Empowered Patient Podcast

David Esposito, President and CEO of ONL Therapeutics, is focused on back-of-the-eye diseases such as open-angle glaucoma, dry age-related macular degeneration, and retinal detachment. Their drug ONL1204 targets retina cells to block the Fas receptor to reduce damage to the eye.  This small peptide is delivered via an injection in the eye to slow the progression of retinal diseases. David elaborates, "The Fas receptor is a common pathophysiology in a number of cells of the body. Your audience may be familiar with oncology treatments, so therapies to treat cancer often try to develop a drug that activates the Fas receptor to trigger the death of those cancer cells. Those have been around for several decades, looking at fas receptors in other disease states. We have been the only ones focused in ophthalmology and eye diseases focused on the Fas receptor to protect retina cells."  "I think certainly with fas receptors in the eye, what's very interesting is that it is a common pathophysiology across a variety of

Nima Ahmadi, CEO of The Wound Company, highlights the need for qualified and certified wound care experts to work with patients on a continuous basis. This kind of relationship allows the care provider to proactively manage the wound to ensure efficient healing as quickly as possible.  Personalized plans are created using AI and data analysis, considering the patient's risk factors and specific details about the wound and their general health condition.  Nima explains, "We think about being in a continuous relationship with everybody who has a wound, ensuring its healing. Then, we continue to be proactive as we manage patients who are at risk of new wounds or repeat wounds so that we're doing everything we can preventatively to prevent that from happening. This is completely different than how we've approached wound care for the last few decades." "We have certified experts, and our vision is that in ten years, every single American with a wound will have a certified wound care expert from The Wound Company a

Dr. Monique Nugent is a practicing hospitalist and an associate director for the Division of Hospital Medicine at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts. She's also the author of Prescription for Admission: A Doctor's Guide for Navigating the Hospital, Advocating for Yourself, and Having a Better Hospitalization. Post-COVID, hospitals are dealing with workflow and getting patients in and out of the hospital as soon as possible. One big obstacle is the lack of places patients can go for rehabilitation and skilled nursing care, which is leading to more consideration of the hospital-at-home model. While this is a patient-facing book, there are insights about what healthcare providers need to understand about the patient hospital experience. Monique explains, "Hospital-at-home is not a new concept. It's somewhat of a new concept here in the United States, but hospital-at-home has been successful around the world, and I think there's a lot of really good benefits." "Number one, it cuts down on costs, an

Ryan McQuaid, Co-Founder of PlushCare, has expanded their collaborative virtual care model to provide whole-person care, including mental health and weight management. Working with partners, PlushCare offers primary care and referrals to specialists, second opinions, and therapists in all 50 states. Their top priority is to provide personalized care in a seamless fashion to all patients, especially those in underserved and rural communities. Ryan elaborates, "Everybody's familiar with virtual care now. And so, given it's become a much more mature market, just like anything, as the market matures, consumers' expectations increase. And so, rewind five years ago, people were okay with maybe not the greatest experience when it came to a virtual visit, but now the bar has been raised substantially. And so, just making sure that patients get a wow experience has been one of our focuses."   "I think another area is being the one-stop shop. I talked about us joining forces with Accolade and 2nd MD to be the one place

Eli Ben-Joseph, Co-Founder and CEO of Regard, works with health systems to integrate AI into their medical record systems to help doctors by highlighting issues, aiding in the diagnosis, and writing medical notes after a patient visit. With increasing doctor burnout, an emphasis on more efficient workflow supported by technology is a path to giving providers more time with patients and less time on administrative issues and on their computers.   Eli explains, "We say that it's essentially an AI co-pilot for doctors. The way that works is we have a deep integration with leading medical records, both Epic and Cerner. And when a health system partners with us they will link our software to their system. When a doctor opens up Regard, the moment they click the Regard button, our technology goes into the medical record and fetches the entire medical record data for that patient. All the labs, all the history, all the vitals."  "What we recognized when we started this company is that doctors are spending way more

Mark McDonough, the CEO of ChromaCode, is leveraging high-definition PCR testing to overcome the limitations of conventional PCR to identify biomarkers of infectious diseases and cancer. While gene sequencing can provide valuable information, it requires more tissue, is expensive, and requires at least a week for analysis. Using HDPCR, ChromaCode has developed a lung cancer assay that looks at nine genes and 15 biomarkers, requiring less tissue, performed at a lower cost, and provides results quickly. This approach, built on a cloud-supported multiplexing platform, provides flexibility to explore other areas in oncology and transplants, looking at multiple targets per sample. Mark explains, "With PCR today, assays look at particular biomarkers on a gene-by-gene basis. So those can be effective in lung cancer, for example, if you know you're just looking for EGFR as a biomarker or if you're looking at KRAS or ALK, a different mutation. But the problem is it's not very comprehensive, and you need a lot of tissu

Priyanka Dutta-Passecker is the CEO and Founder of Healiva, a Swiss start-up focused on innovative treatments for acute and chronic wounds. Healiva begins the process by cleaning the wound using an enzyme invented by Priyanka.  Depending on the severity of the wound, autologous or allogeneic cell therapy is used to make new skin to heal the wound. Priyanka explains, "So, to give a background for when we talk about personalized cell therapies and autologous cell therapy. We take a patient here, and from the patient, we make the patient's skin. That means that we're completely personalizing and making the skin of the patient. And this is given to extremely chronic non-healing wound patients like venous leg ulcer patients or diabetic foot ulcer patients. The skin gets integrated on their ulcer and closes the ulcer. That's one of our autologous cell therapy products called Epidex." "We do keep the primary cells when we take the hair follicle. As you may know, hair follicles are epithelial cells that we expand, a

Steve Kent is Chief Product Officer at Know Labs, which has developed a new sensor that uses noninvasive radiofrequency spectroscopy to measure molecules in the body.  Their first target is to non-invasively measure glucose to help those with diabetes manage their conditions more effectively. As a sensor and diagnostics company, Know Labs is working to understand how its sensor and technology can be integrated with best-in-class insulin delivery systems to provide a portable, reliable, and affordable solution for a growing global audience. Steve explains, "It's a big breakthrough as far as what you're able to measure by being able to penetrate deeper into the human body. Also, we can send up to 400,000 different frequencies through one sensor, whereas, with LEDs, as the example I gave earlier, you can only send something like three to five per LED. Then, you have to physically change out the entire sensor. With ours, that programmatic control allows us an unprecedented amount of new data through the sensor f

Dr. Tony Willoughby is the CEO of Stellus Rx, which has created a model of collaboration for the physician, patient, and pharmacist to provide a more robust system to encourage medication adherence and lifestyle changes. While clinicians may prescribe a treatment plan, pharmacists are in a position to work with patients to address their specific concerns and monitor the patient for drug interactions and possible de-prescribing strategies. Tony explains, "What our model does is it comes alongside the physician. In that moment of the last 90 seconds of the appointment. We actually have that physician connect that patient to a pharmacist that's embedded virtually in that clinic to expand the capacity of the physician. To pick up that conversation and give space to understand what the patient's belief systems are, what their questions are, how to coordinate or optimize the medication to fit the patient's belief system and the product design of their health plan or their pharmacy benefit plan." "Anytime you incre

Dave Hering, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Invivyd, draws on his experience with vaccines working at Pfizer and research on monoclonal antibodies to engineer targeted monoclonal antibodies to treat diseases like cancer and prevent diseases like COVID-19. Providing antibodies, particularly to immunocompromised people, overcomes the limitations of vaccines and reduces the risk of severe outcomes from diseases. Dave elaborates, "Antibodies are made by humans. They're made in response to an antigen, a virus being introduced into the body. Frequently, the starting point for these antibodies is to take blood and serum from people infected from a disease and look for these antibodies. And so that's the starting way. We call that mining antibodies. You can get them from survivors of different diseases and then use them to generate and create antibodies that look like that."   "And so Invivyd does the same thing. We start with those. But with our technology and a partnership with a company called Adimab, we

Luká Yancopoulos is CEO of Grapevine Technologies, a COVID-inspired company determined to increase resilience in the supply chain for healthcare supplies. Disrupting the current network of manufacturers, importers, and distributors, Grapevine is connecting suppliers directly to end users. They aim to build a more resilient network of suppliers, eliminate waste and unnecessary costs for medical providers, and reduce patient charges.      Luká explains, "Not a lot has changed in the healthcare space regarding logistics and supply chain in my lifetime. So, getting things to change and getting things to budge is definitely difficult in nature. But our primary business innovation is that we seamlessly connect a data-driven network of primary suppliers directly to healthcare practices." "When I say that Grapevine is connecting this data-driven network of primary suppliers, we're using the data made publicly available by the United States government to find actual importers or manufacturers of the medical supplie

Dr. Anupam Jena is an economist, a physician, a podcaster, and the Joseph P. Newhouse Professor of Healthcare Policy at the Harvard Medical School. He's also the co-author, along with Dr. Christopher Worsham, of the newly published book Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces that Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health. Anupam, also known as Dr. Bapu, combines his medical training with curiosity about cause and effect to explore explanations for failures and successes in providing healthcare and how chance occurrences affect our health. Of particular interest is the power of natural experiments to enhance understanding of the effect of a treatment or drug within a larger universe than traditional randomized clinical trials.   Bapu elaborates, "One of the benefits of these natural experiments is that they are more generalizable. They tell us what might happen in a real world because you're exactly right. If a clinical trial is performed, it may be performed in a very particular geographic area

Will Cantrell is the Director of Product Solutions at InteliChart, a SaaS-based service providing digital tools to providers and EHR partners. Their focus is on the workflows of staff and clinicians and the patient experience in a telehealth environment or in-person appointment. InteliChart integrates existing systems with innovative technology to facilitate scheduling, reduce clinician stress, encourage preventative care, and better manage chronic diseases. Will explains, "We focus more on workflows for staff to move in between patient visits, initiate sessions, put patients back in waiting rooms, move them between providers, and the patient experience is our primary focus. We can spend a lot of time building that in, not just to a telehealth workflow but into the entirety of the patient journey, and trying to bring that back to the patient portal, which is the hub of engagement for us. So, the patient gets more of a seamless experience through all their touch points." "You don't have to worry about travel

Dr. Björn Mellgård, VP and Global Program Lead of rare genetics and hematology at Takeda, is passionate about finding a cure for cTTP, congenital thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura.  This ultra-rare disease, caused by an enzyme deficiency, presents in early childhood and results in life-threatening blood clots. With their investigational drug TAK-755, a recombinant enzyme, the volume is very small, and the infusion takes four to five minutes and is a replacement therapy to allow patients to avoid daily symptoms and acute episodes. Björn explains, "What happens then is that we have our coagulation system, and many people have heard about bleeding disorders, mainly probably hemophilia, where you lack certain factors which are important to make the blood clot. TTP is on the other side of the spectrum, and the deficiency we're talking about, this ADAMTS13 enzyme, is also importantly involved in blood coagulation." "But the effect is when you don't have this enzyme present. The blood has a tendency to spontaneou

Steve Taddei, Co-Founder and Lab Director of HearAdvisor created to provide unbiased, scientifically-based analysis of over-the-counter hearing aids. With recent legislation allowing hearing aids to be sold directly to consumers and online, there is a need for a clear understanding of the features and benefits of available audio-enhancing technology. Using a life-like mannequin equipped with microphones, HearAdvisor can perform repeatable experiments to test the hearing aids across several categories and rank them for different purposes. Steve explains, "Selecting devices that we found to perform best was quite a process, and I would like to say that HearAdvisor is an independent lab. We are not owned by any hearing aid company. We're kind of three hearing technology nerds or just audiology nerds, people who love sound, acoustics, and hearing. We saw this problem, we came together, and we used as best as possible, the scientific approach to make recordings of all these devices. These recordings emulate, as b

Dr. Zereana Jess-Huff, Senior VP of North American Operations at United We Care, a digital behavioral health company, created Stella. This advanced generative AI solution recognizes 40 human emotions and speaks 29 languages. Accessed through mobile apps and WhatsApp, this resource is interactive and available 24/7 to address daily stress issues and clinical diagnoses.  A clinician-led self-paced, asynchronous video-based clinical program is available, as is coaching and resource material. Zereana elaborates, "Stella is designed to meet and treat you where you're at on a behavioral health spectrum because, as individuals, we move up and down the spectrum at any given point in our lives. Stella is targeted to be able to treat the wide spectrum, and the solution as a whole is a full stack solution, which again allows us to treat the user from subclinical up to hospitalization in terms of treatment." "So we are working on avatars right now. The intention is to create human-like faces that come in a number of na

Dr. Fahar Merchant, President, CEO, and Co-Founder of Medicenna Therapeutics, talks about the role cytokines play in managing the immune system, activating the system, or dampening the immune response depending on the circumstances.  When the system is out of balance, pathogens and cancers can attack, or autoimmune diseases can occur. MDNA11 is an engineered cytokine or superkine which can be used to effectively deliver drugs to treat a range of solid tumors. in addition, MDNA11 is being fused with a checkpoint inhibitor to both stimulate the immune system and reverse the exhaustion of cancer-fighting immune cells. Fahar elaborates, "Engineered cytokines, or superkines, essentially have been designed so that these molecules are much more effective, they're much safer to administer, and therefore have better outcomes than naturally occurring cytokines. So naturally occurring cytokines tend to be rather small. They clear the kidneys very, very quickly, so they're not in the bloodstream for long enough."  "The

Dr. Sachin Dev is a former physician and previous Gartner analyst, currently overseeing innovation and transformation in RGP's healthcare practice. Sachin points to the changes during the pandemic that were required for telehealth solutions to meet the needs of patients and providers. The technology necessary to build these systems into hybrid environments must take advantage of generative AI and automation with a focus on value-based care.  Sachin explains, "When we look at it from our technology standpoint, we have seen some significant development in the technology. When we look at all the different innovations, especially in the healthcare industry, both on the payer and provider side, in the last two or three years since the pandemic, we have come along very well from a technology standpoint." "But, one thing that is lacking is the adoption. That's where, again, there's a big delta when we look at what kind of technology we have available today as to how that technology is utilized to improve patient car

Dr. Paulo Garcia, CEO and Co-Founder of Kytopen, is developing systems to refine the types of payloads, including RNA, DNA, and CRISPR-Cas RMP, that can be delivered to primary T cells, primary Natural Killer cells, and CD34 stem cells. To maximize the number of successfully engineered cells, the Flowfect Discovery technology, using a non-viral approach, automates the process of cell engineering and gene delivery into cells while dramatically reducing the time to produce the cells. Paulo explains, "One of the key differentiating aspects of our technology is that we are using a continuous fluid flow format for the engineering of our cells. This fluid flow contributes to the delivery of these payloads to the different cells. And to put it into perspective, the flow rates that we use are quite large. They are in the tens of milliliters per minute. And if you translate that into a throughput of cells, you're talking about being able to process anywhere between 1 to 2 billion cells in 30 seconds. And these are lar

Tuvik Beker, CEO, and Ranit Aharonov, CTO of Pangea Biomed, have designed ENLIGHT, a computational platform driving precision oncology that matches cancer tumors with available therapies. Drawing on an understanding of synthetic mortality and synthetic rescue, this approach focuses on how the interaction between genes increases or decreases the tumor cell's fitness and the likely response to a drug. Determining which populations might benefit most from a drug opens the door to new treatments for common and rare diseases. Tuvik explains, "When we match therapies to patients, just according to the pure genetic characteristics of the tumor, sometimes we miss potential therapies, and sometimes we give patients therapies that do not work very effectively. To solve that, we developed ENLIGHT, which looks at the broader characteristics of the tumor, not just at the target gene, but multiple interactions, and that way, we can find potential therapies that are missed by the current guidelines and common biomarkers."