Empowered Patient Podcast

Tim Moran, President and CEO of Avertix, discusses the company's mission to revolutionize how heart attack survivors are cared for and supported. Targeting patients who have had one prior heart attack or instance of a prior acute coronary syndrome, this first-of-its-kind technology is implanted in patients to monitor for the onset of another heart attack. The device notifies the patient in real-time so they can seek care and minimize the effects of the attack.  Work is underway for providing cloud connectivity to the device, allowing data to be shared with physicians and family members.   Tim explains, "So in our study, patients that had The Guardian product implanted, we were able to reduce their time to care from the onset of symptoms by almost eight times. So we got the time down on average to 1.6 hours from the onset of symptoms where they arrived at an emergency room and then ultimately could have therapeutic intervention like a stent put in, which ultimately would reperfuse them and get blood flowing a

Jason Bock, Co-Founder and CEO of CTMC, and Dr. Chris Flowers, Division Head of Cancer Medicine and Chair of Lymphoma and Myeloma at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, are collaborating to accelerate the development of cancer cell therapies and manufacturing innovative cell therapies for cancer patients. CTMC is a joint venture between MD Anderson Cancer Center and National Resilience created to address the challenges of delivering autologous cell therapies at a scalable level. Jason and Chris highlight the value of face-to-face interaction in solving the complex logistics of getting a drug from the research into the clinic.   Jason explains, "We created CTMC to address the challenges of delivering autologous cell therapies to treat cancer patients. This modality is unique in that the starting material for each batch of product comes from the patient. And so, the actual manufacturing supply chain starts with the patient. We bring that into the manufacturing facility, engineer the cells, expan

Jay Srinivasan, CEO of Truvian Health, is on a mission to disrupt the blood testing model by making routine testing readily available and affordable with a platform that provides appropriate information for patients and physicians. The current blood testing process involves multiple tubes of blood being drawn, transportation of the blood to a lab, and waiting days for results.  Truvian aims to streamline the process by placing its platform in retail clinics and physician offices where a single tube of blood can be processed on-site with results available in minutes. Jay explains, "Our goal is to have our platform exist wherever you go. So, it could be in a retail or a corporate clinic, it could be in your physician's office labs, it could be in retail pharmacies, it could be in an arena, it could be in a mall, in a school, in a university setting, anywhere you go." "This platform can take one tube of blood, not multiple tubes of blood because it has integrated multiple technologies that allow us to process a

Omri Shor, Co-Founder and CEO of Medisafe is driven to help patients manage their medications. Omri emphasizes that medication adherence is influenced by various factors, including access to healthcare providers, ability to refill prescriptions, side effects, and cost. Medisafe tools support patients by providing reminders, tracking medication intake, and managing drug-to-drug interactions. Partners include drug manufacturers and pharma companies that want to support patients to improve outcomes. Omri explains, "People think medication management is one problem, but it is not. There are so many drivers and challenges behind it, and it is very personalized to the individual on one end. It's also aligned with the specific condition and the specific drug. There is no clear answer to who's more prone." "In many cases, what we want to see is actually connected to outcomes. So, if the patient takes a medication to get to a specific outcome, they can track those outcomes in Medisafe. There are roughly 70 or 80 tra

Anthony Mack, CEO of Virpax Pharma, is developing non-addictive pain drugs focusing on repurposing existing molecules and improving the delivery platform to enhance bioavailability and sustained delivery. With an initial focus on postoperative pain management and preventing opioid tolerance, their product, Probudur, is a long-lasting local anesthetic for sustained pain control. The asset Envelta uses a molecular envelope technology to protect enkephalin as it passes through the blood-brain barrier to attach to delta receptors in the brain to control pain.   Anthony explains, "Now, in the case of the enkephalin asset, as far as tolerance is concerned, we have a product that isn't enkephalin. It's a peptide, and peptides are endogenous materials already in our bodies. Now, we can't generate enough to have pain control, so it would be nice if we could administer them. If an enkephalin can get past the blood-brain barrier, it attaches to the brain's delta receptors. There are immune receptors in the brain, too,

Dr. Jay Shah, Chief Medical Officer of Aktiia, discusses the importance of tracking blood pressure and the challenges of managing high blood pressure. With only one in five people with high blood pressure having it under control, long-term monitoring is crucial for better understanding blood pressure trends and optimizing health. The Aktiia wearable blood pressure monitoring device uses optical signal processing to continuously monitor blood pressure without the need for action to be taken by the patient. Jay explains, "The real danger of high blood pressure occurs over years, decades, long periods of time of having your blood pressure outside the optimal range. It is really what causes the detrimental effects to many of the different organs of our body, of our heart, brain, kidneys, eyes, aorta, and so on. And so the importance of understanding what your blood pressure is over long periods of time is really what we're focused on at Aktiia. That's why people should be aware of and track their blood pressure

Dr. Oliver Kharraz is the CEO and Founder of Zocdoc, a healthcare marketplace that helps patients find and book appointments with doctors.  The platform was created to address the problem of long wait times for appointments and the lack of ability to take advantage of last-minute availability on providers' schedules. The goal is to streamline the patient experience, allow doctors to reduce administrative burdens, and improve patient engagement with easy-to-use tools for messaging, payments, and virtual visits.   Oliver explains, "As we were operating the Zocdoc marketplace, we heard from our 80,000 doctors on the platform that they had trouble engaging patients. For the ones that use Zocdoc, it was easy because we're providing them a lot of the scaffolding and infrastructure. But doctors see a lot of patients who call them, who have been coming to them for a long time, or are coming to them for the first time and don't have the tools available. The tools out there are too expensive or super clunky and make i

Mark Carbone, CEO of PN Medical, highlights the growing problem since COVID-19 of respiratory health and breathing issues. The Breather is a respiratory muscle training device that improves breathlessness, endurance, stamina, blood pressure, and sleep.  Used daily, this device has shown benefits for patients, athletes, and the military in training respiratory muscles and counteracting bad posture and limitations of the environment on the lungs and diaphragm. PN Medical is developing a connected version of The Breather that uses AI and sensors to monitor respiratory health and provide personalized feedback.   Mark explains, "The Breather is our flagship. That's the one we invented 43 years ago. And since then, we've moved from patient to athletics, Special Forces, and even professional singers and actors. So, at its core, it's a gym for your lungs and heart. That's the easiest way to explain it, but the whole system is a three-part system. So, it's a respiratory muscle training device at its core, and the sec

Mark Duman, the Director of MD Healthcare Consultants in the UK, focuses on patient engagement and digital health strategy, working with established life science companies to actually put patients at the center of their activities.  They are also working with start-ups to scale up their digital health services, navigate healthcare systems, and develop patient engagement strategies. The key to a patient-centric approach is working from the bottom up to find patients through local community and faith-based groups and patient advocacy groups. Mark explains, "I'm a former pharmacist. I qualified in Aberdeen, in northern Scotland, back in 1990. I had a particular interest at that time in what we call over here pharmacy practice, the idea of supporting patients to take medicines, which, as we know, 50% of them sadly don't take as prescribed. That has been my focus throughout my career. I've worked in the National Health Service, which, as many of you will know, is the British healthcare system that is funded publi

Derek Streat, Founder and CEO of DexCare, has created an orchestration platform that helps manage healthcare's demand and supply sides. As a data-driven intelligence company, the focus is on allocating limited resources to drive maximum productive utilization for all stakeholders.  While there are often conflicting goals, using large data sets, risk models can be developed to meet the needs of patients, providers, and payers and better manage access to and cost of healthcare. Derek explains, "For the benefit of providers, patients, and health systems, those resources must be allocated. Those precious resources, with limited time and quantity, need to be allocated in a way that makes them the most productive utilization of those resources. We all know that, again, the reason that we often have to wait a long time to get access to care. Whether it's sitting in a waiting room in an ED or waiting weeks or months to get access to a specialist, the reason that happens is often there's a misallocation or misalignmen

Dr. Carol DerSarkissian, Medical Director at Ezra, is bringing AI-enhanced MRI technology to a broader market to help detect cancer earlier in vulnerable and asymptomatic populations.  Using Ezra Flash and a high-speed MRI protocol, MRIs are performed quickly and enhanced to provide high-quality images at the limits of the current standard of care for review by expert radiologists. The  Ezra Flash scan is a full body scan now priced at $1,350, with a goal of $500. Carol elaborates, "The goal is early detection, which is one of our best tools in fighting cancer. Early cancer detection has about an 80% survival rate, compared to less than 20% for late-stage cancer. These statistics are from the American Cancer Society. Yet 50% of cancers are still detected at a late stage. There is a need. At Ezra, we're the first company to leverage artificial intelligence globally, AI across all three key components of the cancer screening process: one, imaging, two, analysis, and three, reporting and making it available dire

Dr. Nora Zetsche, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Veta Health, a health tech company, has designed a continuous support solution for patients that includes virtual care and virtual support of in-person care.  Remote monitoring includes patient-reported data, text messages, tracking from wearables and other passive sensors. Integrating existing electronic health records allows providers to incorporate the virtual data to enable clinicians to make appropriate treatment decisions. Nora explains, "It's always tricky with these buzzwords in health tech because everyone ends up having a different interpretation of them. And so, for us, remote monitoring isn't just what came about in the pandemic, which is these reimbursement codes around remote patient monitoring. Still, it's a whole gamut of virtual care extension into patients' homes. And a part of that is how we seamlessly get information from the patient to the caring clinicians." "And that is, for us, that remote monitoring, that on the one hand, enta

Dror Zur, Founder and CEO of MAGENTIQ EYE, discusses the opportunities for reducing the risk of colorectal cancer through AI-assisted colonoscopies.  He points out the relatively high polyp miss rate that can be due to the size of the polyp, interpretations by physicians, and limitations of the procedure room.  The MAGENTIQ-Colo AI system analyzes colonoscopy videos in real time and alerts the physician to polyps with a bounding box. Dror explains, "The procedure room is not a perfect place. There is some noise, and there are other people sometimes. There can be interference. Also, sometimes, the polyp passes through the video very fast, and even if it is not a very small polyp, it's hard to detect it. Sometimes, the point-of-view is such that it is hard to see. Sometimes, it is hidden behind a fold or something like that, and then only a very small part of it can be seen. It is hard to detect the polyp this way. There are several reasons for that." "The system takes the video, breaks it into frames, and ana

Dr. Eliseo Salinas, head of Research and Development at Delix Therapeutics, is focused on developing drugs to treat central nervous system disorders by addressing synaptic density.  Applying knowledge about psychoplastogens and neuroplastogens, Delix strives to increase connections between neurons in treating depression more quickly and effectively than using antidepressants.  Eliseo explains, "The term psychoplastogen was coined only a few years ago when it was realized that certain substances, like ketamine or psychedelics like psilocybin, produce those increases in synaptic density in hours, not weeks. So, those were termed psychoplastogens. More recently, it is believed that the psychedelics or psychotomimetic effects of those psychoplastogens might not be necessary for the therapeutic benefit." "Neuroplastogens are those compounds that produce an acute increase in synaptic density in hours without producing those psychotomimetics or hallucinatory effects that the typical psychedelics produce." "When y

Cindy Gaines is Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at Lumeon, a clinical workflow automation company. While standard practices are often in place in a healthcare setting, leadership is often surprised at the variations in execution and the opportunities for automation. The goal is to use technology to extend the providers' practice and serve the patients in a familiar, convenient fashion. Cindy elaborates, "As much as we think we have standardized workflows today, I will talk to leaders who are like, "Oh, this is how we do it." And when you talk to the front lines, "How do you do this work? " you find a lot more variation out there than expected by the leadership team. So, that's sometimes where the consulting part of this company comes in. Some people think we're much more standardized than we are, and that's the opportunity to take those standardized workflows and make them easier for the teams to follow. It's this gap between clinical intent and clinical execution." "So when you think foundationally a

Dr. Darrin Starkey, Director of Education at Trace Minerals Research, emphasizes the need for a wholesome, balanced diet and the challenges people face to get necessary nutrients from the food we eat. Of particular concern are the trace elements not present in processed foods. Darrin explains, "We are typically familiar with macrominerals, calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and sodium. But trace minerals are often overlooked and neglected because they're needed in small amounts. So, in answer to that question, they're the trace amounts of these elements that our bodies need that make up 0.01% of our makeup and yet an essential part of our health that we often don't focus on until we're in a crisis." "But often, because of our society, we're such a reactive society today instead of being proactive. We should wait until we're in crisis before asking the questions. But often, being proactive, of being able to put and supplement these trace minerals back into our diets, is a huge point. If we look at the

Eric Mayer, CEO of New Day Diagnostics, is tapping into the trend for more user-friendly diagnostics that patients can use to test themselves for making medical decisions. While blood draw facilities and complex testing will always be a component of healthcare, as technology progresses, more at-home testing will become available. To better support patients and providers, New Day is finding less invasive ways to collect biomarker information and using AI and machine learning to refine the interpretation of test results.  Eric explains, "The business model is very straightforward. We design and develop our suite of diagnostic products that cover cancer testing, infectious disease testing, digestive disease, and women's health. We also operate a contract research laboratory and CRO services for other diagnostics developers, whether point-of-care or over-the-counter, who want to bring those products through the FDA. We help with those studies, and we help with the clinical trials. And then, we also deploy diagno

Dr. Ed Chekan is certified in general surgery and is Vice President of Medical Affairs and Professional Education at Asensus Surgical, which is taking the platform of laparoscopic surgery and adding augmented intelligence technology. Laparoscopic surgery currently starts with a digital interface in a video image. Asensus is adding augmented intelligence to the video image in real-time to support the surgeon and surgical team with additional information to improve outcomes and the experience of the clinicians. Ed explains, "We're starting with things already being done. We have a feature that is a digital measurement. This allows the surgeon, if measurement is critical to this portion of the procedure, for instance, in general surgery, we'd say five to six centimeters from the pylorus, to start a staple line in a sleeve gastrectomy. We either estimate that through different ways, or we'd have to put a tape measure inside the patient to measure that distance accurately to get that measurement. So we're doing t

Lynn Carroll, Chief Operating Officer at HSBlox, provides a platform to encourage collaboration between payers and providers in a value-based care system.  The success of VBC is based on the perspective of the patient and the ability to personalize the interaction with their entire care team. Assessing the needs of patients and using digital tools to engage patients is bringing the benefits of value-based care to a broader audience. Lynn explains, "On the data exchange side, this certainly gets us into the interoperability space. What we have seen is an emphasis on aligning the participants in the care team. Part of an assessment is to understand who a patient is seeing today, who they may have seen recently, or who are they not seeing anyone. But once you know the care team and that care team is in place, facilitating that data sharing component is a key part of the approach." "We have seen an attempt after stratifying a population to know where there are high-touch patients or folks with chronic disease tha

Cassie Choi, Co-Founder of Pair Team, partners with members in the community, such as nonprofits, homeless shelters, food pantries, and primary care providers, to provide healthcare and related services to underserved communities. Drawing on available resources, Pair Team is using digital technology to connect funding sources to these stakeholders so that they can provide the help that is needed by underrepresented and often overlooked patients. Cassie explains, "I think the issue when you look at Medicaid recipients and underserved communities is that they don't have anything at all. A lot of startups and companies aim for big high-achieving impact. That will happen, but we look at it as we have to earn the right to get there by improving the ecosystem little by little. What we do is provide this care coordination and care delivery to augment the existing systems. I think a differentiator for us, too, is that there are entities in the community that are trying to do this work, but they're really not empower