Healthy Conversations

In part two of our conversation on clinical trials, we hear from two people directly involved in the effort to expand access to clinical trials in underserved communities. “There are challenges across the board, both in getting patients into studies and also getting them to stay in studies — what’s called retention,” says our first guest, Josh Rose, Vice President and Head of Clinical Trial Delivery, Site Solutions and Strategy for Clinical Trial Services at CVS Health. He explains how his team chose the 100 MinuteClinic sites to equip for clinical trials from among the more than 1,100 locations nationwide: “We specifically picked out those locations [near] the type of patient population that we were hoping to enroll – urban areas, areas with high patient density, areas with high diversity. That helps ensure that we are getting much more representation of the broader population.”

Clinical Trial Services works with numerous trial sponsors, from large pharmaceutical companies like Moderna to smaller biotech firms like ProKidney, which is working on cell-based therapies to slow down and prevent kidney failure in order to help patients avoid the need for dialysis or a kidney transplant. Dr. Joseph Stavas, Senior Vice President of Global Clinical Development at ProKidney, explains how their innovative cell therapy approach harvests a patient’s own cells, which are then processed, formulated and reinjected. Chronic kidney disease, says Dr. Stavas, is predicted to be one of the largest global problems in the next 20 to 30 years. Their Phase 3 trial is targeting the two most common causes of chronic kidney disease — hypertension and type 2 diabetes.

Learn more

CVS Health Clinical Trial Services
ProKidney

Today, in the first of a two-part episode on increasing diversity in clinical trials, we hear from Dr. Owen Garrick, Chief Medical Officer of Clinical Trial Services at CVS Health. The unit, launched in 2021, is creating a network of clinical research sites by equipping certain HealthHUB and MinuteClinic locations with the staff and resources needed to conduct complex clinical trial protocols. The goal is to expand access to clinical trials in underserved communities and encourage a more diverse population to enroll, leading to more effective outcomes. “Historically, there has just been less diverse participation in studies,” notes Dr. Garrick. “The risk is, if we don’t solve this issue around lack of diversity in clinical trials, as we get to precision medicine, we’re only going to exacerbate health inequity.”

This new model combines precision patient recruitment from a diverse population with trial delivery and real-world evidence generation. Dr. Garrick believes it will be successful because it breaks down several of the barriers to trial participation – outreach to know a trial exists, convenience and, importantly, trust. “You already know CVS Health because you go for part of your health care, whether that’s retail prescriptions or specialty prescriptions or over-the-counter meds or MinuteClinic. So, you have this relationship that already exists,” he says. “As we introduce clinical trials and additional health care services, there’s this built-in trust.”

Learn more

CVS Health Clinical Trial Services

In part two of our conversation about the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme from England’s National Health Service, our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, continues his discussion with Dr. Tony Young, the program’s founder. They talk about a number of innovations brought about through the program, including two aimed at addressing health disparities. CardMedic uses a collection of “digital flashcards” to help improve communication between health care staff and patients across barriers ranging from physical impairment to language to PPE. And Written Medicine’s software uses human-generated translations to provide medication labels in 11 languages – and counting. To encourage innovations like these, the entrepreneur program is building a “health inequalities tool” to help potential entrepreneurs answer questions like, “Am I bringing in unconscious bias? Is this going to make health equity worse?”

In addition, Dr. Young offers a number of tips for potential physician entrepreneurs, including the importance of persistence and surrounding yourself with like-minded people. He encourages entrepreneurs to be open to change. “Don’t fall in love with your solution,” he says. “Too many people go, ‘I’ve got just the perfect answer for this,’ but it’s not. Actually, fall in love with the problem and really work that through. And then bring people onboard that share that problem and really want it solved.”

Learn more

NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme

Written Medicine

CardMedic

Clinicians are problem solvers by nature but taking an idea for a new innovation from concept to commercial market is not a skill widely taught in medical school. In 2015, England’s National Health Service (NHS) launched a Clinical Entrepreneur Programme to help provide just that type of knowledge and expertise. Our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, speaks with Dr. Tony Young, the founder of that program who is an avid entrepreneur himself. Young is helping the NHS retain some of their brightest talent by fostering an entrepreneurial spirit in his colleagues and making connections where he can. The program has trained more than 1,000 clinical entrepreneurs, who’ve founded more than 350 startups, raised more than $500 million pounds, and impacted more than 100 million patients and professionals in the UK and beyond. You’ll hear all about Dr. Young’s career journey and the incredible innovations his colleagues are bringing to operating rooms as well as remote parts of the world. However, “the greatest medical innovation of all time,” says Young, “are the people who work in our Health Services, because they help put everything into action.” 

Learn more

NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme

One in four people in the U.S. has been diagnosed with a gastrointestinal (GI) condition, says the co-founder and CEO of Oshi Health, Sam Holliday. The patient journey to diagnosis is costly and long—often two to four years—and filled with tests, examinations and waiting rooms. Oshi Health is a startup and CVS Health Ventures partner that uses an integrated virtual care model to scale access to care and innovation for patients struggling with GI diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. There’s an emerging understanding that the signaling between the gut and the brain can get dysregulated and trigger symptoms, notes Holliday. Oshi’s approach is to calm that signaling with a combination of FDA-approved digital therapeutics and a multidisciplinary care team that includes a dietician, psychologist, nurse practitioner and gastroenterologist.

Learn more

Oshi Health 

CVS Health Ventures

In Part 2 of the Healthy Conversations discussion with Dr. Brennan Spiegel, professor of medicine and public health at Cedar Sinai Health System, gastroenterologist, and VR pioneer, lets us peak into the future, and see some of the many ways VR is getting “real-er” – as he puts it: “You can experience life as someone with a disability, or as a different race, or with certain physical or visual handicaps. And that can give clinicians a bit of insight to what their patients are experiencing continuously.”

In the first of a 2-part episode on Healthy Conversations, Dr. Brennan Spiegel, a professor of medicine and public health at Cedars-Sinai Health System, gastroenterologist, and VR pioneer, discusses the exciting possibilities of virtual reality in terms of its affecting the human mind, as well as chronic diseases. As he puts it, "Rather than always bringing patients to the clinic, what if we can bring the clinic to the patient?"

In the second of a two-part episode about suicide, Dr. Seth Feuerstein, the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, discusses the exciting potential of digital therapeutics in preventing suicide.  As he says, “So we can use software to tackle problems where we already have lots of prescription options, but -- the thing that really excites me is where can we use software to solve problems that were not previously solvable.

Dr. Seth Feuerstein, the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, dispels misconceptions about suicide in the first of a 2-part episode of Healthy Conversations.

Where do things stand now in terms of COVID, Long – and even Medium COVID?  What have we learned after the past three years, and what should we, going forward?  On the latest Healthy Conversations episode, Dr. Kirsten Anderson, senior medical director for New England for Aetna and CVS Health, shares insights with Daniel, and tells why she feels the role of public health is more important than ever before now.