Healthcare Weekly: At the Forefront of Healthcare Innovation

Today’s guest is Kali Durgampudi, chief technology and innovation officer at Greenway Health, a leading health information technology and services provider. He is working on Project Polaris, a technology which uses machine learning, AI, and natural language processing to save doctors time, increase their productivity, and improve patient satisfaction.

This technology functions as a next generation electronic medical record, which reduces physician burden through machine learning that allows the doctor to focus more on the patient and less on paperwork. The interaction between patient and doctor will be recorded with patient consent, where the speech is converted to text and that text is converted to data.

The goal with this technology is to reduce the amount of time physicians have to spend on documentation, as well as schedule follow-up appointments, send referrals, and order prescriptions. Long-term goals are to completely eliminate the need for doctors to complete documentation themselves, as well as scale all benefits to continue even if there is no physical interaction between patient and doctor.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

How interaction will work between patient and doctor using this technology and its role in patient satisfaction

The level of technology currently on the market

How patient consent will work

Common objections to machine learning and AI and their rebuttals

How machine learning can be integrated with telemedicine

Where Kali sees the healthcare industry in the next decade

Today’s guest is Nate Pelzer, founder of Clinify. Clinify is a cloud-based health analytics platform that combines socioeconomic factors with applied health signals and machine learning, allowing providers to improve patient outcomes through enhanced communication and personalized care.

Clinify uses a combination of data points and facts given directly by the patient regarding the state of their health and socioeconomic situation, giving providers a better understanding of their needs from a clinical and social perspective. With a focus on the most common and chronic conditions, providers are able to see through the noise and offer individualized care.

Providers using the Clinify platform have seen a decrease in no-shows and ER readmissions, and an improvement in preventative care as well as in-clinic patient experience. Through the promotion of health and wellness plans individualized for each patient’s socioeconomic situation, Clinify helps providers offer the best care possible, especially for those in underserved areas.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

The ties between patient health outcomes and socioeconomic factors

Accounting for bias in a health setting

Patient engagement methods

The dangers of overreliance solely on older data

The benefits of partnering with third party agencies to deliver care

The positive impact on quality of care through leveraging technological and data-based solutions

Lesser known correlations between certain conditions and socioeconomic factors

Learn more about Clinify by visiting: https://www.clinifyhealth.com/

In this episode, Codrin Arsene is joined by Kevin Costa. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Novoheart, a company that creates three-dimensional heart constructs which drug manufacturers can use to test out various drugs and treatments.

The current drug development process can take ten years or more to complete. Kevin describes this very inefficient process and the costs incurred by manufacturers. He talks about the inaccurate results that testing animals provides and Novoheart’s offering of a much more reliable solution.

The potential impact on medicine and healthcare by developing heart constructs that are specific to an individual patient is enormous. Kevin says that right now the costs may be prohibitive but explains that it is completely doable.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

How Novoheart works and how they build their hearts

Experiments and tests that are happening with Novoheart today

Recent studies published by Novoheart

Questions from scientists that Novoheart could address

How specific the human tissue construct can be

Limitations in this field

Today’s guest is Neri Lavi. He serves as Managing Director in the United States for Qualitest, the largest quality engineering company in the world. In the US, most of Qualitest’s business activities revolve around the healthcare industry.

Neri describes what to know before testing a device for V&V approval. He talks about the most common challenges that device manufacturers have to deal with, paying special attention to documentation and access. We also learn about the different areas that AI can be used in.

In today's Healthcare Weekly episode, Neri talks about the three groups in healthcare that can benefit from testing through the use of artificial intelligence. He explains how AI can help with QA testing and takes us through relevant examples before giving his thoughts on data breaches in the medical industry.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

An overview of Qualitest

Common challenges faced by medical device manufacturers

How artificial intelligence is leveraged in quality testing

The usefulness of machine learning for the QA discipline

Artificial intelligence use cases for healthcare solutions

Common software development mistakes that lead to data breaches

Underlying technologies that help companies get better at testing

Today we're chatting with Rajiv Kumar, Chief Medical Officer and President of the Virgin Pulse Institute.

Virgin Pulse is the largest employee heath and well-being company in the world. They have a high-tech approach to engaging employees who work for large corporations to prevent health issues.

Virgin Pulse has taken health and well-being and boiled it down to what Rajiv believes is the root of everything they want to accomplish. This root is the daily routine of employees, and Rajiv explains how Virgin Pulse influences this to improve lives. He also gives insight to the platform the company has built to deliver this information.

There are three compelling pieces that Virgin Pulse has implemented in their platform that retain users, and Rajiv reveals what they are. He says that Virgin Pulse has been able to demonstrate meaningful outcomes year after year, which has allowed them to cultivate the sizable customer base that they have.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

The alignment of Virgin Pulse’s mission and its conglomerate

How the company is able to keep employees happy and healthy

Sharing data points with physicians and employers

Usage rates of the Virgin Pulse platform

Measurable impacts that Virgin Pulse has on employees

Generational differences in data

Participation rate variation between genders

Virgin Pulse’s acquisition of SimplyWell

Today’s podcast guest is Jared Taylor. He is the CEO and co-founder of BlocHealth, which is a blockchain-based healthcare company taking on the licensing and credentialing process in the industry. BlocHealth has created a solution that will streamline this entire process.

BlocHealth leverages a universal common application and blockchain technology to make the process go much faster without sacrificing security. Jared shares the roles of these two aspects and provides an explanation of how they work together to relieve healthcare providers of somewhat tedious activities.

Getting providers to update their information readily is tough, but BlocHealth makes this easy by alerting them when licenses expire. Reducing incomplete applications along with getting applications back faster are areas where Jared believes BlocChain can alter the healthcare landscape for the better.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

How BlocHealth works and its desired outcome

The biggest challenges of healthcare in the United States

Verification in the healthcare industry

Gaps in legislation that need to be overcome by BlocHealth

The value proposition of BlocHealth

Cost reduction while staying aligned with policies

The current status of BlocHealth

Obstacles faced by the whole blockchain industry

Matt Johnson is the CEO of EarlySense and our guest in this podcast episode. The company makes a contact-free continuous patient monitor that turns any bed into a smart bed. Their clients are typically hospitals and nursing facilities, along with some home applications, too.

In a typical day at a hospital, heart and respiratory rates are collected from patients about six times per day. EarlySense can collect this data twice per second, giving an earlier indication of patient deterioration that allows nurses and doctors to react quickly.

The goal of EarlySense’s work in reducing deterioration events and improving patient outcomes is to make hospital care more predictable. From this, hospitals will perform much better overall. Matt hopes that within a few years, unmonitored beds will be on every hospital’s list of problems to solve.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

What EarlySense does

Data points that are collected from patients by EarlySense

How a home-use experiment of EarlySense went

Study results that support the use of EarlySense

Hospitals being able to make more money by complying with Medicare

EarlySense’s partnership with Hill-Rom

Where Matt sees his company and the industry going in five years

Rimidi is a digital health company that provides software and clinical analytics for chronic disease management. The CEO of Rimidi, Josh Claman, is on the podcast today to educate us about the platform.

Healthcare is currently a reactive system that is episodic and in-clinic. To manage chronic diseases effectively, Josh insists that we need to move towards an approach that virtualizes healthcare and delivers it to where the patient is. He explains how Rimidi can accomplish this.

Rimidi does not want to further fragment healthcare. They don’t want an app that just cares for hypertension or diabetes; they want to treat patients as patients. Josh tells us how higher-risk patients with multiple issues can be treated holistically.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

Rimidi’s mission to reshape healthcare

Success that Josh has seen when Rimidi is used

Addressing patient compliance and adherence to medical protocol

Creating a partnership with Lilly

Servicing the cardiovascular disease market with Rimidi

The lack of integration between certain technological solutions

Other areas that Josh thinks can be improved in healthcare

Zain Rana, the CEO of Pharmeum, joins the podcast in this episode. Pharmeum claims to be the first blockchain company in artificial intelligence solutions for healthcare.

Zain tells us that Pharmeum is trying to create a more intelligent healthcare system. By doing so, patients will be able to access healthcare more affordably through their smartphone anywhere in the world. He educates us on why blockchain is useful in this application.

Doctors often face challenges when identifying patients on a global level. Furthermore, accessing and transferring patient records is another difficult task. Zain discusses how blockchain can make both of these processes much easier.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

How Pharmeum works and who it is intended for

Medical errors that can be reduced by using Pharmeum

The application of blockchain in this use case

The steps to become a part of the Pharmeum network

Information blocking and patient identification

Algorithms that Pharmeum is utilizing

Sources of collecting patient data

Pharmeum’s push for change in the healthcare industry

Dan Malven is today’s podcast guest. He is the Managing Director at 4490 Ventures, an investment group out of Madison, Wisconsin.

Investments that involve piecing data together have been of high interest to Dan as of late. He explains what this process looks like and comments on FDA-approved algorithms. Another investment that Dan is excited about features a new way to pay for healthcare patients.

When trying to get a consumer to change their behavior, the new solution must be drastically better than the status quo. This hurdle can be a bit easier to overcome when selling directly to businesses, which leads Dan into his thoughts on increasing margin power.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

* Companies that 4490 Ventures has invested in.

* Dealing with the FDA.

* Selection criteria for investments at 4490 Ventures.

* What venture capitalists care the most when investing in healthcare startups.