Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Sean Bohen, President and CEO of Olema Oncology, is looking for a better endocrine option, alone or in the context of a CDK 4/6 inhibitor, to treat ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. Their oral pill OP-1250 does not have chemotherapy-like side effects and could be better tolerated than chemotherapy to aggressively target and turn off the estrogen receptor.

Sean explains, "In that respect, I'd say the estrogen receptor is probably one of the most validated therapeutic, molecular therapeutic targets in cancer, with tamoxifen first being approved in 1977. That said, that progress here has been relatively slow. Tamoxifen, approved in 1977, is not a complete antagonist. It turns on the receptor in some contexts, and turns it off in others. Fulvestrant is a complete antagonist. It has to be injected. That was approved in the early 2000s, and here in 2022, we're still working on getting a better estrogen-receptor targeting therapy."

"What happens, as is often the case in cancers, is that the ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer cell co-ops that normal growth and proliferation signal to promote an abnormal growth and proliferation of the cancerous cells. So that's why we are able to go back and try to turn that signal off and help treat the cancer, prevent progression and, sometimes, cause regression of the tumors by turning off that inappropriately-used estrogen receptor signal."

"We are currently treating three cohorts, 50 patients with measurable tumors, 15 patients without measurable tumors. In the context of ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, that is usually bone-only involvement. Then we also have an interesting property with OP-1250. It crosses the blood-brain barrier, so which raises the possibility of being able to treat brain metastases. We have a cohort of 15 central nervous system metastasis patients that we are working on enrolling right now."

#OlemaOncology #Oncology #BreastCancer #WomensHealth #SERD #CERAN

olema.com

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Dr. Sean Bohen, President and CEO of Olema Oncology, is looking for a better endocrine option, alone or in the context of a CDK 4/6 inhibitor, to treat ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. Their oral pill OP-1250 does not have chemotherapy-like side effects and could be better tolerated than chemotherapy to aggressively target and turn off the estrogen receptor.

Sean explains, "In that respect, I'd say the estrogen receptor is probably one of the most validated therapeutic, molecular therapeutic targets in cancer, with tamoxifen first being approved in 1977. That said, that progress here has been relatively slow. Tamoxifen, approved in 1977, is not a complete antagonist. It turns on the receptor in some contexts, and turns it off in others. Fulvestrant is a complete antagonist. It has to be injected. That was approved in the early 2000s, and here in 2022, we're still working on getting a better estrogen-receptor targeting therapy."

"What happens, as is often the case in cancers, is that the ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer cell co-ops that normal growth and proliferation signal to promote an abnormal growth and proliferation of the cancerous cells. So that's why we are able to go back and try to turn that signal off and help treat the cancer, prevent progression and, sometimes, cause regression of the tumors by turning off that inappropriately-used estrogen receptor signal."

"We are currently treating three cohorts, 50 patients with measurable tumors, 15 patients without measurable tumors. In the context of ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, that is usually bone-only involvement. Then we also have an interesting property with OP-1250. It crosses the blood-brain barrier, so which raises the possibility of being able to treat brain metastases. We have a cohort of 15 central nervous system metastasis patients that we are working on enrolling right now."

#OlemaOncology #Oncology #BreastCancer #WomensHealth #SERD #CERAN

olema.com

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Dr. Tim O'Connell is a practicing radiologist and CEO and Co-Founder of Emtelligent, a medical natural language processing company. Their software converts unstructured text in medical documents into structured data to allow a variety of clients to get access to information that in the past has not been available.

Tim explains, "The problem was that the NLP engine just wasn't good enough. If there was a family history item, it would misidentify it as belonging to the patient. Sometimes it would get negation wrong, and it would miss important terms or have a hard time dealing with ambiguous words or acronyms. I knew that the premise was correct. As a clinician, I needed better access to patient data, and I needed access to the unstructured data, but I needed a better NLP engine in order to get it."

"What we've done is really brought together medical experts and NLP experts and built a system that understands the very unique medical language. Just to take one example, you take something as simple as the word PT. It could mean patient. It could mean physiotherapy. It could mean physiotherapist. It could mean prothrombin time. It could mean posterior tibial, referring to a tendon or a blood vessel. So, dealing with these very special and unique problems, you need to do it on a medical basis."

@emtelhealth #Emtelligent #NLP #MNLP #MedicalNaturalLanguageProcessing #UnstructuredText

emtelligent.com

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Dr. Tim O'Connell is a practicing radiologist and CEO and Co-Founder of Emtelligent, a medical natural language processing company. Their software converts unstructured text in medical documents into structured data to allow a variety of clients to get access to information that in the past has not been available.

Tim explains, "The problem was that the NLP engine just wasn't good enough. If there was a family history item, it would misidentify it as belonging to the patient. Sometimes it would get negation wrong, and it would miss important terms or have a hard time dealing with ambiguous words or acronyms. I knew that the premise was correct. As a clinician, I needed better access to patient data, and I needed access to the unstructured data, but I needed a better NLP engine in order to get it."

"What we've done is really brought together medical experts and NLP experts and built a system that understands the very unique medical language. Just to take one example, you take something as simple as the word PT. It could mean patient. It could mean physiotherapy. It could mean physiotherapist. It could mean prothrombin time. It could mean posterior tibial, referring to a tendon or a blood vessel. So, dealing with these very special and unique problems, you need to do it on a medical basis."

@emtelhealth #Emtelligent #NLP #MNLP #MedicalNaturalLanguageProcessing #UnstructuredText

emtelligent.com

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Marcus Dorstel Head of Operations at Turquoise Health, is part of a team of engineers and healthcare experts focused on the price transparency data that started coming out in 2021 on the hospital side and in July 2022 on the payer side. These prices were previously kept secret and in data silos so that the full picture of costs was not possible. Their aim is to support the No Surprises Act, which requires providers to create a good faith estimate of all medical services ahead of actual service.

Marcus explains, "At Turquoise Health, ultimately, we want to simplify the way healthcare gets paid. I think we're all keenly aware of the complexities of the healthcare space, a lot of that around the payment structure and even just what the price of healthcare is. And so, we're a startup focused on price transparency in the healthcare space and helping all parties within the healthcare ecosystem really simplify those payments and bring more transparency into healthcare."

"Hospitals are certainly taking a look at their prices compared to their competitors. There's a chance to see if you're contracting with a major national carrier and what they're paying your competitor down the street. We're already seeing that this data is being used by both hospitals and also by the payers in these contract negotiations."

@TurquoiseHC #TurquoiseHealth #PriceTransparency #Healthcare #NoSurprisesAct #GoodFaithEstimate #Hospitals #HealthcareCosts #MedicalBills

turquoise.health

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Marcus Dorstel Head of Operations at Turquoise Health, is part of a team of engineers and healthcare experts focused on the price transparency data that started coming out in 2021 on the hospital side and in July 2022 on the payer side. These prices were previously kept secret and in data silos so that the full picture of costs was not possible. Their aim is to support the No Surprises Act, which requires providers to create a good faith estimate of all medical services ahead of actual service.

Marcus explains, "At Turquoise Health, ultimately, we want to simplify the way healthcare gets paid. I think we're all keenly aware of the complexities of the healthcare space, a lot of that around the payment structure and even just what the price of healthcare is. And so, we're a startup focused on price transparency in the healthcare space and helping all parties within the healthcare ecosystem really simplify those payments and bring more transparency into healthcare."

"Hospitals are certainly taking a look at their prices compared to their competitors. There's a chance to see if you're contracting with a major national carrier and what they're paying your competitor down the street. We're already seeing that this data is being used by both hospitals and also by the payers in these contract negotiations."

@TurquoiseHC #TurquoiseHealth #PriceTransparency #Healthcare #NoSurprisesAct #GoodFaithEstimate #Hospitals #HealthcareCosts #MedicalBills

turquoise.health

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Nate Maslak is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ribbon Health, which is a healthcare data platform to power patient care decisions, including price transparency for all services. Their unique technological approach incorporates data from across the entire healthcare ecosystem. It uses predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning to determine accurate information while allowing patients to contribute data back into the system.

Nate explains, "The overall technology focuses on being able to provide the right information on a provider at the right moment in time, so whenever/wherever somebody's seeking care. And the number of problems that exist in provider data is shocking, and sometimes I feel like they are infinite. So just starting with something as basic as the provider directory, so phone numbers, addresses. What is the specialty of this provider?"

"That information out there today is about 45% accurate, which is terrifying because that doesn't even start to hit on some other elements that are hard to get across. So Ribbon helps solve that. We're also then enabling other solutions to be able to show which insurance plan a given provider accepts down to the plan name and network level. And then, we layer on provider performance and cost-effectiveness, and price transparency."

@RibbonHealthAPI #RibbonHealth #Healthcare #DigitalHealth #MedicalBills #AffordableHealthcare #PriceTransparency #HealthcareProviders #Healthtech #MachineLearning #AI #EmpoweringPatients

RibbonHealth.com

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Nate Maslak is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ribbon Health, which is a healthcare data platform to power patient care decisions, including price transparency for all services. Their unique technological approach incorporates data from across the entire healthcare ecosystem. It uses predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning to determine accurate information while allowing patients to contribute data back into the system.

Nate explains, "The overall technology focuses on being able to provide the right information on a provider at the right moment in time, so whenever/wherever somebody's seeking care. And the number of problems that exist in provider data is shocking, and sometimes I feel like they are infinite. So just starting with something as basic as the provider directory, so phone numbers, addresses. What is the specialty of this provider?"

"That information out there today is about 45% accurate, which is terrifying because that doesn't even start to hit on some other elements that are hard to get across. So Ribbon helps solve that. We're also then enabling other solutions to be able to show which insurance plan a given provider accepts down to the plan name and network level. And then, we layer on provider performance and cost-effectiveness, and price transparency."

@RibbonHealthAPI #RibbonHealth #Healthcare #DigitalHealth #MedicalBills #AffordableHealthcare #PriceTransparency #HealthcareProviders #Healthtech #MachineLearning #AI #EmpoweringPatients

RibbonHealth.com

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Keri Yale, Head of Patient Centricity and Engagement at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, brings a deep understanding of the need for pharmaceutical companies to be patient-centric in their culture and focus, including all the employees who do not deal directly with patients. Patient engagement is defined as engaging and listening to patients while integrating their input into the design of clinical trials and developing products and resources for patients and doctors.

Keri elaborates, "I was just thinking recently about how much the work that I've done over the past two decades has come full circle to the work that I just mentioned that I do today. I started at BI in sales. I was working in Los Angeles, and it was the height of the AIDS epidemic. I was calling on AIDS service organizations because we had HIV/AIDS medications, and I was meeting a number of people who were truly inspirational. One of those people who inspired me the most was the director at the time of an organization called Being Alive. And he was the first of many advocates that taught me how much I didn't know."

"We knew there were pockets of excellence, and we knew there were a number of people working in this way, but we wanted to make it across all employees, even those working in IT or HR or finance. We set up an approach where each leader is responsible for having a patient-centricity plan. These plans identify objectives and activities, and they should look very different because we want them to be authentic to the nature of their work. I think it also shows that our leadership recognizes that being patient-focused is everyone's job."

@boehringerus #BoehringerIngelheim #PatientEngagement #PatientCentricity #PatientInput #PatientAmbassador #PatientPartner

boehringer-ingelheim.com

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Dr. Shafiq Rab is the Chief Digital Officer and System Chief Information Officer at Tufts Medicine and an advocate for cloud-based health ecosystems. Healthcare is one of the last industries that has not moved into the cloud to integrate the entire ecosystem of patient data, clinical trial updates, provider information, and payer processes and allow for research and advanced analytics. The cloud provides the flexibility to scale operations and reduce costs related to physical space and administration. While it is hard to get the variety of electronic health record databases and applications to work together, it is even harder to get the humans involved to adjust to new technologies in the workplace.

Shafiq explains, "So in the world that we live in, where everybody wants an Amazon-like experience, healthcare has to go a little forward. On paper, things are still a little less efficient. To make that happen, there are three stages that everybody has to go through. One is digitizing everything, then digitalization, and finally, digital transformation, which is a cultural thing."

"Why into the cloud? That ecosystem means all the applications that you want to use to deliver healthcare. You have it in a place in the cloud because the cloud has the computing power. It allows you to compute things faster and quicker. In the world of healthcare, the consumer consumes on a phone, on an iPhone or Android, at the edge, which is known as edge computing. The connectivity depends upon the strength of the internet and the interoperability between the different systems. So, if you do not have an ecosystem up in the cloud with your major electronic health record, it becomes hard to deliver that information."

"We also benefited by decreasing the number of portals for our patients, for our consumers. We now have one app. Before, we had about 84 different portals and different ways of getting the information, and it was not in one place. So the North Star is how to make it easier and more welcoming, the access to care for the consumers and the communities we serve. Simultaneously, making it also easier for care providers to provide the care, and the employees who work here, and the vendors who are part of the ecosystem, because that's how we complete the ring of healthcare."

@TuftsMedicine @CIOSHAFIQ #TuftsMedicine #DrShafiqRab #AWS #DigitalHealth #HealthIT #HealthTech #Cloud #EHR #DigitalTransformation #HealthcareInnovation #DigitalHealthEcosystem #PatientExperience

tuftsmedicine.org

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