Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Eugene Manley, biomedical scientist turned social impact leader and Founder and CEO of the STEMM & Cancer Health Equity Foundation, is focused on increasing STEMM workforce diversity and improving outcomes for underserved cancer patients. He highlights the lack of diversity in foundational lung cancer research and the need to expand the number of cell lines being included to develop more effective therapies. Eugene also raises concerns about barriers to clinical trial participation and the need to engage local community partners and AI to raise awareness and improve accessibility.

Eugene explains, "The SCHEQ Foundation, which is a short name for STEMM and Cancer Health Equity, is tasked with working to increase STEMM workforce diversity and improve outcomes for underserved patients navigating the cancer care continuum. This is done broadly through trying to increase STEMM access and exposure, mentorship and training programs to help students navigate career transitions, and providing information and resources to underserved patients to help them navigate and access the care they're entitled to."

"There are many paths into the medical field now. If you're trying to do particularly applied research or do things that directly impact patient outcomes, then yes, you might want to go more of a technical path. But as we mentioned, AI is the new thing on the block. It's a lot of looking at trends, variances, and differences in data, and then you can use that to predict how things may act or behave. However, the downside of this is that the data is often based on one population, one race, or ethnicity, which makes it harder to broadly generalize these results. So that's a lot of the challenges that we're seeing right now."

#SCHEQ #HealthEquity #STEMM #CancerResearch #DiversityInScience #BiomedicalResearch #ClinicalTrials #LungCancer #HealthDisparities #MedicalInnovation #SocialImpact #HealthcareAccess #PrecisionMedicine

scheq.org

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Dr. Eugene Manley, biomedical scientist turned social impact leader and Founder and CEO of the STEMM & Cancer Health Equity Foundation, is focused on increasing STEMM workforce diversity and improving outcomes for underserved cancer patients. He highlights the lack of diversity in foundational lung cancer research and the need to expand the number of cell lines being included to develop more effective therapies. Eugene also raises concerns about barriers to clinical trial participation and the need to engage local community partners and AI to raise awareness and improve accessibility.

Eugene explains, "The SCHEQ Foundation, which is a short name for STEMM and Cancer Health Equity, is tasked with working to increase STEMM workforce diversity and improve outcomes for underserved patients navigating the cancer care continuum. This is done broadly through trying to increase STEMM access and exposure, mentorship and training programs to help students navigate career transitions, and providing information and resources to underserved patients to help them navigate and access the care they're entitled to."

"There are many paths into the medical field now. If you're trying to do particularly applied research or do things that directly impact patient outcomes, then yes, you might want to go more of a technical path. But as we mentioned, AI is the new thing on the block. It's a lot of looking at trends, variances, and differences in data, and then you can use that to predict how things may act or behave. However, the downside of this is that the data is often based on one population, one race, or ethnicity, which makes it harder to broadly generalize these results. So that's a lot of the challenges that we're seeing right now."

#SCHEQ #HealthEquity #STEMM #CancerResearch #DiversityInScience #BiomedicalResearch #ClinicalTrials #LungCancer #HealthDisparities #MedicalInnovation #SocialImpact #HealthcareAccess #PrecisionMedicine

scheq.org

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Ro Wickramasinghe, Vice President and Head of Global Business at Pi Health, identifies fundamental problems plaguing clinical trials, including operational inefficiencies and limited access to trials. Pi Health is addressing these challenges by developing an integrated software platform for clinical trial sponsors, sites, and patients and partnering with community-based cancer treatment centers worldwide. The company has built a hospital in India to serve as a living laboratory to test and refine its model to democratize access and increase the ethnic diversity of trial participants.

Ro explains, "I think the challenge has always been, from a pharma-biotech perspective, is to find patients, but, from the other perspective, its patients participating in trials and being able to find clinical trials. So a lot of stats get bandied around, but despite many eligible patients, the percentage of eligible patients who actually end up in a clinical trial is really small. It's like 5% to 8%, so not a huge amount. I think that's kind of one problem."

"So we have it in chicken and egg scenario where we as a company develop clinical trial software, but when ultimately the vision for us is for that to really become the standard of care and really make trials more efficient for the clinicians that treat the patients and run the trials for these pharma companies and biotech companies that develop the drugs and sponsor the study."

"But having said that, I think to run lots of studies, what we decided to do was to build our own cancer hospital in India. And the beauty of that is that it is fully vertically integrated at the point of care. So the data gets captured on those patients in FICS, which is the software we've developed and then we can run trials. We have run trials for pharma and biotech at that site using our software. So it was, I guess, one of the quicker ways to test the software in a real-world environment and also getting lots of data on FICS and how it can benefit patients from the point of care to being on trials."

#PiHealth #ClinicalTrials #HealthTech #CancerResearch #Innovation #DigitalHealth #PharmaTech #PatientAccess #MedTech #Healthcare #ClinicalResearch #GlobalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #India

Pihealth.ai

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Ro Wickramasinghe, Vice President and Head of Global Business at Pi Health, identifies fundamental problems plaguing clinical trials, including operational inefficiencies and limited access to trials. Pi Health is addressing these challenges by developing an integrated software platform for clinical trial sponsors, sites, and patients and partnering with community-based cancer treatment centers worldwide. The company has built a hospital in India to serve as a living laboratory to test and refine its model to democratize access and increase the ethnic diversity of trial participants.

Ro explains, "I think the challenge has always been, from a pharma-biotech perspective, is to find patients, but, from the other perspective, its patients participating in trials and being able to find clinical trials. So a lot of stats get bandied around, but despite many eligible patients, the percentage of eligible patients who actually end up in a clinical trial is really small. It's like 5% to 8%, so not a huge amount. I think that's kind of one problem."

"So we have it in chicken and egg scenario where we as a company develop clinical trial software, but when ultimately the vision for us is for that to really become the standard of care and really make trials more efficient for the clinicians that treat the patients and run the trials for these pharma companies and biotech companies that develop the drugs and sponsor the study."

"But having said that, I think to run lots of studies, what we decided to do was to build our own cancer hospital in India. And the beauty of that is that it is fully vertically integrated at the point of care. So the data gets captured on those patients in FICS, which is the software we've developed and then we can run trials. We have run trials for pharma and biotech at that site using our software. So it was, I guess, one of the quicker ways to test the software in a real-world environment and also getting lots of data on FICS and how it can benefit patients from the point of care to being on trials."

#PiHealth #ClinicalTrials #HealthTech #CancerResearch #Innovation #DigitalHealth #PharmaTech #PatientAccess #MedTech #Healthcare #ClinicalResearch #GlobalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #India

Pihealth.ai

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Paul Goode, President and CEO of Glucotrack, discusses the evolution and future of continuous glucose and continuous blood glucose monitoring for people with diabetes, as well as opportunities for implantable CMG monitors. In addition to convenience and comfort, the Glucotrack implantable CGM monitor is designed to be more accurate and measure blood glucose. This approach eliminates the lag time associated with wearable CGMs that measure interstitial fluid, enabling faster, more effective treatment decisions.

Paul explains, "When you look at the market penetration of CGM in the US, even for those who are covered with insurance, because it is a standard of care in a large portion of patients with diabetes, it's still only a little over 50%. And when you try to understand why, it's because the technology works well, it's pretty accurate, and it helps patients. Market research shows that it's a collection of various reasons."

"When we realized that a large majority of the problems with use of current CGMs, whether people are using them, or people don't want to use them, a lot of these, let's call them hassle factors or discomfort factors, were because it was a wearable product. So we said, well, let's go inside the body, and that resolves almost all of those types of problems."

"Then we said, well, if we're in the body, we can also measure the glucose that's in the blood, actually measure blood glucose. Most folks don't realize that many do, but many don't, that CGM, the wearable CGMs, measure the interstitial fluid and not the actual blood glucose. And typically that's not a problem. There is a time lag between blood glucose and interstitial fluid, with interstitial fluid lagging behind anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. But that's usually only a problem during rapid rates of change, for example, when one is eating, exercising, or sick. "

#Glucotrack #DiabetesTech #MedicalDevices #ContinuousGlucoseMonitoring #HealthcareInnovation #DiabetesManagement #ImplantableTech #BloodGlucose #CGM #MedTech #DiabetesCare #HealthTech

glucotrack.com

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Paul Goode, President and CEO of Glucotrack, discusses the evolution and future of continuous glucose and continuous blood glucose monitoring for people with diabetes, as well as opportunities for implantable CMG monitors. In addition to convenience and comfort, the Glucotrack implantable CGM monitor is designed to be more accurate and measure blood glucose. This approach eliminates the lag time associated with wearable CGMs that measure interstitial fluid, enabling faster, more effective treatment decisions.

Paul explains, "When you look at the market penetration of CGM in the US, even for those who are covered with insurance, because it is a standard of care in a large portion of patients with diabetes, it's still only a little over 50%. And when you try to understand why, it's because the technology works well, it's pretty accurate, and it helps patients. Market research shows that it's a collection of various reasons."

"When we realized that a large majority of the problems with use of current CGMs, whether people are using them, or people don't want to use them, a lot of these, let's call them hassle factors or discomfort factors, were because it was a wearable product. So we said, well, let's go inside the body, and that resolves almost all of those types of problems."

"Then we said, well, if we're in the body, we can also measure the glucose that's in the blood, actually measure blood glucose. Most folks don't realize that many do, but many don't, that CGM, the wearable CGMs, measure the interstitial fluid and not the actual blood glucose. And typically that's not a problem. There is a time lag between blood glucose and interstitial fluid, with interstitial fluid lagging behind anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. But that's usually only a problem during rapid rates of change, for example, when one is eating, exercising, or sick. "

#Glucotrack #DiabetesTech #MedicalDevices #ContinuousGlucoseMonitoring #HealthcareInnovation #DiabetesManagement #ImplantableTech #BloodGlucose #CGM #MedTech #DiabetesCare #HealthTech

glucotrack.com

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Ben Backus, Chief Science Officer, and James Blaha, CEO and Founder of Vivid Vision, discuss their work addressing binocular dysfunctions and improving visual field testing. Their innovative visual test uses a consumer-grade VR headset to deliver a gamified, less stressful, more engaging experience for patients, encouraging longer, more frequent testing. This approach also improves dataset precision and overcomes barriers in clinical trials for new therapeutics for diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration, potentially accelerating the development of vision-saving treatments.

Ben explains, "Vivid Vision addresses two conditions. One of them is binocular dysfunctions, which include conditions like amblyopia, strabismus, and convergence insufficiency. And the other one that we're really focusing strongly on now is visual field testing, which is especially important to use for monitoring people who have glaucoma. It also gets used for screening tests for glaucoma, and it's an especially important part of getting new therapeutics approved for any medication that is going to try to preserve your sight. That includes macular degeneration, a particular flavor of macular degeneration, degeneration called geographic atrophy, inherited retinal diseases, diabetic retinopathy, and stroke. It's the visual field test that we are putting the majority of our effort into, but we still also treat binocular dysfunction."

James elaborates, "I originally got started, I guess, because I grew up with some binocular vision disorders. I had a lazy eye and a crossed eye, also known as strabismus and amblyopia. And I had kind of the traditional experience as a kid where I was not cooperative with the treatments, wearing my eye patch, and doing eye exercises, and that sort of thing. And I wasn't successfully treated as a kid. About 60% of the time, that's the case in the US, where kids are not successfully treated for conditions. Then, when I was older, in my mid-twenties, I got interested in this topic through a TED talk by a neuroscientist, Sue Barry. That ultimately caused me to make the first prototypes, and I was able to gain 3D vision depth perception from some of those first prototypes. And that's ultimately what caused us to start the company."

#VividVision #VRHealthcare #EyeHealth #MedicalTechnology #DigitalHealth #VisionTesting #Innovation #Glaucoma #MacularDegeneration #Amblyopia #HealthTech #VirtualReality #PatientCare #EarlyDetection #ClinicalTrials

seevividly.com

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Ben Backus, Chief Science Officer, and James Blaha, CEO and Founder of Vivid Vision, discuss their work addressing binocular dysfunctions and improving visual field testing. Their innovative visual test uses a consumer-grade VR headset to deliver a gamified, less stressful, more engaging experience for patients, encouraging longer, more frequent testing. This approach also improves dataset precision and overcomes barriers in clinical trials for new therapeutics for diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration, potentially accelerating the development of vision-saving treatments.

Ben explains, "Vivid Vision addresses two conditions. One of them is binocular dysfunctions, which include conditions like amblyopia, strabismus, and convergence insufficiency. And the other one that we're really focusing strongly on now is visual field testing, which is especially important to use for monitoring people who have glaucoma. It also gets used for screening tests for glaucoma, and it's an especially important part of getting new therapeutics approved for any medication that is going to try to preserve your sight. That includes macular degeneration, a particular flavor of macular degeneration, degeneration called geographic atrophy, inherited retinal diseases, diabetic retinopathy, and stroke. It's the visual field test that we are putting the majority of our effort into, but we still also treat binocular dysfunction."

James elaborates, "I originally got started, I guess, because I grew up with some binocular vision disorders. I had a lazy eye and a crossed eye, also known as strabismus and amblyopia. And I had kind of the traditional experience as a kid where I was not cooperative with the treatments, wearing my eye patch, and doing eye exercises, and that sort of thing. And I wasn't successfully treated as a kid. About 60% of the time, that's the case in the US, where kids are not successfully treated for conditions. Then, when I was older, in my mid-twenties, I got interested in this topic through a TED talk by a neuroscientist, Sue Barry. That ultimately caused me to make the first prototypes, and I was able to gain 3D vision depth perception from some of those first prototypes. And that's ultimately what caused us to start the company."

#VividVision #VRHealthcare #EyeHealth #MedicalTechnology #DigitalHealth #VisionTesting #Innovation #Glaucoma #MacularDegeneration #Amblyopia #HealthTech #VirtualReality #PatientCare #EarlyDetection #ClinicalTrials

seevividly.com

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Erez Druk, CEO of Freed, was motivated to bring technology to the healthcare environment based on his wife's experience as a family medicine doctor. Freed was founded to alleviate the provider's administrative burdens by leveraging AI to streamline pre-visit preparation, billing, and EHR maintenance. The focus is on small and rural private practices, giving them tools to save time, reduce costs, and maintain their independence.

Erez explains, "So the need that I identified, together with my wife Gabi, was that clinicians need more time in their lives. They want to spend less time on this admin work and more time again with their patients and families. And that was it, thinking about how we can use these new technologies and feel better products that really take care of that, help clinicians be happier and freer, hence the name Freed. Yes, super proud now to be supporting more than 25,000 clinicians who will use Freed to do a lot of this work for them. So that's how the need was identified for years of watching the pain, let's say."

"But my background is, so I studied mathematics and computer science back in Israel. So I'm originally from Israel. In the Technion, we like to think of Technion as the MIT of Israel. So I studied there as an undergrad, and then I moved to the Bay Area to work for Facebook as an engineer. I was very lucky to start on the same day on the same team with this guy named Andrey, who, 10 years later, after lots of convincing, is my co-founder and CTO. So he is the real technical brain behind what we're doing here. So I worked as an engineer and tech lead at Facebook, and then I started working in my first startup called UrbanLeap."

"And with EHR integration- I'm going a bit into the weeds here- but EHR integration is a big problem in healthcare that is mostly unsolved. So, we built an agent, which we call "EHR Push," that goes into the EHR and, like a human, finds the right fields, navigates to the right places, and puts the note and everything in the EHR for the clinician. And it's working amazingly. It saves clinicians a lot of time. And that's another example of how we apply this agentic AI to solve more and more complex problems for the clinician, keep it simple, and just save as much time as we can for clinicians."

#FreedAI #AIscribes #HealthcareAI #ClinicianBurnout #HealthTech #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareAI #MedicalDocumentation #HealthcareInnovation #DigitalHealth #PhysicianWellness #HealthcareEfficiency #MedTech

GetFreed.AI

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Erez Druk, CEO of Freed, was motivated to bring technology to the healthcare environment based on his wife's experience as a family medicine doctor. Freed was founded to alleviate the provider's administrative burdens by leveraging AI to streamline pre-visit preparation, billing, and EHR maintenance. The focus is on small and rural private practices, giving them tools to save time, reduce costs, and maintain their independence.

Erez explains, "So the need that I identified, together with my wife Gabi, was that clinicians need more time in their lives. They want to spend less time on this admin work and more time again with their patients and families. And that was it, thinking about how we can use these new technologies and feel better products that really take care of that, help clinicians be happier and freer, hence the name Freed. Yes, super proud now to be supporting more than 25,000 clinicians who will use Freed to do a lot of this work for them. So that's how the need was identified for years of watching the pain, let's say."

"But my background is, so I studied mathematics and computer science back in Israel. So I'm originally from Israel. In the Technion, we like to think of Technion as the MIT of Israel. So I studied there as an undergrad, and then I moved to the Bay Area to work for Facebook as an engineer. I was very lucky to start on the same day on the same team with this guy named Andrey, who, 10 years later, after lots of convincing, is my co-founder and CTO. So he is the real technical brain behind what we're doing here. So I worked as an engineer and tech lead at Facebook, and then I started working in my first startup called UrbanLeap."

"And with EHR integration- I'm going a bit into the weeds here- but EHR integration is a big problem in healthcare that is mostly unsolved. So, we built an agent, which we call "EHR Push," that goes into the EHR and, like a human, finds the right fields, navigates to the right places, and puts the note and everything in the EHR for the clinician. And it's working amazingly. It saves clinicians a lot of time. And that's another example of how we apply this agentic AI to solve more and more complex problems for the clinician, keep it simple, and just save as much time as we can for clinicians."

#FreedAI #AIscribes #HealthcareAI #ClinicianBurnout #HealthTech #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareAI #MedicalDocumentation #HealthcareInnovation #DigitalHealth #PhysicianWellness #HealthcareEfficiency #MedTech

GetFreed.AI

Download the transcript here