Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Vishwa Srivastava, APAC CEO of SSI, SS Innovations International, is a leader in telesurgery, using robotic surgery to extend surgical services in underserved areas. The SSI Mantra surgical robot is used for laparoscopic surgery and offers an affordable alternative to prevailing robotic solutions without compromising quality. Telesurgery has potential in remote operations and is also revolutionizing surgical training by providing real-time expert proctoring. Vishwa explains, "My father was one of the early global pioneers in robotic cardiac surgery, and he had actually helped Intuitive Surgical back in their early days get their FDA approval. And what he recognized very quickly was that through these minimally invasive robotic cardiac surgical procedures, 20% of his patients went home the next day, 50% in two days or less, and the average length of stay was 3.2 days. So, he became convinced after they twisted his arm to launch robotic cardiac surgical programs. And Dr. Fred Moll at the time was the chairman and founder of Intuitive Surgical, and he wanted to start on the heart because it was the most complex procedure to do a beating heart, totally endoscopic, bypass surgery. And he felt that if you could do that, then everything else would be simple."   "The way that we look at remote robotic surgery, or what we call telesurgery, currently, we are the only company in India that has received formal regulatory approval from the CDSCO for both teleproctoring and telesurgery. The way that we look at teleproctoring and telesurgery, it's not like one rockstar surgeon sitting in one location operating omnipresent in a hundred different locations." "With teleproctoring and telesurgery, the way that we look at it is in addition to operating and extending expertise in the remote areas of the country, we look at teleproctoring and telesurgery the same way that doctors are trained in residency where you always have an attending in the room, the junior surgeon will be operating, and the goal of the proctor or the attending surgeon is to guide the junior surgeon to maturity."  #SSInnovations #RoboticSurgery #Telesurgery #CardiacProcedures #HeartSurgery #Teleproctoring #RemoteSurgery  SSInnovations.com Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Vishwa Srivastava, APAC CEO of SSI, SS Innovations International, is a leader in telesurgery, using robotic surgery to extend surgical services in underserved areas. The SSI Mantra surgical robot is used for laparoscopic surgery and offers an affordable alternative to prevailing robotic solutions without compromising quality. Telesurgery has potential in remote operations and is also revolutionizing surgical training by providing real-time expert proctoring. Vishwa explains, "My father was one of the early global pioneers in robotic cardiac surgery, and he had actually helped Intuitive Surgical back in their early days get their FDA approval. And what he recognized very quickly was that through these minimally invasive robotic cardiac surgical procedures, 20% of his patients went home the next day, 50% in two days or less, and the average length of stay was 3.2 days. So, he became convinced after they twisted his arm to launch robotic cardiac surgical programs. And Dr. Fred Moll at the time was the chairman and founder of Intuitive Surgical, and he wanted to start on the heart because it was the most complex procedure to do a beating heart, totally endoscopic, bypass surgery. And he felt that if you could do that, then everything else would be simple."   "The way that we look at remote robotic surgery, or what we call telesurgery, currently, we are the only company in India that has received formal regulatory approval from the CDSCO for both teleproctoring and telesurgery. The way that we look at teleproctoring and telesurgery, it's not like one rockstar surgeon sitting in one location operating omnipresent in a hundred different locations." "With teleproctoring and telesurgery, the way that we look at it is in addition to operating and extending expertise in the remote areas of the country, we look at teleproctoring and telesurgery the same way that doctors are trained in residency where you always have an attending in the room, the junior surgeon will be operating, and the goal of the proctor or the attending surgeon is to guide the junior surgeon to maturity."  #SSInnovations #RoboticSurgery #Telesurgery #CardiacProcedures #HeartSurgery #Teleproctoring #RemoteSurgery  SSInnovations.com Download the transcript here

Vikram Ahuja, Co-Founder and CEO, and Joe Promoppatam, Co-Founder and CTO of OsseoLabs, are utilizing 3D printing and AI to advance reconstructive surgery by enabling the creation of personalized, precision-fit implants and surgical instruments. Traditional surgery has relied on standardized implants made of titanium and involves lengthy operations. The OsseoLabs approach reduces surgical planning and operating time, improving patient outcomes by achieving a better fit and enhanced bone integration through the use of advanced implant materials. AI is used to automate and accelerate the design process for these custom devices, enabling a scalable and cost-effective approach to create complex, regulated medical devices. Vikram explains, "We want to use our engineering know-how, especially in 3D printing, to improve the quality of the outcome of the surgeries and also help the students to be able to offer a better solution at a speed, and also the outcome that is a little bit more precise. And that's what we have been working on for quite a long time. We want to use the knowledge of 3D printing, biomechanics, and also AI to help, especially in complex surgical cases. So both the patients and the surgeons are better off with the outcome. And the main gap that we are seeing here is not only in the Asian countries where we operate, but also in the US. And the use of 3D presented implants, even though it has been around for quite some time in the US, we still see a lot of gaps that can be improved in what materials are being used, and how the implants are designed. We help the surgeons and also the hospitals throughout this process." Joe elaborates, "Yes, for such a device, they all look the same way, but the patients look different. So we see this gap between the available instrumentation and the actual treatment that the surgeons want to conduct. And we want to break that barrier by being able to decide which instrument is required individually, and I mean that in the day, we could not do that. The price can be competitive because all the manufacturing technology is used to support production. But we have to depend on how they matured in the past few years. We are able to adopt the technology, which allows us to decide and print the instrument for specific care and specific surgery. I think the speed and cost become much more practical, and all we need to look into is the 3D printer. But eventually, when you come into something like customization, you talk about the speed. In terms of speed, it's not just the speed of how we make things, but it's about the speed of how we decide things. That's where we see the gap that we can fill using AI to split up the bedside process."   #OsseoLabs #ReconstructiveSurgery #3DPrinting #PersonalizedImplants #MedAI OsseoLabs.com Listen to the podcast here

Vikram Ahuja, Co-Founder and CEO, and Joe Promoppatam, Co-Founder and CTO of OsseoLabs, are utilizing 3D printing and AI to advance reconstructive surgery by enabling the creation of personalized, precision-fit implants and surgical instruments. Traditional surgery has relied on standardized implants made of titanium and involves lengthy operations. The OsseoLabs approach reduces surgical planning and operating time, improving patient outcomes by achieving a better fit and enhanced bone integration through the use of advanced implant materials. AI is used to automate and accelerate the design process for these custom devices, enabling a scalable and cost-effective approach to create complex, regulated medical devices. Vikram explains, "We want to use our engineering know-how, especially in 3D printing, to improve the quality of the outcome of the surgeries and also help the students to be able to offer a better solution at a speed, and also the outcome that is a little bit more precise. And that's what we have been working on for quite a long time. We want to use the knowledge of 3D printing, biomechanics, and also AI to help, especially in complex surgical cases. So both the patients and the surgeons are better off with the outcome. And the main gap that we are seeing here is not only in the Asian countries where we operate, but also in the US. And the use of 3D presented implants, even though it has been around for quite some time in the US, we still see a lot of gaps that can be improved in what materials are being used, and how the implants are designed. We help the surgeons and also the hospitals throughout this process." Joe elaborates, "Yes, for such a device, they all look the same way, but the patients look different. So we see this gap between the available instrumentation and the actual treatment that the surgeons want to conduct. And we want to break that barrier by being able to decide which instrument is required individually, and I mean that in the day, we could not do that. The price can be competitive because all the manufacturing technology is used to support production. But we have to depend on how they matured in the past few years. We are able to adopt the technology, which allows us to decide and print the instrument for specific care and specific surgery. I think the speed and cost become much more practical, and all we need to look into is the 3D printer. But eventually, when you come into something like customization, you talk about the speed. In terms of speed, it's not just the speed of how we make things, but it's about the speed of how we decide things. That's where we see the gap that we can fill using AI to split up the bedside process."   #OsseoLabs #ReconstructiveSurgery #3DPrinting #PersonalizedImplants #MedAI OsseoLabs.com Download the transcript here

Trân Lê, Co-Founder and CEO of Grove AI,  was founded to automate the manual and inefficient workflows in clinical trial recruitment, patient engagement, and support. The company's AI agent, Grace, is trained on specific trial protocols and approved scripts to respond to patient questions about pre-screening, logistics, and scheduling appointments. This platform aims to increase speed and quality of participant recruitment, improve representation, and expand accessibility to clinical trials by offering support in over 19 languages and providing access to information on demand. Trân explains, "The birth of Grove really came from my co-founder, Sohit, and his experience working in the hospital. We were working at Stanford, and there we were, computer scientists building a lot of internal tools for clinical trials, clinical research, as well as for the greater healthcare patient services. And that, combined with my experience trying to enroll in a clinical trial, really set us off to think deeply about how we can automate a lot of the manual workflows that exist today for patients and for providers, as well as for pharma in taking new drugs to market. Specifically, within that, we identified patient engagement and support, and prescreening to be an important part of ensuring that patients know where they're going and what to do when they're participating in these trials. And so we decided to really step out into the industry and change this process and make it an easier and more accessible experience for patients."   "I would say that having worked inside a hospital and seeing all of this lead generation or getting people educated about the trial is an important aspect, and it's being done by a lot of the recruitment vendors as well as in-house teams out there. In addition to that, a bottleneck that previously has always been there now is possible to automate with agentic AI is actually doing the work of taking all the interest from different potential patients and helping them prescreen and understand the requirements of the trials, getting them to the right site, booking their transportation, reminding them about the appointments, and scheduling that appointment."   "I would say that Grace, as we call her, is a digital staff or an AI agent - both are comparable terms to describe Grace. The difference is that Grace is trained on the trial, the requirements, and the IRB-approved script of that trial. So she really has the knowledge to be able to respond spontaneously in real time to any questions that the participant may have about the trial." #GroveAI #ClinicalTrials #PatientRecruitment #Pharma #HealthTech #DigitalHealth #AI #AgenticAI grovetrials.com Listen to the podcast here

Trân Lê, Co-Founder and CEO of Grove AI,  was founded to automate the manual and inefficient workflows in clinical trial recruitment, patient engagement, and support. The company's AI agent, Grace, is trained on specific trial protocols and approved scripts to respond to patient questions about pre-screening, logistics, and scheduling appointments. This platform aims to increase speed and quality of participant recruitment, improve representation, and expand accessibility to clinical trials by offering support in over 19 languages and providing access to information on demand. Trân explains, "The birth of Grove really came from my co-founder, Sohit, and his experience working in the hospital. We were working at Stanford, and there we were, computer scientists building a lot of internal tools for clinical trials, clinical research, as well as for the greater healthcare patient services. And that, combined with my experience trying to enroll in a clinical trial, really set us off to think deeply about how we can automate a lot of the manual workflows that exist today for patients and for providers, as well as for pharma in taking new drugs to market. Specifically, within that, we identified patient engagement and support, and prescreening to be an important part of ensuring that patients know where they're going and what to do when they're participating in these trials. And so we decided to really step out into the industry and change this process and make it an easier and more accessible experience for patients."   "I would say that having worked inside a hospital and seeing all of this lead generation or getting people educated about the trial is an important aspect, and it's being done by a lot of the recruitment vendors as well as in-house teams out there. In addition to that, a bottleneck that previously has always been there now is possible to automate with agentic AI is actually doing the work of taking all the interest from different potential patients and helping them prescreen and understand the requirements of the trials, getting them to the right site, booking their transportation, reminding them about the appointments, and scheduling that appointment."   "I would say that Grace, as we call her, is a digital staff or an AI agent - both are comparable terms to describe Grace. The difference is that Grace is trained on the trial, the requirements, and the IRB-approved script of that trial. So she really has the knowledge to be able to respond spontaneously in real time to any questions that the participant may have about the trial." #GroveAI #ClinicalTrials #PatientRecruitment #Pharma #HealthTech #DigitalHealth #AI #AgenticAI grovetrials.com Download the transcript here

Jeff Glazier, CEO of General Oncology, is taking a unique approach to treating cancer by using older chemotherapy drugs with broad action but in novel combinations designed to avoid the incidental toxicity.  Their primary drug in trials is GO-4 which is focused on shutting down DNA repair in cancer cells to overcome drug resistance.  While testing in patients with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, this approach was designed to combat tumor heterogeneity by targeting fundamental processes like proliferation that are common to all cancer cells within a tumor. Jeff explains, "We're actually taking a different approach than a lot of companies are. And I would say there are really two approaches because we have two different things on, we have a clinical trial right now where we're using old chemotherapy drugs in a new way, and when you combine them together, you really get just a different result. We're trying to shut down DNA repair and kill cancer cells. But the other really interesting thing, and I think it's underlying general vision, is chemotherapy drugs long ago had very broad action, and with broad action comes unwanted incidental toxicity. And over the years, it's been huge in the industry, or moving towards specific drugs that target specific things and have less incidental toxicity. The unfortunate side effect is that cancer cells can evolve around a drug if there's too much specificity. So we're taking a pretty novel approach with our business of going after drugs that have broad action, but we found a way, we believe, to do it in a way that doesn't have incidental toxicity." "I certainly feel that you want to have more than one attack. If you only do one, the cancer cells can evolve around it. The drug resistance approach I was referring to was what we call GO-4 in our clinical trial, and we're altering part of the cancer cells' fundamental biology that is involved in DNA repair and shutting it down. But we're doing it in more than one way."   #GeneralOncology #PancreaticCancer #CancerAwareness #MetastaticCancer #GO4Therapy #CancerResearch #InnovativeTherapies #DrugDevelopment generaloncology.com  Listen to the podcast here

Jeff Glazier, CEO of General Oncology, is taking a unique approach to treating cancer by using older chemotherapy drugs with broad action but in novel combinations designed to avoid the incidental toxicity.  Their primary drug in trials is GO-4 which is focused on shutting down DNA repair in cancer cells to overcome drug resistance.  While testing in patients with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, this approach was designed to combat tumor heterogeneity by targeting fundamental processes like proliferation that are common to all cancer cells within a tumor. Jeff explains, "We're actually taking a different approach than a lot of companies are. And I would say there are really two approaches because we have two different things on, we have a clinical trial right now where we're using old chemotherapy drugs in a new way, and when you combine them together, you really get just a different result. We're trying to shut down DNA repair and kill cancer cells. But the other really interesting thing, and I think it's underlying general vision, is chemotherapy drugs long ago had very broad action, and with broad action comes unwanted incidental toxicity. And over the years, it's been huge in the industry, or moving towards specific drugs that target specific things and have less incidental toxicity. The unfortunate side effect is that cancer cells can evolve around a drug if there's too much specificity. So we're taking a pretty novel approach with our business of going after drugs that have broad action, but we found a way, we believe, to do it in a way that doesn't have incidental toxicity." "I certainly feel that you want to have more than one attack. If you only do one, the cancer cells can evolve around it. The drug resistance approach I was referring to was what we call GO-4 in our clinical trial, and we're altering part of the cancer cells' fundamental biology that is involved in DNA repair and shutting it down. But we're doing it in more than one way."   #GeneralOncology #PancreaticCancer #CancerAwareness #MetastaticCancer #GO4Therapy #CancerResearch #InnovativeTherapies #DrugDevelopment generaloncology.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Arup Roy-Burman, Founder and Chief Strategy and Medical Officer of Elemeno Health, is addressing the gap between established medical policies and actual frontline practice. The Elemeno microlearning platform provides just-in-time multimedia content, building confidence in high-risk, low-frequency procedures, helping support knowledge retention, and combating clinician burnout. This modern approach to learning caters to clinicians with shorter attention spans and the expectation of receiving information on the device of their choice when they need it. Arup explains, "My background is as an ICU physician, and I have practiced as an ICU director for 20-plus years. And the challenge that we had in our ICUs is how to keep our teams on the same page with constantly changing information? And on top of that, in the context of constantly changing staff, medicine is full of so many different practices, workflows, and procedures, and we expect our staff to know all of them and to be able to execute on each one of them at the time that they need to. But that's really unrealistic. There's no way that people can stay on top of it. All medical knowledge doubles every 73 days."   "When we think about today's generational workforce, as we think about just those of us who have kids, we see that attention spans, as you said, are short. People don't want to sit through a whole classroom. They can't remember that. And the way that people want to learn now and the way that they do learn, it's like one of our clients put it, it's like the "TikTokification of education." How do we deliver information on a mobile device? How do we deliver it in short, bite-sized chunks? Multimedia that you can actually consume in context when you need it." #ElemenoHealth #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #Microlearning #NurseTraining  elemenohealth.com Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Arup Roy-Burman, Founder and Chief Strategy and Medical Officer of Elemeno Health, is addressing the gap between established medical policies and actual frontline practice. The Elemeno microlearning platform provides just-in-time multimedia content, building confidence in high-risk, low-frequency procedures, helping support knowledge retention, and combating clinician burnout. This modern approach to learning caters to clinicians with shorter attention spans and the expectation of receiving information on the device of their choice when they need it. Arup explains, "My background is as an ICU physician, and I have practiced as an ICU director for 20-plus years. And the challenge that we had in our ICUs is how to keep our teams on the same page with constantly changing information? And on top of that, in the context of constantly changing staff, medicine is full of so many different practices, workflows, and procedures, and we expect our staff to know all of them and to be able to execute on each one of them at the time that they need to. But that's really unrealistic. There's no way that people can stay on top of it. All medical knowledge doubles every 73 days."   "When we think about today's generational workforce, as we think about just those of us who have kids, we see that attention spans, as you said, are short. People don't want to sit through a whole classroom. They can't remember that. And the way that people want to learn now and the way that they do learn, it's like one of our clients put it, it's like the "TikTokification of education." How do we deliver information on a mobile device? How do we deliver it in short, bite-sized chunks? Multimedia that you can actually consume in context when you need it." #ElemenoHealth #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #Microlearning #NurseTraining  elemenohealth.com Download the transcript here

Kourosh Davarpanah, Co-Founder and CEO of Inato, is using an AI-enabled platform to transform participation in clinical trials. The existing clinical trial system is not seen as representative of the general population, and FDA directives have addressed this lack of diversity. The Inato platform features a marketplace approach that connects trial sponsors with a broader range of hospital sites, as well as an AI tool to assist doctors in identifying patients who are eligible for trials.   Kourosh explains, "Our focus at Inato is to expand the number of patients who are able to participate in clinical research. If you think about how things have been done for the past decades, most of the patients who have the opportunity to participate are coming from the larger academic hospitals. And what this means is that typically, 5% of the sites, meaning 5% of the hospitals running research, run about 70% of all the trials globally. So this has an impact not only on the number of patients that can actually participate in trials, but it also has an impact on the type of patients. So, typically, those are going to be white patients, richer patients. And so it has a big impact also on equity and on the diversity--and ethnic diversity especially--of patients participating."   "We have two pieces of the platform. The first piece is that we're helping connect the hospitals running the trials with trials that are being run by the sponsors. So the way this works is similar to marketplaces like Airbnb, where you have the sponsor that can share any number of upcoming trials. We enable the sites to discover all the trials on the platform and showcase, based on their profiles, how many trials they have done in the past, what is the makeup of the team and doctors, etc. We're able to allow them to get selected in trials that they otherwise wouldn't be able to get selected for. So this is the first piece of it, really connecting the sites and the trials. And increasingly with AI, we've started supporting sites in actually identifying patients at scale. And this has really been a massive tech shift, where the latest generations of LLMs are able to accurately identify patients eligible for any trial with over 95% accuracy." #Inato #ClinicalTrials #ClinicalRearch #AI #MedAI #DrugDevelopment  Inato.com Listen to the podcast here

Kourosh Davarpanah, Co-Founder and CEO of Inato, is using an AI-enabled platform to transform participation in clinical trials. The existing clinical trial system is not seen as representative of the general population, and FDA directives have addressed this lack of diversity. The Inato platform features a marketplace approach that connects trial sponsors with a broader range of hospital sites, as well as an AI tool to assist doctors in identifying patients who are eligible for trials.   Kourosh explains, "Our focus at Inato is to expand the number of patients who are able to participate in clinical research. If you think about how things have been done for the past decades, most of the patients who have the opportunity to participate are coming from the larger academic hospitals. And what this means is that typically, 5% of the sites, meaning 5% of the hospitals running research, run about 70% of all the trials globally. So this has an impact not only on the number of patients that can actually participate in trials, but it also has an impact on the type of patients. So, typically, those are going to be white patients, richer patients. And so it has a big impact also on equity and on the diversity--and ethnic diversity especially--of patients participating."   "We have two pieces of the platform. The first piece is that we're helping connect the hospitals running the trials with trials that are being run by the sponsors. So the way this works is similar to marketplaces like Airbnb, where you have the sponsor that can share any number of upcoming trials. We enable the sites to discover all the trials on the platform and showcase, based on their profiles, how many trials they have done in the past, what is the makeup of the team and doctors, etc. We're able to allow them to get selected in trials that they otherwise wouldn't be able to get selected for. So this is the first piece of it, really connecting the sites and the trials. And increasingly with AI, we've started supporting sites in actually identifying patients at scale. And this has really been a massive tech shift, where the latest generations of LLMs are able to accurately identify patients eligible for any trial with over 95% accuracy." #Inato #ClinicalTrials #ClinicalRearch #AI #MedAI #DrugDevelopment  Inato.com Download the transcript here

Javier Cuello, Founder and CEO of H+Trace highlights the significant and often overlooked problem of errors in the handling of medical samples. Issues like mislabeling, contamination, and improper shipping conditions are responsible for a majority of lab result errors, potentially leading to patient misdiagnoses. The H+Trace solution uses wireless sensors and AI to track samples, generate high-value data, and predict where errors are likely to occur. Working in Latin America and Central America has provided the company with experience in utilizing drones for shipping medical samples and organs to remote and hard-to-reach areas, while maintaining sample integrity.  Javier explains, "It all started for me when a very close friend of mine was misdiagnosed with diabetes while she was pregnant. And when I started digging into this problem, what we found out is that most lab tests today are highly reliable. Once the sample reaches the analyzer, the real danger lies in the logistics of collecting, labeling, and transporting samples prior to that. While not every mistake hurts, the patient studies showed that about 2% to 5% of errors are clinically significant, and this means over 9,000 patients every day in the US risk misdiagnosis, late treatment, and unnecessary procedures or even life-threatening consequences, all because of failures in the pre-analytic logistics."   "It's a quite new problem because over the past decades, laboratories have invested heavily in laboratory equipment and training, but the logistics of sample handling have seen little innovation. That is why roughly two-thirds of errors still occur in the pre-analytical phase." "But the reality is that most laboratories don't even know under what conditions the transport takes place. Even some of the most important labs simply receive the sample processing and send the results. So we're working with a laboratory that addresses this kind of problem, which started with labor. They have their own logistics. We started in Latin America and Central America, and now we're about to launch in the US because this is a very big problem in the US." #HTrace #Logistics #LabSamples #Sensors #ShippingLabSamples h-trace.com Listen to the podcast here

Javier Cuello, Founder and CEO of H+Trace highlights the significant and often overlooked problem of errors in the handling of medical samples. Issues like mislabeling, contamination, and improper shipping conditions are responsible for a majority of lab result errors, potentially leading to patient misdiagnoses. The H+Trace solution uses wireless sensors and AI to track samples, generate high-value data, and predict where errors are likely to occur. Working in Latin America and Central America has provided the company with experience in utilizing drones for shipping medical samples and organs to remote and hard-to-reach areas, while maintaining sample integrity.  Javier explains, "It all started for me when a very close friend of mine was misdiagnosed with diabetes while she was pregnant. And when I started digging into this problem, what we found out is that most lab tests today are highly reliable. Once the sample reaches the analyzer, the real danger lies in the logistics of collecting, labeling, and transporting samples prior to that. While not every mistake hurts, the patient studies showed that about 2% to 5% of errors are clinically significant, and this means over 9,000 patients every day in the US risk misdiagnosis, late treatment, and unnecessary procedures or even life-threatening consequences, all because of failures in the pre-analytic logistics."   "It's a quite new problem because over the past decades, laboratories have invested heavily in laboratory equipment and training, but the logistics of sample handling have seen little innovation. That is why roughly two-thirds of errors still occur in the pre-analytical phase." "But the reality is that most laboratories don't even know under what conditions the transport takes place. Even some of the most important labs simply receive the sample processing and send the results. So we're working with a laboratory that addresses this kind of problem, which started with labor. They have their own logistics. We started in Latin America and Central America, and now we're about to launch in the US because this is a very big problem in the US." #HTrace #Logistics #LabSamples #Sensors #ShippingLabSamples h-trace.com Download the transcript here

Kyna Fong, Co-Founder and CEO of Elation Health, is developing AI tools that prioritize patient care and automate documentation and referrals to help alleviate physician burnout and improve the patient-provider relationship. Kyna emphasizes the critical role of interoperability in effective primary care, enabling primary care physicians to coordinate care. She also noted the recent White House initiative on interoperability, which encouraged the private sector to cooperate in data-sharing initiatives, now that AI can be used to overcome technical issues of data integration and analysis.  Kyna explains, "Clinical-first is not new for Elation. It's actually our founding product philosophy. When we first started building Elation, what we observed was that so many tools that were built for physicians to use and their electronic health records were very much oriented around billing needs and, in a lot of ways, followed a billing-first philosophy. And so we created Elation to really focus on clinical first, which means putting patient care first and foremost."   "The way that we are approaching AI is as a tool. It's a tool in our toolkit. It's a how and when we think about all the pressures and burdens on physicians, especially primary care physicians, that prevent them from being able to focus on their patients. We take each of those and think about, well, how can AI make this easier? And so there are a variety of areas where we've deployed AI to help our customers. There are the clear, fairly pervasive ones today that start with something like an ambient scribe that helps with documentation, saving multiple hours per day. It's radically transformative."  #ElationHealth #AI #MedAI #PrimaryCare #Physicians #EHR #HealthIT #DigitalHealth elationhealth.com Listen to the podcast here  

Kyna Fong, Co-Founder and CEO of Elation Health, is developing AI tools that prioritize patient care and automate documentation and referrals to help alleviate physician burnout and improve the patient-provider relationship. Kyna emphasizes the critical role of interoperability in effective primary care, enabling primary care physicians to coordinate care. She also noted the recent White House initiative on interoperability, which encouraged the private sector to cooperate in data-sharing initiatives, now that AI can be used to overcome technical issues of data integration and analysis.  Kyna explains, "Clinical-first is not new for Elation. It's actually our founding product philosophy. When we first started building Elation, what we observed was that so many tools that were built for physicians to use and their electronic health records were very much oriented around billing needs and, in a lot of ways, followed a billing-first philosophy. And so we created Elation to really focus on clinical first, which means putting patient care first and foremost."   "The way that we are approaching AI is as a tool. It's a tool in our toolkit. It's a how and when we think about all the pressures and burdens on physicians, especially primary care physicians, that prevent them from being able to focus on their patients. We take each of those and think about, well, how can AI make this easier? And so there are a variety of areas where we've deployed AI to help our customers. There are the clear, fairly pervasive ones today that start with something like an ambient scribe that helps with documentation, saving multiple hours per day. It's radically transformative."  #ElationHealth #AI #MedAI #PrimaryCare #Physicians #EHR #HealthIT #DigitalHealth elationhealth.com Download the transcript here  

Hamid Ghanadan, CEO of LINUS, discusses the findings of the company's recent state-of-the-science research, a semiannual survey that tracks sentiment and confidence within the life sciences. Notably, a growing gap in optimism exists between academic and biopharma scientists.  As a result, academics are seeking partnerships at a new level due to economic pressures from grant cancellations, the need for multidisciplinary collaboration to solve complex problems, and the desire for a stronger collective voice. AI was identified as the top priority for academia and biopharma, as is the need to improve communication with the public about scientific discoveries and medical advancements. Hamid explains, "We started the state-of-the-science research four years ago, so this is the eighth time that we've done it. And what we're really doing is measuring consumer confidence within the life sciences. So we track sentiment, we track funding, we track barriers and opportunities, as well as purchase intentions. And we do it every six months for the coming six months of the year."   "So here you have to take into consideration that we talk to scientists globally in this survey, and we talk to them from a variety of different settings and environments. So while about half of our respondents are from academic institutions around the world, the other half are in a variety of industries, mostly biopharma. And we see here that there's a shift, there's a difference in sentiment and in optimism, in outlook, in interest in science, in the applicability of science, and how these different groups are managing it. As you can imagine, the academics are feeling a lot more pressure."   "The consumer sentiment is lower, and there's definitely more fear in that cohort of scientists. Biopharma is actually surprisingly more resilient, more forward-looking. So on the biopharma side, what we're seeing is that there's actually surprising resilience and there's forward-looking intentions. And we see that scientists are actually looking forward to applying new techniques and new technologies that are coming online, and they have more confidence in their ability to make progress for the second half of 2025."   #LINUSGroup #Lifesciences #Healthcare #AIHealthcare #Stategy #Scientists #AI #MedAI thelinusgroup.com Listen to the podcast here

Hamid Ghanadan, CEO of LINUS, discusses the findings of the company's recent state-of-the-science research, a semiannual survey that tracks sentiment and confidence within the life sciences. Notably, a growing gap in optimism exists between academic and biopharma scientists.  As a result, academics are seeking partnerships at a new level due to economic pressures from grant cancellations, the need for multidisciplinary collaboration to solve complex problems, and the desire for a stronger collective voice. AI was identified as the top priority for academia and biopharma, as is the need to improve communication with the public about scientific discoveries and medical advancements. Hamid explains, "We started the state-of-the-science research four years ago, so this is the eighth time that we've done it. And what we're really doing is measuring consumer confidence within the life sciences. So we track sentiment, we track funding, we track barriers and opportunities, as well as purchase intentions. And we do it every six months for the coming six months of the year."   "So here you have to take into consideration that we talk to scientists globally in this survey, and we talk to them from a variety of different settings and environments. So while about half of our respondents are from academic institutions around the world, the other half are in a variety of industries, mostly biopharma. And we see here that there's a shift, there's a difference in sentiment and in optimism, in outlook, in interest in science, in the applicability of science, and how these different groups are managing it. As you can imagine, the academics are feeling a lot more pressure."   "The consumer sentiment is lower, and there's definitely more fear in that cohort of scientists. Biopharma is actually surprisingly more resilient, more forward-looking. So on the biopharma side, what we're seeing is that there's actually surprising resilience and there's forward-looking intentions. And we see that scientists are actually looking forward to applying new techniques and new technologies that are coming online, and they have more confidence in their ability to make progress for the second half of 2025."   #LINUSGroup #Lifesciences #Healthcare #AIHealthcare #Stategy #Scientists #AI #MedAI thelinusgroup.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kamal Golla, Vice President of Clinical Technologies and Performance at Evolent, highlights the complexities of cancer care and the need for care navigation to address medical, emotional, financial, and logistical challenges. This comprehensive approach leads to improved treatment adherence and patient satisfaction while reducing emergency room visits and hospitalization. The care team serves as an extension of the medical decision-makers, helping to manage care across multiple specialists, advising on overcoming side effects, and reducing logistical hurdles to ease the burden on physicians and caregivers, ultimately improving patient outcomes. Kamal explains, "Cancer care navigation is really about creating a roadmap for patients. It's making sure they're not left alone to piece together appointments, interpret side effects, or figure out how to pay for medications. The role of a navigator here is really to guide them through the whole journey. That includes the medical components that many folks are familiar with, but also the emotional, financial, and logistical components that come with a cancer diagnosis. The evidence is really clear, given that more than half of emergency department visits and nearly a quarter of hospitalizations related to cancer care are actually avoidable, that responding rapidly to these situations is key." "In our navigation program, we are rooted in patient-centric navigation, meaning we ask them what the transportation difficulties are that they might face. Who is your caregiver and their support? What do you do for work? What are your cultural and religious beliefs? All of those play a big part in dealing with the new diagnosis of cancer. We want all of that information to be able to provide a very personalized journey."  #Evolent #Oncology #CancerCare #CareNavigation #HealthcareInnovation #DigitalHealth #PersonalizedCare #PatientCenteredCare #Evolent #Careology Evolent.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kamal Golla, Vice President of Clinical Technologies and Performance at Evolent, highlights the complexities of cancer care and the need for care navigation to address medical, emotional, financial, and logistical challenges. This comprehensive approach leads to improved treatment adherence and patient satisfaction while reducing emergency room visits and hospitalization. The care team serves as an extension of the medical decision-makers, helping to manage care across multiple specialists, advising on overcoming side effects, and reducing logistical hurdles to ease the burden on physicians and caregivers, ultimately improving patient outcomes. Kamal explains, "Cancer care navigation is really about creating a roadmap for patients. It's making sure they're not left alone to piece together appointments, interpret side effects, or figure out how to pay for medications. The role of a navigator here is really to guide them through the whole journey. That includes the medical components that many folks are familiar with, but also the emotional, financial, and logistical components that come with a cancer diagnosis. The evidence is really clear, given that more than half of emergency department visits and nearly a quarter of hospitalizations related to cancer care are actually avoidable, that responding rapidly to these situations is key." "In our navigation program, we are rooted in patient-centric navigation, meaning we ask them what the transportation difficulties are that they might face. Who is your caregiver and their support? What do you do for work? What are your cultural and religious beliefs? All of those play a big part in dealing with the new diagnosis of cancer. We want all of that information to be able to provide a very personalized journey."  #Evolent #Oncology #CancerCare #CareNavigation #HealthcareInnovation #DigitalHealth #PersonalizedCare #PatientCenteredCare #Evolent #Careology Evolent.com Listen to the podcast here

Bill Snyder, CEO and Founder of Cylinder, is addressing the high prevalence of digestive health issues using a virtual care model to provide access to a coordinated care team, including dieticians and health coaches, to offer personalized care plans. GI conditions are complex and involve a combination of genetic predisposition, environmental factors, and dietary influences. There are strong correlations between the gut and brain, as well as digestive health and various physical and mental conditions. Cylinder fills a gap in traditional GI care, where physicians often lack extensive nutritional training. Bill explains, "First and foremost, we think about the patients that we serve, and the patients that we serve come to us from across the country. We serve patients in every state across the US, and they suffer from a variety of GI-related conditions. That's things like ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and GERD. It's also a large population who don't have a formal diagnosis, but are symptomatic of GI conditions. So they may have chronic bloating, chronic constipation, and chronic heartburn, and they may not know what the underlying cause is. And then we also reach those members through our clients, which are large self-funded organizations and health plans. People traditionally gain access to Cylinder as part of their employee benefits package." "But there's also a lot that we continue to understand in terms of our overall digestive health system connection. The gut-brain axis, which serves as a bilateral feedback loop between the gut and the brain, is where we found that your digestive health often correlates with your mental health, and vice versa. So we know that some of the reasons for the onset of these conditions can be genetic, but to your point, we're also seeing a lot of impact from our environment and certainly from the foods we eat. And so as you think about the American diet, and as you think about how that's changed over the past several decades, we're seeing an increase in the incidence of these conditions and an increase in people who are presenting with these symptoms and not really sure where to go or what to do." #CylinderHealth #GIhealth #digestivehealth #cylinderhealth #GIcare #virtualhealth #employeebenefits  cylinderhealth.com Listen to the podcast here

Bill Snyder, CEO and Founder of Cylinder, is addressing the high prevalence of digestive health issues using a virtual care model to provide access to a coordinated care team, including dieticians and health coaches, to offer personalized care plans. GI conditions are complex and involve a combination of genetic predisposition, environmental factors, and dietary influences. There are strong correlations between the gut and brain, as well as digestive health and various physical and mental conditions. Cylinder fills a gap in traditional GI care, where physicians often lack extensive nutritional training. Bill explains, "First and foremost, we think about the patients that we serve, and the patients that we serve come to us from across the country. We serve patients in every state across the US, and they suffer from a variety of GI-related conditions. That's things like ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and GERD. It's also a large population who don't have a formal diagnosis, but are symptomatic of GI conditions. So they may have chronic bloating, chronic constipation, and chronic heartburn, and they may not know what the underlying cause is. And then we also reach those members through our clients, which are large self-funded organizations and health plans. People traditionally gain access to Cylinder as part of their employee benefits package." "But there's also a lot that we continue to understand in terms of our overall digestive health system connection. The gut-brain axis, which serves as a bilateral feedback loop between the gut and the brain, is where we found that your digestive health often correlates with your mental health, and vice versa. So we know that some of the reasons for the onset of these conditions can be genetic, but to your point, we're also seeing a lot of impact from our environment and certainly from the foods we eat. And so as you think about the American diet, and as you think about how that's changed over the past several decades, we're seeing an increase in the incidence of these conditions and an increase in people who are presenting with these symptoms and not really sure where to go or what to do." #CylinderHealth #GIhealth #digestivehealth #cylinderhealth #GIcare #virtualhealth #employeebenefits  cylinderhealth.com Download the transcript here

Pat Michael, Director of Patient Contact Services at Nebraska Medicine, highlights the challenges of high-volume patient contact centers and how agentic AI can improve operational efficiency, enhance patient access, and allow human agents to focus on more complex and critical calls.  The AI agent offers patients self-service options for scheduling, cancellations, and medication refills, resulting in a 40% reduction in call volume to human operators. Integrating AI into the contact center also enables the prioritization of time-sensitive calls, such as those related to organ transplant coordination. Pat explains, "I'm the Patient Contact Services Director for Nebraska Medicine, which means I oversee our three main contact centers. They're our ambulatory contact center, which takes and schedules all the calls for our ambulatory clinic, and our radiology contact center, which schedules all of our outpatient radiology services. And then our medical communication center, which is our 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation with our hospital operators and a group of triage nurses."   "So, some of the challenges that we had are that one of the big things is that we deal with the sheer volume of calls coming into the contact center. And so through the three contact centers, we have about 2.5 million calls that come in, but they're not evenly distributed. They come in when they come in. And so the key to success is managing all these complex calls while ensuring accuracy in the call handling. And what does that mean in the simplest terms? You have to have time to handle the calls accurately. Are we actually staying ahead of the volume, or are we just trying to catch up?"  #NebraskaMedicine #ActiumHealth #AIAgents #PatientEngagement #healthtech #AgenticAI #automation Nebraskamed.com Listen to the podcast here

Pat Michael, Director of Patient Contact Services at Nebraska Medicine, highlights the challenges of high-volume patient contact centers and how agentic AI can improve operational efficiency, enhance patient access, and allow human agents to focus on more complex and critical calls.  The AI agent offers patients self-service options for scheduling, cancellations, and medication refills, resulting in a 40% reduction in call volume to human operators. Integrating AI into the contact center also enables the prioritization of time-sensitive calls, such as those related to organ transplant coordination. Pat explains, "I'm the Patient Contact Services Director for Nebraska Medicine, which means I oversee our three main contact centers. They're our ambulatory contact center, which takes and schedules all the calls for our ambulatory clinic, and our radiology contact center, which schedules all of our outpatient radiology services. And then our medical communication center, which is our 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation with our hospital operators and a group of triage nurses."   "So, some of the challenges that we had are that one of the big things is that we deal with the sheer volume of calls coming into the contact center. And so through the three contact centers, we have about 2.5 million calls that come in, but they're not evenly distributed. They come in when they come in. And so the key to success is managing all these complex calls while ensuring accuracy in the call handling. And what does that mean in the simplest terms? You have to have time to handle the calls accurately. Are we actually staying ahead of the volume, or are we just trying to catch up?"  #NebraskaMedicine #ActiumHealth #AIAgents #PatientEngagement #healthtech #AgenticAI #automation Nebraskamed.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Peter Altman, President and CEO of BioCardia, is focused on treating ischemic heart failure and chronic myocardial ischemia using autologous cells from the patient's bone marrow.  The company has developed a cost-effective model that utilizes a pre-procedure diagnostic to select the optimal patients for this point-of-care system, which processes their cells in a single procedure. A key technology is the Helix catheter system, which enables minimally invasive delivery of cells into the heart, aided by the Heart3D Fusion imaging platform that provides a 3D map for precise cell delivery. Peter explains, "BioCardia's focus is on ischemic etiology of heart disease. This is heart disease that results from poor perfusion, typically following, for example, a heart attack, which is an ischemic disease. And the two diseases we're working on are ischemic heart failure, which is often characterized by a large dilated heart. And in the second is chronic myocardial ischemia, which is characterized by what's called refractory angina or chest pain that actually can be incredibly severe. And so are our focus areas. And we're advancing cell therapies that have been shown to inherently improve the cells we're looking at, which are cells from the bone marrow space, the mononuclear cells that contain the CD34 and CD133 cell populations. They're actually involved in forming new microvasculature and supply." "What we've done is come at it from a different perspective. Instead of selecting the cells and then manufacturing in a remote facility, we have a pre-procedure diagnostic that enables us to select the patients who have appropriate cells and then process them with a point-of-care cell processing platform, which involves just a simple disposable cartridge. And then we can treat these patients in a standard interventional cardiology setting at relatively low cost compared to all cell therapies."      #BioCardia #HeartDisease #AutologousCellTherapy #CellTherapy #3DImaging #Heart3DFusion #CardiAMP biocardia.com Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Peter Altman, President and CEO of BioCardia, is focused on treating ischemic heart failure and chronic myocardial ischemia using autologous cells from the patient's bone marrow.  The company has developed a cost-effective model that utilizes a pre-procedure diagnostic to select the optimal patients for this point-of-care system, which processes their cells in a single procedure. A key technology is the Helix catheter system, which enables minimally invasive delivery of cells into the heart, aided by the Heart3D Fusion imaging platform that provides a 3D map for precise cell delivery. Peter explains, "BioCardia's focus is on ischemic etiology of heart disease. This is heart disease that results from poor perfusion, typically following, for example, a heart attack, which is an ischemic disease. And the two diseases we're working on are ischemic heart failure, which is often characterized by a large dilated heart. And in the second is chronic myocardial ischemia, which is characterized by what's called refractory angina or chest pain that actually can be incredibly severe. And so are our focus areas. And we're advancing cell therapies that have been shown to inherently improve the cells we're looking at, which are cells from the bone marrow space, the mononuclear cells that contain the CD34 and CD133 cell populations. They're actually involved in forming new microvasculature and supply." "What we've done is come at it from a different perspective. Instead of selecting the cells and then manufacturing in a remote facility, we have a pre-procedure diagnostic that enables us to select the patients who have appropriate cells and then process them with a point-of-care cell processing platform, which involves just a simple disposable cartridge. And then we can treat these patients in a standard interventional cardiology setting at relatively low cost compared to all cell therapies."      #BioCardia #HeartDisease #AutologousCellTherapy #CellTherapy #3DImaging #Heart3DFusion #CardiAMP biocardia.com Download the transcript here

Marissa Fayer, CEO of DeepLook Medical, points out the challenges of detecting breast cancer in dense breast tissue using mammography. The DeepLook DP Precise platform is a visual intelligence tool designed to help radiologists see inside dense tissue more clearly, without disrupting their workflow and potentially reducing the need for additional tests or biopsies. A recent FDA mandate requiring providers to inform patients about their breast density has increased patient demand for better screening tools Marissa explains, "We're focused on breast imaging, and it's very specifically in dense breasts, because unfortunately, with dense, it's like seeing a cotton ball in the cloud. Radiologists have a really hard time seeing that in standard ways. This is a known problem. I developed the three mammography systems, so I absolutely know that it's a problem. We help radiologists visualize better with visual intelligence to be able to see inside these mammograms so that they potentially don't have to send their patients back for additional ultrasounds, other mammograms, or even biopsies." "So dense breasts show up white on mammograms, and cancer shows up white. So again, it's the analogy of the cotton bowl in the cloud. It might be there, but it might not be. The cloud is just hiding the cotton ball. This is just how X-ray technology is. It's been a problem and known since its inception, and unfortunately 45% to 50% of all women have dense breasts. And so, this is a very common problem, and there's nothing anybody can do. You can't diet or change the way your body composition is. In reality, this is just an additional add-on to existing screening that is a standard of care to help women."  #DeepLookMedical #WomenInHealthTech #BreastCancerAwareness #DenseBreastTissue #AIinHealthcare #DigitalHealth #HealthEquity #EarlyDetection #EmpoweredPatients #PatientCenteredCare #WomensHealth #Breastcancer deeplookmedical.com  Listen to the podcast here

Marissa Fayer, CEO of DeepLook Medical, points out the challenges of detecting breast cancer in dense breast tissue using mammography. The DeepLook DP Precise platform is a visual intelligence tool to help radiologists see inside dense tissue more clearly without disrupting their workflow, potentially reducing the need for additional tests or biopsies. A recent FDA mandate requiring providers to inform patients about their breast density has increased patient demand for better screening tools Marissa explains, "We're focused on breast imaging, and it's very specifically in dense breasts, because unfortunately, with dense, it's like seeing a cotton ball in the cloud. Radiologists have a really hard time seeing that in standard ways. This is a known problem. I developed the three mammography systems, so I absolutely know that it's a problem. We help radiologists visualize better with visual intelligence to be able to see inside these mammograms so that they potentially don't have to send their patients back for additional ultrasounds, other mammograms, or even biopsies." "So dense breasts show up white on mammograms, and cancer shows up white. So again, it's the analogy of the cotton bowl in the cloud. It might be there, but it might not be. The cloud is just hiding the cotton ball. This is just how X-ray technology is. It's been a problem and known since its inception, and unfortunately 45% to 50% of all women have dense breasts. And so, this is a very common problem, and there's nothing anybody can do. You can't diet or change the way your body composition is. In reality, this is just an additional add-on to existing screening that is a standard of care to help women."  #DeepLookMedical #WomenInHealthTech #BreastCancerAwareness #DenseBreastTissue #AIinHealthcare #DigitalHealth #HealthEquity #EarlyDetection #EmpoweredPatients #PatientCenteredCare #WomensHealth #Breastcancer deeplookmedical.com Download the transcript here

Dan Cohen, President and Co-Founder of Adhere+, is advancing the role and function of remote therapeutic monitoring by asking patients a few questions every day through a smartphone app. Gathering this kind of data makes in-person visits with providers more productive and insightful. It helps providers manage chronic conditions and pain by using direct and indirect questions to gain a holistic view of the patient's overall well-being. This type of real-world data shows promise for enhancing clinical trials and powering AI-driven healthcare insights. Dan explains, "At its core, what we're doing is monitoring patients in between their visits with physicians. Now, I know a lot of your listeners have heard about telemedicine and telehealth, and sometimes they think they're the same thing, but they're not. Telemedicine is a synchronous communication where you'll be on your computer on a Zoom call with your doctor. That's telemedicine, where the physician is actually treating you as you would be in the office." "Telehealth is what happens in between physician meetings. It goes back to a very simple principle of medicine, something that physicians learn in the first two weeks of medical school. And that simple principle is the more often you touch a patient, the better the outcome is going to be. And in our telehealth approach using remote therapeutic monitoring, our physicians touch their patients every day for a brief few seconds to reinforce their care plan, to help the patients know that they're being treated, and for the patients to be able to act and react appropriately for their disease state." "The clinical questions are designed by clinicians around the country, and these questions change every day. They have normative ranges set in the background of those questions, and it really allows the physicians to drill down. We have default protocols, of course, to get practices started, and then physicians can titrate the questions to their needs. But if you think about the questions, it's the types of questions the physician is going to ask you when you're sitting in session with one another to try and find out what's happening."  #AdHerePlus #RTM #RemoteTherapeuticMonitoring #PainAwarenessMonth #USPain #ChangingthePainEquation #ChronicPain #DigitalHealth adhereplus.com Listen to the podcast here

Dan Cohen, President and Co-Founder of Adhere+, is advancing the role and function of remote therapeutic monitoring by asking patients a few questions every day through a smartphone app. Gathering this kind of data makes in-person visits with providers more productive and insightful. It helps providers manage chronic conditions and pain by using direct and indirect questions to gain a holistic view of the patient's overall well-being. This type of real-world data shows promise for enhancing clinical trials and powering AI-driven healthcare insights. Dan explains, "At its core, what we're doing is monitoring patients in between their visits with physicians. Now, I know a lot of your listeners have heard about telemedicine and telehealth, and sometimes they think they're the same thing, but they're not. Telemedicine is a synchronous communication where you'll be on your computer on a Zoom call with your doctor. That's telemedicine, where the physician is actually treating you as you would be in the office." "Telehealth is what happens in between physician meetings. It goes back to a very simple principle of medicine, something that physicians learn in the first two weeks of medical school. And that simple principle is the more often you touch a patient, the better the outcome is going to be. And in our telehealth approach using remote therapeutic monitoring, our physicians touch their patients every day for a brief few seconds to reinforce their care plan, to help the patients know that they're being treated, and for the patients to be able to act and react appropriately for their disease state." "The clinical questions are designed by clinicians around the country, and these questions change every day. They have normative ranges set in the background of those questions, and it really allows the physicians to drill down. We have default protocols, of course, to get practices started, and then physicians can titrate the questions to their needs. But if you think about the questions, it's the types of questions the physician is going to ask you when you're sitting in session with one another to try and find out what's happening."   #AdHerePlus #RTM #RemoteTherapeuticMonitoring #PainAwarenessMonth #USPain #ChangingthePainEquation #ChronicPain #DigitalHealth adhereplus.com Download the transcript here

Sam Libby is President and Managing Director of TCB Capital Advisors, a healthcare-focused investment and advisory firm with a focus on improving patient outcomes in oncology, neurodegenerative diseases, and women's health. The firm evaluates early-stage companies based on the strength of clinical data, scientific and medical expertise, and technology, which may have been overlooked or struggled to raise funding. Trends TCB is keeping an eye on include diagnostics and preventive healthcare, as well as the growing interest in women's health, an underinvested sector that presents significant opportunities for innovation and investment. Sam explains, "I think first and foremost, we look at the clinical data. So the way that we built TCD is that we have a team of experienced bankers and investors who work with early-stage companies. We also have on the other side of the house commercial experts and consultants who can do, I like to always say they can do all the things that bankers talk about. So, post-merger integration, building out the sales funnel, and applying for grants." "The other side, which I believe is probably the most important, is the scientific, strategic, and clinical advisory boards. And so when you're looking at one of these early-stage companies, the first thing is, does the science work? Is the actual foundation for the company solid? And so having experts that can drill into that because it's very easy when you start talking about deals and an early-stage company, everyone gets excited by the vision of the CEO or founder."  #TCBCapitalAdvisors #Healthcare #HeatlhcareInvestments #PatientOutcomes #Oncology #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #WomensHealth   TCBcapitaladvisors.com Listen to the podcast here

Sam Libby is President and Managing Director of TCB Capital Advisors, a healthcare-focused investment and advisory firm with a focus on improving patient outcomes in oncology, neurodegenerative diseases, and women's health. The firm evaluates early-stage companies based on the strength of clinical data, scientific and medical expertise, and technology, which may have been overlooked or struggled to raise funding. Trends TCB is keeping an eye on include diagnostics and preventive healthcare, as well as the growing interest in women's health, an underinvested sector that presents significant opportunities for innovation and investment. Sam explains, "I think first and foremost, we look at the clinical data. So the way that we built TCD is that we have a team of experienced bankers and investors who work with early-stage companies. We also have on the other side of the house commercial experts and consultants who can do, I like to always say they can do all the things that bankers talk about. So, post-merger integration, building out the sales funnel, and applying for grants." "The other side, which I believe is probably the most important, is the scientific, strategic, and clinical advisory boards. And so when you're looking at one of these early-stage companies, the first thing is, does the science work? Is the actual foundation for the company solid? And so having experts that can drill into that because it's very easy when you start talking about deals and an early-stage company, everyone gets excited by the vision of the CEO or founder."  #TCBCapitalAdvisors #Healthcare #HeatlhcareInvestments #PatientOutcomes #Oncology #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #WomensHealth   TCBcapitaladvisors.com Download the transcript here

Jon Friis, Founder and CEO of Miiskin, provides a telehealth platform to independent dermatologists and clinics, enabling them to serve a broader patient audience.  Using an asynchronous model, patients submit their images and medical history for the provider to review, and then receive a diagnosis and treatment plan within 24-48 hours.  This approach improves efficiency in handling routine care and prescription renewals, adds flexibility for patient convenience, and enables providers to allocate more time to address complex and high-value procedures.  Jon explains, "Miiskin's mission is to make high-quality dermatology care more accessible and convenient without compromising standards and care. We see ourselves as a differentiator in the market because we're enabling providers with a dermatology platform that they can use for their audience. They're not contracting with us as a provider. We enable the clinics and the providers with this technology platform. So we give the control back to the providers so they can meet the digital-first audience themselves and grow their business based on that." "With dermatology care, the skin is visible to the patient, and I strongly believe that the future will strive towards that. Every visit starts with the patient taking images and supporting patient information and patient history before they see any provider and consult with the provider. Therefore, it's essential that the cameras are of good quality, the images are of high quality, and the image capture process is. And that's where we've been evolving a lot of imaging technology to support that process for our platform and providers."  #Miiskin #DigitalDermatology #Dermatologist #Telehealth miiskin.com Listen to the podcast here

Jon Friis, Founder and CEO of Miiskin, provides a telehealth platform to independent dermatologists and clinics, enabling them to serve a broader patient audience.  Using an asynchronous model, patients submit their images and medical history for the provider to review, and then receive a diagnosis and treatment plan within 24-48 hours.  This approach improves efficiency in handling routine care and prescription renewals, adds flexibility for patient convenience, and enables providers to allocate more time to address complex and high-value procedures.  Jon explains, "Miiskin's mission is to make high-quality dermatology care more accessible and convenient without compromising standards and care. We see ourselves as a differentiator in the market because we're enabling providers with a dermatology platform that they can use for their audience. They're not contracting with us as a provider. We enable the clinics and the providers with this technology platform. So we give the control back to the providers so they can meet the digital-first audience themselves and grow their business based on that." "With dermatology care, the skin is visible to the patient, and I strongly believe that the future will strive towards that. Every visit starts with the patient taking images and supporting patient information and patient history before they see any provider and consult with the provider. Therefore, it's essential that the cameras are of good quality, the images are of high quality, and the image capture process is. And that's where we've been evolving a lot of imaging technology to support that process for our platform and providers."  #Miiskin #DigitalDermatology #Dermatologist #Telehealth miiskin.com Download the transcript here

Sandra Johnson, Senior VP of client services at CliniComp, discusses the findings from a survey commissioned to explore the support for AI by hospital CIOs. While 80% view AI implementation as a priority, less than half have actually implemented AI tools, which is attributed to privacy concerns and the limitations of legacy systems. There was a strong desire for AI solutions to be embedded within existing systems to avoid the complexity of integrating third-party applications. The goal is to improve data exchange and interoperability to bring the focus back on the patient and improving outcomes.   Sandra explains, "The survey painted a really clear picture. Hospital CIOs are not asking if AI should be a part of their strategy, but more about how to implement it. There's a lot of support for AI adoption now, and the use cases that come first and foremost are reducing administrative burden and streamlining workflows. The survey showed that 80% of CIOs are looking to automate administrative tasks as one of their top three priorities."  "That really signals a shift towards using technology not just for innovation's sake, but with a focused goal. And that's to free up providers to spend more time with the patients. I think the other thing the survey pointed out is that there's a real desire for AI to be embedded within the EHR. CIOs don't want to have another layer of complexity with third-party bolt-ons. They really want an integrated solution that is reliable, scalable, and sustainable." #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareAI #HealthITAutomation #AmbientAI #ClinicalAutomation #HealthcareLeadership #CIOInsights #HealthSystemStrategy #HospitalInnovation #HealthTechStrategy CliniComp.com Listen to the podcast here

Sandra Johnson, Senior VP of client services at CliniComp, discusses the findings from a survey commissioned to explore the support for AI by hospital CIOs. While 80% view AI implementation as a priority, less than half have actually implemented AI tools, which is attributed to privacy concerns and the limitations of legacy systems. There was a strong desire for AI solutions to be embedded within existing systems to avoid the complexity of integrating third-party applications. The goal is to improve data exchange and interoperability to bring the focus back on the patient and improving outcomes.   Sandra explains, "The survey painted a really clear picture. Hospital CIOs are not asking if AI should be a part of their strategy, but more about how to implement it. There's a lot of support for AI adoption now, and the use cases that come first and foremost are reducing administrative burden and streamlining workflows. The survey showed that 80% of CIOs are looking to automate administrative tasks as one of their top three priorities."  "That really signals a shift towards using technology not just for innovation's sake, but with a focused goal. And that's to free up providers to spend more time with the patients. I think the other thing the survey pointed out is that there's a real desire for AI to be embedded within the EHR. CIOs don't want to have another layer of complexity with third-party bolt-ons. They really want an integrated solution that is reliable, scalable, and sustainable." #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareAI #HealthITAutomation #AmbientAI #ClinicalAutomation #HealthcareLeadership #CIOInsights #HealthSystemStrategy #HospitalInnovation #HealthTechStrategy CliniComp.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Ari Vojdani, Chief Scientific Officer at Cyrex Labs, describes the two primary components of the immune system--humoral and cell-mediated immunity and how the Cyrex diagnostics are designed to measure both. The Cyrex food immune reactivity testing measures antibodies against raw, cooked, modified, and processed food proteins as the structure of these proteins can change and affect immune responses. Cyrex is also developing tests to measure antibodies against various gut bacteria, fungi, and toxins, and how these relate to autoimmune conditions. Ari explains, "Cyrex performs lots of tests, but we can divide them based on the immune system. As you know, the immune system has two major components, the humoral and cell-mediated immunity. The humoral components of the immune system deal with measurements of antibodies. So when we get exposed to certain antigens, proteins of pathogens, food, or toxic chemicals, when they bind to human tissue, our body reacts to them, and the end result of that is specific antibody production against that specific protein or antigen." "The second component of the immune system is cell-mediated immunity, which looks at different lymphocytes, their markers, such as whether it is a T-cell, B-cell, CD4, CD8, T helper 1, T helper 2, regulatory T cells, or natural killer cells. So that also could be abnormal in certain inflammatory and autoimmune disorders. That's why at Cyrex, the tests that they are performing are classified based on humoral and cell-mediated immunity."   "In 1986 and 1987, I developed the ELISA method for measuring antibodies against different food antigens. Then I did not have the knowledge about the importance of raw versus cooked or raw versus modified foods. I established the methodologies, and many others came to visit my laboratories. Years later, they started their own laboratories. So they continue using the same raw food for measuring antibodies in their own laboratories." #CyrexLabs #FunctionalImmunology #FunctionalMedicine #immuneHealth #FoodSensitivity #FoodAllergies cyrexlabs.com Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Ari Vojdani, Chief Scientific Officer at Cyrex Labs, describes the two primary components of the immune system--humoral and cell-mediated immunity and how the Cyrex diagnostics are designed to measure both. The Cyrex food immune reactivity testing measures antibodies against raw, cooked, modified, and processed food proteins as the structure of these proteins can change and affect immune responses. Cyrex is also developing tests to measure antibodies against various gut bacteria, fungi, and toxins, and how these relate to autoimmune conditions. Ari explains, "Cyrex performs lots of tests, but we can divide them based on the immune system. As you know, the immune system has two major components, the humoral and cell-mediated immunity. The humoral components of the immune system deal with measurements of antibodies. So when we get exposed to certain antigens, proteins of pathogens, food, or toxic chemicals, when they bind to human tissue, our body reacts to them, and the end result of that is specific antibody production against that specific protein or antigen." "The second component of the immune system is cell-mediated immunity, which looks at different lymphocytes, their markers, such as whether it is a T-cell, B-cell, CD4, CD8, T helper 1, T helper 2, regulatory T cells, or natural killer cells. So that also could be abnormal in certain inflammatory and autoimmune disorders. That's why at Cyrex, the tests that they are performing are classified based on humoral and cell-mediated immunity."   "In 1986 and 1987, I developed the ELISA method for measuring antibodies against different food antigens. Then I did not have the knowledge about the importance of raw versus cooked or raw versus modified foods. I established the methodologies, and many others came to visit my laboratories. Years later, they started their own laboratories. So they continue using the same raw food for measuring antibodies in their own laboratories." #CyrexLabs #FunctionalImmunology #FunctionalMedicine #immuneHealth #FoodSensitivity #FoodAllergies cyrexlabs.com Download the transcript here

Kevin Freeman, Chief Commercial Officer at Health Catalyst, highlights the challenges mid-market healthcare systems are currently facing, including the predicted impact of Medicaid cuts and the increase in uninsured patients. There is a need to break down data silos and use AI and data analytics to improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and address clinician burnout. The Health Catalyst platform is designed to integrate existing technology, improve efficiency, and provide expertise and support to drive better patient outcomes and manage financially sound organizations.   Kevin explains, "Health Catalyst works with healthcare providers, really of all sizes. Historically, more academics and IDNs, but more recently, over the last six to seven months, have really focused on the mid-market health systems. Mid-market health systems still struggle with some of the same issues that large health systems do, but they lack the technology, expertise, and some of the clinical experience that drive outcomes. So, we're really excited to move into the mid-market, improve quality and patient care, and reduce costs at the same time."    "Our goal is not to rip and replace, but to meet them where they're at. Those investments that they've made, we can take those investments, integrate them into our platform, and drive those outcomes—that outcome improvement strategy across the entire system. I think that one of the biggest things we're seeing is that the technology is just not enough. Dashboards aren't enough. It really takes driving those outcomes and having that clinical expertise. But we don't just bring the technology. We bring the people with the technology to actually partner with them hand-in-hand to actually drive that outcome improvement." #HealthCatalyst #MidMarketHospitals #Hospitals #Healthcare #MedicaidCuts  #HealthcareProviders healthcatalyst.com Listen to the podcast here

Kevin Freeman, Chief Commercial Officer at Health Catalyst, highlights the challenges mid-market healthcare systems are currently facing, including the predicted impact of Medicaid cuts and the increase in uninsured patients. There is a need to break down data silos and use AI and data analytics to improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and address clinician burnout. The Health Catalyst platform is designed to integrate existing technology, improve efficiency, and provide expertise and support to drive better patient outcomes and manage financially sound organizations.   Kevin explains, "Health Catalyst works with healthcare providers, really of all sizes. Historically, more academics and IDNs, but more recently, over the last six to seven months, have really focused on the mid-market health systems. Mid-market health systems still struggle with some of the same issues that large health systems do, but they lack the technology, expertise, and some of the clinical experience that drive outcomes. So, we're really excited to move into the mid-market, improve quality and patient care, and reduce costs at the same time."    "Our goal is not to rip and replace, but to meet them where they're at. Those investments that they've made, we can take those investments, integrate them into our platform, and drive those outcomes—that outcome improvement strategy across the entire system. I think that one of the biggest things we're seeing is that the technology is just not enough. Dashboards aren't enough. It really takes driving those outcomes and having that clinical expertise. But we don't just bring the technology. We bring the people with the technology to actually partner with them hand-in-hand to actually drive that outcome improvement." #HealthCatalyst #MidMarketHospitals #Hospitals #Healthcare #MedicaidCuts  #HealthcareProviders healthcatalyst.com Download the transcript here

Nick Nunez, a strategy and solutions engineer at RevSpring, discusses the significant staffing shortages and technology vendor fragmentation that hamper the healthcare revenue cycle teams.  RevSpring is addressing these issues by providing integrated analytics that function seamlessly with existing workflows and various dashboards, helping to prioritize work and eliminate inefficiencies. AI tools are being designed to support the financial and administrative aspects of healthcare, automating certain functions, augmenting human staff, and improving the quality of vendor and patient financial engagement. Nick explains, "RevSpring has a fairly broad footprint inside of the healthcare revenue cycle ecosystem here, and we support everyone from large health systems, IDNs, these integrated delivery networks, academic medical centers, to specialty clinics and smaller managed care organizations. We also have a footprint, actually, within our early out or bad debt vendors in healthcare. So we really do get an opportunity to see the full lifecycle of revenue even outside the walls of the originating health systems."   "There are a couple of things that we've really started to focus on. We've been in the game for a long time doing things like statements, print and mail, and that is still important. So you asked the question about paper on day-to-day operations. I don't see as much about it, but paper statements out the door is still a need and sometimes an obligation that health systems have. And so we've done a lot to actually invest in giving analytics and insight to make sure that we are sending only the amount of statements via mail that are necessary to drive yield, drive down costs from postage by knowing this patient responds better to a text message versus a digital outreach versus print." #RevSpring #Ai #RevenueCycle #InspiringAction #PatientPathway #PatientFinance revspringinc.com Listen to the podcast here  

Nick Nunez, a strategy and solutions engineer at RevSpring, discusses the significant staffing shortages and technology vendor fragmentation that hamper the healthcare revenue cycle teams.  RevSpring is addressing these issues by providing integrated analytics that function seamlessly with existing workflows and various dashboards, helping to prioritize work and eliminate inefficiencies. AI tools are being designed to support the financial and administrative aspects of healthcare, automating certain functions, augmenting human staff, and improving the quality of vendor and patient financial engagement. Nick explains, "RevSpring has a fairly broad footprint inside of the healthcare revenue cycle ecosystem here, and we support everyone from large health systems, IDNs, these integrated delivery networks, academic medical centers, to specialty clinics and smaller managed care organizations. We also have a footprint, actually, within our early out or bad debt vendors in healthcare. So we really do get an opportunity to see the full lifecycle of revenue even outside the walls of the originating health systems."   "There are a couple of things that we've really started to focus on. We've been in the game for a long time doing things like statements, print and mail, and that is still important. So you asked the question about paper on day-to-day operations. I don't see as much about it, but paper statements out the door is still a need and sometimes an obligation that health systems have. And so we've done a lot to actually invest in giving analytics and insight to make sure that we are sending only the amount of statements via mail that are necessary to drive yield, drive down costs from postage by knowing this patient responds better to a text message versus a digital outreach versus print." #RevSpring #Ai #RevenueCycle #InspiringAction #PatientPathway #PatientFinance  revspringinc.com Download the transcript here

Michael Palladino, VP of Sales and Clinical Solutions at OptimizeRx, is utilizing AI to educate patients and providers, promoting shared decision-making about which medications are most likely to yield the best health outcomes. The goal is to combat information overload by precisely targeting education to specific patients and delivering that information on the patient's preferred media delivery platform.  Technology-driven nudges deliver timely information, reminders about upcoming appointments, and address medication adherence issues.  Michael explains, "So OptimizeRx is a health technology company. We partner with the life sciences industry, and we help patients get on the right drug at the right time, educating both patient and provider. And we do that through some traditional methods of point-of-care. We also use our AI technology, which we will talk a little bit about today." "We've evolved as a company to be as individualized as possible, and that really has been using the technological advances of AI and machine learning over the past three years to predict in a patient journey when they may qualify for a procedure or drug, and educating both the patient and the HCP. So, it's really the use of data and technology that has evolved, and it's how we're leveraging our expertise in the space." "Traditionally, the way that a pharmaceutical industry may work or a life science manufacturer may work is they're often quite siloed. The patient gets some type of education on TV, the HCP somewhere in the country gets a similar type of education, and there's not a lot of synergy. What we have done in the marketplace is combine the patient's finding with the HCP's finding, and we educate them at the right time."  #OptimizeRx #PrecisionMedicine #HealthTech #AI #HealthAI #DrugInformation optimizerx.com Listen to the podcast here

Michael Palladino, VP of Sales and Clinical Solutions at OptimizeRx, is utilizing AI to educate patients and providers, promoting shared decision-making about which medications are most likely to yield the best health outcomes. The goal is to combat information overload by precisely targeting education to specific patients and delivering that information on the patient's preferred media delivery platform.  Technology-driven nudges deliver timely information, reminders about upcoming appointments, and address medication adherence issues.  Michael explains, "So OptimizeRx is a health technology company. We partner with the life sciences industry, and we help patients get on the right drug at the right time, educating both patient and provider. And we do that through some traditional methods of point-of-care. We also use our AI technology, which we will talk a little bit about today." "We've evolved as a company to be as individualized as possible, and that really has been using the technological advances of AI and machine learning over the past three years to predict in a patient journey when they may qualify for a procedure or drug, and educating both the patient and the HCP. So, it's really the use of data and technology that has evolved, and it's how we're leveraging our expertise in the space." "Traditionally, the way that a pharmaceutical industry may work or a life science manufacturer may work is they're often quite siloed. The patient gets some type of education on TV, the HCP somewhere in the country gets a similar type of education, and there's not a lot of synergy. What we have done in the marketplace is combine the patient's finding with the HCP's finding, and we educate them at the right time."  #OptimizeRx #PrecisionMedicine #HealthTech #AI #HealthAI #DrugInformation optimizerx.com Download the transcript here

Jim LaRoe, CEO of Symphion, highlights an often overlooked cybersecurity threat posed by network-connected printers in a hospital setting.  Modern printers are complex devices with numerous features that create vulnerabilities and potential access points to patient and hospital data for cybercriminals, yet they are generally managed outside of the IT security environment. The first step in ensuring printer security is to determine the number of printing devices on the network, their locations, and their configurations. Additionally, it is essential to ask the IT team to demonstrate security hygiene for the entire printer fleet. Jim explains, "We personally were exposed to the print industry in about 2015. And we noticed that the printers are really essential for patient care. They process, store, and transmit the most sensitive data, but they have grown up outside of the information security and supply chain. The security has been left vulnerable. In today's cybercrime growth industry climate, where opportunistic criminals are looking for opportunities to steal data, ransom, or attack patient care, you've got a real recipe for disaster. So really, we're facing a whole lot of issues that relate to the vulnerability of the printer." "They're absolutely very complex business machines, and the manufacturers for the last 40 years or so, from what you're talking about, the analog days, have really enriched them with incredible features beyond the camera, the document sorter, and things like that. They built in incredible web server features, email servers, fax servers, FTP servers, like a Dropbox that we all use for heavy payload communication protocols. They built all those features into the devices, and they built in ways to secure those features, but they haven't been used, and they're not being used on networks."  #Symphion #Hospitals #PrinterSecurity #Cybercrimes #NetworkSecurity symphion.com Listen to the podcast here

Jim LaRoe, CEO of Symphion, highlights an often overlooked cybersecurity threat posed by network-connected printers in a hospital setting.  Modern printers are complex devices with numerous features that create vulnerabilities and potential access points to patient and hospital data for cybercriminals, yet they are generally managed outside of the IT security environment. The first step in ensuring printer security is to determine the number of printing devices on the network, their locations, and their configurations. Additionally, it is essential to ask the IT team to demonstrate security hygiene for the entire printer fleet. Jim explains, "We personally were exposed to the print industry in about 2015. And we noticed that the printers are really essential for patient care. They process, store, and transmit the most sensitive data, but they have grown up outside of the information security and supply chain. The security has been left vulnerable. In today's cybercrime growth industry climate, where opportunistic criminals are looking for opportunities to steal data, ransom, or attack patient care, you've got a real recipe for disaster. So really, we're facing a whole lot of issues that relate to the vulnerability of the printer." "They're absolutely very complex business machines, and the manufacturers for the last 40 years or so, from what you're talking about, the analog days, have really enriched them with incredible features beyond the camera, the document sorter, and things like that. They built in incredible web server features, email servers, fax servers, FTP servers, like a Dropbox that we all use for heavy payload communication protocols. They built all those features into the devices, and they built in ways to secure those features, but they haven't been used, and they're not being used on networks."  #Symphion #Hospitals #PrinterSecurity #Cybercrimes #NetworkSecurity symphion.com Download the transcript here

Sinan Gölhan, Founder and CEO of GelTech, describes the characteristics and applications for hydrogels, which are bio-friendly, super-absorbent materials similar to natural tissue. In cancer treatments, hydrogels offer a way to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly to a tumor, which can significantly increase the accuracy and efficacy of the drug. GelTech has developed a robotic instrument to streamline the time-consuming testing process for new hydrogel treatments, automating repetitive actions, reducing inconsistencies, and enabling 24/7 testing capabilities. Sinan explains, "You could think of hydrogels like sponges. They're super absorbent, bio-friendly materials that are made of water. For this reason, scientists like myself essentially consider them the next best thing to natural tissue. Just like our own bodies, they're mostly made up of water. They have great applications in drug delivery, implant cosmetics, all these modern hydrogel face masks, and other types of substances." "I worked in hydrogel research for many years after seeing my mother and both my grandmothers go through chemotherapy treatments. I became motivated to make these treatments more effective, smarter, more targeted, and hydrogel-like. I just realized the main limitation is that to even make one of these treatments, it costs the company around a billion dollars over 10 years to figure out if this hydrogel is even going to work. And most of this was due to manual testing. It's scientists doing the same tests over and over again. It's very tedious, takes a long time, and it's very expensive to get a scientist to do this all day, every day. After feeling like a robot during the same test over and over again, I said, ‘I want to build a robot that automates this.' The company I was working for loved it and I essentially started focusing on that for the rest of my career."  #GelTech #Hydrogels #Robots #ResearchRobotics #Cancer #CancerTreatments geltechlabs.com Listen to the podcast here  

Sinan Gölhan, Founder and CEO of GelTech, describes the characteristics and applications for hydrogels, which are bio-friendly, super-absorbent materials similar to natural tissue. In cancer treatments, hydrogels offer a way to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly to a tumor, which can significantly increase the accuracy and efficacy of the drug. GelTech has developed a robotic instrument to streamline the time-consuming testing process for new hydrogel treatments, automating repetitive actions, reducing inconsistencies, and enabling 24/7 testing capabilities. Sinan explains, "You could think of hydrogels like sponges. They're super absorbent, bio-friendly materials that are made of water. For this reason, scientists like myself essentially consider them the next best thing to natural tissue. Just like our own bodies, they're mostly made up of water. They have great applications in drug delivery, implant cosmetics, all these modern hydrogel face masks, and other types of substances." "I worked in hydrogel research for many years after seeing my mother and both my grandmothers go through chemotherapy treatments. I became motivated to make these treatments more effective, smarter, more targeted, and hydrogel-like. I just realized the main limitation is that to even make one of these treatments, it costs the company around a billion dollars over 10 years to figure out if this hydrogel is even going to work. And most of this was due to manual testing. It's scientists doing the same tests over and over again. It's very tedious, takes a long time, and it's very expensive to get a scientist to do this all day, every day. After feeling like a robot during the same test over and over again, I said, ‘I want to build a robot that automates this.' The company I was working for loved it and I essentially started focusing on that for the rest of my career."  #GelTech #Hydrogels #Robots #ResearchRobotics #Cancer #CancerTreatments geltechlabs.com Download the transcript here

Elizabeth Jeffords, CEO and President of Iolyx Therapeutics, discusses dry eye disease and its connection to autoimmune conditions. The company's novel therapeutic topical immune modulator is designed to treat the root inflammation in the eye, which systemic drugs often fail to reach due to the blood-retina barrier. Patients with dry eye disease often have multiple comorbidities and are excluded from clinical trials, making this research even more significant in finding treatments for a growing population. Elizabeth explains, "Some people have physical dry eye, i.e., they have a dysfunction in their meibomian glands, and they can't make enough tears or those tears aren't the right composition. But more than half of the patients with dry eye have an underlying autoimmune disease. And they might know that, and they might not. So, patients with either Sjogren's disease or any of the thyroid conditions, patients with rheumatoid arthritis, MS, connective tissue dysfunction, most of those patients have some ocular comorbidities, and specifically, dry eye is probably one of the biggest ones." "Sometimes we treat the body, and we can treat autoimmune diseases successfully, but you don't really get most drugs into the eye. And so those alarm bells are still going off in the eye. And unfortunately, these patients with autoimmune disease tend to have more severe disease. They respond differently to the drugs that are out there today and probably most troublesome to us, and why Iolyx is really targeted these patients is that they get excluded from most of trials because they're just more difficult to treat, but they're also more difficult to treat because they have systemic medications that they're on, and most of those drugs get excluded." #IolyxTherapeutics #DryEyeDisease #Ophthalmology #AutoimmuneDisease #EyeCare #ImmunoOphthalmology #ClinicalTrials Iolyx.com Listen to the podcast here

Elizabeth Jeffords, CEO and President of Iolyx Therapeutics, discusses dry eye disease and its connection to autoimmune conditions. The company's novel therapeutic topical immune modulator is designed to treat the root inflammation in the eye, which systemic drugs often fail to reach due to the blood-retina barrier. Patients with dry eye disease often have multiple comorbidities and are excluded from clinical trials, making this research even more significant in finding treatments for a growing population. Elizabeth explains, "Some people have physical dry eye, i.e., they have a dysfunction in their meibomian glands, and they can't make enough tears or those tears aren't the right composition. But more than half of the patients with dry eye have an underlying autoimmune disease. And they might know that, and they might not. So, patients with either Sjogren's disease or any of the thyroid conditions, patients with rheumatoid arthritis, MS, connective tissue dysfunction, most of those patients have some ocular comorbidities, and specifically, dry eye is probably one of the biggest ones." "Sometimes we treat the body, and we can treat autoimmune diseases successfully, but you don't really get most drugs into the eye. And so those alarm bells are still going off in the eye. And unfortunately, these patients with autoimmune disease tend to have more severe disease. They respond differently to the drugs that are out there today and probably most troublesome to us, and why Iolyx is really targeted these patients is that they get excluded from most of trials because they're just more difficult to treat, but they're also more difficult to treat because they have systemic medications that they're on, and most of those drugs get excluded." #IolyxTherapeutics #DryEyeDisease #Ophthalmology #AutoimmuneDisease #EyeCare #ImmunoOphthalmology #ClinicalTrials Iolyx.com Download the transcript here

Gene Mack, CEO and President of Gain Therapeutics, is combining AI-powered drug discovery with the development of allosteric modulators, drugs that bind to unique sites on proteins. The company's AI platform, Magellan, is crucial for accelerating drug discovery by reducing the time for computational screening of potential drug compounds.  Their lead compound is showing promising results as a potential disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson's disease, aiming to halt the progression of the disease rather than just treating symptoms. Gene explains, "So allosteric modulators of protein, it's a bit of a word salad, but what we're trying to achieve here is finding unique binding sites on proteins that are sort of away from the active site of that protein." "So, a lot of physics calculations go into these binding site calculations. The idea is to complete these quickly during the screening of hundreds or thousands of compounds. This process takes 10 to 15 minutes to run a set of computations and determine if a particular molecule is a fit for a specific protein. If that takes 10 or 15 minutes per compound, it's not a very big deal to go to that library if you need to get through billions, trillions of those compounds, and you need that computational speed to really fire up." "We are able to speed up those calculations from, let's say, 10 minutes to milliseconds. You can screen through much larger numbers of compounds and potentially even construct new molecules that are not known to the public domain, which would be a real key innovation." "What we think we have in our lead program, which is GT-02287, another molecule that was discovered through our application of Magellan. What we hope we have in GT-02287 is a disease-modifying approach to Parkinson's. Up until now, the only available treatments for Parkinson's are really just focused on the symptoms and allaying the severity of the symptoms." #Parkinsons #ParkinsonsDisease #AI #DrugDiscovery #GAINtherapeutics #DiseaseModification gaintherapeutics.com  Listen to the podcast here