Empowered Patient Podcast

Kent Wakeford, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Form Bio, a company that provides computational solutions to scientists who are focused on cell and gene therapy to accelerate drug discovery and development, reduce costs, and ultimately make treatments more affordable for patients. Form Bio's in silico platform utilizes computational biology tools, bioinformatics, machine learning, and AI to process large amounts of open source data to provide insights to scientists to help them solve critical challenges. They are committed to supporting the rare and ultra-rare disease community and offer their tools to patient advocacy groups for free.

Kent explains, "There are a lot of bumps. The production, scaling up, and cost of gene therapies are major obstacles to their widespread success. As we've seen in small molecule, target identification is one of the key challenges, and there's been a lot of breakthroughs in AI, and computational analysis that have helped scientists find those targets."

"In cell and gene therapy, it's different. It's a little bit easier to find the gene of interest that you want to try and work on. Still, it is harder to design and ultimately develop the gene therapy that can scale, have limited immunotoxic impact, and provide the therapeutic outcome at the right place and strength in the body."

"Training a platform is one of the most critical areas for an AI or a computational company. Our team of incredible AI scientists from some of the greatest academic labs went out and pulled together all the available data in the open-source market. And to be honest, there's a lot, but it's not that helpful when you're trying to get very specific scientific outcomes."

"And so, we partnered with a number of leading academic institutions where we commissioned and paid for scientific research that produced data that we can then train models on. We looked at specific genes of interest for major therapeutic areas and then looked at all the regulatory elements to understand the different interactions. We can understand if you were to change one element of this, what happens to the rest of the therapeutic? What happens to expression, what happens to tropism, what happens to the packaging and manufacturability of that drug?"

#FormBio #AI #ML #ComputationalBiology #DrugDiscovery #DrugDevelopment #ClinicalTrials #CellTherapy #GeneTherapy #RareDiseases

formbio.com

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Kent Wakeford, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Form Bio, a company that provides computational solutions to scientists who are focused on cell and gene therapy to accelerate drug discovery and development, reduce costs, and ultimately make treatments more affordable for patients. Form Bio's in silico platform utilizes computational biology tools, bioinformatics, machine learning, and AI to process large amounts of open source data to provide insights to scientists to help them solve critical challenges. They are committed to supporting the rare and ultra-rare disease community and offer their tools to patient advocacy groups for free.

Kent explains, "There are a lot of bumps. The production, scaling up, and cost of gene therapies are major obstacles to their widespread success. As we've seen in small molecule, target identification is one of the key challenges, and there's been a lot of breakthroughs in AI, and computational analysis that have helped scientists find those targets."

"In cell and gene therapy, it's different. It's a little bit easier to find the gene of interest that you want to try and work on. Still, it is harder to design and ultimately develop the gene therapy that can scale, have limited immunotoxic impact, and provide the therapeutic outcome at the right place and strength in the body."

"Training a platform is one of the most critical areas for an AI or a computational company. Our team of incredible AI scientists from some of the greatest academic labs went out and pulled together all the available data in the open-source market. And to be honest, there's a lot, but it's not that helpful when you're trying to get very specific scientific outcomes."

"And so, we partnered with a number of leading academic institutions where we commissioned and paid for scientific research that produced data that we can then train models on. We looked at specific genes of interest for major therapeutic areas and then looked at all the regulatory elements to understand the different interactions. We can understand if you were to change one element of this, what happens to the rest of the therapeutic? What happens to expression, what happens to tropism, what happens to the packaging and manufacturability of that drug?"

#FormBio #AI #ML #ComputationalBiology #DrugDiscovery #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #CellTherapy #GeneTherapy #RareDiseases

formbio.com

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Ram Krishnan, CEO of Valant, works with therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and nurse practitioners in the outpatient behavioral healthcare environment, which has significant unmet needs that can be addressed with technology. Scaling a mental health practice differs from other medical practices due to the frequency of visits and the need for individualized care with the most effective therapist. Virtual visits and telehealth are helping providers bridge the gap between physical and mental health, and generative AI is showing promise in diagnosing and maintaining behavioral health.

Ram explains, "This has been a market that has evolved over the last 25 years because so much has changed with our overall perception of the value and importance of mental health. This is a market that was primarily rarely covered by insurance, and employers rarely demanded coverage for their employees. Therefore, it was a cash-based business for most of its existence."

"But over the last ten years, as the stigma for mental health has started to fade, and people are more outspoken about mental health challenges that they're facing, whether it's celebrities or athletes, it's just made its way to the forefront. So employers, first and foremost, have begun to demand that the payers offer their services, and that's where it starts. Payers then, in turn, begin to look for coverage. Now you have a market that was built for cash working its way into the insurance model. Finding itself subscale, they are now looking to build to scale so that it can have the systems and structures required to be able to swim into the larger waters of the US healthcare system with the insurance and payer process. And so, you have a lot of practices that have a lot of catching up to do with respect to adopting technology, and quite frankly, just process."

#Valant #MentalHealth #BehavioralHealth #BehavioralHealthEHR #PracticeManagement #PatientPortal #Telehealth

Valant.io

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Ram Krishnan, CEO of Valant, works with therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and nurse practitioners in the outpatient behavioral healthcare environment, which has significant unmet needs that can be addressed with technology. Scaling a mental health practice differs from other medical practices due to the frequency of visits and the need for individualized care with the most effective therapist. Virtual visits and telehealth are helping providers bridge the gap between physical and mental health, and generative AI is showing promise in diagnosing and maintaining behavioral health.

Ram explains, "This has been a market that has evolved over the last 25 years because so much has changed with our overall perception of the value and importance of mental health. This is a market that was primarily rarely covered by insurance, and employers rarely demanded coverage for their employees. Therefore, it was a cash-based business for most of its existence."

"But over the last ten years, as the stigma for mental health has started to fade, and people are more outspoken about mental health challenges that they're facing, whether it's celebrities or athletes, it's just made its way to the forefront. So employers, first and foremost, have begun to demand that the payers offer their services, and that's where it starts. Payers then, in turn, begin to look for coverage. Now you have a market that was built for cash working its way into the insurance model. Finding itself subscale, they are now looking to build to scale so that it can have the systems and structures required to be able to swim into the larger waters of the US healthcare system with the insurance and payer process. And so, you have a lot of practices that have a lot of catching up to do with respect to adopting technology, and quite frankly, just process."

#Valant #MentalHealth #BehavioralHealth #BehavioralHealthEHR #PracticeManagement #PatientPortal #Telehealth

Valant.io

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Fadi Micaelian, CEO of Sparkdit, and Dr. Andrew Fang, Chief of Orthopedics at Kaiser South San Francisco, have joined together to help patients and doctors make better treatment decisions by considering trade-offs and patient preferences. The platform can help reduce bias and incorporate patient desires into care while considering comorbidities and other factors that may affect treatment decisions. Fadi and Andrew agree that collaboration between technologists and clinicians is essential for advancing the use of AI in healthcare to augment human intelligence and improve outcomes.

Fadi explains, "At Sparkdit, our mission is to teach computers to think like humans. To do so, we've taught computers to think with trade-offs. So humans universally think the same way. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. We all think the same way. Whenever we have a decision, we have a set of criteria that we take into account. We think in a certain way of each criterion, and then we apply on top of that a set of trade-offs. Trade-offs are core to the way we make decisions. Now, when you apply that to healthcare, that's not a domain that I'm an expert in. There was a set of doctors led by Dr. Fang at Kaiser who discovered and invented a new way of applying that technology to healthcare."

Andrew elaborates, "I think the potential benefits of AI are that they can augment the doctor/patient relationship. It's really important that we maintain this human connection with our patients, but is there a way that AI can help us make better decisions, achieve better outcomes, and incorporate some of the things that patients want in their care more easily?"

#Sparkdit #MedAI #AI #DigitalHealth #MedTech #Orthopedics #PatientDecisions #DecisionIntelligence

sparkdit.com

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Fadi Micaelian, CEO of Sparkdit, and Dr. Andrew Fang, Chief of Orthopedics at Kaiser South San Francisco, have joined together to help patients and doctors make better treatment decisions by considering trade-offs and patient preferences. The platform can help reduce bias and incorporate patient desires into care while considering comorbidities and other factors that may affect treatment decisions. Fadi and Andrew agree that collaboration between technologists and clinicians is essential for advancing the use of AI in healthcare to augment human intelligence and improve outcomes.

Fadi explains, "At Sparkdit, our mission is to teach computers to think like humans. To do so, we've taught computers to think with trade-offs. So humans universally think the same way. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. We all think the same way. Whenever we have a decision, we have a set of criteria that we take into account. We think in a certain way of each criterion, and then we apply on top of that a set of trade-offs. Trade-offs are core to the way we make decisions. Now, when you apply that to healthcare, that's not a domain that I'm an expert in. There was a set of doctors led by Dr. Fang at Kaiser who discovered and invented a new way of applying that technology to healthcare."

Andrew elaborates, "I think the potential benefits of AI are that they can augment the doctor/patient relationship. It's really important that we maintain this human connection with our patients, but is there a way that AI can help us make better decisions, achieve better outcomes, and incorporate some of the things that patients want in their care more easily?"

#Sparkdit #MedAI #AI #DigitalHealth #MedTech #Orthopedics #PatientDecisions #DecisionIntelligence

sparkdit.com

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Sufian Chowdhury, CEO of Kinetik, highlights how the non-emergency medical transportation industry, which has about 20,000 local transportation providers and over 400,000 drivers, plays a pivotal role in the healthcare continuum. Kinetik is bringing digital tools to this environment to provide scheduling and real-time information to an industry that currently relies on the phone. The goal is to make the system more efficient, reduce waiting times for patients and drivers, and ensure that drivers get paid promptly for these rides Medicaid covers.

Sufian explains, "These are pre-planned rides. This industry is non-digital. You have to liken the state of this industry to what the taxi industry was in the '90s. It's a lot of telephonic communication. Not a lot of these transport companies are using technology. Because of that, the scheduling becomes very cumbersome, and some members have to request these rides three or four days in advance, not by choice but just because of the broken structure of this industry. We're trying to fix that with Kinetik by digitizing it so that these rides can become real-time rides."

"One of the biggest challenges and how Kinetik started the genesis of Kinetik is to initially address the billing problem that transport providers were facing. They would send out claims and get paid every 60 to 90 days, yet they would have to pay their drivers every seven days. These are small businesses that struggled mightily when it came to cash flow management. So, the first problem we solved, as we entered this market about seven years ago, was to build a billing platform that allowed these transport providers to get paid on time or instantly. That was our initial goal."

#Kinetik #NonEmergencyMedicalTransportation #NEMT #DigitalHealth

kinetik.care

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Sufian Chowdhury, CEO of Kinetik, highlights how the non-emergency medical transportation industry, which has about 20,000 local transportation providers and over 400,000 drivers, plays a pivotal role in the healthcare continuum. Kinetik is bringing digital tools to this environment to provide scheduling and real-time information to an industry that currently relies on the phone. The goal is to make the system more efficient, reduce waiting times for patients and drivers, and ensure that drivers get paid promptly for these rides Medicaid covers.

Sufian explains, "These are pre-planned rides. This industry is non-digital. You have to liken the state of this industry to what the taxi industry was in the '90s. It's a lot of telephonic communication. Not a lot of these transport companies are using technology. Because of that, the scheduling becomes very cumbersome, and some members have to request these rides three or four days in advance, not by choice but just because of the broken structure of this industry. We're trying to fix that with Kinetik by digitizing it so that these rides can become real-time rides."

"One of the biggest challenges and how Kinetik started the genesis of Kinetik is to initially address the billing problem that transport providers were facing. They would send out claims and get paid every 60 to 90 days, yet they would have to pay their drivers every seven days. These are small businesses that struggled mightily when it came to cash flow management. So, the first problem we solved, as we entered this market about seven years ago, was to build a billing platform that allowed these transport providers to get paid on time or instantly. That was our initial goal."

#Kinetik #NonEmergencyMedicalTransportation #NEMT #DigitalHealth

kinetik.care

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Piotr Orzechowski, CEO of Infermedica, works with health insurance companies, technology partners, public payers, and ministries of health to provide digital care navigation tools that enhance the patient experience with a healthcare provider. The highlight is the development of digital front door technology to support patients in finding appropriate care. Using an AI-powered care interface, symptoms can be evaluated, questions answered, and guidance offered for care options including self-care at home. When appropriate, AI-based decision support tools guide nurses through phone conversations to triage and determine immediate actions that should be taken.

Piotr explains, "We have developed a clinically validated symptom-checking tool powered by AI. I will explain it in a second. But most importantly, it's curated by a team of 50 physicians. So, every single day, our group of doctors performs different tasks related to clinical validation and content updates, and using this content, we create probabilistic models that try to resemble the way doctors would triage patients."

"We've spent more than 12 years of joint work between our medical teams, data scientists, and algorithm developers to establish one of the most versatile and accurate probabilistic models for current primary diseases. We currently have more than 120,000 hours of doctors who work on this medical content that's behind our technology."

"The way it works is that there are two main use cases and two main ways we provide our technology, and it's very straightforward. The first approach is we have a patient-facing app. So when you are feeling unwell, or maybe somebody in your family is feeling unwell, we guide you through a very simple process. You can provide your demographics, basic risk factors and chief complaints, and based on that, we engage in a sequence of questions to learn more about underlying causes. So, if you ever played 20 Questions, this is more like a 20-question flow, but, of course, for medical problems. After about 10 to 15 questions, our AI engine knows enough to propose the right triage level and even the most likely conditions."

#Infermedica #DigitalHealth #DigitalHealthcare #HealthCareAI #DigitalFrontDoor #PatientEngagement #Triage #CallCenter #SymptomChecker #HealthTech

Infermedica.com

Listen to the podcast here

Piotr Orzechowski, CEO of Infermedica, works with health insurance companies, technology partners, public payers, and ministries of health to provide digital care navigation tools that enhance the patient experience with a healthcare provider. The highlight is the development of digital front door technology to support patients in finding appropriate care. Using an AI-powered care interface, symptoms can be evaluated, questions answered, and guidance offered for care options, including self-care at home. When appropriate, AI-based decision support tools guide nurses through phone conversations to triage and determine immediate actions that should be taken.

Piotr explains, "We have developed a clinically validated symptom-checking tool powered by AI. I will explain it in a second. But most importantly, it's curated by a team of 50 physicians. So, every single day, our group of doctors performs different tasks related to clinical validation and content updates, and using this content, we create probabilistic models that try to resemble the way doctors would triage patients."

"We've spent more than 12 years of joint work between our medical teams, data scientists, and algorithm developers to establish one of the most versatile and accurate probabilistic models for current primary diseases. We currently have more than 120,000 hours of doctors who work on this medical content that's behind our technology."

"The way it works is that there are two main use cases and two main ways we provide our technology, and it's very straightforward. The first approach is we have a patient-facing app. So when you are feeling unwell, or maybe somebody in your family is feeling unwell, we guide you through a very simple process. You can provide your demographics, basic risk factors and chief complaints, and based on that, we engage in a sequence of questions to learn more about underlying causes. So, if you ever played 20 Questions, this is more like a 20-question flow, but, of course, for medical problems. After about 10 to 15 questions, our AI engine knows enough to propose the right triage level and even the most likely conditions."

#Infermedica #DigitalHealth #DigitalHealthcare #HealthCareAI #DigitalFrontDoor #PatientEngagement #Triage #CallCenter #SymptomChecker #HealthTech

Infermedica.com

Download the transcript here