Empowered Patient Podcast

James McCullough, CEO of Renalytix, is focused on preventive care for those most likely to get chronic kidney disease. Diagnostics and risk assessment of patients earlier in the disease cycle emphasize maintaining kidney health rather than managing complications from late-stage kidney disease and kidney failure. Using a machine-learning algorithm to look at blood-based biomarkers and EMR data, the KidneyIntelX system provides the clinician with a risk score and guidelines for treatment.

James elaborates, "There are five stages of kidney disease. We're focused on the early stages, so stages 1 through 3, before the majority of damage is done to the kidney. When you have therapeutic intervention, lifestyle intervention, you get specialist involvement, you have a pretty good shot at slowing or stopping the progression of the disease into the later stages, stages 4 and 5, where your options start to become limited."

"With KidneyIntelX now, for the first time, we can start to see risk assessment taking place at the front end of the chronic disease with the primary care doctor. If you score high by KidneyIntelX, you are roughly 20 times more likely to experience significant kidney function decline over the next five years versus if you score low by KidneyIntelX. The stratification, for the first time, becomes a very powerful tool that we can implement very simply at the primary care level, where most people with early-stage kidney disease and diabetes are being seen."

"This is an advanced prognosis. Prognosis is the key to controlling chronic disease, especially widespread chronic disease because you can't treat everybody. We know that probably close to half the people with kidney disease and diabetes aren't progressing over the next few years. The real question becomes because there are so many people with diabetes and kidney disease. and healthcare resources are limited, who do you treat? Who should you be concerned about now to be able to give drug treatments, specialist referrals, and significant lifestyle modifications?"

@Renalytix #KidneyDisease #KidneyHealth #DIgitalHealth #AI #MachineLearning #Diagnostics

renalytix.com

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James McCullough, CEO of Renalytix, is focused on preventive care for those most likely to get chronic kidney disease. Diagnostics and risk assessment of patients earlier in the disease cycle emphasize maintaining kidney health rather than managing complications from late-stage kidney disease and kidney failure. Using a machine-learning algorithm to look at blood-based biomarkers and EMR data, the KidneyIntelX system provides the clinician with a risk score and guidelines for treatment.

James elaborates, "There are five stages of kidney disease. We're focused on the early stages, so stages 1 through 3, before the majority of damage is done to the kidney. When you have therapeutic intervention, lifestyle intervention, you get specialist involvement, you have a pretty good shot at slowing or stopping the progression of the disease into the later stages, stages 4 and 5, where your options start to become limited."

"With KidneyIntelX now, for the first time, we can start to see risk assessment taking place at the front end of the chronic disease with the primary care doctor. If you score high by KidneyIntelX, you are roughly 20 times more likely to experience significant kidney function decline over the next five years versus if you score low by KidneyIntelX. The stratification, for the first time, becomes a very powerful tool that we can implement very simply at the primary care level, where most people with early-stage kidney disease and diabetes are being seen."

"This is an advanced prognosis. Prognosis is the key to controlling chronic disease, especially widespread chronic disease because you can't treat everybody. We know that probably close to half the people with kidney disease and diabetes aren't progressing over the next few years. The real question becomes because there are so many people with diabetes and kidney disease. and healthcare resources are limited, who do you treat? Who should you be concerned about now to be able to give drug treatments, specialist referrals, and significant lifestyle modifications?"

@Renalytix #KidneyDisease #KidneyHealth #DIgitalHealth #AI #MachineLearning #Diagnostics

renalytix.com

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Yarone Goren, Co-Founder and COO of SteadyMD powers telehealth for providers by providing the clinician workforce licensed in the states where the patients are located. Supported by behind-the-scenes clinical operations and patient interface, clinicians can give virtual care in addition to performing their traditional roles. With the growth in the demand for telemedicine, this solution provides a path for clinicians and digital health companies to meet the needs of patients for primary and disease-specific care and to manage chronic conditions on demand.

Yarone explains, "What we do for a lot of our customers is provide the clinician workforce, the doctors, the nurses, the therapists, licensed, kind of a crazy Venn diagram of licensure across all the states where they need it. We do clinical operations, meaning we work closely with clinicians to schedule them to ensure that they appear for their scheduled shifts, train them on all the technology they need to use, and ensure that they meet all the clinical quality measures and SLAs."

"Then the last piece is product and technology. Someone needs to provide the interfaces for the patients to sign up, to fill out their intake form, see their patient portal, and to schedule a follow-up appointment. We do a lot of that. We also do a lot of the product and tech for the clinicians, making it easy for them to do their job and efficiently handle visits across a handful of programs and modalities in all the states where they're licensed."

"The challenge is to bring our expertise to the fore, support them in the way they need, and also help influence their product plans, product roadmap, and strategic thinking about this stuff. And it's definitely tricky to navigate. We also have a lot of customers. We do a lot of work in online urgent care, in condition-specific care, in online primary care, in lab ordering, lab order review and approval, and in online therapy as well. There are little differences in texture in all of those, but it's probably split pretty evenly. Folks come to us to design, build, and launch something from scratch, and then there are those who come to us and want help scaling and expanding."

#Telehealth #DigitalHealth #Healthcare #VirtualHealth #VirtualCare #HealthcareInnovation #PoweringTelehealth

steadymd.com

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Yarone Goren, Co-Founder and COO of SteadyMD powers telehealth for providers by providing the clinician workforce licensed in the states where the patients are located. Supported by behind-the-scenes clinical operations and patient interface, clinicians can give virtual care in addition to performing their traditional roles. With the growth in the demand for telemedicine, this solution provides a path for clinicians and digital health companies to meet the needs of patients for primary and disease-specific care and to manage chronic conditions on demand.

Yarone explains, "What we do for a lot of our customers is provide the clinician workforce, the doctors, the nurses, the therapists, licensed, kind of a crazy Venn diagram of licensure across all the states where they need it. We do clinical operations, meaning we work closely with clinicians to schedule them to ensure that they appear for their scheduled shifts, train them on all the technology they need to use, and ensure that they meet all the clinical quality measures and SLAs."

"Then the last piece is product and technology. Someone needs to provide the interfaces for the patients to sign up, to fill out their intake form, see their patient portal, and to schedule a follow-up appointment. We do a lot of that. We also do a lot of the product and tech for the clinicians, making it easy for them to do their job and efficiently handle visits across a handful of programs and modalities in all the states where they're licensed."

"The challenge is to bring our expertise to the fore, support them in the way they need, and also help influence their product plans, product roadmap, and strategic thinking about this stuff. And it's definitely tricky to navigate. We also have a lot of customers. We do a lot of work in online urgent care, in condition-specific care, in online primary care, in lab ordering, lab order review and approval, and in online therapy as well. There are little differences in texture in all of those, but it's probably split pretty evenly. Folks come to us to design, build, and launch something from scratch, and then there are those who come to us and want help scaling and expanding."

#Telehealth #DigitalHealth #Healthcare #VirtualHealth #VirtualCare #HealthcareInnovation #PoweringTelehealth

steadymd.com

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Dr. Tariq Arshad is the Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Qualigen Therapeutics, addressing multiple types of RAS-driven cancers. While researchers understand RAS's role in tumorgenesis and have identified which cancers are RAS-driven, RAS has been considered an undruggable target. With a pan-RAS approach inhibiting KRAS, HRAS and NRAS, the three isoforms of RAS, Qualigen is identifying drug candidates showing strong anti-tumor efficacy.

Tariq elaborates, "That was so difficult to do because when you look at the KRAS protein itself, it's a complicated, three-dimensional structure that constantly changes. The opening, or the aperture, where a small molecule can attach and inhibit the G12C moiety or specifically the cysteine amino acid, which is targeted by these inhibitors, it appears for a very, very short period of time. It's nothing short of a miracle of bioengineering, and specifically medicinal chemistry that we've been able to identify these inhibitors that can target that subcomponent, that very small aperture within the overall KRAS protein, without, as you're saying, impacting the function of the overall protein."

"The field is moving towards understanding why this lack of durability exists and is trying to understand whether it's due to the emergence of other mutations, whether it's due to the emergence of wild-type RAS, or whether it's due to other factors. One of the theories that is emerging behind the emergence of this KRAS resistance is the fact that there are other RAS isoforms that exist in the same tumor. They allow a mechanism in which the tumorigenesis can bypass KRAS, even though it's inhibited, and signal into the cell to convert it into a cancer cell. It now becomes important for us to understand how we can address that potential mechanism of resistance."

#QualigenInc #RAS #KRAS #RASDrivenCancer #Cancer

QualigenInc.com

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Dr. Tariq Arshad is the Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Qualigen Therapeutics, addressing multiple types of RAS-driven cancers. While researchers understand RAS's role in tumorgenesis and have identified which cancers are RAS-driven, RAS has been considered an undruggable target. With a pan-RAS approach inhibiting KRAS, HRAS and NRAS, the three isoforms of RAS, Qualigen is identifying drug candidates showing strong anti-tumor efficacy.

Tariq elaborates, "That was so difficult to do because when you look at the KRAS protein itself, it's a complicated, three-dimensional structure that constantly changes. The opening, or the aperture, where a small molecule can attach and inhibit the G12C moiety or specifically the cysteine amino acid, which is targeted by these inhibitors, it appears for a very, very short period of time. It's nothing short of a miracle of bioengineering, and specifically medicinal chemistry that we've been able to identify these inhibitors that can target that subcomponent, that very small aperture within the overall KRAS protein, without, as you're saying, impacting the function of the overall protein."

"The field is moving towards understanding why this lack of durability exists and is trying to understand whether it's due to the emergence of other mutations, whether it's due to the emergence of wild-type RAS, or whether it's due to other factors. One of the theories that is emerging behind the emergence of this KRAS resistance is the fact that there are other RAS isoforms that exist in the same tumor. They allow a mechanism in which the tumorigenesis can bypass KRAS, even though it's inhibited, and signal into the cell to convert it into a cancer cell. It now becomes important for us to understand how we can address that potential mechanism of resistance."

#QualigenInc #RAS #KRAS #RASDrivenCancer #Cancer

QualigenInc.com

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Patty Hayward, General Manager, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk, is addressing staff burnout due to the increased demand for patient support and rising patient expectations to get questions answered, appointments scheduled, and issues resolved. Through AI, chatbots, and automation of basic tasks, staff can spend more time with patients to address complex problems. While some patients still like to talk to a live person on the phone, the use of technology allows for real-time responses to many concerns through a patient portal or contact center that has access to patient EMR including history and current medical condition.

Patty explains, "People come into healthcare specifically because they want to help people. Healthcare is very personal, and so when you don't have the time and space and resources often to deliver that empathetic experience to really help people, that can lead to a real high level of burnout feeling, a lot of frustration, and you're not having that job satisfaction that you got into healthcare for."

"Everyone can use Amazon. You can do the same thing here with certain aspects that are simple. So it's a matter of those low-hanging fruit, those things that are easy, getting people used to that, getting them used to being able to go to that as a first step as opposed to the phone and calling someone first."

"But then also, okay, if they want to go voice, let's create chatbots that are on the phone that are voice virtual agents that allow us to have a conversation on the phone. Because sometimes it doesn't matter how many times you push people toward the computer, a lot of people are still going to call you."

@Talkdesk #Talkdesk #EmployeeBurnout #PatientJourney #ContactCenter #PatientPortal #DigitalHealth #HealthcareIT #PatientExperience #HealthcareInnovation #Healthcare #AI

talkdesk.com

Listen to the podcast here

Patty Hayward, General Manager, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk, is addressing staff burnout due to the increased demand for patient support and rising patient expectations to get questions answered, appointments scheduled, and issues resolved. Through AI, chatbots, and automation of basic tasks, staff can spend more time with patients to address complex problems. While some patients still like to talk to a live person on the phone, the use of technology allows for real-time responses to many concerns through a patient portal or contact center that has access to patient EMR including history and current medical condition.

Patty explains, "People come into healthcare specifically because they want to help people. Healthcare is very personal, and so when you don't have the time and space and resources often to deliver that empathetic experience to really help people, that can lead to a real high level of burnout feeling, a lot of frustration, and you're not having that job satisfaction that you got into healthcare for."

"Everyone can use Amazon. You can do the same thing here with certain aspects that are simple. So it's a matter of those low-hanging fruit, those things that are easy, getting people used to that, getting them used to being able to go to that as a first step as opposed to the phone and calling someone first."

"But then also, okay, if they want to go voice, let's create chatbots that are on the phone that are voice virtual agents that allow us to have a conversation on the phone. Because sometimes it doesn't matter how many times you push people toward the computer, a lot of people are still going to call you."

@Talkdesk #Talkdesk #EmployeeBurnout #PatientJourney #ContactCenter #PatientPortal #DigitalHealth #HealthcareIT #PatientExperience #HealthcareInnovation #Healthcare #AI

talkdesk.com

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James Graham is the CEO of Recce Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company focused on the global antibiotic-resistant patient population. This new class of synthetic antibiotics takes a broad-spectrum approach to kill bacterial infections, which continue to mutate, rendering existing antibiotics ineffective. The founding inventor of Recce is Dr. Graham Melrose, the grandfather of James, who has grown this idea into one of the top-performing biotech stocks in Australia.

James explains, "As you may know, by my accent, I'm an Australian. I think Australia found the first penicillin, which worked well for everyone around the world for a number of years. But it's time for a new penicillin, penicillin 2.0, or one entirely synthetic, not reliant on existing natural processes. And that's what we've fundamentally started with, beginning with the end in mind that is Recce antibiotics. So I really say the challenge, the silent pandemic is right upon us. You only have to look at the AMR resistance rates. I think raising at about 10% each year, certainly in certain antibiotic or indication groups. If we don't do something, we're just going to have these useless drugs that no one will pay the price for anyway. The business model will be broken, and everybody will be out of options. It's really the pandemic before us."

"I hinted that R327 is synthetic. It's entirely synthetic when all existing antibiotics to date are naturally derived. So the way antibiotics and bacteria have always worked is that you find something in nature by way of the antibiotic. The bacteria are too smart. They evolve too quickly, and let's begin with the end in mind and create something that will work against all types of bacteria, gram-positive gram-negative in their hypercellular mutated forms, and keep on working with repeated use."

"And in the case of my origins with Recce, the inventor, Dr. Graham Melrose, is actually my grandfather. He turned 90 years old about a little over a month ago, and he's the guy who was the head of Johnson & Johnson Australasia for about a decade. He is the foundational inventor of this compound. And he and I started this company. He's the inventor. I just gave him a bit of money, and off we went. That's the easy part. He started identifying the ideal compound in his garage in Perth in Western Australia. If anyone knows where that is, it's actually the most isolated city in the world."

@ReccePharma #AntimicrobialResistance #AMR #SuperBugs #Sepsis #UTIs #Urosepsis #SyntheticAntiInfective #Antibiotics #AustraliaBioTech

recce.com.au

Listen to the podcast here

James Graham is the CEO of Recce Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company focused on the global antibiotic-resistant patient population. This new class of synthetic antibiotics takes a broad-spectrum approach to kill bacterial infections, which continue to mutate, rendering existing antibiotics ineffective. The founding inventor of Recce is Dr. Graham Melrose, the grandfather of James, who has grown this idea into one of the top-performing biotech stocks in Australia.

James explains, "As you may know, by my accent, I'm an Australian. I think Australia found the first penicillin, which worked well for everyone around the world for a number of years. But it's time for a new penicillin, penicillin 2.0, or one entirely synthetic, not reliant on existing natural processes. And that's what we've fundamentally started with, beginning with the end in mind that is Recce antibiotics. So I really say the challenge, the silent pandemic is right upon us. You only have to look at the AMR resistance rates. I think raising at about 10% each year, certainly in certain antibiotic or indication groups. If we don't do something, we're just going to have these useless drugs that no one will pay the price for anyway. The business model will be broken, and everybody will be out of options. It's really the pandemic before us."

"I hinted that R327 is synthetic. It's entirely synthetic when all existing antibiotics to date are naturally derived. So the way antibiotics and bacteria have always worked is that you find something in nature by way of the antibiotic. The bacteria are too smart. They evolve too quickly, and let's begin with the end in mind and create something that will work against all types of bacteria, gram-positive gram-negative in their hypercellular mutated forms, and keep on working with repeated use."

"And in the case of my origins with Recce, the inventor, Dr. Graham Melrose, is actually my grandfather. He turned 90 years old about a little over a month ago, and he's the guy who was the head of Johnson & Johnson Australasia for about a decade. He is the foundational inventor of this compound. And he and I started this company. He's the inventor. I just gave him a bit of money, and off we went. That's the easy part. He started identifying the ideal compound in his garage in Perth in Western Australia. If anyone knows where that is, it's actually the most isolated city in the world."

@ReccePharma #AntimicrobialResistance #AMR #SuperBugs #Sepsis #UTIs #Urosepsis #SyntheticAntiInfective #Antibiotics #AustraliaBioTech

recce.com.au

Download the transcript here