Empowered Patient Podcast

Ohad Arazi, CEO of Clarius, a medical imaging startup with a mission to bring accurate, easy-to-use, AI-assisted, and affordable hand-held ultrasound tools to a broad range of medical professionals. Traditional ultrasound is costly, stationary, and requires specialized training. The portable Clarius device communicates with an iPad or an Android or iOS phone. The ultrasound produces highly nuanced grayscale real-time images that, with the help of artificial intelligence, can be used safely in a wider point-of-care environment to make informed decisions.

Ohad explains, "We're all about bringing together high-performance ultrasound imaging, cloud data, and artificial intelligence into this powerful ecosystem that improves patient care enabled by medical imaging in every setting. The key differentiation is that handheld ultrasound is not about replacing legacy systems in places where they're already well entrenched, like radiology or cardiology. It is rather about bringing medical imaging to new care settings and putting it in the hands of new practitioners that may not have had access to an ultrasound before."

"We can even extend that outside of the walls of the hospital into the ambulance. Powered by AI, we have a feature called Auto Preset AI, which, as the EMT roam through the patient's body, looking for trauma, our AI will automatically adapt the view of that image to optimize it for the organ the EMT is looking at. This lowers that threshold for knowledge to enable them to make a more informed decision. For example, to see that there might be stenosis in the carotid and they should radio the hospital and get the thrombectomy lab ready because there's a stroke patient on hand."

#Clarius #MedTech #Ultrasound #MedicalImaging #AI #DigitalHealth #HandheldUltrasound

clarius.com

clarius.com/2023-state-of-ultrasound-report/

Listen to the podcast here

Ohad Arazi, CEO of Clarius, a medical imaging startup with a mission to bring accurate, easy-to-use, AI-assisted, and affordable hand-held ultrasound tools to a broad range of medical professionals. Traditional ultrasound is costly, stationary, and requires specialized training. The portable Clarius device communicates with an iPad or an Android or iOS phone. The ultrasound produces highly nuanced grayscale real-time images that, with the help of artificial intelligence, can be used safely in a wider point-of-care environment to make informed decisions.

Ohad explains, "We're all about bringing together high-performance ultrasound imaging, cloud data, and artificial intelligence into this powerful ecosystem that improves patient care enabled by medical imaging in every setting. The key differentiation is that handheld ultrasound is not about replacing legacy systems in places where they're already well entrenched, like radiology or cardiology. It is rather about bringing medical imaging to new care settings and putting it in the hands of new practitioners that may not have had access to an ultrasound before."

"We can even extend that outside of the walls of the hospital into the ambulance. Powered by AI, we have a feature called Auto Preset AI, which, as the EMT roam through the patient's body, looking for trauma, our AI will automatically adapt the view of that image to optimize it for the organ the EMT is looking at. This lowers that threshold for knowledge to enable them to make a more informed decision. For example, to see that there might be stenosis in the carotid and they should radio the hospital and get the thrombectomy lab ready because there's a stroke patient on hand."

#Clarius #MedTech #Ultrasound #MedicalImaging #AI #DigitalHealth #HandheldUltrasound

clarius.com

clarius.com/2023-state-of-ultrasound-report/

Download the transcript here

Alina Czekai, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Cohere Health, points out the need to transform the often painful prior authorization process. The traditional approach takes a piecemeal view of requests and provides a yes or no response. The Cohere view looks at the process as a multidimensional challenge that requires understanding the entirety of care and leveraging technology and AI to help guide behavior toward what is most clinically appropriate.

Alina explains, "You can think of it as an authorization for a credit card. Ensuring that what is going to be done or what medication or devices are going to be ordered is actually going to be paid for. The process and payments in the healthcare system today have become so complex. It's complex not only for the health plan that's administering payments for care but also for physicians and their staff. Most importantly, it's a confusing and stressful process for patients."

"We believe that prior authorization is a process that can be automated, that should be automated and is really an opportunity in the patient journey to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page. We also think that tools like prior authorization can really be leveraged to understand what's next in a patient's care journey."

"We have a joke at Cohere. None of us were super excited to get in the prior auth business, but we were super excited to get in the business of totally changing a part of the healthcare system that is so antiquated. Prior authorization, for years, has relied on fax. We're not trying to put the fax machine totally out of business, but we think that we can really automate this important process and make access to care even faster for patients."

#CohereHealth #PriorAuthorization #CMS #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #HealthTech

CohereHealth.com

Listen to the podcast here

Alina Czekai, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Cohere Health, points out the need to transform the often painful prior authorization process. The traditional approach takes a piecemeal view of requests and provides a yes or no response. The Cohere view looks at the process as a multidimensional challenge that requires understanding the entirety of care and leveraging technology and AI to help guide behavior toward what is most clinically appropriate.

Alina explains, "You can think of it as an authorization for a credit card. Ensuring that what is going to be done or what medication or devices are going to be ordered is actually going to be paid for. The process and payments in the healthcare system today have become so complex. It's complex not only for the health plan that's administering payments for care but also for physicians and their staff. Most importantly, it's a confusing and stressful process for patients."

"We believe that prior authorization is a process that can be automated, that should be automated and is really an opportunity in the patient journey to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page. We also think that tools like prior authorization can really be leveraged to understand what's next in a patient's care journey."

"We have a joke at Cohere. None of us were super excited to get in the prior auth business, but we were super excited to get in the business of totally changing a part of the healthcare system that is so antiquated. Prior authorization, for years, has relied on fax. We're not trying to put the fax machine totally out of business, but we think that we can really automate this important process and make access to care even faster for patients."

#CohereHealth #PriorAuthorization #CMS #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #HealthTech

CohereHealth.com

Download the transcript here

Jared Crapo, Head of Product and Technology at Kalderos, focuses on drug discounts paid by drug manufacturers to pharmacy benefit managers, commercial or government payers, and healthcare providers. Congress created the 340B Drug Discount Program and the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program to support healthcare for underserved patients. While these programs have dramatically grown, so too have the complexities and confusion about discounts and disagreements about payments.

Jared explains, "The 340B program was created by Congress, and it's a subsidy from drug manufacturers to underserved healthcare providers. The Medicaid Drug Rebate Program is a similar program created by Congress that is a source of financial support for state Medicaid agencies, also provided by drug manufacturers. So drug manufacturers give a discount to state Medicaid agencies for drugs prescribed to Medicaid patients."

"One way to think about it is there's a lot of information asymmetry, which means some stakeholders have access to a lot more data than other stakeholders. And without a shared common understanding of which discounts are available, which discounts are compliant, and which ones aren't, it's really difficult for these various stakeholders to understand what their obligations are and what they should be doing. That leads to the dysfunction that you've mentioned."

"What Kalderos does to reduce this dysfunction is compile and curate data from dozens of different sources, to try and create a common understanding of what actually happened on a particular prescription. This is so that all stakeholders have access to the same information, which then reduces the disagreements about what should actually happen from a discount and a rebate perspective."

@KalderosInc #DrugDiscountPrograms #340BDrugDiscountProgram #MedicaidDrugRebateProgram #MDRP

kalderos.com

Listen to the podcast here

Jared Crapo, Head of Product and Technology at Kalderos, focuses on drug discounts paid by drug manufacturers to pharmacy benefit managers, commercial or government payers, and healthcare providers. Congress created the 340B Drug Discount Program and the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program to support healthcare for underserved patients. While these programs have dramatically grown, so too have the complexities and confusion about discounts and disagreements about payments.

Jared explains, "The 340B program was created by Congress, and it's a subsidy from drug manufacturers to underserved healthcare providers. The Medicaid Drug Rebate Program is a similar program created by Congress that is a source of financial support for state Medicaid agencies, also provided by drug manufacturers. So drug manufacturers give a discount to state Medicaid agencies for drugs prescribed to Medicaid patients."

"One way to think about it is there's a lot of information asymmetry, which means some stakeholders have access to a lot more data than other stakeholders. And without a shared common understanding of which discounts are available, which discounts are compliant, and which ones aren't, it's really difficult for these various stakeholders to understand what their obligations are and what they should be doing. That leads to the dysfunction that you've mentioned."

"What Kalderos does to reduce this dysfunction is compile and curate data from dozens of different sources, to try and create a common understanding of what actually happened on a particular prescription. This is so that all stakeholders have access to the same information, which then reduces the disagreements about what should actually happen from a discount and a rebate perspective."

@KalderosInc #DrugDiscountPrograms #340BDrugDiscountProgram #MedicaidDrugRebateProgram #MDRP

kalderos.com

Download the transcript here

Jessica Ackerman, the Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and Impact at Responsum Health, is focused on the insights that patients can provide drug companies and other people newly diagnosed or suffering from a chronic condition. Responsum is a digital-based educational community providing accurate scientific information, peer support, access to clinical trials, and a path by which drug companies can get real-world data.

Jessica explains, "Every disease focus that we have started has come from a partnership, some vested interest, from either a commercial sponsor or a pharmaceutical company, to build this robust community. Their interest is to gain the patient's voice and get insights, market research data, and real-world data from patients and family members to understand their gaps in care. So we have created a number of communities, like kidney disease CKD. We have glaucoma. We have pulmonary fibrosis, which is considered a rare disease, so we are in the rare disease and orphan disease space as well."

"We also have a long COVID community. That's a newer one that was met purely out of need. Patients diagnosed with long COVID undergo a lot of stigma and have trouble finding resources that are credible. We also have a menopause community that has many, many women who are feeling empowered to figure out what's going on for a lot of unmet needs as well. We have a number of communities, and we're always willing and able to build new communities. Part of what we're doing here is building new communities."

#Responsum #PatientExperience #PatientEmpowerment #DigitalHealth #PatientEducation #LongCOVID #HealthEquity #ClinicalTrials #HealthLiteracy #RareDisease

ResponsumHealth.com

Listen to the podcast here

Jessica Ackerman, the Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and Impact at Responsum Health, is focused on the insights that patients can provide drug companies and other people newly diagnosed or suffering from a chronic condition. Responsum is a digital-based educational community providing accurate scientific information, peer support, access to clinical trials, and a path by which drug companies can get real-world data.

Jessica explains, "Every disease focus that we have started has come from a partnership, some vested interest, from either a commercial sponsor or a pharmaceutical company, to build this robust community. Their interest is to gain the patient's voice and get insights, market research data, and real-world data from patients and family members to understand their gaps in care. So we have created a number of communities, like kidney disease CKD. We have glaucoma. We have pulmonary fibrosis, which is considered a rare disease, so we are in the rare disease and orphan disease space as well."

"We also have a long COVID community. That's a newer one that was met purely out of need. Patients diagnosed with long COVID undergo a lot of stigma and have trouble finding resources that are credible. We also have a menopause community that has many, many women who are feeling empowered to figure out what's going on for a lot of unmet needs as well. We have a number of communities, and we're always willing and able to build new communities. Part of what we're doing here is building new communities."

#Responsum #PatientExperience #PatientEmpowerment #DigitalHealth #PatientEducation #LongCOVID #HealthEquity #ClinicalTrials #HealthLiteracy #RareDisease

ResponsumHealth.com

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Dr. Phil Wagner, Founder and CEO of Sparta Science, is developing a movement health intelligence solution to better understand the overall health of a patient and their risk of injury. They are interweaving movement ability and balance ability to analyze meaningful biomarkers to ensure top performance and safe mobility. From his experience as a sports trainer, Phil warns about making assumptions about performance at any age.

Phil explains, "We do a balance assessment to assess that movement health, and it takes about 20 seconds on each side, and that will actually generate about a million data points on our device. This feeds into software that uses machine learning to compare you against yourself but also around others in a similar cohort, whether that's similar ages or sex at birth. So, being able to compare yourself against your own previous baselines and assessments, but also compare yourself for norms against others."

"We're working with the military on a TBI biomarker, traumatic brain injury because movement is interwoven into all those different types of conditions. So, the biomarkers that are created are really based on those conditions you're trying to improve, maybe performance for an athlete, or it may be avoiding some sort of setback, like a fall. The biomarkers that are of interest really depend on the population. Still, because balance is such a global application, it really has the opportunity to create biomarkers in several different areas, depending on the population."

"On the other side, we've seen hospitals assign fall risk to individuals just based on their age. I spoke with a hospital CEO the other day who found that anybody over 65 gets yellow booties. They're automatically a fall risk when they are checked into the hospital. He encountered a woman walking around in these yellow booties at his hospital, and he told her to get back in her room because she was a fall risk. She ran back to her room. So, this is the idea that we're using age as a primary marker and assuming that we have these movement limitations that may or may not exist."

#SpartaScience #MovementHealth #MovementHealthIntelligence #BigData #DigitalHealthTech #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #MachineLearning

SpartaScience.com

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Phil Wagner, Founder and CEO of Sparta Science, is developing a movement health intelligence solution to better understand the overall health of a patient and their risk of injury. They are interweaving movement ability and balance ability to analyze meaningful biomarkers to ensure top performance and safe mobility. From his experience as a sports trainer, Phil warns about making assumptions about performance at any age.

Phil explains, "We do a balance assessment to assess that movement health, and it takes about 20 seconds on each side, and that will actually generate about a million data points on our device. This feeds into software that uses machine learning to compare you against yourself but also around others in a similar cohort, whether that's similar ages or sex at birth. So, being able to compare yourself against your own previous baselines and assessments, but also compare yourself for norms against others."

"We're working with the military on a TBI biomarker, traumatic brain injury because movement is interwoven into all those different types of conditions. So, the biomarkers that are created are really based on those conditions you're trying to improve, maybe performance for an athlete, or it may be avoiding some sort of setback, like a fall. The biomarkers that are of interest really depend on the population. Still, because balance is such a global application, it really has the opportunity to create biomarkers in several different areas, depending on the population."

"On the other side, we've seen hospitals assign fall risk to individuals just based on their age. I spoke with a hospital CEO the other day who found that anybody over 65 gets yellow booties. They're automatically a fall risk when they are checked into the hospital. He encountered a woman walking around in these yellow booties at his hospital, and he told her to get back in her room because she was a fall risk. She ran back to her room. So, this is the idea that we're using age as a primary marker and assuming that we have these movement limitations that may or may not exist."

#SpartaScience #MovementHealth #MovementHealthIntelligence #BigData #DigitalHealthTech #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #MachineLearning

SpartaScience.com

Download the transcript here