Empowered Patient Podcast

Christian Lillis, Co-Founder and CEO of the Peggy Lillis Foundation is a patient advocate in the fight against C. diff infection. Clostridium difficile is an opportunistic infection of the gut that often occurs after taking antibiotics and can lead to life-threatening complications. Christian shares his personal story of losing his mother to C. diff and highlights the progress made in raising awareness and the development of new treatments for the infection. The Peggy Lillis Foundation emphasizes the importance of patient voices in shaping infectious disease policies and research and the need for community support to fight C. diff and other preventable infectious diseases.

Christian explains, "Last time we did our most recent C. diff awareness month campaign in November, it was our most successful one yet. We reached around 23 million people through a mix of earned, print, video, and podcast media and a strong social media campaign. We also had it bolstered by media partnerships with Contagion Live and Pharmacy Times. As part of our programming for the month, we held a virtual town hall, and about 200 people attended. More than half of them were C. diff patients, survivors, and family members."

"Other progress was at the end of 2022, and then in early 2023, two new therapies. Technically, they are classified as preventative by the FDA, but they are basically microbiome restoration therapies. As I said earlier, when you take antibiotics, there can be other causes. Still, when your gut microbiome, gut bacteria, and viruses get out of whack or depleted, you become very vulnerable to C. diff. And a reason why people struggle to get over C. diff is because their gut microbiome remains degraded. So these new two therapies, one is done by enema, one is given by capsule over several days, it's a really huge change for people who are battling recurrent C. diff."

#CDiff #PeggyLillisFoundation #ClostridiumDifficile #CDifficile #PatientAdvocacy #CdiffAwarenessMonth

cdiff.org

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Christian Lillis, Co-Founder and CEO of the Peggy Lillis Foundation is a patient advocate in the fight against C. diff infection. Clostridium difficile is an opportunistic infection of the gut that often occurs after taking antibiotics and can lead to life-threatening complications. Christian shares his personal story of losing his mother to C. diff and highlights the progress made in raising awareness and the development of new treatments for the infection. The Peggy Lillis Foundation emphasizes the importance of patient voices in shaping infectious disease policies and research and the need for community support to fight C. diff and other preventable infectious diseases.

Christian explains, "Last time we did our most recent C. diff awareness month campaign in November, it was our most successful one yet. We reached around 23 million people through a mix of earned, print, video, and podcast media and a strong social media campaign. We also had it bolstered by media partnerships with Contagion Live and Pharmacy Times. As part of our programming for the month, we held a virtual town hall, and about 200 people attended. More than half of them were C. diff patients, survivors, and family members."

"Other progress was at the end of 2022, and then in early 2023, two new therapies. Technically, they are classified as preventative by the FDA, but they are basically microbiome restoration therapies. As I said earlier, when you take antibiotics, there can be other causes. Still, when your gut microbiome, gut bacteria, and viruses get out of whack or depleted, you become very vulnerable to C. diff. And a reason why people struggle to get over C. diff is because their gut microbiome remains degraded. So these new two therapies, one is done by enema, one is given by capsule over several days, it's a really huge change for people who are battling recurrent C. diff."

#CDiff #PeggyLillisFoundation #ClostridiumDifficile #CDifficile #PatientAdvocacy #CdiffAwarenessMonth

cdiff.org

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Paul Hickey, President and CEO of ReShape Lifesciences, discusses the company's role in the weight loss industry. The ReShape Lap-Band® and the new ReShape Lap-Band® 2.0 FLEX are tested surgical options for weight loss and weight management and are now being joined in the market by GLP-1 agonists such as Wegovy and Ozempic. While these options are effective for different individuals, Paul emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive approach that includes diet and lifestyle changes. As a society, we have normalized obesity, and more education is needed to inform those with obesity about these effective solutions.

Paul explains, "The weight loss drugs people have been hearing about are the first step for weight loss, along with working with your physician and their team. And then as you move down, the more aggressive treatment, the ReShape products, and in particular the Lap-Band®, which has been around for over 20 years, is the first surgical step performed by a laparoscopic surgeon that goes in and helps to provide for a way to get back on the weight loss path for individuals. And then, beyond that, you have other procedures that are more aggressive that people also have to consider as they continue their journey."

"We see physicians today using the GLP-1s as combination therapy for someone who has a Lap-Band® or a gastric sleeve or a gastric bypass who may have had any one of those procedures, including a Lap-Band® for five or ten years and started to plateau or reverse on their weight loss. Those GLP-1s can be administered and prescribed for those who want to get back on the path to weight loss."

"There are a lot of differences in the type of obesity that someone has. There are a lot of differences in what treatments work better or worse for individuals. I think the side effect, part of the answer to the question is with the GLP-1s, there's going to be probably more studies to come out to show what side effects the GLP-1s have on different population sets. It is certainly being studied today, and the data out there now is part of the data used to get the drugs approved."

#ReShapeLifesciences #LapBandLife #ReShapeLapBand #LapBand #LapBandFLEX #WeightLoss #GLP1

reshapelifesciences.com

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Paul Hickey, President and CEO of ReShape Lifesciences, discusses the company's role in the weight loss industry. The ReShape Lap-Band® and the new ReShape Lap-Band® 2.0 FLEX are tested surgical options for weight loss and weight management and are now being joined in the market by GLP-1 agonists such as Wegovy and Ozempic. While these options are effective for different individuals, Paul emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive approach that includes diet and lifestyle changes. As a society, we have normalized obesity, and more education is needed to inform those with obesity about these effective solutions.

Paul explains, "The weight loss drugs people have been hearing about are the first step for weight loss, along with working with your physician and their team. And then as you move down, the more aggressive treatment, the ReShape products, and in particular the Lap-Band®, which has been around for over 20 years, is the first surgical step performed by a laparoscopic surgeon that goes in and helps to provide for a way to get back on the weight loss path for individuals. And then, beyond that, you have other procedures that are more aggressive that people also have to consider as they continue their journey."

"We see physicians today using the GLP-1s as combination therapy for someone who has a Lap-Band® or a gastric sleeve or a gastric bypass who may have had any one of those procedures, including a Lap-Band® for five or ten years and started to plateau or reverse on their weight loss. Those GLP-1s can be administered and prescribed for those who want to get back on the path to weight loss."

"There are a lot of differences in the type of obesity that someone has. There are a lot of differences in what treatments work better or worse for individuals. I think the side effect, part of the answer to the question is with the GLP-1s, there's going to be probably more studies to come out to show what side effects the GLP-1s have on different population sets. It is certainly being studied today, and the data out there now is part of the data used to get the drugs approved."

#ReShapeLifesciences #LapBandLife #ReShapeLapBand #LapBand #LapBandFLEX #WeightLoss #GLP1

reshapelifesciences.com

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Matt Hollingsworth, Co-Founder of Carta Healthcare, has identified the need to change how hospitals complete clinical registries, which require information from clinical notes. Currently, nurses manually fill out the forms primarily based on their understanding of the notes from the doctors. Using AI to read through notes, extract relevant information, and enter the data into the clinical registry form saves nurses 95% of their time, improves accuracy, and highlights actionable data. This approach allows the abstractors to spend more time on complex cases and uncover overlooked medical conditions.

Matt explains, "What we do is collect data for these things called clinical registries, which are required quality submissions that hospitals have to do. And we bring AI to the table so that we can make it a not-so-manual process. Historically, the way these forms have been completed has been with just nurse time. Also, I don't think there's a word in the English language to quite correctly describe form in this particular scenario. Just to give a concrete example, if a PCI, so a stent installation via cath is performed, it takes a nurse about an hour and a half to fill out the documentation required to do the submission to the registry. It takes a really long time."

"The problem is that most of it is in the notes. So one of the questions in a registry was the patient hypertensive upon admission. And the way you figure that out is you look, in most cases, in the H&P note and read through it. It'll say somewhere in there that there's either a history of hypertension or they took a blood pressure, and now they have it, etc. And so, the nurse, to paint a picture about what this looks like here, what the nurse is doing is they have the EHR open on one screen, a form to fill out on the other, and they're reading through notes, reaching conclusions, and then filling out the form. So, most of the data needed for this whole process is in the clinical notes, not in some structured form."

"Yes, so this is how we define quality in the whole shift to value-based care. A necessary component is that you measure quality in it. And this is just how the sausage is made for doing that. The way you measure something is you collect data for it. These registries are there to collect data, and in many cases, they are procedure-based. Sometimes, it's condition-based, like there's a COVID registry or what have you. Sometimes, it's a location-based thing like this patient was admitted to this unit like a CVICU or an acute care floor."

#CartaHealth #GenAI #HealthSystems #2024MedicalPredictions #HealthTech #MedTech

Carta.Healthcare

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Matt Hollingsworth, Co-Founder of Carta Healthcare, has identified the need to change how hospitals complete clinical registries, which require information from clinical notes. Currently, nurses manually fill out the forms primarily based on their understanding of the notes from the doctors. Using AI to read through notes, extract relevant information, and enter the data into the clinical registry form saves nurses 95% of their time, improves accuracy, and highlights actionable data. This approach allows the abstractors to spend more time on complex cases and uncover overlooked medical conditions.

Matt explains, "What we do is collect data for these things called clinical registries, which are required quality submissions that hospitals have to do. And we bring AI to the table so that we can make it a not-so-manual process. Historically, the way these forms have been completed has been with just nurse time. Also, I don't think there's a word in the English language to quite correctly describe form in this particular scenario. Just to give a concrete example, if a PCI, so a stent installation via cath is performed, it takes a nurse about an hour and a half to fill out the documentation required to do the submission to the registry. It takes a really long time."

"The problem is that most of it is in the notes. So one of the questions in a registry was the patient hypertensive upon admission. And the way you figure that out is you look, in most cases, in the H&P note and read through it. It'll say somewhere in there that there's either a history of hypertension or they took a blood pressure, and now they have it, etc. And so, the nurse, to paint a picture about what this looks like here, what the nurse is doing is they have the EHR open on one screen, a form to fill out on the other, and they're reading through notes, reaching conclusions, and then filling out the form. So, most of the data needed for this whole process is in the clinical notes, not in some structured form."

"Yes, so this is how we define quality in the whole shift to value-based care. A necessary component is that you measure quality in it. And this is just how the sausage is made for doing that. The way you measure something is you collect data for it. These registries are there to collect data, and in many cases, they are procedure-based. Sometimes, it's condition-based, like there's a COVID registry or what have you. Sometimes, it's a location-based thing like this patient was admitted to this unit like a CVICU or an acute care floor."

#CartaHealth #GenAI #HealthSystems #2024MedicalPredictions #HealthTech #MedTech

Carta.Healthcare

Download the transcript here

Dr. Doron Behar, Co-Founder and CEO of Igentify, has a vision for the future of genetic counseling, where patients get the support they need to interpret and understand genetic screening results before the tests as well as after. With a shortage of genetic counselors, the solution, in part, lies in using technology to reduce waiting times and improve the interpretation of results while allowing the counselors to handle more patients effectively. The Igentify platform aims to support end-to-end services to provide precision medicine solutions to patients to meet specific needs and identify what test results might indicate about future health.

Doron explains, "We need to first speak about the genomic revolution and the crucial role of genetic counseling in it. So, as we know, we are all currently going through the genomic revolution, which means that we are anticipating that each of us will have genomic information, the full content of the genome, inside the medical record. The genetic counselors are the ones who are responsible for interpreting for us and explaining to us what our genome is telling us about our future health."

"And particularly, the genome can identify potential risks that we might want to know about, whether it is related to reproductive health, cancer risk, or the use of drug pharmacogenomics. We can see literature saying that even recently, there were more than 5 million genetic tests sold in 2021. Less than 6,000 genetic counselors can present the information to the patients, and they are in North America. And if we compare to the world, there are only 7,500 genetic counselors globally."

"The force model will allow us to use the digital genetic assistant and send information back to the patients, creating an end-to-end solution. Very importantly, we are using advanced and sophisticated multimedia content to approach the patients either in the pre- or in the post-test scenarios. These multimedia components allow speaking with the patients about their own situation. So maintaining a very high level of personalization, even speaking different languages to the patients, is particularly important, for example, to make sure that patients understand."

#Igentify #GeneticCounseling #GeneticScreening #GeneticTesting #GeneticMedicine #DigitalHealth #PrecisionMedicine

igentify.com

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Doron Behar, Co-Founder and CEO of Igentify, has a vision for the future of genetic counseling, where patients get the support they need to interpret and understand genetic screening results before the tests as well as after. With a shortage of genetic counselors, the solution, in part, lies in using technology to reduce waiting times and improve the interpretation of results while allowing the counselors to handle more patients effectively. The Igentify platform aims to support end-to-end services to provide precision medicine solutions to patients to meet specific needs and identify what test results might indicate about future health.

Doron explains, "We need to first speak about the genomic revolution and the crucial role of genetic counseling in it. So, as we know, we are all currently going through the genomic revolution, which means that we are anticipating that each of us will have genomic information, the full content of the genome, inside the medical record. The genetic counselors are the ones who are responsible for interpreting for us and explaining to us what our genome is telling us about our future health."

"And particularly, the genome can identify potential risks that we might want to know about, whether it is related to reproductive health, cancer risk, or the use of drug pharmacogenomics. We can see literature saying that even recently, there were more than 5 million genetic tests sold in 2021. Less than 6,000 genetic counselors can present the information to the patients, and they are in North America. And if we compare to the world, there are only 7,500 genetic counselors globally."

"The force model will allow us to use the digital genetic assistant and send information back to the patients, creating an end-to-end solution. Very importantly, we are using advanced and sophisticated multimedia content to approach the patients either in the pre- or in the post-test scenarios. These multimedia components allow speaking with the patients about their own situation. So maintaining a very high level of personalization, even speaking different languages to the patients, is particularly important, for example, to make sure that patients understand."

#Igentify #GeneticCounseling #GeneticScreening #GeneticTesting #GeneticMedicine #DigitalHealth #PrecisionMedicine

igentify.com

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Dr. Steven Chen, a breast surgeon and Chief Medical Officer at ImpediMed, discusses the early detection and treatment of lymphedema, a type of swelling that often occurs after breast cancer treatments. Visual observation and measurements using a tape measure are the current, inaccurate methods of determining early warning signs. The ImpediMed SOZO device measures subtle changes in time for simple interventions such as wearing compression sleeves, now covered by Medicare, which can reverse the damage. Unaddressed, this condition can lead to severe functional problems.

Steven explains, "The whole goal of ImpediMed is to help people find this when it's in stage zero or stage one when it can be reversed. It's a very simple set of treatments when you catch it early, primarily wearing a sleeve, a compression sleeve, and/or a compression glove. And with that, you can reverse almost all the stage zeros and probably somewhere between 80% to 90% of stage ones. And so you can see that if you can catch it early, this will go away with a fairly simple set of treatments."

"As you get into stage two and stage three, you're now talking about much more aggressive treatments - things like massage, pumps, and nighttime pumps to try to get the swelling down. And usually, that just provides temporary relief. It almost never goes all the way back to the way it was. Now, there are plastic surgeons and microsurgeons who have started doing things like transplanting lymph nodes to try to get more drainage. And that could be helpful as well. But again, it's rare once you get to stage two or three to see getting back to how you were before surgery."

"In stage one, you can start to have measurement differences a little bit if you use a tape measure regularly. But as you might imagine, using a tape measure regularly takes time, but it's also somewhat hard to do. If you've ever tried to measure yourself with just a fabric tape measure, you do it two or three times in a row, and you might get two or three different measurements. So, trying to measure someone every three to six months and do it with precisely the same amount of tension is fairly difficult. But I think the real primary thing is people don't realize that this happens, and if it does happen, they can turn it around. So, patients don't complain to their doctors because they don't realize it's a consequence of their treatment."

#ImpediMed #Lymphedema #LymphedemaAwarenessMonth #LymphedemaPrevention #BreastCancerCare #BreastCancer #Survivorship

impediMed.com

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Steven Chen, a breast surgeon and Chief Medical Officer at ImpediMed, discusses the early detection and treatment of lymphedema, a type of swelling that often occurs after breast cancer treatments. Visual observation and measurements using a tape measure are the current, inaccurate methods of determining early warning signs. The ImpediMed SOZO device measures subtle changes in time for simple interventions such as wearing compression sleeves, now covered by Medicare, which can reverse the damage. Unaddressed, this condition can lead to severe functional problems.

Steven explains, "The whole goal of ImpediMed is to help people find this when it's in stage zero or stage one when it can be reversed. It's a very simple set of treatments when you catch it early, primarily wearing a sleeve, a compression sleeve, and/or a compression glove. And with that, you can reverse almost all the stage zeros and probably somewhere between 80% to 90% of stage ones. And so you can see that if you can catch it early, this will go away with a fairly simple set of treatments."

"As you get into stage two and stage three, you're now talking about much more aggressive treatments - things like massage, pumps, and nighttime pumps to try to get the swelling down. And usually, that just provides temporary relief. It almost never goes all the way back to the way it was. Now, there are plastic surgeons and microsurgeons who have started doing things like transplanting lymph nodes to try to get more drainage. And that could be helpful as well. But again, it's rare once you get to stage two or three to see getting back to how you were before surgery."

"In stage one, you can start to have measurement differences a little bit if you use a tape measure regularly. But as you might imagine, using a tape measure regularly takes time, but it's also somewhat hard to do. If you've ever tried to measure yourself with just a fabric tape measure, you do it two or three times in a row, and you might get two or three different measurements. So, trying to measure someone every three to six months and do it with precisely the same amount of tension is fairly difficult. But I think the real primary thing is people don't realize that this happens, and if it does happen, they can turn it around. So, patients don't complain to their doctors because they don't realize it's a consequence of their treatment."

#ImpediMed #Lymphedema #LymphedemaAwarenessMonth #LymphedemaPrevention #BreastCancerCare #BreastCancer #Survivorship

ImpediMed.com

Download the transcript here