Empowered Patient Podcast

Joan Butters, CEO and Co-Founder of Xsolis works with health systems and health plans to automate medical necessity decisions and improve efficiency. Using data and AI, Xsolis helps clinicians make more informed decisions and reduces manual administrative work, resulting in time and cost savings and improved patient care. Addressing the challenges and pushback faced when introducing AI into healthcare, Joan emphasizes the importance of understanding the limitations and complexities of generative AI and the need for subject matter expertise in developing prompts to properly address friction points between providers and payers in the healthcare environment.

Joan explains, "More important to this audience are the administrative aspects and the impact of that back and forth on the cost of healthcare. We were very fortunate that we found a niche in what we were trying to solve for. Again, that was the medical necessity decision whether a patient required hospital-based care. And then, with that laser focus, we did a lot of research from both sides and found that there was a way to automate through the use of data and AI to solve some of those problems."

"There are definitely two areas that we have a direct impact on. As I said, one is the cost of healthcare—so big efficiency. If you think about what clinicians do when they're making a determination of hospital-based care, prior to Xsolis, those clinicians would be reading through multiple data points and not data points that were connected, which became a very manual process. With automation and artificial intelligence, our system allows that very costly staff to be much more efficient in making those determinations. Coupled with that, instead of clinicians doing administrative tasks, the automation we provide through AI and our technology frees the clinician to be back at the bedside with the patient."

#Xsolis #Healthcare #HealthcareAdministration #Workflow #RemovingWorkflowFriction #AI #MedicalNecessityDecisions #Clinicians

xsolis.com

Listen to the podcast here

Joan Butters, CEO and Co-Founder of Xsolis works with health systems and health plans to automate medical necessity decisions and improve efficiency. Using data and AI, Xsolis helps clinicians make more informed decisions and reduces manual administrative work, resulting in time and cost savings and improved patient care. Addressing the challenges and pushback faced when introducing AI into healthcare, Joan emphasizes the importance of understanding the limitations and complexities of generative AI and the need for subject matter expertise in developing prompts to properly address friction points between providers and payers in the healthcare environment.

Joan explains, "More important to this audience are the administrative aspects and the impact of that back and forth on the cost of healthcare. We were very fortunate that we found a niche in what we were trying to solve for. Again, that was the medical necessity decision whether a patient required hospital-based care. And then, with that laser focus, we did a lot of research from both sides and found that there was a way to automate through the use of data and AI to solve some of those problems."

"There are definitely two areas that we have a direct impact on. As I said, one is the cost of healthcare—so big efficiency. If you think about what clinicians do when they're making a determination of hospital-based care, prior to Xsolis, those clinicians would be reading through multiple data points and not data points that were connected, which became a very manual process. With automation and artificial intelligence, our system allows that very costly staff to be much more efficient in making those determinations. Coupled with that, instead of clinicians doing administrative tasks, the automation we provide through AI and our technology frees the clinician to be back at the bedside with the patient."

#Xsolis #Healthcare #HealthcareAdministration #Workflow #RemovingWorkflowFriction #AI #MedicalNecessityDecisions #Clinicians

xsolis.com

Download the transcript here

Sanjeev Redkar, Co-Founder, Executive Director, and President of Apollomics, focuses on difficult-to-treat cancers, such as lung cancer, brain cancer, and leukemias, not served by immune checkpoint inhibitors. Their approach targets the thematic pathway in cancer cells responsible for their growth and proliferation. In their drug development, AI and data analysis drive precision-targeted therapies based on tumor molecular profiling. They are developing the drugs Vebreltinib and Uproleselan, which can be used as standalone treatments or in combination with other therapies to treat rare cancers.

Sanjeev explains, "There's a pathway that is very important for the growth of cancer cells. This is proliferation, motility, migration, and invasion of cancer cells, and that's the thematic pathway. This is an important receptor, which is upstream in cell signaling of these cancer cells. This is when these pathways work well, these cells grow as normal homeostasis, normal growth of cells. When this pathway is disrupted in cancer cells, they tend to grow far more than what normal cells would. That's the pathway that we are going after. These are mutations in this pathway, in the genome amplification, gene amplification, and fusions, which lead for these particular cancers to grow well. If you are able to inhibit that pathway, then you are able to impart benefit to the patient. And that's what one of our main drugs, Vebreltinib, is going after."

"As a whole, in lung cancer, even though the checkpoint inhibitors have moved the needle in terms of five-year survival rates, the needle has been moved from about 25% to about 30%, 32%, which is still much lower than say breast cancer, prostate cancer, where the five-year survival rates are close to 80%, 90%. So, how we can win the battle against lung cancer and brain cancer is really using precision-targeted therapies. These slivers of cancers that have a particular mutation, that have a particular dysregulation, and having treatments for that allow these patients a targeted approach for a longer benefit as opposed to one treatment for the entire lung cancer population. That is why we go after the so-called slivers, which put them into the rare cancers bucket."

#Apollomics #RareDiseases #Cancer #LungCancer #Leukemias #BrainCancer #RareCancers #NextGenSequencing #MolecularProfiling #CancerMolecularProfiling #TumorMolecularProfiling #AI

Apollomics.com

Listen to the podcast here

Sanjeev Redkar, Co-Founder, Executive Director, and President of Apollomics, focuses on difficult-to-treat cancers, such as lung cancer, brain cancer, and leukemias, not served by immune checkpoint inhibitors. Their approach targets the thematic pathway in cancer cells responsible for their growth and proliferation. In their drug development, AI and data analysis drive precision-targeted therapies based on tumor molecular profiling. They are developing the drugs Vebreltinib and Uproleselan, which can be used as standalone treatments or in combination with other therapies to treat rare cancers.

Sanjeev explains, "There's a pathway that is very important for the growth of cancer cells. This is proliferation, motility, migration, and invasion of cancer cells, and that's the thematic pathway. This is an important receptor, which is upstream in cell signaling of these cancer cells. This is when these pathways work well, these cells grow as normal homeostasis, normal growth of cells. When this pathway is disrupted in cancer cells, they tend to grow far more than what normal cells would. That's the pathway that we are going after. These are mutations in this pathway, in the genome amplification, gene amplification, and fusions, which lead for these particular cancers to grow well. If you are able to inhibit that pathway, then you are able to impart benefit to the patient. And that's what one of our main drugs, Vebreltinib, is going after."

"As a whole, in lung cancer, even though the checkpoint inhibitors have moved the needle in terms of five-year survival rates, the needle has been moved from about 25% to about 30%, 32%, which is still much lower than say breast cancer, prostate cancer, where the five-year survival rates are close to 80%, 90%. So, how we can win the battle against lung cancer and brain cancer is really using precision-targeted therapies. These slivers of cancers that have a particular mutation, that have a particular dysregulation, and having treatments for that allow these patients a targeted approach for a longer benefit as opposed to one treatment for the entire lung cancer population. That is why we go after the so-called slivers, which put them into the rare cancers bucket."

#Apollomics #RareDiseases #Cancer #LungCancer #Leukemias #BrainCancer #RareCancers #NextGenSequencing #MolecularProfiling #CancerMolecularProfiling #TumorMolecularProfiling #AI

Apollomics.com

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Kristen Helton, CEO and Co-Founder of Herself Health, provides comprehensive primary care designed specifically for women over 65, considering the unique health challenges these women face. The emphasis is on the importance of addressing women's health beyond reproductive health and the need for tailored treatment and screening for conditions that affect women differently than men. Kristen notes the underrepresentation of women, especially older women, in clinical trials and the need for further investigation. They aim to reduce bias and improve the quality of care for older women by adopting a person-centric approach, listening to patients' concerns, and building trust.

Kristen explains, "Almost half of the burdens of disease that women experience stem from conditions that affect women differently than men. So, a lot of these diseases, cardiovascular, chronic illness, gastroenterology, and depression, affect men differently than they affect women. We're very focused on how we treat women and screen them for different diseases. We take a really comprehensive health history. Women have a lot of data that we need to understand as we're putting together the picture of their overall health."

"I mean, 65 is young old, in fact. It's just the beginning, and there are a lot of differences between 65 and 75 and 85 and 95. We're talking about decades. So I'm also remiss in grouping 65 and up even into a single category. But you hit on something super important there, and that is women are not satisfied with the answer that's just what happens as you get older. It comes back to, in essence, the quality of life. I think this is where we're seeing some real success in our approach, which is yes, we want to do all of the important preventative, physical, behavioral health care. But we also want to understand the patient's goals and what they're trying to get to and maintain."

#HerselfHealth #WomensHealth #Healthcare #ValueBasedCare #PrimaryCare

herself-health.com

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Kristen Helton, CEO and Co-Founder of Herself Health, provides comprehensive primary care designed specifically for women over 65, considering the unique health challenges these women face. The emphasis is on the importance of addressing women's health beyond reproductive health and the need for tailored treatment and screening for conditions that affect women differently than men. Kristen notes the underrepresentation of women, especially older women, in clinical trials and the need for further investigation. They aim to reduce bias and improve the quality of care for older women by adopting a person-centric approach, listening to patients' concerns, and building trust.

Kristen explains, "Almost half of the burdens of disease that women experience stem from conditions that affect women differently than men. So, a lot of these diseases, cardiovascular, chronic illness, gastroenterology, and depression, affect men differently than they affect women. We're very focused on how we treat women and screen them for different diseases. We take a really comprehensive health history. Women have a lot of data that we need to understand as we're putting together the picture of their overall health."

"I mean, 65 is young old, in fact. It's just the beginning, and there are a lot of differences between 65 and 75 and 85 and 95. We're talking about decades. So I'm also remiss in grouping 65 and up even into a single category. But you hit on something super important there, and that is women are not satisfied with the answer that's just what happens as you get older. It comes back to, in essence, the quality of life. I think this is where we're seeing some real success in our approach, which is yes, we want to do all of the important preventative, physical, behavioral health care. But we also want to understand the patient's goals and what they're trying to get to and maintain."

#HerselfHealth #WomensHealth #Healthcare #ValueBasedCare #PrimaryCare

herself-health.com

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Robert Towarnicki, CEO and Co-founder of SIRPant Immunotherapeutics, discusses cancer-specific immunotherapy for aggressive tumors, the role macrophages play in the immune response to cancer, and how cancer cells can shut down this response. SIRPant Immunotherapeutics aims to modify macrophages by reducing SIRPα expression, triggering them to eat cancer cells and educate other immune cells. Early evidence demonstrates potential effectiveness for various cancers, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and solid tumors. Robert emphasizes this therapy's scalability and cost advantages compared to other cell therapies like CAR-T. He also highlights the potential for treating rare diseases and the ability of SIRPant-M to target a wide range of cancers without the need for pre-identified targets.

Robert explains, "Macrophages are a normal immune cell type in your body. They normally function to recognize foreign invaders and process them in the sense of phagocytizing or eating the foreign protein and invader, if it's a virus, a bacteria, or a cancer. Unfortunately, cancers are very good at shutting down this immune response. So, we need to modify the macrophage and re-empower it to elicit the other immune cells in the body to do their job and eliminate cancer."

"I think one of the mistakes we've seen with others working with the macrophage in this situation was the lack of appreciation for the role of SIRPα. Our inventor, Dr. Yuan Liu at Georgia State University, identified this early on through a knockout mouse, a mouse where SIRPα was genetically removed from it. With that mouse, she could discover and learn how macrophages function and react. It directed us to the whole concept of removing SIRPα from the macrophage. Now, removal alone is not enough. You also have to activate a macrophage. So, a macrophage exists in multiple states. There's an active state, and then there's an inactive state."

#SIRPant #Immunotherapy #Macrophages #Oncology #Cancer

sirpantimmunotx.com

Listen to the podcast here

Robert Towarnicki, CEO and Co-founder of SIRPant Immunotherapeutics, discusses cancer-specific immunotherapy for aggressive tumors, the role macrophages play in the immune response to cancer, and how cancer cells can shut down this response. SIRPant Immunotherapeutics aims to modify macrophages by reducing SIRPα expression, triggering them to eat cancer cells and educate other immune cells. Early evidence demonstrates potential effectiveness for various cancers, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and solid tumors. Robert emphasizes this therapy's scalability and cost advantages compared to other cell therapies like CAR-T. He also highlights the potential for treating rare diseases and the ability of SIRPant-M to target a wide range of cancers without the need for pre-identified targets.

Robert explains, "Macrophages are a normal immune cell type in your body. They normally function to recognize foreign invaders and process them in the sense of phagocytizing or eating the foreign protein and invader, if it's a virus, a bacteria, or a cancer. Unfortunately, cancers are very good at shutting down this immune response. So, we need to modify the macrophage and re-empower it to elicit the other immune cells in the body to do their job and eliminate cancer."

"I think one of the mistakes we've seen with others working with the macrophage in this situation was the lack of appreciation for the role of SIRPα. Our inventor, Dr. Yuan Liu at Georgia State University, identified this early on through a knockout mouse, a mouse where SIRPα was genetically removed from it. With that mouse, she could discover and learn how macrophages function and react. It directed us to the whole concept of removing SIRPα from the macrophage. Now, removal alone is not enough. You also have to activate a macrophage. So, a macrophage exists in multiple states. There's an active state, and then there's an inactive state."

#SIRPant #Immunotherapy #Macrophages #Oncology #Cancer

sirpantimmunotx.com

Download the transcript here

Jeff Surges, CEO of RLDatix, offers global cloud-based solutions for risk management, compliance management, and regulatory management in healthcare. To address patient safety, Jeff emphasizes the need for a collaborative workforce, data analytics, and AI. RLDatix uses technology to automate information gathering, facilitate incident reporting, and analyze data to determine proactive actions to prevent incidents and improve safety.

Jeff explains, "The simplest analogy when I get asked this is: how does this relate to other industries? We all fly in airplanes, and we've seen in the airline industry most recently with doors coming off, the emergency exit doors, close calls, or what we'll call incidents where you need to look at the root cause. The key difference is if a plane goes down, as tragic as that is, the pilots and the crew go down. But in healthcare, if there's an incident or a procedure or an event that has occurred, it's likely only affecting the patient and the patient's family. That's not meant to say that people don't care, everybody cares, but it doesn't affect the entire circumference. What we try to do is make it automated, make it easy to use, engage with what we call a culture of safety, which starts at the very highest level, and then using data analytics, now, generative AI."

"For 20 years, an article written in our industry called To Err Is Human kicked off the energy around improving patient safety. I think the first phase of that for over ten years, 15 years, was just documenting the event after it happened. Let's document. Let's run around and automate, document, and report on it."

"Today, that's no longer the case. All of our customers and our industry want to prevent this. We use terms like highly reliable- I want to be an HRO, a highly reliable organization. We're competing on safety. Everybody wants to go to the safest place for care. We're trying to use data and analytics to both prevent and gain the insights to make sure that we can continue that not just one time. The data is telling us there are some decisions we can make in our policies and our procedures, in our staffing levels, and in our credentialing of staff to make sure that we can continue. So, going from reactive to proactive risk mitigation."

#RLDatix #ConnectedHealthcareOperations #PatientSafety #HealthTech #AI

rldatix.com

Listen to the podcast here

Jeff Surges, CEO of RLDatix, offers global cloud-based solutions for risk management, compliance management, and regulatory management in healthcare. To address patient safety, Jeff emphasizes the need for a collaborative workforce, data analytics, and AI. RLDatix uses technology to automate information gathering, facilitate incident reporting, and analyze data to determine proactive actions to prevent incidents and improve safety.

Jeff explains, "The simplest analogy when I get asked this is: how does this relate to other industries? We all fly in airplanes, and we've seen in the airline industry most recently with doors coming off, the emergency exit doors, close calls, or what we'll call incidents where you need to look at the root cause. The key difference is if a plane goes down, as tragic as that is, the pilots and the crew go down. But in healthcare, if there's an incident or a procedure or an event that has occurred, it's likely only affecting the patient and the patient's family. That's not meant to say that people don't care, everybody cares, but it doesn't affect the entire circumference. What we try to do is make it automated, make it easy to use, engage with what we call a culture of safety, which starts at the very highest level, and then using data analytics, now, generative AI."

"For 20 years, an article written in our industry called To Err Is Human kicked off the energy around improving patient safety. I think the first phase of that for over ten years, 15 years, was just documenting the event after it happened. Let's document. Let's run around and automate, document, and report on it."

"Today, that's no longer the case. All of our customers and our industry want to prevent this. We use terms like highly reliable- I want to be an HRO, a highly reliable organization. We're competing on safety. Everybody wants to go to the safest place for care. We're trying to use data and analytics to both prevent and gain the insights to make sure that we can continue that not just one time. The data is telling us there are some decisions we can make in our policies and our procedures, in our staffing levels, and in our credentialing of staff to make sure that we can continue. So, going from reactive to proactive risk mitigation."

#RLDatix #ConnectedHealthcareOperations #PatientSafety #HealthTech #AI

rldatix.com

Download the transcript here