Empowered Patient Podcast

Luká Yancopoulos is CEO of Grapevine Technologies, a COVID-inspired company determined to increase resilience in the supply chain for healthcare supplies. Disrupting the current network of manufacturers, importers, and distributors, Grapevine is connecting suppliers directly to end users. They aim to build a more resilient network of suppliers, eliminate waste and unnecessary costs for medical providers, and reduce patient charges.

Luká explains, "Not a lot has changed in the healthcare space regarding logistics and supply chain in my lifetime. So, getting things to change and getting things to budge is definitely difficult in nature. But our primary business innovation is that we seamlessly connect a data-driven network of primary suppliers directly to healthcare practices."

"When I say that Grapevine is connecting this data-driven network of primary suppliers, we're using the data made publicly available by the United States government to find actual importers or manufacturers of the medical supplies and find the companies that sell to McKesson, Henry Schein, Cardinal Health, and Medline. And we basically onboard those primary suppliers, those importers, upstream of the middleman, McKesson, and these big dinosaur distributors. And we connect those importers directly to end users."

"There's a lot that incurs additional costs between the importer and the end user when they purchase from McKesson. They have to move it to McKesson's warehouse. They then pay the McKesson labor staff. They pay the account manager. And by bypassing the middleman, you bypass with him his inefficiencies, his markups. And at Grapevine, we can offer the same products that these healthcare practices already buy at an average of 62% lower prices, which is a significant saving that can be carried forward to patients and reduce the financial burden of healthcare costs."

#GrapevineTechnologies #SupplyChain #MedicalSupplies #MedicalDevices #Healthcare #CostReduction #SupplyShortages

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Luká Yancopoulos is CEO of Grapevine Technologies, a COVID-inspired company determined to increase resilience in the supply chain for healthcare supplies. Disrupting the current network of manufacturers, importers, and distributors, Grapevine is connecting suppliers directly to end users. They aim to build a more resilient network of suppliers, eliminate waste and unnecessary costs for medical providers, and reduce patient charges.

Luká explains, "Not a lot has changed in the healthcare space regarding logistics and supply chain in my lifetime. So, getting things to change and getting things to budge is definitely difficult in nature. But our primary business innovation is that we seamlessly connect a data-driven network of primary suppliers directly to healthcare practices."

"When I say that Grapevine is connecting this data-driven network of primary suppliers, we're using the data made publicly available by the United States government to find actual importers or manufacturers of the medical supplies and find the companies that sell to McKesson, Henry Schein, Cardinal Health, and Medline. And we basically onboard those primary suppliers, those importers, upstream of the middleman, McKesson, and these big dinosaur distributors. And we connect those importers directly to end users."

"There's a lot that incurs additional costs between the importer and the end user when they purchase from McKesson. They have to move it to McKesson's warehouse. They then pay the McKesson labor staff. They pay the account manager. And by bypassing the middleman, you bypass with him his inefficiencies, his markups. And at Grapevine, we can offer the same products that these healthcare practices already buy at an average of 62% lower prices, which is a significant saving that can be carried forward to patients and reduce the financial burden of healthcare costs."

#GrapevineTechnologies #SupplyChain #MedicalSupplies #MedicalDevices #Healthcare #CostReduction #SupplyShortages

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Dr. Anupam Jena is an economist, a physician, a podcaster, and the Joseph P. Newhouse Professor of Healthcare Policy at the Harvard Medical School. He's also the co-author, along with Dr. Christopher Worsham, of the newly published book Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces that Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health. Anupam, also known as Dr. Bapu, combines his medical training with curiosity about cause and effect to explore explanations for failures and successes in providing healthcare and how chance occurrences affect our health. Of particular interest is the power of natural experiments to enhance understanding of the effect of a treatment or drug within a larger universe than traditional randomized clinical trials.

Bapu elaborates, "One of the benefits of these natural experiments is that they are more generalizable. They tell us what might happen in a real world because you're exactly right. If a clinical trial is performed, it may be performed in a very particular geographic area, in a very particular type of patient that is not the same as the type of person who might take that medication in the real world."

"I don't think that we should be making whole-scale treatment decisions without randomized trials. So those are the gold standard, and we need them to be there. They provide an important foundation."

"But it's also important to know that they do have some limitations because we might not be able to do a randomized trial on every population person that we care about. That's where the natural experiments come in. I think they really are complements and not substitutes because once we have a sense that this medication does work based on randomized trials, then we can do natural experiments to say, "Well, they might work better or not as well in these particular populations of people."

"So it's no surprise to people that randomness or chance does affect our health in ways that we can appreciate. For example, a child drowns in the swimming pool because, just by chance, someone gets distracted in the moment, or someone is hit by a car. Again, totally random events. In many cases, a cancer, when there are no risk factors, that's unpredictable and it's a chance event."

#RandomActsofMedicine @DrBapuPod @AnupamBJena @DoubledayBook

Random Acts of Medicine

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Dr. Anupam Jena is an economist, a physician, a podcaster, and the Joseph P. Newhouse Professor of Healthcare Policy at the Harvard Medical School. He's also the co-author, along with Dr. Christopher Worsham, of the newly published book Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces that Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health. Anupam, also known as Dr. Bapu, combines his medical training with curiosity about cause and effect to explore explanations for failures and successes in providing healthcare and how chance occurrences affect our health. Of particular interest is the power of natural experiments to enhance understanding of the effect of a treatment or drug within a larger universe than traditional randomized clinical trials.

Bapu elaborates, "One of the benefits of these natural experiments is that they are more generalizable. They tell us what might happen in a real world because you're exactly right. If a clinical trial is performed, it may be performed in a very particular geographic area, in a very particular type of patient that is not the same as the type of person who might take that medication in the real world."

"I don't think that we should be making whole-scale treatment decisions without randomized trials. So those are the gold standard, and we need them to be there. They provide an important foundation."

"But it's also important to know that they do have some limitations because we might not be able to do a randomized trial on every population person that we care about. That's where the natural experiments come in. I think they really are complements and not substitutes because once we have a sense that this medication does work based on randomized trials, then we can do natural experiments to say, "Well, they might work better or not as well in these particular populations of people."

"So it's no surprise to people that randomness or chance does affect our health in ways that we can appreciate. For example, a child drowns in the swimming pool because, just by chance, someone gets distracted in the moment, or someone is hit by a car. Again, totally random events. In many cases, a cancer, when there are no risk factors, that's unpredictable and it's a chance event."

#RandomActsofMedicine @DrBapuPod @AnupamBJena @DoubledayBook

Random Acts of Medicine

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Will Cantrell is the Director of Product Solutions at InteliChart, a SaaS-based service providing digital tools to providers and EHR partners. Their focus is on the workflows of staff and clinicians and the patient experience in a telehealth environment or in-person appointment. InteliChart integrates existing systems with innovative technology to facilitate scheduling, reduce clinician stress, encourage preventative care, and better manage chronic diseases.

Will explains, "We focus more on workflows for staff to move in between patient visits, initiate sessions, put patients back in waiting rooms, move them between providers, and the patient experience is our primary focus. We can spend a lot of time building that in, not just to a telehealth workflow but into the entirety of the patient journey, and trying to bring that back to the patient portal, which is the hub of engagement for us. So, the patient gets more of a seamless experience through all their touch points."

"You don't have to worry about travel time and shifting between rooms, so you have some savings there as well. The nice thing about telehealth, too, is if the patient queues up early into the waiting room, and you're early, you can grab that patient and start to have that visit with them early, at least from our dashboard. Once you go through that, you can move on to the next patient, who is early. So you have some room there to make gains and have advantages from a time savings over in-office visits."

#InteliChart #PatientEngagement #Telehealth #Telemedicine #HealthIT #HealthOutcomes

InteliChart.com

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Will Cantrell is the Director of Product Solutions at InteliChart, a SaaS-based service providing digital tools to providers and EHR partners. Their focus is on the workflows of staff and clinicians and the patient experience in a telehealth environment or in-person appointment. InteliChart integrates existing systems with innovative technology to facilitate scheduling, reduce clinician stress, encourage preventative care, and better manage chronic diseases.

Will explains, "We focus more on workflows for staff to move in between patient visits, initiate sessions, put patients back in waiting rooms, move them between providers, and the patient experience is our primary focus. We can spend a lot of time building that in, not just to a telehealth workflow but into the entirety of the patient journey, and trying to bring that back to the patient portal, which is the hub of engagement for us. So, the patient gets more of a seamless experience through all their touch points."

"You don't have to worry about travel time and shifting between rooms, so you have some savings there as well. The nice thing about telehealth, too, is if the patient queues up early into the waiting room, and you're early, you can grab that patient and start to have that visit with them early, at least from our dashboard. Once you go through that, you can move on to the next patient, who is early. So you have some room there to make gains and have advantages from a time savings over in-office visits."

#InteliChart #PatientEngagement #Telehealth #Telemedicine #HealthIT #HealthOutcomes

InteliChart.com

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Dr. Björn Mellgård, VP and Global Program Lead of rare genetics and hematology at Takeda, is passionate about finding a cure for cTTP, congenital thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. This ultra-rare disease, caused by an enzyme deficiency, presents in early childhood and results in life-threatening blood clots. With their investigational drug TAK-755, a recombinant enzyme, the volume is very small, and the infusion takes four to five minutes and is a replacement therapy to allow patients to avoid daily symptoms and acute episodes.

Björn explains, "What happens then is that we have our coagulation system, and many people have heard about bleeding disorders, mainly probably hemophilia, where you lack certain factors which are important to make the blood clot. TTP is on the other side of the spectrum, and the deficiency we're talking about, this ADAMTS13 enzyme, is also importantly involved in blood coagulation."

"But the effect is when you don't have this enzyme present. The blood has a tendency to spontaneously form blood clots in the circulation. And these blood clots then tend to lodge in critical organs such as the brain, the heart, and the kidney, and the patients then suffer symptoms based on that."

"So, our drug then represents a recombinant enzyme. So, it's a recombinant protein that is produced in a laboratory. It's exactly the same as we have in our bodies. And this kind of replacement therapy has been used for a long time. And I mentioned hemophilia as an example where Takeda and also other companies have recombinant factor VIII in that case. So, the principle behind this treatment is to give the patient what they're missing. That's pretty straightforward in some sense."

#Takeda #cTTP #TAK755 #RecombinantEnzyme #RareDisease

Takeda.com

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Dr. Björn Mellgård, VP and Global Program Lead of rare genetics and hematology at Takeda, is passionate about finding a cure for cTTP, congenital thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. This ultra-rare disease, caused by an enzyme deficiency, presents in early childhood and results in life-threatening blood clots. With their investigational drug TAK-755, a recombinant enzyme, the volume is very small, and the infusion takes four to five minutes and is a replacement therapy to allow patients to avoid daily symptoms and acute episodes.

Björn explains, "What happens then is that we have our coagulation system, and many people have heard about bleeding disorders, mainly probably hemophilia, where you lack certain factors which are important to make the blood clot. TTP is on the other side of the spectrum, and the deficiency we're talking about, this ADAMTS13 enzyme, is also importantly involved in blood coagulation."

"But the effect is when you don't have this enzyme present. The blood has a tendency to spontaneously form blood clots in the circulation. And these blood clots then tend to lodge in critical organs such as the brain, the heart, and the kidney, and the patients then suffer symptoms based on that."

"So, our drug then represents a recombinant enzyme. So, it's a recombinant protein that is produced in a laboratory. It's exactly the same as we have in our bodies. And this kind of replacement therapy has been used for a long time. And I mentioned hemophilia as an example where Takeda and also other companies have recombinant factor VIII in that case. So, the principle behind this treatment is to give the patient what they're missing. That's pretty straightforward in some sense."

#Takeda #cTTP #TAK755 #RecombinantEnzyme #RareDisease

Takeda.com

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Steve Taddei, Co-Founder and Lab Director of HearAdvisor created to provide unbiased, scientifically-based analysis of over-the-counter hearing aids. With recent legislation allowing hearing aids to be sold directly to consumers and online, there is a need for a clear understanding of the features and benefits of available audio-enhancing technology. Using a life-like mannequin equipped with microphones, HearAdvisor can perform repeatable experiments to test the hearing aids across several categories and rank them for different purposes.

Steve explains, "Selecting devices that we found to perform best was quite a process, and I would like to say that HearAdvisor is an independent lab. We are not owned by any hearing aid company. We're kind of three hearing technology nerds or just audiology nerds, people who love sound, acoustics, and hearing. We saw this problem, we came together, and we used as best as possible, the scientific approach to make recordings of all these devices. These recordings emulate, as best as possible, what an individual may experience in the real world."

"So, multi-talker situations where you have one, two, or three people speaking, with various types and levels of background noise. We make recordings with all the technologies, and we measure their performance through several different metrics. We don't need to get into all of them, but for example, algorithms that predict how well an individual with hearing loss might be able to hear speech in background noise."

"Then we have an industry-standard mannequin, and the mannequin's name is KEMAR. It's an acronym for the product, but this mannequin emulates the average size shape of a human head and body, and it has little microphones where the eardrums are. So it's very similar and when we make recordings from our eight-speaker array, as it's called through our mannequin KEMAR, it emulates you sitting in that environment."

#HearAdvisor #HearingHealth #PatientAccessibility #HearingAids #OTCHearingAids #OvertheCounterHearingAids

Hearadvisor.com

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Steve Taddei, Co-Founder and Lab Director of HearAdvisor created to provide unbiased, scientifically-based analysis of over-the-counter hearing aids. With recent legislation allowing hearing aids to be sold directly to consumers and online, there is a need for a clear understanding of the features and benefits of available audio-enhancing technology. Using a life-like mannequin equipped with microphones, HearAdvisor can perform repeatable experiments to test the hearing aids across several categories and rank them for different purposes.

Steve explains, "Selecting devices that we found to perform best was quite a process, and I would like to say that HearAdvisor is an independent lab. We are not owned by any hearing aid company. We're kind of three hearing technology nerds or just audiology nerds, people who love sound, acoustics, and hearing. We saw this problem, we came together, and we used as best as possible, the scientific approach to make recordings of all these devices. These recordings emulate, as best as possible, what an individual may experience in the real world."

"So, multi-talker situations where you have one, two, or three people speaking, with various types and levels of background noise. We make recordings with all the technologies, and we measure their performance through several different metrics. We don't need to get into all of them, but for example, algorithms that predict how well an individual with hearing loss might be able to hear speech in background noise."

"Then we have an industry-standard mannequin, and the mannequin's name is KEMAR. It's an acronym for the product, but this mannequin emulates the average size shape of a human head and body, and it has little microphones where the eardrums are. So it's very similar and when we make recordings from our eight-speaker array, as it's called through our mannequin KEMAR, it emulates you sitting in that environment."

#HearAdvisor #HearingHealth #PatientAccessibility #HearingAids #OTCHearingAids #OvertheCounterHearingAids

Hearadvisor.com

Download the transcript here