Improve Healthcare

In this episode, I welcomed a successful pharma colleague from the United Kingdom - Ms. Janice MacLennan as we discuss ‘Implementing successful pharma brand strategies post-COVID’.

 Janice MacLennan has more than 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry helping pharma brands take new drugs and therapies to market, and ensuring successful sales strategies. She is the founder of an app called NMBLR, the first digital solution that enables global teams to create informed, coherent and aligned strategies.

 Janice graduated and worked as a pharmacist in Cape Town, South Africa before moving to England and entering the world of pharmaceutical sales. Within her six months in this role at Beechams, she was promoted to Brand Manager. She has risen to the top of the industry and in 1991 founded St Clair - a brand strategy consultancy for life science businesses. 

 Following 30 years hands-on experience in the industry, in February 2022 is launching NMBLR.

Janice, lives in Highgate in London but works Internationally.

More about Janice

• Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Janice Mclennan of NMBLR On The 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned From Her Experience
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In this episode  Primary Care Innovator and Executive Coach from England, Dr. Robert Varnam shares his insights into what is needed to unleash greater potential in primary care.

Dr. Robert Varnam is a general practitioner (GP) in inner city Manchester, a strategist for change and a leadership coach. His background is in researching and leading quality improvement. Over the last decade, he has been a leader at the forefront of National Health Service, England policy for integrated care, primary care transformation and improvement leadership. Most recently he worked as national Director of Primary Care Improvement at NHS England and NHS Improvement. Currently he provides hands-on support to leaders, particularly in health care and community development. He remains passionate about supporting leaders and teams to improve what they do without working harder with interest both in small and large scale change.

A few of his noteworthy accomplishments include:

• Leadership across Manchester, helping to catalyze partnerships between the NHS and local government for public health.

• At the University of Manchester, he worked in the National Primary Care Research & Development Centre. His research focused on staff wellbeing, quality of care and patient safety, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. He helped establish a new system of research governance in the University.

 • At the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement he helped create and deliver new QI programmes for general practice, improving safety, quality and productivity. His role as an advisor to the English government on integrated care as part of the NHS Future Forum, and supported NHS England to create the support and assessment framework for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).  He designed and led a new large scale change leadership programme for system leaders which was made available to every CCG. At the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) he led developments in policy, practice accreditation, quality awards and establishment of the Royal College of General Practitioner Centre for Commissioning.

 • At NHS England he contributed to the NHS Five Year Forward, the General Practice Forward View and the NHS Long Term Plan. He established Time for Care, one of the world’s largest primary care innovation programmes, overseeing new investment of £130m pounds.

robertvarnam.coach

In this episode, Goodroot CEO Mike Waterbury shares his innovative approaches to medical and pharmacy cost transformation; living up to his title as the "10th Man in Healthcare"; He gives his insights into tackling medical debt as well as other hot topics!

Michael Waterbury is founder and Chief Executive Officer of  Goodroot , a community of companies reinventing healthcare one system at a time.

For over 25 years Mike has studied the healthcare system from the inside out. He advanced from a financial role to an executive leadership role at Oxford Health Plans, and then Magellan Health Services. While at Magellan, Mike pioneered the integration of ICORE Healthcare, a company focused on solving specialty pharmacy challenges, and the development of a new medical pharmacy program.

Mike was inspired to become an entrepreneur and create a company that could change pharmacy rebates and formularies for the better. In 2015, he founded RemedyOne, which became the first Goodroot company. Now 6 companies strong, Goodroot is a community of companies committed to reinventing healthcare one system at a time. That team has created a passionate culture Mike is proud of, and has produced outcomes that have changed thousands of lives for the better by saving over $800M in healthcare costs. Mike continues to free and amplify talent to join the Goodroot cause working towards a goal of saving the healthcare system $30 billion in the next five years. 

Recent articles by Mike

• Let's stop calling it medical 'debt' in Fierce Healthcare
• High-deductible health plans are causing medical debt. It’s time to fix them. in BenefitsPRO
• 4 Actions Business Leaders Can Take Today to Stop Medical Debt in Real Leaders
• 5 changes that need to be made to improve the overall US healthcare system in Thrive 
• Warren Buffett Tried to Kill the 'Tapeworm' of Healthcare Costs But Couldn't Do It. Maybe Entrepreneurs Can. in Entrepreneur

In this episode, I had a great conversation with seasoned thought-leader and physician on healthcare delivery. Dr. Zema shares his wisdom from years of practice including insights for how to improve the care delivery system; as well as a preview of his exciting new book:
“Modern Healthcare Delivery, Deliverance or Debacle – A Glimpse From the Inside Out.”

Dr. Zema received his Medical Degree from Cornell University Medical College and completed his post-graduate Internal Medicine training at the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, Long Island, with subsequent Fellowships in Cardiology at that institution and The New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, NY. He is a distinguished Fellow in the American College of Physicians, American College of Cardiology, American College of Chest Physicians and the American College of Clinical Pharmacology among others, and is a Certified Physician Executive of the American Association of Physician Leadership and a Six Sigma Green Belt in Healthcare. Dr. Zema has penned numerous publications in professional medical journals and most recently has authored the book “Modern Healthcare Delivery, Deliverance or Debacle – A Glimpse From the Inside Out.”

His book can be found on Apple Books, Amazon, and Google to name a few! Enjoy!

In this episode, I speak with a national thought-leader on community driven AI and the Metaverse with Dr. Hadley.

Dr. Hadley’s expertise is in translating big data into precision medicine and digital health. He earned his PhD in genomics and computational biology while at medical school at university of Pennsylvania and he trained in clinical pathology while in residency at Stanford University. His research generates, annotates, and ultimately reasons over large multi-modal data stores to develop clinical intelligence, identify novel biomarkers and potential therapeutics for disease.
His early work at the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia resulted in a successful precision medicine clinical trial for ADHD (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02286817) for a first-in-class, non-stimulant neuromodulator to be targeted across the neuropsychiatric disease spectrum. 
As an early principal investigator at the University of California San Francisco, his laboratory was funded by the NIH Big Data to Knowledge initiative to develop the stargeo.org as an open curation resource to discover the functional genes and biological pathways that are defective in disease.

He went on to develop National Institute of Health-funded models of curation for clinical applications of digital health to more precisely screen, diagnose, and manage disease. 

He was repeatedly recognized by University of California San Francisco with various awards including the inaugural Marcus Award for Precision Medicine to develop a digital learning health system to use smartphones to screen for skin cancer as well as a pilot award in precision imaging to better screen mammograms for invasive breast cancer.

https://www.hadleylab.org/

In this episode, I spoke with a global leader in medical innovation. He shared his work around cough and innovation to help alleviate suffering for patients around the world. Hear his thoughts on a range of issues related to global health and innovation!

Dr. Peter Small is currently the Chief Medical Officer at Hyfe, pursuing his vision to make cough quantifiable and diagnostic. In the distant past he was a medical resident and chief medical resident at UCSF during the dawn of the HIV epidemic. He then moved to Stanford where he completed an Infectious Disease fellowship and spent about a decade on the faculty of Stanford’s Infectious Disease Division. During these years, he published pioneering molecular epidemiological papers that helped to shape the public health response to the resurgence of tuberculosis and seminal papers on mycobacterial genomics.

In 2002 he was one of the early employees of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where he developed their tuberculosis strategy, built the foundation’s core partnerships and country programs, hired and manage the Foundation’s TB team and oversaw a large portfolio of vaccine, drug and diagnostic product development activities. In 2011, he relocated to India where he established the foundation’s tuberculosis program in India.

In 2015 he joined Stony Brook University as the Founding Director of the University-wide Global Health Institute focused on the use of technology to delivery health care in remote Madagascar and Nepal. He continues to oversee grants and mentor students on tuberculosis research, especially in innovative ways of delivering care such as drone observed therapy.

More recently he was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow exploring a number of efforts culminating in ways to improve medication adherence and Director of Global Health Technologies at Global Health Labs (formerly Global Good) in Bellevue.

More About Hyfe AI and Dr. Small
- https://www.hyfe.ai/
- https://www.hyfe.ai/news/hyfe-appoints-dr-peter-small-as-chief-medical-officer

In this episode, I spoke to two leaders in the World Health Organization Eastern Mediterranean Region (WHO EMR)on COVID-19 in terms of insights for preparedness, challenges and lessons learned among the vast and diverse countries of the area!

Dr. Hamid Ravaghi is currently working as Regional Advisor for Hospital Care and Management in WHO/ Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, Cairo, Egypt. Hamid has a PhD degree in Health Policy and management from the University of York, UK. He is an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Iran University of Medical Sciences. He has worked as an international consultant in the area of hospital management in different countries. Before this, he has served as hospital director, policy maker, and advisor for 20 years. He has taught in various master's and PhD programs and senior continuous education courses and published more than 60 articles. 

Merette Khalil, MPH is a multi-lingual health systems researcher, gender advocate, feminist, doula, and birth educator, passionate about ensuring the right to health for all.  Merette works as a consultant with the Hospital Care Management Team at the WHO Regional Office in Cairo supporting hospitals responses to COVID-19 and health systems strengthening to achieve universal health coverage. She is also the founder and CEO of YourEgyptianDoula working to improve high-quality, rights-based, women-centered, respectful maternal care in Egypt and the region. 

Katie Caspero, MS, OTR/L is the founder of OT Graphically where she uses infographics to helps researchers share their work, supports occupational therapists with staying up to date on evidence, and empowers clients to be more engaged in their care. Katie describes herself as an entrepreneur, pediatric occupational therapist (OT), research assistant, and knowledge translator.
Bio: Katie is currently completing her Advanced Practice Certificate in Implementation of Evidence in Clinical Practice at The University of Pittsburgh. She has been a research assistant for over 8 years and a clinical OT for 6 years and shares a passion for combining research and the real world of OT practice. Katie created OT Graphically in 2020 and had the idea growing three years prior. Katie's work focuses on taking complex topics and synthesizing them down into easy-to-understand visuals, especially of research articles. OT Graphically creates graphic designs, consults with researchers and universities, and has a membership for clinicians that gives access to a library of infographics to helps them stay up-to-date quickly. She is an avid hiker and photographer along with her design skills and absolutely loves being an entrepreneur.

Website: www.otgraphically.com
Blog for researchers with additional resources: https://www.otgraphically.com/research-blog

Schedule a free, 15-minute consultation for your knowledge translation project by emailing Katie at
[email protected]

In commemoration of World Patient Safety Day 2021, I welcomed a special guest and colleague from Cairo Egypt Ms Merette Khalil to enlighten us about Doulas, Obstetric Violence and Respectful Birth!

Merette Khalil, MScPH [she/her] is a multi-lingual health systems researcher, gender and sexual reproductive health and rights advocate, feminist, doula, and birth educator, passionate about ensuring the right to health for all. Merette is specialist on obstetric violence with her Master of Science in Public Health from the KIT Royal Tropical Institute. She has published her research on obstetric violence in Egypt and the Region, in book chapters and peer-reviewed publications, most recently in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Merette is also the founder and CEO of YourEgyptianDoula, the first doula organization of its kind in Egypt and the Region working to educate, advocate, and empower expecting parents on their rights in childbirth to improve quality of respectful maternal care. Merette works at the WHO Regional Office in Cairo as a consultant on COVID-19 response, gender equity, and health systems strengthening focusing on achieving universal health coverage, protecting marginalized and vulnerable populations, and advancing global health security.  

Learn more at https://youregyptiandoula.com/

I had the privilege speaking on an important social determinant of health - Youth Homelessness with  Ms. Julianne Hanckel, Director of Communications and Marketing at Lifeworks!

Julianne leads a multi-million dollar fundraising and public awareness campaign to end youth homelessness in Austin. She is a proud graduate of Howard University in Washington D.C., using her skills, experience, and education to tell stories in a creative, compassionate, equitable, and appealing way. As a reporter, she earned multiple first-place journalism awards for her feature and breaking news stories. She has earned an official proclamation from the Mayor of Austin and have increased opportunities to inform policy and advocacy around youth homelessness in Austin and across the state of Texas.

Originally from Amherst, New Hampshire, she enjoys outdoor activities including: ocean swimming and seafood delicacies found in New England such as hot lobster and oysters.