Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Romain Micol, CEO, and Dr. Tom VanCott, Chief Scientific Officer, at Combined Therapeutics, are excited about the opportunities to design mRNA vaccines that target specific tissue cells to restrict protein expression and have stronger potency in the fight against infectious disease and cancer. They have designed their vaccine platform to keep the vaccine antigen expression at the injection site, protecting the liver, kidney, and heart.

Romain explains, "So mRNA vaccines are highly effective both for infectious diseases and, more recently, to treat cancer. It's an ideal technology that is relatively easy to make and to manufacture. It could be very rapid and can get expression in vivo where protein would be folded properly. We can currently use the mRNA vaccine to deliver multiple materials to prevent infectious diseases and also cure cancer."

"The main challenge we see at Combined Therapeutics, both for vaccines for infectious disease and for cancer treatment, is in their biodistribution and potency. Our platform at Combined Therapeutics is a proprietary technology that enables us to focus protein expression in specific tissue cells and prevent off-target expression in selected cell tissue. At the moment, our R&D program covers both oncology and infectious disease."

Thomas elaborates, "What we've done here at Combined Therapeutics is we're taking advantage of something called micro RNAs. Now, what are micro RNAs? A lot of people don't know about them, but they're really just small RNA molecules that are naturally present throughout the body. They're actually fairly small molecules. They're about 22 nucleotides in size."

"But what's really important is that they're distributed differentially throughout the body. So, if you look at the lungs or the heart or the muscles, you'll see a different array of micro RNAs that are expressed in each one of those tissues, and that is exactly what we take advantage of. What we do in our mRNA is engineer into it what we call these blockers. And what's a blocker? A blocker is really a binding site for the micro RNA."

@Combined_tx #CombinedTherapeutics #mRNA #Vaccines #Cancer #Oncology #InfectiousDisease

combinedtx.com

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Dr. Romain Micol, CEO, and Dr. Tom VanCott, Chief Scientific Officer, at Combined Therapeutics, are excited about the opportunities to design mRNA vaccines that target specific tissue cells to restrict protein expression and have stronger potency in the fight against infectious disease and cancer. They have designed their vaccine platform to keep the vaccine antigen expression at the injection site, protecting the liver, kidney, and heart.

Romain explains, "So mRNA vaccines are highly effective both for infectious diseases and, more recently, to treat cancer. It's an ideal technology that is relatively easy to make and to manufacture. It could be very rapid and can get expression in vivo where protein would be folded properly. We can currently use the mRNA vaccine to deliver multiple materials to prevent infectious diseases and also cure cancer."

"The main challenge we see at Combined Therapeutics, both for vaccines for infectious disease and for cancer treatment, is in their biodistribution and potency. Our platform at Combined Therapeutics is a proprietary technology that enables us to focus protein expression in specific tissue cells and prevent off-target expression in selected cell tissue. At the moment, our R&D program covers both oncology and infectious disease."

Thomas elaborates, "What we've done here at Combined Therapeutics is we're taking advantage of something called micro RNAs. Now, what are micro RNAs? A lot of people don't know about them, but they're really just small RNA molecules that are naturally present throughout the body. They're actually fairly small molecules. They're about 22 nucleotides in size."

"But what's really important is that they're distributed differentially throughout the body. So, if you look at the lungs or the heart or the muscles, you'll see a different array of micro RNAs that are expressed in each one of those tissues, and that is exactly what we take advantage of. What we do in our mRNA is engineer into it what we call these blockers. And what's a blocker? A blocker is really a binding site for the micro RNA."

@Combined_tx #CombinedTherapeutics #mRNA #Vaccines #Cancer #Oncology #InfectiousDisease

combinedtx.com

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Nick Hedges is the CEO of Raintree Systems, a provider of software-as-a-relationship to help therapy and rehab companies enhance their patient engagement, provide access to an electronic medical record system, and improve revenue cycle management. Using predictive models and a digital approach to billing and reimbursement, Raintree is reducing the friction for patients, providers, and payers.

Nick explains, "A lot of people describe software these days as delivered primarily through the internet as software-as-a-service. However, service doesn't really tell you the full story about how we interact with our clients. We see our software as being a partnership. We work very closely with our clients to make sure that it delivers exactly what they need, and we build our product in unison with our clients. That's why we call it software-as-a-relationship."

"Healthcare, in general, is quite far behind in terms of the digital patient experience or the digital consumer experience. One of the things that Raintree seeks to do is to be at the forefront of that within healthcare and bring some of the capabilities that you see in other industries like financial services and automotive and so on to the healthcare industry because that's what consumers who are patients want. They want a more digital experience."

"The revenue cycle side of things is a really important aspect, both for the therapy provider and the patient. What we try to do is to reduce the friction to the maximum amount for both sides because it's very complicated. It's an arcane system when it comes to how provider reimbursements work. And frankly, neither the patient nor the therapist, wants to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how their healthcare plan matches with the needs that they have for their healthcare. So what we do is automate a lot of that process."

@RaintreeSystems #PhysicalTherapy #TherapyRehab #OccupationalTherapy #PediatricTherapy #SpeechTherapy

raintreeinc.com

Listen to the podcast here

Nick Hedges is the CEO of Raintree Systems, a provider of software-as-a-relationship to help therapy and rehab companies enhance their patient engagement, provide access to an electronic medical record system, and improve revenue cycle management. Using predictive models and a digital approach to billing and reimbursement, Raintree is reducing the friction for patients, providers, and payers.

Nick explains, "A lot of people describe software these days as delivered primarily through the internet as software-as-a-service. However, service doesn't really tell you the full story about how we interact with our clients. We see our software as being a partnership. We work very closely with our clients to make sure that it delivers exactly what they need, and we build our product in unison with our clients. That's why we call it software-as-a-relationship."

"Healthcare, in general, is quite far behind in terms of the digital patient experience or the digital consumer experience. One of the things that Raintree seeks to do is to be at the forefront of that within healthcare and bring some of the capabilities that you see in other industries like financial services and automotive and so on to the healthcare industry because that's what consumers who are patients want. They want a more digital experience."

"The revenue cycle side of things is a really important aspect, both for the therapy provider and the patient. What we try to do is to reduce the friction to the maximum amount for both sides because it's very complicated. It's an arcane system when it comes to how provider reimbursements work. And frankly, neither the patient nor the therapist, wants to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how their healthcare plan matches with the needs that they have for their healthcare. So what we do is automate a lot of that process."

@RaintreeSystems #PhysicalTherapy #TherapyRehab #OccupationalTherapy #PediatricTherapy #SpeechTherapy

raintreeinc.com

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Whitney Stewart, the Director of Clinical Project Management at Curebase, and Megan Coder, the Chief Policy Officer of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, have worked together on a white paper Setting the Stage for a Fit-For-Purpose DTx Evidentiary Standard. The goal is to outline foundational principles that, in some cases, are unique to the digital therapeutics category. Their focus is on baseline expectations related to procedures and the type, quality, and timing of clinical trials necessary to evaluate and widely implement DTx therapies.

Megan explains, "Given some of their development pathways and processes, given how they're regulated as a medical device and not a drug, we've really started talking with Curebase and some of our other members. We are looking at, and we recognize that, these digital therapeutic products have great value to patient care. They can be used alongside or sometimes even in place of some of these traditional therapies. But what became evident to us pretty quickly is that these therapies really don't sit in line with all of the evidentiary standards that exist for the current existing treatments and therapies."

"We wanted to talk about this idea of a fit-for-purpose standard that can pull in some of the aspects from traditional therapies into this evaluation framework. This is so a patient, clinician, payer, and policymaker can understand, "Oh, this is what this therapy does, this is how I know it's going to be successful, and this is how I know what the impact is going to be for my patient population."

Whitney elaborates, "The future implications include a better understanding of the clinical evidence dossier, which just means more effective and fair evaluations of the technologies. So, do they need to conduct the same trials and generate the same evidence as pharmaceuticals? No, I think we all are aligned with that. Do they need to go through the same processes as high-risk medical devices? No, they probably don't. Most of them are fairly low-risk. So we've been talking about it just to get everybody on the same page and with the same kind of evaluation criteria so that everyone knows exactly what sufficient looks like."

#DigitalTherapeuticsAlliance #Curebase #DTx #DigitalTherapeutics #PrescriptionDigitalTherapeutics #DTxTrials #ClinicalResearch #ClinicalTrials

DTxalliance.org

curebase.com

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Whitney Stewart, the Director of Clinical Project Management at Curebase, and Megan Coder, the Chief Policy Officer of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, have worked together on a white paper Setting the Stage for a Fit-For-Purpose DTx Evidentiary Standard. The goal is to outline foundational principles that, in some cases, are unique to the digital therapeutics category. Their focus is on baseline expectations related to procedures and the type, quality, and timing of clinical trials necessary to evaluate and widely implement DTx therapies.

Megan explains, "Given some of their development pathways and processes, given how they're regulated as a medical device and not a drug, we've really started talking with Curebase and some of our other members. We are looking at, and we recognize that, these digital therapeutic products have great value to patient care. They can be used alongside or sometimes even in place of some of these traditional therapies. But what became evident to us pretty quickly is that these therapies really don't sit in line with all of the evidentiary standards that exist for the current existing treatments and therapies."

"We wanted to talk about this idea of a fit-for-purpose standard that can pull in some of the aspects from traditional therapies into this evaluation framework. This is so a patient, clinician, payer, and policymaker can understand, "Oh, this is what this therapy does, this is how I know it's going to be successful, and this is how I know what the impact is going to be for my patient population."

Whitney elaborates, "The future implications include a better understanding of the clinical evidence dossier, which just means more effective and fair evaluations of the technologies. So, do they need to conduct the same trials and generate the same evidence as pharmaceuticals? No, I think we all are aligned with that. Do they need to go through the same processes as high-risk medical devices? No, they probably don't. Most of them are fairly low-risk. So we've been talking about it just to get everybody on the same page and with the same kind of evaluation criteria so that everyone knows exactly what sufficient looks like."

#DigitalTherapeuticsAlliance #Curebase #DTx #DigitalTherapeutics #PrescriptionDigitalTherapeutics #DTxTrials #ClinicalResearch #ClinicalTrials

DTxAlliance.org

curebase.com

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Karen Smith is the Founder of Catie's Cause, a nonprofit charity dedicated to building awareness about the safe use of over-the-counter pain medications. After the death of her daughter Catie from liver failure due to overuse of Tylenol, Karen founded this organization to shine a light on the unintended and intentional side effects of easy access to these medicines.

Karen explains, "The research shows that there are four main groups of individuals who are impacted by acetaminophen poisoning. Young adults definitely are a large group, oftentimes because they're on their own and they don't realize the dangers of medication. Some of them do begin to abuse it and they take it way too regularly. Sadly, about 50% of the deaths are from suicide, so obviously intended, but 50% of them are unintended. So young adults are a big group."

"Another group is young children because parents tend to freak out when their little ones get a headache, and they overmedicate. The third group impacted are the elderly because they have difficulty reading the warning labels or are taking a lot of other medications, and their liver may already be compromised by that."

"And then the last group are those with limited access to healthcare. That's primarily because they don't have someone to warn them about what could happen if they overuse that medication. Instead of going to a doctor, they tend to go to the pharmacy and pick up whatever's on the shelf."

#CatiesCause #AcetaminophenPoisoning #AcetaminophenDangers #KnowYourMedications #LiverSafety #DrugSafety #Tylenol #SouthRampartPharma #DoIt4Catie #PaintTherapy

catiescause.org

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Karen Smith is the Founder of Catie's Cause, a nonprofit charity dedicated to building awareness about the safe use of over-the-counter pain medications. After the death of her daughter Catie from liver failure due to overuse of Tylenol, Karen founded this organization to shine a light on the unintended and intentional side effects of easy access to these medicines.

Karen explains, "The research shows that there are four main groups of individuals who are impacted by acetaminophen poisoning. Young adults definitely are a large group, oftentimes because they're on their own and they don't realize the dangers of medication. Some of them do begin to abuse it and they take it way too regularly. Sadly, about 50% of the deaths are from suicide, so obviously intended, but 50% of them are unintended. So young adults are a big group."

"Another group is young children because parents tend to freak out when their little ones get a headache, and they overmedicate. The third group impacted are the elderly because they have difficulty reading the warning labels or are taking a lot of other medications, and their liver may already be compromised by that."

"And then the last group are those with limited access to healthcare. That's primarily because they don't have someone to warn them about what could happen if they overuse that medication. Instead of going to a doctor, they tend to go to the pharmacy and pick up whatever's on the shelf."

#CatiesCause #AcetaminophenPoisoning #AcetaminophenDangers #KnowYourMedications #LiverSafety #DrugSafety #Tylenol #SouthRampartPharma #DoIt4Catie #PaintTherapy

catiescause.org

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Dr. Jing Wang is the Dean and Professor at Florida State University College of Nursing and is focused on bringing a high-tech, high-touch approach to patient care in the education of nurses. The idea is to leverage technology and digital health tools to support nurses so that they can spend more quality time with patients. The newest generation of students are digital natives, and one goal is to help them use that knowledge to smooth the transition for the less technology savvy.

Jing explains, "I think it's all about how technology is introduced into the learning in our current nursing education and health profession education. That is critically important. That's what we are doing here at Florida State University College of Nursing. We would like to do it in the right way, to introduce technology as a tool to enhance care and facilitate care versus this is a fancy technology, we must use it. I think that's core, and that's the attitude that we are hoping our graduating students will have."

"We have launched a new Institute on Digital Health and Innovation. It's very exciting that we are launching our first design sprint. We're bringing students all together for them to work 24 non-stop to focus on solutions with people who build homes, people who design homes, people who take care of seniors, and people who focus on wellness. This includes doctors, nurses, and social workers. How can we design this home that is a future aging-in-place home that would consider all of the aspects for our seniors or adults who would like age-in-place?"

#FSUResearch #FSUNursing #DigitalHealth #AginginPlace #DigitalPrecisionHealth #Nurses

Nursing.FSU.edu

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Dr. Jing Wang is the Dean and Professor at Florida State University College of Nursing and is focused on bringing a high-tech, high-touch approach to patient care in the education of nurses. The idea is to leverage technology and digital health tools to support nurses so that they can spend more quality time with patients. The newest generation of students are digital natives, and one goal is to help them use that knowledge to smooth the transition for the less technology savvy.

Jing explains, "I think it's all about how technology is introduced into the learning in our current nursing education and health profession education. That is critically important. That's what we are doing here at Florida State University College of Nursing. We would like to do it in the right way, to introduce technology as a tool to enhance care and facilitate care versus this is a fancy technology, we must use it. I think that's core, and that's the attitude that we are hoping our graduating students will have."

"We have launched a new Institute on Digital Health and Innovation. It's very exciting that we are launching our first design sprint. We're bringing students all together for them to work 24 non-stop to focus on solutions with people who build homes, people who design homes, people who take care of seniors, and people who focus on wellness. This includes doctors, nurses, and social workers. How can we design this home that is a future aging-in-place home that would consider all of the aspects for our seniors or adults who would like age-in-place?"

#FSUResearch #FSUNursing #DigitalHealth #AginginPlace #DigitalPrecisionHealth #Nurses

Nursing.FSU.edu

Download the transcript here