know what tooth number four is, and they don't know what atypical radiolucency is. And then they're squinting and trying to see what the dentist see

Dan Gallagher, Vice President for Strategy and Partnerships at Lyric, describes how Lyric uses advanced analytics to improve the coordination of benefits by proactively identifying coverage changes, verifying eligibility at the time of service, and transitioning patients to the correct payer. Coordination of benefits can be complex due to job changes, data lags, and situations like workplace accidents where multiple payers may be involved. Improving coordination of benefits can reduce patients' out-of-pocket costs and get providers paid faster.   Dan explains, "Simply stated, coordination of benefits is determining who or what entity has financial responsibility for an individual during a course of treatment. So, for a large portion of the population, it's pretty straightforward. You may have commercial insurance, and you may have one insurance card for your family, but there's not a lot to coordinate for other members of the population. You may have Medicare and you're still working over the age of 65. You

Yoona Kim, CEO of Arine,  a medication intelligence company, works with health plans and payers to ensure safe and effective medication therapy for patients. The Arine platform addresses polypharmacy, medication mismanagement, drug interactions, and proper dosing. Using AI and integrated databases, Arine is identifying patients who would benefit from medication management and shifting from reactive to proactive and preventative care. Yoona explains, "Our clients are health plans and risk-bearing providers. So these are the payers of the healthcare system, those who bear the financial burden of healthcare costs because medications can be very powerful, they can cure, or they can lead to detrimental consequences and even unnecessary fatalities and high-cost events like hospitalizations. So it's important to these customers to make sure that their members are on the right medications to avoid these unnecessary clinical and financial outcomes."  "I think it pertains to all of these situations. One of our bigge

Andrew Spier is the Vice President of Advanced Cyber Solutions and Commercial Services at Core4ce, a company specializing in protecting healthcare organizations and critical infrastructure from cyber threats. The healthcare environment has outdated software, weak access controls, insecure network connectivity, and a large Internet of Things network with many connected medical devices vulnerable to cyberattacks. Core4ce provides cybersecurity services, risk assessment, and education so that healthcare organizations can be more proactive in recognizing vulnerabilities and protecting against cyber criminals.  Andrew explains, "Core4ce is a data-centric national and enterprise security organization primarily specializing in protecting the nation and healthcare organizations. Critical infrastructure is mostly from cyber threats, which could be insider threats, cybersecurity or cyber criminals, or adversarial nation-states. We also provide a full suite of cybersecurity solutions in support of those customers." "I t

Dr. Sam Lee, Co-CEO of Cocrystal Pharma, is an expert in developing small-molecule antiviral drugs to treat COVID-19, Norovirus, influenza, avian flu, West Nile virus, Dengue, Zika, and other RNA viruses. Cocrystal uses its structure-based drug discovery platform to identify promising drug targets for potent broad-spectrum oral and inhaled antiviral therapeutics. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for vaccines and effective therapeutics to respond to viral outbreaks and prevent further transmission. Sam elaborates, "Before we talk about avian flu, let's just step back up about the strains. Influenza, as you know, includes influenza A strains, influenza B, and the C. But the public health point of view is the influenza A strains are important. These cause the pandemic flu, as well as the seasonal flu. Influenza B is roughly less than 20% of flu patients that have this influenza B. It's seasonal. It doesn't cause a pandemic influenza infection." "So we're talking about avian flu. Avian flu is mostly a

Dr. Mark Campbell, Chief Pharmacy Officer at RxBenefits, a prescription benefit optimizer that works with self-funded employers to help them get the best clinical and economic value from their pharmacy benefit manager relationships. As the healthcare landscape has become more complex with the rise of specialty and high-cost drugs, a significant portion of an employer's pharmacy costs can be impacted by a small population. A key challenge is managing the volatility introduced each year by changes in the health of employees and their families while also managing costs for the broader covered population. Mark explains, "The landscape for prescription benefits has shifted a lot over the course of my career. In 1998, for example, 35% of the prescriptions were generic, and 65% were branded. There was no appreciable amount of specialties at that time. And the average cost for a plan was probably in the mid-thirties per member per month. But with the shift we've seen where generics have grown to roughly 88% of the p

Dr. Vicky Demas, CEO of identifeye HEALTH, is using AI-powered diagnostic algorithms and automation to improve the accessibility and quality of retinal imaging, focusing on the early detection of diabetic retinopathy. The identifeye technology makes it easier for patients to get screened for eye conditions in primary care or retail settings. The goal is to leverage the information from retinal scans to detect other eye conditions and identify biomarkers for other systematic diseases.   Vicky explains, "In general, we leverage AI and automation to solve workflow problems to make, first and foremost the capturing of good-quality retinal imaging. It's really easy to make sure that, for example, we can remove the barriers and access for that. We don't need to be at a specialist office for a lot of the screening conditions. Very specifically too, for our first application, we're focusing on diabetic retinopathy, which is a huge problem and one where accessibility to good quality screenings and early detection or

Felicia Janovich is a founding member of the American IV Association, which advocates for safe and effective IV therapies, including hydration, vitamin infusions, and treatments to support patients with chronic conditions or undergoing chemotherapy. While there is limited research on the effectiveness of these IV therapies, AIVA is working to collect and analyze clinical data to understand better the impact these therapies might have on individuals to help with recovery and overall health. Felicia explains, "Right now, in our space, we struggle with clear guidelines. And there's kind of misunderstanding that there's a bunch of IV cowboys out there, and they're just starting IVs, and they don't have regulations. It's just entirely untrue. The IV Association and its members bring in this amazing opportunity to collaborate, not compete, which is huge within this IV industry because it is relatively new, so we need all the data, all the information, and all the science to back it up. What AIVA has done is welcom

Michael McFadden is the CEO of Alpha Cognition, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing treatments for brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, ALS, and traumatic brain injury. Their drug ZUNVEYL, recently approved by the FDA, is an oral treatment for mild to moderate Alzheimer's that improves symptoms such as memory loss, mental processing speed, and mood changes. A key feature of the drug is fewer gastrointestinal side effects compared to other Alzheimer's drugs coming onto the market.   Michael explains, "ZUNVEYL is a class of medications known as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. It’s the second oral compound approved by the FDA to treat Alzheimer’s disease in the last decade. So, it is a momentous accomplishment by our company, and it is an accomplishment that will serve patients and physicians well. It’s designed to treat symptoms of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease that many patients suffer from. These are things like memory loss, mental health processing speed, ability to solve problems or re

George Pappas, CEO of Intraprise Health, works with various healthcare organizations across the healthcare industry and healthcare ecosystem to help address cybersecurity risks. While recent cyber attacks have raised awareness about the need for better cybersecurity measures, the complexity of healthcare IT systems creates significant challenges for comprehensive risk management. Proactive measures, including employee training, enhanced identity confirmation, and limiting access, are critical to mitigating the risk of cyber attacks.   George explains, "The net situation is that these large technology companies that serve healthcare and hospital systems and large medical practices change are clearinghouses, revenue cycle managers, and manage real-time price transparency. What medication management companies manage is so complicated, and they have so many ways that something can be attacked. As you mentioned at the beginning, the attackers are getting very clever and sharing a lot of their methods, so you have

Ketan Mehta, Founder and CEO of Tris Pharma, is focused on developing non-addictive pain medication. Their lead drug candidate is designed to be an effective pain drug without the respiratory-depressive and addictive side effects of traditional opioid drugs. This drug works by targeting the nociceptin receptor and has also shown promise to help curb cravings and dependence on opioids. The goal is to provide doctors and patients with a non-opioid pain medication option that can help reduce reliance on highly addictive prescription opioids.  Ketan explains, "Tris is focused on neuroscience-based products, especially CNS, at a high level. More specifically, we focused on ADHD and neurodevelopmental disorders and the products that treat them. And also, more recently, we have been more active in the pain space." "We're developing a drug, which is currently an investigational drug in Phase three clinical trials. It's called cebranopadol. And what we have seen is that it has an efficacy just on par with your typica

Beth Houck, Chief Executive Officer at SonarMD, works with payers and physician practices to provide proactive, value-based care for patients with chronic GI conditions. They use a digital platform to monitor self-reported patient symptoms and enable physicians to identify those patients that need attention. This approach aims to improve patient outcomes and reduce emergency room visits and hospitalizations.   Beth explains, "SonarMD manages patients with chronic gut health conditions, and specifically, we started with something called inflammatory bowel disease, which is the encompassing word for patients with Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. We develop a value-based contract with a payer, so somebody at risk for the cost of care of a patient, and then we bring that cost of care program to a physician's office. In collaboration with that physician, we manage a population of patients to have better outcomes for their chronic GI conditions." "We just talk about this as a shift to proactive care from reactive c

Dr. Chris Bouton, the Senior VP and Head of Artificial Intelligence at Certara, is exploring applying generative AI to drug discovery and development to improve efficiency and identify novel therapeutics across various use cases. The focus is on developing specialized secure AI models to integrate internal data with the Certara platform. Generative AI is particularly useful in areas with high specificity, such as antibody design and mRNA therapeutics, where modeling the underlying biology is crucial.  Chris explains, "Certara helps pharmaceutical and biotech companies throughout their process, from early basic research to regulatory filing and beyond. And we're quite a unique company in that we are not developing our own drugs but instead helping companies develop their drugs. And it's something like over 90% of all FDA approvals are projects that, in some way, shape, or form, Certara has helped with." "Our philosophy is to start with the use case. Generative AI is an incredible novel technology. There are m

David Happel is President and CEO of Sagimet Biosciences, a company developing drugs to treat metabolic diseases by targeting the underlying cause of fat accumulation in the liver. The drug denifanstat limits the activity of fatty acid synthase (FASN), an enzyme that regulates fat accumulation. This approach is a fat inhibitor, not a fat burner, the focus of other MASH drugs.  David explains, "Sagimet was founded back in 2007 as a private company with a group of medicinal chemists that had a particular target in mind, and this particular target was called fatty acid synthase, or FASN. FASN is a rather ubiquitous enzyme throughout the body that functions as a regulating enzyme in many organs. When FASN becomes overactive or overexpressed, it sort of throws things out of balance and, in particular, certain cardiometabolic diseases, such as MASH and in the liver. So, this group of chemists, in order to resolve this overactivity, developed a portfolio of FASN inhibitors, led by our lead program denifanstat, that

Dr. Gavin Magaha, Senior Director for External Affairs and Policy at Kalderos, describes the 340B drug discount program created in 1992 to help safety net healthcare providers obtain discounted drugs. Over time, this program has grown in complexity, and issues have arisen around duplicate discounts where Medicaid rebates are involved. The current 340B system makes it difficult for stakeholders to share data and lacks transparency. The Kalderos platform incorporates technology and AI and ML tools to address data sharing, validate claims, and prevent duplicate discounts.  Gavin explains, "Our platform primarily helps manufacturers. However, through the activities that we provide service for, we end up helping all stakeholders in a compliant manner or be more compliant with several different drug discount programs, primarily the intersection of the 340B and the Medicaid Drug Rebate programs. We work to help the states, the covered entities in the program, and the manufacturers. All come to a resolution of what'

Chris Hart, Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Creyon Bio, is focused on engineering drugs rather than just discovering them through serendipity and traditional methods.  Creyon is developing oligonucleotide medicines for rare and common diseases by applying AI and big data models of the molecular and genetic basis of diseases to develop safe and effective drugs more quickly.  Chris elaborates, "When we think about drug engineering versus drug discovery, we’re thinking about how we take this process that currently requires us to do trial-and-error identification of molecules that may be beneficial in the clinic to a place where we can say, can I build the right machinery, the right data, the right models, the right processes to go in and understand if I want to make this modulation within a cell, here’s the molecule that will do it and I can have confidence that it will be safe." "In terms of drug engineering and the type of drug engineering that Creyon does, what made starting Creyon the right thing to do and

Krystyna Houser is the Founder of mBIOTA Labs, a company that develops effective and tolerable elemental diets and medical foods for treating gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS, IBD, SIBO, IMO, and Crohn's disease. While short-term liquid elemental diets have been used in the past to treat GI conditions, the formulation has been very unpalatable, resulting in high patient non-compliance. The mBIOTA clinical trials have shown the elemental diet to be more effective than antibiotics in allowing the gut to recover.  Krystyna explains, "After battling my own GI issues and successfully treating them through a combination of an elemental diet and a dietary protocol called low-fermentation eating, I became a believer in the power of functional nutrition and built mBIOTA Labs to bring these solutions along with taste and a pleasant experience to millions of people suffering with GI conditions." "Elemental diets have been around for over 50 years. And through hundreds of clinical studies, elemental diets have bee

Dr. Ann Beliën, Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Rejuvenate Biomed, is addressing the underlying biology of aging including mechanisms like mitochondrial health, cell-cell communication and inflammation in order to promote healthy aging. Taking a combination therapy approach, Rejuvenate is using AI-enable drug discovery to address multiple pathways that are involved in aging. Their lead drug candidate is a treatment for sarcopenia with plans to assess impact on other age-related biomarkers. Ann explains, "The biology of aging indeed is being defined by 12 hallmarks. These 12 hallmarks are pathways where you see that the functioning is deteriorating. One of them is mitochondrial health. So, the mitochondria are there to create energy in your cells to make sure that they work to an optimal base. That’s a very important element that we need to address." "Another very important one for us is cell-cell communication. So, for instance, in sarcopenia, one of the diseases we study, it’s very important that you