Empowered Patient Podcast

Amit Kumar is the President and CEO of Anixa Biosciences and is working on a prophylactic vaccine to prevent the onset of breast cancer rather than a therapeutic vaccine to fight the solid tumors. Anixa is also working on CAR-T therapy for solid tumors and using artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover compounds to treat COVID-19.

Amit elaborates, "We believe that trying to destroy cancer cells as they arise in a patient's body is much easier than waiting until that cancer becomes a large tumor mass with trillions of cells. As you know, cancer starts off with one single cell that becomes aberrant. Then it reproduces, it becomes two cells, four cells, eight cells, and so on, eventually becoming a tumor that is comprised of millions to trillions of cells. So if we try and destroy a tumor that's millions and trillions of cells, it's very difficult."

"You have a tumor microenvironment, you have a very immunosuppressive environment in that tumor, and it's very hard to address that tumor. However, if you could destroy those cells as they arise at the two-cell, four-cell, or handful-of-cell stage, then you could eliminate the tumor from ever arising. The cells never have a chance to become a tumor. That's what we're trying to do with our breast cancer vaccine."

"This is a therapeutic as opposed to a vaccine against coronavirus. We believe that the coronavirus is going to be an endemic disease, and there will always be a need for therapeutics. We want to be able to have a therapeutic that can be easily distributed, it's room-temperature-stable, unlike the vaccines, which require a cold chain, and something very inexpensive that can be taken by mouth."

@AnixaBio #CancerVaccine #CART #Immunotherapy #BreastCancer #COVID19 #COVIDTherapeutic

Anixa.com

Listen to the podcast here

Amit Kumar is the President and CEO of Anixa Biosciences and is working on a prophylactic vaccine to prevent the onset of breast cancer rather than a therapeutic vaccine to fight the solid tumors. Anixa is also working on CAR-T therapy for solid tumors and using artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover compounds to treat COVID-19.

Amit elaborates, "We believe that trying to destroy cancer cells as they arise in a patient's body is much easier than waiting until that cancer becomes a large tumor mass with trillions of cells. As you know, cancer starts off with one single cell that becomes aberrant. Then it reproduces, it becomes two cells, four cells, eight cells, and so on, eventually becoming a tumor that is comprised of millions to trillions of cells. So if we try and destroy a tumor that's millions and trillions of cells, it's very difficult."

"You have a tumor microenvironment, you have a very immunosuppressive environment in that tumor, and it's very hard to address that tumor. However, if you could destroy those cells as they arise at the two-cell, four-cell, or handful-of-cell stage, then you could eliminate the tumor from ever arising. The cells never have a chance to become a tumor. That's what we're trying to do with our breast cancer vaccine."

"This is a therapeutic as opposed to a vaccine against coronavirus. We believe that the coronavirus is going to be an endemic disease, and there will always be a need for therapeutics. We want to be able to have a therapeutic that can be easily distributed, it's room-temperature-stable, unlike the vaccines, which require a cold chain, and something very inexpensive that can be taken by mouth."

@AnixaBio #CancerVaccine #CART #Immunotherapy #BreastCancer #COVID19 #COVIDTherapeutic

Anixa.com

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Chris Young is the Head of Product at Force Therapeutics and is focusing on presenting information to patients before and after surgery, particularly those undergoing musculoskeletal related treatments. The key to patient engagement is presenting the right information in the right form at the right time to keep patients on track with their medications and rehab and to help manage their expectations about pain and recovery time.

Chris elaborates, "And so when we talk about digital health 2.0, what we want to do is take advantage of the fact that the majority of patients have a behavior-changing device in their pocket. So a lot of patients are going to be walking around with an iPhone or an Android in their pocket. And the way that we can present information in real-time based on their needs, we feel like that with that behavior-changing device in their pocket, we can truly help them ingest information. We can do more than just kind of present this cold, clinical kind of information in front of them, and actually try to create true behavioral change. So I think that's really where the importance of design and health tech comes into play."

"I would say that the preoperative window, particularly around up to a week, especially when it's surgical care, a week before surgery, is really, really important. You want to do a couple of things, especially in the move towards same-day discharge. You'll often see, especially with hip and knee replacement, that there is a move towards same-day discharge. You're leaving the hospital or the ASC after about six hours. We want to make sure that you feel adequately prepped for when you get home. So a lot of what we're going to do is present that information."

@ForceTherEx #ForceTherapeutics #DIgitalHealth #PatientEngagement #CareManagement

ForceTherapeutics.com

Listen to the podcast here

Chris Young is the Head of Product at Force Therapeutics and is focusing on presenting information to patients before and after surgery, particularly those undergoing musculoskeletal related treatments. The key to patient engagement is presenting the right information in the right form at the right time to keep patients on track with their medications and rehab and to help manage their expectations about pain and recovery time.

Chris elaborates, "And so when we talk about digital health 2.0, what we want to do is take advantage of the fact that the majority of patients have a behavior-changing device in their pocket. So a lot of patients are going to be walking around with an iPhone or an Android in their pocket. And the way that we can present information in real-time based on their needs, we feel like that with that behavior-changing device in their pocket, we can truly help them ingest information. We can do more than just kind of present this cold, clinical kind of information in front of them, and actually try to create true behavioral change. So I think that's really where the importance of design and health tech comes into play."

"I would say that the preoperative window, particularly around up to a week, especially when it's surgical care, a week before surgery, is really, really important. You want to do a couple of things, especially in the move towards same-day discharge. You'll often see, especially with hip and knee replacement, that there is a move towards same-day discharge. You're leaving the hospital or the ASC after about six hours. We want to make sure that you feel adequately prepped for when you get home. So a lot of what we're going to do is present that information."

@ForceTherEx #ForceTherapeutics #DIgitalHealth #PatientEngagement #CareManagement

ForceTherapeutics.com

Download the transcript here

Matt Murphy is the EVP of Network and Clinical Content at Cohere Health, innovators in utilization management and prior authorization for tests, services, and drugs. By taking a patient-first approach means reviewing cases on behalf of the Cohere health plan clients as well as with an eye to the health outcomes of patients.

Matt explains," Utilization management really evolved as an adversarial exercise with health plans pitted against physicians. And if you think about the key areas where it's impacting patients and physicians more broadly, really it's three things. First is delays in care and access. Really there shouldn't be anything coming in between a patient and the care they need as long as it's clinically appropriate. So I'd say that's probably the first issue."

"A few weeks ago, we reported out jointly with Humana, one of our first clients, on the impact we had in year one, and it was tremendous in terms of medical expense savings. But I think it goes back to the philosophical differences people have in utilization management."

"On one side, you have a number of folks who think that the only way to drive down medical expense is to deny services versus our vision, which is if you truly are driving the right clinical care for patients and the highest value care, you're inherently going to have lower expense. So I think if you can kind of transition across that philosophical boundary into the focus on clinical outcomes, you inherently save money."

@CohereHealth #PriorAuthorization #UtilizationManagement

coherehealth.com

Listen to the podcast here

Matt Murphy is the EVP of Network and Clinical Content at Cohere Health, innovators in utilization management and prior authorization for tests, services, and drugs. By taking a patient-first approach means reviewing cases on behalf of the Cohere health plan clients as well as with an eye to the health outcomes of patients.

Matt explains," Utilization management really evolved as an adversarial exercise with health plans pitted against physicians. And if you think about the key areas where it's impacting patients and physicians more broadly, really it's three things. First is delays in care and access. Really there shouldn't be anything coming in between a patient and the care they need as long as it's clinically appropriate. So I'd say that's probably the first issue."

"A few weeks ago, we reported out jointly with Humana, one of our first clients, on the impact we had in year one, and it was tremendous in terms of medical expense savings. But I think it goes back to the philosophical differences people have in utilization management."

"On one side, you have a number of folks who think that the only way to drive down medical expense is to deny services versus our vision, which is if you truly are driving the right clinical care for patients and the highest value care, you're inherently going to have lower expense. So I think if you can kind of transition across that philosophical boundary into the focus on clinical outcomes, you inherently save money."

@CohereHealth #PriorAuthorization #UtilizationManagement

coherehealth.com

Download the transcript here

Steven Goh is the CEO of Achiko which is developing a COVID-19 test based around using a DNA aptamer, a small strand of oligonucleotides, as an alternative to using an antigen. When saliva is placed in a colloidal solution and read by a spectrophotometer, smart software can then classify if the person is likely to be COVID positive or negative.

Steven elaborates, "The sum of it all is that we believe that we've got possibly one of the tests with the best value for the money. It looks like the cost per test at scale may only be tens of cents. The sensitivity at very low viral loads... And the customer experience is great. It starts with a minty mouthwash and spit in a tube and scan on a spectrophotometer, and hopefully, in a year with the generation three or four product, it'll end up being scanned on your phone."

"In the future, given the advantages that using aptamers give us, yes, we are looking at a polymorphic set of tests where we could actually be able to identify the full range of respiratory diseases and give you a classification. So, one test we'll be able to, in about a year from now, we hope we'll be able to tell if you've got bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, SARS, MERS, which variant of COVID. We believe that's technically possible, given the technology stack that we're using."

@achikoag #Achiko #COVID19 #COVID19Tests #COVID #Aptamex

Achiko.com

Listen to the podcast here

Steven Goh is the CEO of Achiko which is developing a COVID-19 test based around using a DNA aptamer, a small strand of oligonucleotides, as an alternative to using an antigen. When saliva is placed in a colloidal solution and read by a spectrophotometer, smart software can then classify if the person is likely to be COVID positive or negative.

Steven elaborates, "The sum of it all is that we believe that we've got possibly one of the tests with the best value for the money. It looks like the cost per test at scale may only be tens of cents. The sensitivity at very low viral loads... And the customer experience is great. It starts with a minty mouthwash and spit in a tube and scan on a spectrophotometer, and hopefully, in a year with the generation three or four product, it'll end up being scanned on your phone."

"In the future, given the advantages that using aptamers give us, yes, we are looking at a polymorphic set of tests where we could actually be able to identify the full range of respiratory diseases and give you a classification. So, one test we'll be able to, in about a year from now, we hope we'll be able to tell if you've got bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, SARS, MERS, which variant of COVID. We believe that's technically possible, given the technology stack that we're using."

@achikoag #Achiko #COVID19 #COVID19Tests #COVID #Aptamex

Achiko.com

Download the transcript here

Angie Franks is the CEO of ABOUT, an innovative healthcare technology company, formally known as Central Logic. ABOUT is solving the problem of getting acute patients to the optimal setting of care as they move into and out of the hospital and then to a post-acute facility or their own home.

Angie explains, "Well, a big contributor to physician burnout is really all of the work. I would call it almost unnecessary friction and noise in their day-to-day jobs. So if we take a use case that ABOUT solves every day for health systems across the country, it is addressing the problem of interfacility patient transfers."

"When our solution is not in place, the noise and the friction on the clinical staff at the accepting location is tremendous."

"All of this noise to get the decision made is just extra work sitting on clinicians' plates that can be handled in a centralized hub, a support service hub on behalf of the health system. We can take all of that work and all of that noise so that the clinicians inside the hospital system can focus on taking care of the patients under their charge while the access center, which operates as a centralized hub and shared service center for the entire health system, can take all of those calls."

"Well, much of this process operates like the 1960s with sticky notes, whiteboards, post-it notes, phone calls, nurses writing information on their hands, and making a lot of calls."

@ABOUT_est2005 #Hospitals #InterfacilityPatientTransfer

abouthealthcare.com

Listen to the podcast here

Angie Franks is the CEO of ABOUT, an innovative healthcare technology company, formally known as Central Logic. ABOUT is solving the problem of getting acute patients to the optimal setting of care as they move into and out of the hospital and then to a post-acute facility or their own home.

Angie explains, "Well, a big contributor to physician burnout is really all of the work. I would call it almost unnecessary friction and noise in their day-to-day jobs. So if we take a use case that ABOUT solves every day for health systems across the country, it is addressing the problem of interfacility patient transfers."

"When our solution is not in place, the noise and the friction on the clinical staff at the accepting location is tremendous."

"All of this noise to get the decision made is just extra work sitting on clinicians' plates that can be handled in a centralized hub, a support service hub on behalf of the health system. We can take all of that work and all of that noise so that the clinicians inside the hospital system can focus on taking care of the patients under their charge while the access center, which operates as a centralized hub and shared service center for the entire health system, can take all of those calls."

"Well, much of this process operates like the 1960s with sticky notes, whiteboards, post-it notes, phone calls, nurses writing information on their hands, and making a lot of calls."

@About_est2005 #Hospitals #InterfacilityPatientTransfer

abouthealthcare.com

Download the transcript here