Empowered Patient Podcast

Shauna Sweeney, Founder of tendercare, aims to assist caregivers with digital tools and expert support to simplify the process of caring for an aging family member. Recognizing the essential role of caregivers in the quality of life of the patient, tendercare provides a user-friendly interface that incorporates data from wearables and remote sensors to identify early warning signs of risks, help coordinate care, and encourage proactive preparation. The Magic Magnet feature allows caregivers and emergency responders to quickly update and share critical health information.

Shauna explains, "This is not just a gendered issue. We have 54 million just Americans, if we keep it to the US, who are currently providing unpaid family care. This usually takes the form of anything from looking through bills, managing medications, renewing prescriptions, coordinating doctors' visits, and all other visits. Often, we find that those who are on our platform are the eldest child. So whether that's a daughter or a son, this is the type of person who is often leaning in to help. What is generally a parent or a grandparent who may or may not have the ability or the means to be able to get themselves to the doctor's appointments or pick up their prescriptions themselves, for instance."

"Up until now, a lot of this has actually been human-powered. So, sitting down at the kitchen table with Mom and going through the mail to determine what needs to be paid by what time, but increasingly, because so many of us are living farther apart from one another, this is becoming more and more complicated. There is a level of coordination that we're all doing with one another, but we're often doing it over text. We're doing it over email, we're doing it over shared accounts and passwords. And so it's getting a lot more complicated, which is really where tendercare dropped in to try and help simplify a lot of this experience that so many of us are walking through right now."

#Trytendercare #DigitalHealth #CareGiving #CareGivingTech #SmartCare #AginginPlace #HealthEquity

trytendercare.com

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Shauna Sweeney, Founder of tendercare, aims to assist caregivers with digital tools and expert support to simplify the process of caring for an aging family member. Recognizing the essential role of caregivers in the quality of life of the patient, tendercare provides a user-friendly interface that incorporates data from wearables and remote sensors to identify early warning signs of risks, help coordinate care, and encourage proactive preparation. The Magic Magnet feature allows caregivers and emergency responders to quickly update and share critical health information.

Shauna explains, "This is not just a gendered issue. We have 54 million just Americans, if we keep it to the US, who are currently providing unpaid family care. This usually takes the form of anything from looking through bills, managing medications, renewing prescriptions, coordinating doctors' visits, and all other visits. Often, we find that those who are on our platform are the eldest child. So whether that's a daughter or a son, this is the type of person who is often leaning in to help. What is generally a parent or a grandparent who may or may not have the ability or the means to be able to get themselves to the doctor's appointments or pick up their prescriptions themselves, for instance."

"Up until now, a lot of this has actually been human-powered. So, sitting down at the kitchen table with Mom and going through the mail to determine what needs to be paid by what time, but increasingly, because so many of us are living farther apart from one another, this is becoming more and more complicated. There is a level of coordination that we're all doing with one another, but we're often doing it over text. We're doing it over email, we're doing it over shared accounts and passwords. And so it's getting a lot more complicated, which is really where tendercare dropped in to try and help simplify a lot of this experience that so many of us are walking through right now."

#Trytendercare #DigitalHealth #CareGiving #CareGivingTech #SmartCare #AginginPlace #HealthEquity

trytendercare.com

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Karen Sussman Horgan is the Co-Founder and CEO of VAL Health, a behavioral economics consulting firm that helps healthcare organizations drive engagement and nudge patients to improve their health and lifestyle choices. Behavioral economics is the science of understanding how patients make irrational choices based on biases, fear, and faulty analysis of outcomes and risk. Nudges can be carrots or sticks, but in healthcare, the focus is on making the right path easier to follow, reducing friction, and introducing positive reinforcements rather than penalties.

Karen explains, "We work across the entire healthcare ecosystem. We think about digital health companies, how do you drive enrollment and engagement, and how do you optimize the journey? There are communications for that. We do a lot of work with payers, which is closing gaps in care, but also just improving the member experience in general with providers. It could be around provider adoption of new care pathways, but it's also about population health. We work with employers on wellness programs and pharma on that adherence. So think about where information alone isn't driving people to think about their health or take care of themselves. We create the nudges to help make that happen."

"It's the science of understanding that we as humans are irrational. We have a bias toward the present. We have an aversion to loss and regret. We overweight probability. There are dozens of known biases, and what we do is harness them rather than asking people to change their biases. So let me give you a few examples to bring this to light because right now people are probably like, What is a bias? So think about Netflix when you watch an episode. First of all, you have choice overload when you get there. So it's giving you recommendations, but it also defaults you into the next episode because it plays on the fact that we have a status quo bias, and we're lazy, and we're just going to sit there and binge-watch. "

#VALHealth #BehavioralEconomics #BehavioralScience #BehaviorChange #DigitalHealth #Payers #HealthcareInnovation #HealthcareConsulting

valhealth.com

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Karen Sussman Horgan is the Co-Founder and CEO of VAL Health, a behavioral economics consulting firm that helps healthcare organizations drive engagement and nudge patients to improve their health and lifestyle choices. Behavioral economics is the science of understanding how patients make irrational choices based on biases, fear, and faulty analysis of outcomes and risk. Nudges can be carrots or sticks, but in healthcare, the focus is on making the right path easier to follow, reducing friction, and introducing positive reinforcements rather than penalties.

Karen explains, "We work across the entire healthcare ecosystem. We think about digital health companies, how do you drive enrollment and engagement, and how do you optimize the journey? There are communications for that. We do a lot of work with payers, which is closing gaps in care, but also just improving the member experience in general with providers. It could be around provider adoption of new care pathways, but it's also about population health. We work with employers on wellness programs and pharma on that adherence. So think about where information alone isn't driving people to think about their health or take care of themselves. We create the nudges to help make that happen."

"It's the science of understanding that we as humans are irrational. We have a bias toward the present. We have an aversion to loss and regret. We overweight probability. There are dozens of known biases, and what we do is harness them rather than asking people to change their biases. So let me give you a few examples to bring this to light because right now people are probably like, What is a bias? So think about Netflix when you watch an episode. First of all, you have choice overload when you get there. So it's giving you recommendations, but it also defaults you into the next episode because it plays on the fact that we have a status quo bias, and we're lazy, and we're just going to sit there and binge-watch. "

#VALHealth #BehavioralEconomics #BehavioralScience #BehaviorChange #DigitalHealth #Payers #HealthcareInnovation #HealthcareConsulting

valhealth.com

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Christine Lee, Head of Health Strategy and Partnerships at AnalyticsIQ, focuses on helping healthcare brands and pharmaceutical companies better understand and engage with healthcare providers by taking into account data beyond their professional lives. This data-driven Provider as a Person approach analyzes the healthcare professional's personal characteristics, outside interests, decision-making style, and preferred method of communication. The goal is to foster more meaningful relationships with providers, address provider burnout, and improve patient outcomes.

Christine explains, "We're coming into play here in supporting healthcare brands and better understanding the providers as people. As I mentioned, we're a people-based data company. I'd say that in an era where data is abundant and there is no shortage of health data being gathered and analyzed. So, you've got a lot of data assets out there that are coming from clinical trials, your real-world evidence, claims data, your electronic health records, all of which give insight into the aspects of a provider from a clinical setting. Traditionally, healthcare providers have been viewed primarily through the lens of their professional lives, their specialties, their role in patient care, prescription-writing behaviors, and even their affiliations. And these are super important factors. We do see those truly as table stakes, but they paint an incomplete picture."

"Providers, like patients, have unique lives, needs, and preferences, which really shape how they interact with the work they do and the brands they seek to engage with. The industry is really recognizing these nuances, which presents a unique opportunity for healthcare brands to acknowledge the complexity of the providers' lives beyond what you could say are their white coat moments, and differentiate their message. And so this can dig into driving more meaningful engagement. And for us here at AnalyticsIQ, we're focused on helping to understand healthcare providers, or HCPs, more broadly, and understanding some of their personal characteristics. So, the data we're bringing to the table to complement all the other data in the ecosystem will be things like considering their work-life balance."

#AnalyticsIQ #HealthcareData #HealthcareAnalytics #HealthTech #HCPengagement #PatientExperience #ValueBasedCare #PersonalizedCare #HealthEquity #SDOH #HealthcarePrivacy #PatientData

analytics-iq.com

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Christine Lee, Head of Health Strategy and Partnerships at AnalyticsIQ, focuses on helping healthcare brands and pharmaceutical companies better understand and engage with healthcare providers by taking into account data beyond their professional lives. This data-driven Provider as a Person approach analyzes the healthcare professional's personal characteristics, outside interests, decision-making style, and preferred method of communication. The goal is to foster more meaningful relationships with providers, address provider burnout, and improve patient outcomes.

Christine explains, "We're coming into play here in supporting healthcare brands and better understanding the providers as people. As I mentioned, we're a people-based data company. I'd say that in an era where data is abundant and there is no shortage of health data being gathered and analyzed. So, you've got a lot of data assets out there that are coming from clinical trials, your real-world evidence, claims data, your electronic health records, all of which give insight into the aspects of a provider from a clinical setting. Traditionally, healthcare providers have been viewed primarily through the lens of their professional lives, their specialties, their role in patient care, prescription-writing behaviors, and even their affiliations. And these are super important factors. We do see those truly as table stakes, but they paint an incomplete picture."

"Providers, like patients, have unique lives, needs, and preferences, which really shape how they interact with the work they do and the brands they seek to engage with. The industry is really recognizing these nuances, which presents a unique opportunity for healthcare brands to acknowledge the complexity of the providers' lives beyond what you could say are their white coat moments, and differentiate their message. And so this can dig into driving more meaningful engagement. And for us here at AnalyticsIQ, we're focused on helping to understand healthcare providers, or HCPs, more broadly, and understanding some of their personal characteristics. So, the data we're bringing to the table to complement all the other data in the ecosystem will be things like considering their work-life balance."

#AnalyticsIQ #HealthcareData #HealthcareAnalytics #HealthTech #HCPengagement #PatientExperience #ValueBasedCare #PersonalizedCare #HealthEquity #SDOH #HealthcarePrivacy #PatientData

analytics-iq.com

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Francisco Salva, President and CEO of Azitra, Inc., is leveraging the microbial bacteria that comprise the skin microbiome and exploring novel methods to deliver precision medicines to the skin. Azitra has genetically engineered specific strains of these microbes to produce proteins that are missing in patients with skin conditions like Netherton syndrome and cancer therapy-associated rashes. These bacterial strains have the ability to get beneath the stratum corneum and turn into miniature factories to make the therapeutic proteins and help the skin return to homeostasis.

Francisco explains, "We're leveraging the billions of microbial bacteria that naturally live on us and are synergistic with our skin to help keep our skin in homeostasis or a regulated standard of existence. These bacteria makeup that are known as the skin microbiome, we have built up a library of these microbial bacteria strains commonly found on normal people and characterize them in a way that allows us to look for specific strains that may be able to deliver special proteins that may be missing or aberrantly made in the skin."

"What we're leveraging is that microbial strain's ability to get past the outer protective layer of the skin called the stratum corneum. And these microbial strains get through that outer layer through intermittent spaces between the hair and that outer skin layer, the stratum corneum, and are able to get underneath the stratum corneum, grow, multiply, and colonize. And so by genetically engineering specific strains of these microbes, we're able to synthetically, or also known as recombinantly, make proteins that are missing in the patient's skin."

"It's a little bit newer than the gut microbiome, and the field of study is also a little bit newer. And so the development of the understanding of the microbiome, which is what they call the defined consortia of various strains that normally live on us, is not quite as well elucidated as it is in the gut microbiome. That said, our mission at Azitra isn't to try to reset the entire regulation of the entire skin microbiome, but really just leverage specific strains of these bacteria that have the ability to get underneath that external layer of the skin."

#RareDisease #OrphanDisease #Dermatology #SkinDisease #SkinDisorder #PrecisionsMedicine #PrecisionDermatology #PrecisionDerm #Netherton #NethertonSyndrome #Ichthyosis #CancerRash #EGFRiRash #EGFRiTreament

azitrainc.com

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Francisco Salva, President and CEO of Azitra, Inc., is leveraging the microbial bacteria that comprise the skin microbiome and exploring novel methods to deliver precision medicines to the skin. Azitra has genetically engineered specific strains of these microbes to produce proteins that are missing in patients with skin conditions like Netherton syndrome and cancer therapy-associated rashes. These bacterial strains have the ability to get beneath the stratum corneum and turn into miniature factories to make the therapeutic proteins and help the skin return to homeostasis.

Francisco explains, "We're leveraging the billions of microbial bacteria that naturally live on us and are synergistic with our skin to help keep our skin in homeostasis or a regulated standard of existence. These bacteria makeup that are known as the skin microbiome, we have built up a library of these microbial bacteria strains commonly found on normal people and characterize them in a way that allows us to look for specific strains that may be able to deliver special proteins that may be missing or aberrantly made in the skin."

"What we're leveraging is that microbial strain's ability to get past the outer protective layer of the skin called the stratum corneum. And these microbial strains get through that outer layer through intermittent spaces between the hair and that outer skin layer, the stratum corneum, and are able to get underneath the stratum corneum, grow, multiply, and colonize. And so by genetically engineering specific strains of these microbes, we're able to synthetically, or also known as recombinantly, make proteins that are missing in the patient's skin."

"It's a little bit newer than the gut microbiome, and the field of study is also a little bit newer. And so the development of the understanding of the microbiome, which is what they call the defined consortia of various strains that normally live on us, is not quite as well elucidated as it is in the gut microbiome. That said, our mission at Azitra isn't to try to reset the entire regulation of the entire skin microbiome, but really just leverage specific strains of these bacteria that have the ability to get underneath that external layer of the skin."

#RareDisease #OrphanDisease #Dermatology #SkinDisease #SkinDisorder #PrecisionsMedicine #PrecisionDermatology #PrecisionDerm #Netherton #NethertonSyndrome #Ichthyosis #CancerRash #EGFRiRash #EGFRiTreament

azitrainc.com

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Dr. Quyen Nguyen, CEO and Founder of Alume Biosciences, is developing fluorescent-guided precision surgery technologies that enable surgeons to visualize critical structures, such as nerves, blood vessels, and tumor margins, more clearly during procedures. Alume is developing fluorescent dyes and imaging systems to support this approach, building on work by Roger Tsien who won the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. This technology has the potential to enable more complex surgical procedures to be performed safely in brain, head, neck, and abdominal surgeries and has the promise to transform surgery.

Quyen elaborates, "I first met Roger Tsien Nobel Laureate for his work in fluorescence, in 2001. I had worked with green fluorescent protein, one of the things that he was working on for fluorescence, and he ultimately was awarded the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. And I asked him, 'Roger, is there a way we can make nerves fluorescent in patients? We certainly have that in research, but surgeons don't have this tool now.' And he said, 'What, no one's done that yet?' And so that's the beginning of our story together. I see that the use of fluorescence is going to be transformative in the field of surgery. Who wants to turn off the light and see if surgeons can see and operate in the dark? So I feel like fluorescence is just another level of light that allows you to see structures more precisely."

"Of course, you want to see structures more precisely so you can continue to carry on your work, tumor resection, reconstructive surgery, or any other procedures that patients are undergoing. Of course, you want to see tumor margins more clearly. Of course, you want to see arteries and veins and so forth. Of all the structures that we work on, I would say that nerves are considered the holy grail of surgery, partly because they're so delicate. One or two millimeters can take away somebody's ability to have urinary continence or erectile function or the ability to smile."

#AlumeBiosciences #FluorescentGuidedSurgery #PrecisionSurgery #HeadNeckSurgery

AlumeBiosciences.com

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Dr. Quyen Nguyen, CEO and Founder of Alume Biosciences, is developing fluorescent-guided precision surgery technologies that enable surgeons to visualize critical structures, such as nerves, blood vessels, and tumor margins, more clearly during procedures. Alume is developing fluorescent dyes and imaging systems to support this approach, building on work by Roger Tsien who won the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. This technology has the potential to enable more complex surgical procedures to be performed safely in brain, head, neck, and abdominal surgeries and has the promise to transform surgery.

Quyen elaborates, "I first met Roger Tsien Nobel Laureate for his work in fluorescence, in 2001. I had worked with green fluorescent protein, one of the things that he was working on for fluorescence, and he ultimately was awarded the Nobel Prize for fluorescence. And I asked him, 'Roger, is there a way we can make nerves fluorescent in patients? We certainly have that in research, but surgeons don't have this tool now.' And he said, 'What, no one's done that yet?' And so that's the beginning of our story together. I see that the use of fluorescence is going to be transformative in the field of surgery. Who wants to turn off the light and see if surgeons can see and operate in the dark? So I feel like fluorescence is just another level of light that allows you to see structures more precisely."

"Of course, you want to see structures more precisely so you can continue to carry on your work, tumor resection, reconstructive surgery, or any other procedures that patients are undergoing. Of course, you want to see tumor margins more clearly. Of course, you want to see arteries and veins and so forth. Of all the structures that we work on, I would say that nerves are considered the holy grail of surgery, partly because they're so delicate. One or two millimeters can take away somebody's ability to have urinary continence or erectile function or the ability to smile."

#AlumeBiosciences #FluorescentGuidedSurgery #PrecisionSurgery #HeadNeckSurgery

AlumeBiosciences.com

Download the transcript here