Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Jason Williams, President and Director of Interventional Oncology and Immunotherapy at the Williams Cancer Institute, uses a combination of Pulse Electric Field technology to ablate tumors and direct injection of immunotherapy drugs into the tumor to stimulate the immune system. This approach can be used in conjunction with traditional cancer treatments and has fewer side effects than standard immunotherapy. This method is part of the broader trend in cancer research to provide a more targeted approach to treating tumors. Jason explains, "Our big focus is going to the tumor itself, so we do treatments directly at the tumor, and we do a combination of things. We do things that will be considered ablation where we're using different technologies or energies — I'll explain — particularly, we use one called Pulse Electric Field (PEF), which kills the tumor by essentially shocking it, and that kills it in a way that actually makes the immune system see it better. You're not trying to kill all of the tumor, yo

Joel Stanley is the CEO of Ajna Biosciences, a company developing the next generation of botanical medicines. These full-spectrum drugs, derived from plants and fungi, are regulated and approved through the FDA, unlike dietary supplements. Lead drug candidates are targeting autism, generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD. With expertise in cultivating and scaling the production of botanical raw materials, Ajna is creating a sustainable model compared to wild-harvested botanicals. Joel explains, "It's no secret that before about a hundred years ago, all of our medicines were botanical medicines, or mostly coming from plants, or maybe mushrooms. And in the last century, as we developed Western medicine - modern medicine - the drug approval process started to learn how to synthesize molecules and isolate molecules from nature. So we started to step completely away from plant medicine and into a synthetic pharmaceutical landscape. The FDA fairly recently started allowing botanical drugs. So what that means is that

Dana Brown serves as President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board at iCAD Inc., which has developed a next-generation approach that leverages advancements in AI and imaging technology to improve the accuracy and efficiency of breast cancer screening.  This technology can help reduce unnecessary biopsies and additional tests while more accurately identifying cancers that need immediate attention. The concerning trend of rising breast cancer in younger women highlights the importance of early detection and personalized care plans. Dana explains, "Literally, iCAD's first FDA-cleared product in a first-generation AI was around 2002. So it's been well over 20 years. We're now on our fourth generation. So, yes, you're very accurate in describing this as a next-generation approach. So, not only has imaging technology improved over the past 20 years, but artificial intelligence has also improved. We continue to leverage the latest in artificial intelligence technology, how the artificial intelligence can be trained and

Dr. Rany Aburashed, CEO and Founder of Neurogen Biomarking, is using a blood-based biomarker looking at p-tau 217 to detect early signs of Alzheimer's disease, up to 8-10 years before the onset of clinical symptoms. The company has built an ecosystem to provide patients with a comprehensive health assessment with an at-home blood test, cognitive testing, access to neurologists, and education on lifestyle changes that can support a good quality of life. Their mission is to take a proactive rather than the current reactive approach to diagnosing and slowing the progression of cognitive decline.   Rany explains, "The challenge for us, and this is what I saw from years of clinical practice and hospital management, is that a disease like Alzheimer's operates almost like a green light. Life is okay, you're having minor issues, but for the most part, you're moving along. Then suddenly you notice a sentinel event, which then becomes that red light, and now you have Alzheimer's dementia. And so the issue that is at t

Ram Krishnan, CEO of Valant, uses AI to make mental health care more accessible through their practice management and patient engagement platforms designed specifically for mental health providers. AI is applied to improve administrative efficiency, address billing and compliance, and drive successful patient outcomes. New solutions are needed due to the growing patient population for mental health services and the potential of advanced therapeutics that are transforming the behavioral health environment, where demand is outpacing the supply of mental health care providers. Ram explains, "If I took a step back, AI - let's describe what AI is across a practice. Multiple functional verticals exist within a practice, including marketing. A team is trying to acquire the right type of patients. There's your administrative vertical, if you will, which is just making sure you're running the business well. You have your clinical vertical, which is the time the clinician, prescriber, psychiatrist, and practitioner sp

Jaya Tiwari, Senior Vice President of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs at XVIVO, which is focused on improving organ preservation for transplantation. Current organ preservation methods using ice coolers limit the time and distance organs can be transported.  XVIVO's perfusion technology can significantly extend the preservation time of hearts, kidneys, livers, and lungs, providing hospitals and transplant centers access to more viable organs. The company is passionate about increasing organ availability to give more patients access to life-saving transplants. Jaya explains, "I take it back to 1967 when the first heart transplant was performed in Cape Town, and the way that the heart was preserved and transported in essentially an ice box. The standard of care for the preservation of organs is still an ice or an ice cooler with ice. So, this decreases metabolic activities. So, to try to preserve the organs so that you can get them from the donor to the recipient, the problem is that the organs are not viable

Brian Drozdowicz, Senior VP and General Manager for Acute and Payer at PointClickCare, provides a platform using predictive analytics and AI for data sharing and collaboration across healthcare stakeholders. Interoperability has been an ongoing challenge due to the lack of standards and clear governance to support data sharing. The shift to value-based care drives the need for more access to patient data to improve patient outcomes, facilitate care transitions, and reduce readmissions and costs.   Brian explains, "PointClickCare has been a player in the market for quite some time. We're best known for the market-leading senior care EHR that we've had in market for 20-plus years. I run a business unit that sits by the side of that. We refer to that as the acute and payer business. And ultimately, this additional business and value proposition to the market operates the largest care collaboration network, sharing healthcare data across all the different stakeholders, hospitals, health plans, ambulatory clinics,

G.T. LaBorde, CEO and Co-Founder of IllumiCare, focuses on reducing hospital clinical waste. Doctors often make decisions about tests, medications, and procedures without knowing the actual cost to the hospital and the patient. The IllumiCare platform aims to nudge doctors to make cost-effective decisions without compromising the quality of patient care by providing cost information and clinical guidance at the point of care. Another benefit is the reduction in overtesting and overprescribing, supporting efforts to improve patient safety.. G.T. explains, "When doctors make decisions about what test to order and what medications to prescribe, particularly in the inpatient setting, they have no idea what the cost is. They don't know the relative cost of one drug or another, and it's not a knock on doctors. It's very difficult to know because there are, in our average hospital across hundreds of hospitals, something like 2,000 different medications on the formulary that are available to order if you're a provide

Gary Falcetano, Scientific Affairs Manager for Allergy at Thermo Fisher Scientific, is a leader in allergy and autoimmune diagnostics, providing specific IgE tests and the instruments to run them. Accurately diagnosing allergies can be challenging, but specific IgE testing can help confirm the underlying causes by looking at individual allergen components for precise diagnosis. This is the first step in determining the appropriate management approach to potentially interrupt the atopic march, where allergies can progress or even be life-threatening. Gary explains, "It runs the gamut of just about anything that could potentially be an allergy disease. So I think the majority of our testing is done in both environmental allergies and food allergies. What people think about when we, especially this time of year in the US, with spring about to become a big onslaught, are environmental allergies, including pollens, grass, trees, and weeds. Also, looking at some of the indoor triggers to environmental allergies li

Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of LogicMark, is developing technology solutions to help seniors age independently and safely. Their AgeTech ecosystem addresses the requirements and comfort levels of the diverse aging population and provides predictive technology to identify potential health issues and emergencies. The key is keeping a human-centric approach to the application of this technology and integration with other health monitoring devices and apps.   Chia-Lin explains, "At LogicMark, we tell people that the medical react technology business is saying that our job is to make better technology to help identify that fall or a catastrophe or a health issue, and then help as we can within that golden hour in a medical emergency. When I joined the company in June of 2021, our goal was not just to be even better at reactive technology but to develop predictive technology, which is to take a look at the pattern of living and your experiences and being able to stop that first initial catastrophe or fall if we can. And

Martin Brenner, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of iBio, is focused on the untapped potential of therapeutic antibodies for obesity and cardiometabolic diseases. Leveraging AI and machine learning, iBio is streamlining the antibody discovery and optimization process and addressing the need for more complex antibody mechanisms of action. Their lead candidate, iBio 600, is an anti-myostatin antibody designed to address the side effects of muscle mass and bone density loss associated with current GLP-1 therapies. Martin explains, "We can separate this into multiple areas. First of all, there's a predictive model that suggests that there are 5,000 different targets related to disease out there. So, there are 5,000 different possibilities to make medicines. All of the currently approved antibodies target only 92 targets. Even worse, 40% of approved antibodies only target about 10. So you can imagine there's a huge untapped potential of novel targets for which antibodies could be used. The problem is that the tec

Dr. Lauren Parks Nicola, Chief Medical Officer at RevealDx, has extensive experience dealing with the challenges of accurately describing lung nodules and distinguishing between benign and malignant nodules based on visual inspection of CT scans. RevealDx software tool integrates into the radiologists' workflow and uses advanced algorithms and a large database of lung nodule data to provide a malignancy score for lung nodules. This technology can help reduce unnecessary follow-up scans and invasive procedures for patients with benign lung nodules while identifying high-risk ones requiring more aggressive investigation. Lauren explains, "Reveal's product is a software that characterizes lung nodules. So lung nodules, little blips on a lung that we find on a chest CT. And the thing is, they're very, very common. Lots of patients have them, they can turn out to be cancer, most of them aren't. But with the knowledge that we have right now, just as radiologists looking at those nodules, it's really hard to tell w

Daniel Getts, the CEO and Founder of Myeloid Therapeutics is focused on the role of myeloid cells in the immune response to solid tumors. These cells are the first responders in the immune system and play a crucial role in bridging the innate and adaptive immune response. The Myeloid Therapeutics' mRNA technology activates myeloid cells in tumors, making the tumor microenvironment hot and attracting other immune cells to fight the cancer. Daniel explains, "The ability to harness our immune systems has revolutionized how we treat cancer. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go, and if you think about some of the worst of the worst cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, and so on, immunotherapy has still not gotten us to a place where we can solve this. It's our mission at Myeloid Therapeutics to overcome these challenges. We've uncovered a lot of really interesting things about these cancers in the last 20 years, and we've been harnessing that knowledge."  "Myeloid cells are at the heart of t

Saul Marquez, Founder and CEO of Outcomes Rocket, emphasizes the need for strategic healthcare communications, including earned media and paid advertising, content creation, and social influencers. The explosion of social media and online news outlets has changed the healthcare information environment, challenging companies to express authentic and intentional messages to their target audience. Identifying pain points and unique propositions is key to effective healthcare messaging that persuades, motivates, and informs. Saul elaborates, "I started the Outcomes Rocket agency as a podcast, and then it evolved into a full-service agency focused on healthcare organizations, leaders, and brands looking to maximize their impact in the market and accelerate their growth. We work in four areas: strategy, earned, owned, and paid. So, under each of those categories, there are different focus areas."  "It's never been more important for leaders to be authentic in an age of artificial intelligence and just so much noise

Robert Maxwell, Founder of ClinConnect, is building this neutral third-party intermediary between patients and clinical trial sponsors, improving on the clinicaltrials.gov platform by streamlining the clinical trial enrollment process. This patient-facing platform provides patients with up-to-date information about trial options and eligibility criteria and guides them through the enrollment process. This resource is particularly significant for the rare disease community, where ClinConnect works with patient advocacy networks to improve study design and identify trial participants.   Robert explains, "One thing that has changed over the last year since we last spoke is we have far more relationships and far better relationships with many clinical trial sponsors. So the folks behind whatever therapeutic or investigational, drug, biologic, whatever it might be. And so when it comes to recruitment and enrollment, we have what are called enrollment criteria, inclusion and exclusion criteria. Those are filed with

Angela Adams, CEO at Inflo Health, is addressing the opportunity to improve the tracking and follow-up of radiology findings. Info Health uses natural language processing to understand radiologists' reports and identify findings that require additional imaging and possible actions. Healthcare providers often lack the resources to manage radiology test results effectively.  Inflo Health's solution can drive significant revenue to these providers by minimizing missed follow-ups and appointments. Angela explains, "Inflo Health is a technology company that serves healthcare—primarily health systems and imaging centers. We're built around solving the problem for health systems of never missing a follow-up related to radiology. If you look at the research, it will show you pretty readily that about 50% of radiology findings and actionable findings are missed in the healthcare system today, primarily because it's a really difficult problem to solve. You've got a radiologist who dictates a report in real-time, under

Dr. Chris Duma, President and Founder of Regeneration Biomedical, is developing stem cell therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, and multiple sclerosis. Their approach involves directly injecting the patient's stem cells into the brain ventricles to stimulate the brain's innate stem cells to repair and replace damaged neurons. Current clinical trials are showing promising results and, notably, minimal side effects compared to other Alzheimer's drugs. Chris explains, "So our focus is to treat the full disease and make a difference in the disease's progression. The way the disease presents itself and the way that the disease is actually cured. The focus until now has been to target particular areas of abnormality in patients’ brains. Those with Alzheimer's disease, as we know, have plaques in the brain, and they have tangles in the brain. Alzheimer's disease was discovered or invented by a pathologist in the early 1900s. When they sliced the brain of an Alzheimer's patient, they f

Will Ho, President, CEO, and Co-Founder of IN8bio, a company developing next-generation cellular therapies using gamma delta T cells, which play a unique role in bridging the innate and adaptive immune systems. GDT cell therapies may have reduced side effects compared to other T cell therapies as they can more selectively target tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. IN8bio is conducting clinical trials using autologous and allogeneic gamma delta T cells for leukemia and glioblastoma with the goal of eliminating the cancer.   Will explains, "As you probably are aware, our immune system is generally broken down into two halves. One is the innate or the immediate portion of the system, which is why we're called IN8bio, the gamma delta T cells, which are considered innate immune cells. On the other, the adaptive is the memory part of our immune system. The gamma delta T cells bridge between both the innate and the adaptive. They actually have features across both. In particular, one of their natural function

Patrick Mobley, CEO and Co-Founder of Vivid Health has developed a platform to address the inefficiencies in the post-acute care industry. Home health and hospice nurses often spend hours completing required paper-based forms and assessments to create personalized patient care plans and submissions for payments. This technology aims to streamline the workflow and collection of patient information while proactively monitoring patients and using AI-powered voice agents to improve patient engagement. Patrick explains, "So the way it works with your standard home health organization is that referral is received from a hospital, and most of the work from that point on takes place within any EMR. There are some other vendors that process places, but there is no getting around that form. It is required that you've got to complete every single step. There's really no difference no matter what state you're in or what jurisdiction; you might see slight variations between Medicare, Medicare Advantage, or Medicaid, but i

Dr. Jonathan Usuka, CEO of Sapient, uses insights about proteomics and metabolomics to provide deep molecular characterization of diseases from a single sample to support drug discovery, development, and approval. The company's unique dataset combines real-world data with longitudinal molecular profiling of tens of thousands of samples across different diseases, ethnicities, genders, and ages.  By measuring proteins and metabolites, this data and insights engine helps pharmaceutical companies gain a significantly more comprehensive view of the molecular basis of disease, better understand drug targets, and predict potential drug outcomes and safety. Jonathan explains, "We support drug discovery and drug development, and a couple of things are going on in the industry right now in discovery and development. One is the overall pharma landscape of how a drug gets approved. That's been fairly static since the 1970s with the creation of the FDA. So clinical trials are well established, but the structure of it was