Empowered Patient Podcast

Rob Abbott, CEO and Executive Director at ISPOR, the Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research, focuses on defining and measuring value in healthcare, including accessibility, affordability, effectiveness, and patient outcomes. HEOR (health economics and outcomes research) can provide data-driven insights to guide healthcare decision-making, reduce bias in research, and consider a broader range of factors like social determinants of health. This can improve treatment adherence, align therapies with what matters most to patients, and support the evaluation of technology used for treatments and predictive analysis of new therapies.   Rob explains, "I'm excited at both the legacy of work that health economics and outcomes research has contributed to, but I'm particularly excited about the extent to which health economics and outcomes research can provide data-driven insights to highlight health interventions that provide the best health outcomes for the investment made. This is good for m

Tony Goodman is the Chief Operating Officer at Adial Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a personalized therapy for alcohol use disorder based on a genetic biomarker. This unique approach combines the therapeutic AD04 with the biomarker AG Plus to identify a specific AUD patient population that responds well to this drug. Insights from this work could potentially lead to a broader understanding of the genetic and neurobiological connection underlying addiction.  Tony explains, "What makes us unique is that we're out in front of where the current prevailing wisdom of science is going in the addiction space. There's a renewed interest in personalized medicine or genetics, the study of genetic biomarkers, and things of that sort in addiction. As you know, we've been doing this for a long time. And so I think the uniqueness comes into the fact that we've coupled a therapeutic with a genetic biomarker, in this case, known as AG Plus, which we believe can produce results for patients that have this specific genot

Shai Shen-Orr, the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of CytoReason, is developing computational disease models powered by AI to improve the probability of success in phase 2 clinical trials. Their goal is to more precisely develop drugs using AI to analyze large amounts of biological and clinical data and overcome the challenges of the complexity and uncertainty in medical information. Working with large pharmaceutical companies, CytoReason is supporting companies in their drug development efforts and helping them choose the right drug target and patient populations to study.   Shai explains, "There are many challenges. I would say that CytoReason right now isn't tackling images. And there are certainly companies in the field that have been doing this. We've been focused more on the molecular side of the data, the genes, the proteins, the cells, the genetics. But the challenge is that when you work in this field and try to do AI in biology, it's very difficult for us to know the ground truth. We don't know when

Josh Hix, the CEO of Season Health, has developed a food as medicine platform that combines registered dietitian services, food delivery, and medical nutrition therapy. This makes it easier for patients to access food benefits and eat healthier. The rise of GLP-1 agonist medications for weight management has highlighted the need to develop personalized nutrition plans to help patients maintain a healthy lifestyle. There is growing interest in food as medicine as it is increasingly recognized that improving nutrition can help prevent and manage many chronic health conditions.   Josh explains, "I think many people, if not most, do better with a GLP-1 and some form of medical nutrition therapy, dietician services, etc. We hear from a lot of folks that GLP-1 helps turn down the cravings and the food noise. While they're on the drug, whether that's for a month or a year, that's the best time to start to figure out how to eat better and to form some new habits, to eat more whole foods, to find things that they like

Dr. Philip Räth, Managing Director at Palleos, discusses the advantages of a mid-size contract research organization compared to a large CRO. Customized solutions, strong cross-departmental cooperation, and fast decision-making are key to addressing the most significant unmet needs of clinical trial sponsors. This nimble clinical trial model, supported by machine learning, emphasizes collaboration and transparency. Philip explains, "In the end, we are a service industry, so it's always about time, costs, and quality. So, certain structures have been established in terms of project management and how you set up trials. We have regulations in place that are very clear on how things should get done. So, I think what collaboration enables is getting something done together. Collaboration between sponsors and CROs can transform the landscape and situation where collaboration enables trust and, therefore, change is possible." "I think that's always the biggest challenge for collaboration. You have change in the pro

Dr. Kristin MacGregor, a clinical psychologist and senior clinical director of Integrated Behavioral Health at LifeStance Health, the largest outpatient mental health practice in the U.S., employing nearly 7,000 clinicians across 33 states to provide therapy, psychiatry, and psychological/neuropsychological services both in-person and virtually. They work with large medical practices and health systems to help build integrated behavioral health programs using the collaborative care model. Integrating mental health into primary care settings can help address early warning signs of cognitive decline, reduce stigma, and improve collaboration between providers to address both mental and physical health needs better and manage chronic diseases. Kristin explains, "I think anything that removes barriers to people accessing mental health care when they actually need it is a positive thing. The research shows that it takes 11 years, on average, between the time someone experiences a mental health symptom and the time

Meri Beckwith, Co-Founder of Lindus Health, aims to transform clinical trials by changing the CRO model to leverage technology to improve patient recruitment, retention, and the experience of the sponsors and trial participants. While the compensation model for contract research organizations is often not aligned with trial outcomes, Lindus ties compensation to hitting milestones and outcomes. They emphasize the need for more flexible trial design and a decentralized and hybrid approach to reduce participant burden and bring drugs to market sooner.   Meri explains, "This comes back to how contract research organizations are paid and compensated where they’re typically paid per hour of input, and it’s not at all tied to the outputs being speed, patient experience, or quality of data. And so we’ve created this monster over the last 10 or 20 years where the cost of clinical trials keeps going up. Patient experience certainly seems to be getting worse. Above all, patients suffer because the direct experience in

Greg Hamilton, CEO of io9, aims to enable precision oncology treatments for patients globally.  The company has developed an AI-powered biomarker analysis platform called OncoGaze that can rapidly analyze digital pathology images to identify cancer biomarkers. This enables pathologists to efficiently and quickly digitize and analyze tumor samples and oncologists to start patients on the appropriate targeted therapy much faster.   Greg explains, "For many of these cancers, determining the right cancer treatment is the difference between life and death. When we look at how we treat cancer today, what hasn’t changed is that there’ll be a biopsy. So, they take a piece of the tumor out and send that tumor to a pathologist. Pathologists will take that tumor and put it in a glass slide. They usually use what’s called H&E, they kind of stain it to read it better. But basically, a pathologist is looking under a microscope at the cells, and that’s how we diagnose cancer. That’s the formal way that we diagnose can

Dr. Jeng Her, Founder and CEO of AP Biosciences, is developing T-Cube bispecific antibodies that can target cancer cells and engage T-cells to kill them more effectively and safely than existing treatments. The company is focused on treating hard-to-treat cancers such as HER2-positive breast cancer, lung cancer, head and neck cancer, and pancreatic cancer. The T-Cube bispecific antibodies use CD137 instead of CD3 to activate T-cells, which can lead to better efficacy and safety compared to other T-cell engager antibodies. Jeng explains, "So why not just take two, let's say, monospecific antibodies and then put them together and give them to the patient in the combination therapy? Instead, we wanted to develop bispecific antibodies by fusing two antibodies together into one single molecule. So what's the advantage? Eventually, what it comes down to is the therapeutic window of bispecific antibodies. This means you want your antibodies, your bispecific, to have better efficacy, better safety, and sometimes low

Sonia Veluchamy, CEO and Co-founder of Celegence discusses the increasing regulatory requirements and complexities faced by the medical device industry. Celegence works with companies to streamline their regulatory data management processes and adopt advanced technology solutions to manage compliance efficiently. Medical device companies are often slower than pharmaceutical companies to recognize the need to invest in data governance and process optimization to maintain compliance and avoid fines, delays in product approval, and loss of market access. Sonia explains, "The awareness is there, but medical device companies have traditionally been a bit slower in adapting and bringing in consultancy, expertise, and technology. That is partly because the sector’s regulations have not evolved at the same pace as in the pharmaceutical industry. More recently, though, the regulations have become more complex. For instance, the requirements under the EU MDR- Medical Device Regulation – are very heavy in terms of the

Dr. Ethan Korngold is the chief medical officer and divisional vice president of medical affairs at Abbott’s vascular business, which has developed a dissolvable stent technology to treat peripheral artery disease. PAD disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic communities and is often overlooked because early symptoms can be mistaken for other conditions. The Esprit BTK stent can help open up the smaller arteries below the knee and improve blood flow to the legs and feet to treat PAD and prevent severe complications and amputations. Ethan explains, "So peripheral artery disease refers to blockages in the arteries to the legs. When those blockages build up, it’s because of cholesterol typically that builds up in the walls of the artery and causes limited blood flow. Initially, people can have cramping or soreness in their legs when they walk. That gets better with rest. As the blockages get worse, people can develop infections, ulcers, or non-healing wounds of their legs with what we call chronic limb-thre

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