Empowered Patient Podcast

Melinda Thomas, the COO and Co-Founder of Octave Bioscience is focused on delivering a new standard of care for multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases.  The company aims to address the unmet needs of people living with MS using blood-based biomarkers, expanded imaging, and a clinical insights program. The solution includes an app, wearable sensors, and a nurse care partner to help patients and neurologists make better-informed treatment decisions.   Melinda elaborates, "What we learned when we did about 150 interviews before we even started developing anything was, in MS specifically, there was no way to see what was going on beneath the surface. You didn't have a blood test that told you what was going on in the biology. So, we developed a blood test, 18 biomarkers analytically validated, that reveal underlying activated pathways and mechanisms that allow for accurate measurement of what's going on with their disease activity."   "The tool used today is an MRI, which shows new or worsening l

Cheryl Cheng, Founder and CEO of Vive Collective, discusses the unique business model of their investment platform, which focuses on digital health and health tech addressing large problems in healthcare, such as chronic conditions and complex workflows. Cheryl emphasizes the need for seamless integration of digital health solutions into existing healthcare systems and the importance of user interface. While excited about the potential of AI and robotics in healthcare, Cheryl highlights the need to include humans in decision-making while leveraging technology to improve access and quality of care. Cheryl explains, "We're excited to have launched this investment platform a couple of years ago, and the thesis behind it is to be very flexible in the type of capital we can deploy in the types of businesses we can invest in and build. However, they all need to stay within digital health and health tech. The idea was to give us the flexibility to add value to companies along their lifecycle. We can be a continuous

Dejan Nenov, Founder and Chairman of Panaton Software, highlights the importance of integrating healthcare data for such purposes as ordering medical tests and recruiting patients for clinical trials. The Panaton simple integration service for healthcare services uses AI to help streamline workflow, break down data silos, and provide seamless data exchange. While standardization is desirable, flexibility is essential when creating workflows that allow people to be more efficient. Dejan explains, "Imagine that you have just invented a fantastic new medical test, spent years doing the science and the research, and then millions of dollars doing your studies and FDA approval. So now you have a test and a lab that can perform it. Suddenly, you need to be able to offer that test to 100 different health systems, including the ability to get paid for it, either through private or insurance or Medicare." "You realize you have to move information just to order your tests. You have to move information from your lab to

Brian Smith, Chief Pharmacy Officer at Shields Health Solutions, addresses the challenges patients experience receiving specialty drugs by working with health systems to simplify the process. With a focus on measuring outcomes and improving patient care, Shields has seen a significant cure rate for hepatitis C, driven by attention to medication adherence and tracking outcomes. Recognizing the need to treat the multiple conditions patients often experience, Shields takes a patient-centric view to help these high-risk patients keep their conditions under control.   Brian explains, "We started in the areas of what people would call specialty pharmacy, such as oncology medications that people take at home, oral medications for people who have had a transplant, and injections like Humira for rheumatoid arthritis." "But I'd say what we found over the last 12 years is a lot of medications can be challenging and difficult, and a lot of patients need help. While we focus on specialty pharmacy, I'd say we have broaden

Shelly Hoffman, Partner and Executive VP at Marbury Creative Group emphasizes that branding and messaging in the healthcare industry increasingly focus on problem-solving and emotional messaging. She highlights the value of leveraging written content, audio, video, and podcasts to disseminate information to target audiences. COVID-19 has also changed healthcare and pharma messaging to physicians and patients with a shift to safety, population health, and social determinants of health.  Shelly elaborates, "We're a brand-building marketing agency on a mission to simplify things for our clients. So whether that's from a messaging and positioning standpoint, trying to make things that can be complicated simple, or from a media and campaign standpoint, trying to make sure our clients understand results and everything from an ROI standpoint. So we do work across a lot of different services, including branding, strategy and insights, digital, social, experiential, video, and photography." "Often, on the healthcare s

Dr. Margie Balfour, a psychiatrist and Chief Clinical Quality Officer at Connections Health Solutions, discusses the challenges and demand for behavioral health crisis care.  She highlights the implementation of the 988 Suicide and Crisis National Lifeline, which allows individuals to access mental health support by phone, text, or chat. With a focus on crisis stabilization, help from peer specialists, and face-to-face interventions, Margie emphasizes the importance of teamwork in crisis management.   Margie explains, "What 988 does is, now anyone from your phone, just like you could dial 911, you can dial 988. That connects to what used to be called the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. And that is a network of about 200 call centers around the country that are staffed with trained mental health counselors who can help. For a lot of crises, having someone to talk to can make people's symptoms decrease and get people connected to the care they need and help that crisis in the moment without having to sen

Chris Sullens, CEO of CentralReach, offers a range of technology solutions to support providers, therapists, educators, and parents working with individuals with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities. The goal is to streamline administrative tasks, replacing paper-based procedures with digital tools and allowing professionals to spend more in-person time with clients. The digital CR Care Coordinator helps train parents to reinforce the work of the therapists, which leads to better outcomes for the child and the behavior technician.   Chris explains, "At CentralReach, our focus is providing technology and associated services to providers, therapists, special educators, and others who are working with primarily the autistic community and those with broader intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs). That technology spans everything from patient-provider management systems, practice management systems, data collection on the clinical side, curriculum content assessments, as well as a ho

Brian Strem, President and CEO of Kiora Pharmaceuticals, is developing a small molecule drug to treat orphan retinal diseases. Their drug KIO-301 restores vision in patients with inherited retinal disease. By giving retinal ganglion cells the ability to sense light, signals can be sent to the brain to effectively see using cells that are not normally light-sensitive.  These molecular photoswitches can change shape based on the presence or absence of light and allow a patient to see the direction and movement of light. Brian explains, "It is dependent on the specific mutation. So, we know that there are certain gene mutations that a child will literally be born with immediate signs and symptoms of that disease. Whether that is immediately being blind, so being born blind, versus some of the other ones where you don't tend to get the onset of disease symptoms until the second, or third decade of life when you have difficulty seeing in the dark. Then all of a sudden, that progresses to losing peripheral vision a

Mark Litton, President and CEO of Athira Pharma, discusses advancements in treating neurodegenerative diseases, highlighting the challenges in treating these diseases. Athira's approach uses the body's natural repair mechanism to enhance the repair and protection of nerve cells.  Their lead molecule, fosgonimeton, enhances the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) and crosses the blood-brain barrier to effectively target neurodegeneration. Mark explains, "At Athira, we're taking a completely novel approach where we're using the body's natural repair mechanism to help repair. We have spent many years designing molecules that enhance this mechanism. This is what we call the HGF/MET biology. This is a biology that has been known for over 30 years. It was originally discovered coming from the liver. What we know about it is that it's important in repairing, protecting, healing, and developing nerve cells." "What we found in a lot of neurodegenerative diseases is that this repair mechanism is impaired, or it slows down

Jim Murphy, CEO of Greenphire, discusses the company's role in addressing the financial lifecycle of clinical trials.  Greenphire works with sponsors, CROs, and research sites to automate and simplify payment processes, provide patient services, and remove burdens for patients and site personnel.  The aim is to improve patient retention and accelerate clinical development by streamlining processes from traditional manual methods to digital solutions that address budgeting, grant payments, and patient reimbursements.   Jim explains, "There are so many solutions that address data collection points in clinical trials. We're not one of those. We're a company focused on solving more of the business problems of clinical research. For example, we provide workflows that automate and simplify the payment processes from sponsors or CROs to investigative research sites. We provide patient convenience services that enable and support participants to maintain their journey on a clinical trial, giving them reimbursements,

Julia Regan, CEO and Co-Founder of RxLightning discussed the company's platform for streamlining the process of accessing specialty medications. The traditional process of getting the necessary consent and shipment of these drugs involves a significant amount of paperwork and delays in delivery. RxLightning aims to digitize and automate this process by removing the need for physical paper by using digital tools to connect all parties to ensure fast and affordable access to care. By eliminating paper-based processes, they have achieved a completion rate of 85% of applications within 24 hours.   Julia explains, "Specialty medications are always an interesting topic because, over the last 15 years, the definition of a specialty med has evolved with the new medications and molecules coming to market. So when we define specialty meds, we're talking about the high-cost medications that could treat rare diseases. Still, they also treat things like oncology, dermatology issues, GI, RA, and even allergy immunology. S

Mike Pattwell, principal business advisor at Edifecs and Chair of the WEDI payment models work group, emphasizes the pandemic's impact on moving away from the fee-for-service model towards a value-based care model. Improving the administration of healthcare requires automation, new workflow solutions, and better data exchange to improve patient health.  He mentions three organizations, including CMMI, WEDI, and CAQH, working towards creating interoperability and seamless communication between payers and providers.   Mike explains, "We've been around for 26 years, and we've been developing solutions to help our clients, mostly payers and providers, and health systems, to operationalize and automate workflows to improve the administration side of healthcare so that they can focus on doing what they do well, which is taking care of members and patients." "Starting at the top, it would be The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMS) and the innovation center called CMMI. They're paving the future of hea

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