Raise the Line

There's a relatively small number of people who have had the opportunity to create a medical school from the ground up, which is why today’s Raise the Line guest, Dr. Robert Hasty, is particularly interesting to talk to because he’s had that chance three times. Currently, he is involved in launching one of the nation's newest medical schools, the Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine, in one of its fastest growing areas, Central Florida. “I think one of the things I've learned is that everything is incredibly connected at a medical school -- the facility, the curriculum, the culture, the clinical rotation partners...it all has to work together, so that's one of the things that we've done.” Hasty and his team have also designed a modern curriculum that’s taking a “lecture-less,” team-based, case-based, systems-based approach that interweaves clinical skills and knowledge of basic science throughout the four years. And on top of all that, given the school’s proximity to Disney World, you can see fireworks every night from campus! Join host Shiv Gaglani for this hopeful look at the cutting-edge of medical education.  

Mentioned in this episode: https://ocom.org/

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If you get nothing else from listening to this memorable episode of Raise the Line, you’ll at least have the chance to do a breathing exercise in real time along with host Shiv Gaglani and his guest, Dr. Michelle Thompson, who is triple board certified in lifestyle, integrative, and osteopathic family medicine. Dr. Thompson has come to rely on a breathing practice for her own daily wellbeing and offers to do it along with all of her patients as well as countless medical students, residents and colleagues. In fact, as a strong advocate for provider wellness, she's created full-day programs for physicians and nurses to learn tools like breathwork for resilience and self-care. “Self-care is not selfish. If we are caring for ourselves, we are more available to others,” she explains. In addition to her role as medical director of the Lifestyle Medicine Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Thompson is a national force in establishing lifestyle medicine programs in health systems across the country, as nearly 100 organizations have done.  Taking it a step further, UPMC is building a new hospital in the city that Thompson says is going to have a “lifestyle village” on the first three floors to facilitate the efforts of community members to choose healthy habits. Join us as we explore the impact lifestyle and mind-body medicine is having on patient care, employee wellness and medical education in Pittsburgh and far beyond in this perspective-shifting conversation.

Mentioned in this episode: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

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Today’s Raise the Line guest has created two new degree programs at Brown University, is a vice president and board director at one of the oldest venture capital firms in the nation, and was CEO at a groundbreaking digital healthcare company. Oh, and he’s still in his twenties.  As an investor, Morgan Cheatham -- who is also a third-year medical student at Brown University -- is applying his impressive experience, intellect and energy to the use of computation in improving patient care, and he’s encouraged by what he sees. A prime example is Abridge, a company that uses an AI audio system to capture and summarize the information patients share during appointments, allowing the doctor to focus on the patient, not on typing notes.  “A guiding light in my career has been how we take this sacred one-to-one relationship and scale it one to many, and Abridge is the company that does just that,” Cheatham tells host Shiv Gaglani, who also happens to be a successful healthcare entrepreneur and third-year medical student.  And while Cheatham is excited by the potential application of AI in healthcare, he notes that the medical community needs to move quicky to establish quality standards for its use. “How do we build the right validation benchmarks and evaluation criteria to know whether or not it is performing well?” Don’t miss this fun and fascinating conversation that also covers the necessity of embracing ambiguity, remaining curious and seeking diverse perspectives to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of healthcare and technology. 

Mentioned in this episode: Bessemer Venture Partners

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As researchers continue to explore therapeutic applications of existing psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin, there's been a parallel effort to create new compounds that produce the same beneficial effects, but that come without the lengthy protocols and regulatory obstacles attached to those currently criminalized substances. "If you could develop new molecules that were more targeted and shorter acting, you may actually be able to create medicines as potent as the existing ones, but administratively and medically more efficient so we can reach more people," says Ronan Levy, a serial entrepreneur in the space. After a foray into creating a business model for ketamine-assisted therapy, Levy is now looking to support the community of millions of people who are already using psychedelics in various capacities through his Non-Ordinary Therapy Company instead of providing the therapeutic experience directly. “Wherever you're having your psychedelic experiences, that's wonderful. We're there to help you get the maximum impact from your sessions.” Join host Shiv Gaglani for this fascinating conversation about responsibly pushing regulatory boundaries, whether hallucinatory effects are essential to therapeutic benefit, and the rapid pace of change in a field that holds the potential to, as Levy puts it, “displace most forms of mental health care currently provided.” 

Mentioned in this episode: 

Non-Ordinary Therapy Company

The Ketamine Breakthrough (book)

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Distance learning continues to grow in popularity with most college students in the U.S. now taking at least some classes online offered by hundreds of brick-and-mortar and exclusively online institutions. We’re going to learn about one of the highest ranked programs in the space today with Geordie Hyland, president and CEO of the American College of Education. One way ACE sets itself apart in a crowded field is that 85% of its students graduate with no debt, which Hyland says is reflective of the school’s mission. “ACE was founded with a key consideration about return on the students' time and financial investment so we have some of the lowest tuition in the nation, but we also provide a fully online, high-quality experience.” Check out this informative conversation with host Derek Apanovitch to learn about ACE’s programs that are tailored to address pressing staffing shortages in healthcare, its data-driven approach to student support, and the collaborative interactions it facilitates among its 10,000 students. "It's fascinating to see students from very different geographic regions be able to share ideas and collaborate," says Hyland.

Mentioned in this episode: https://ace.edu/

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Chronic stress can be at the root of everything from mental health struggles to digestive problems to heart disease.  Today on Raise the Line, we’re going to learn about a wearable device made by Apollo Neuroscience that uses gentle vibrations to help the body adjust to stress. “Apollo is based on all the same principles that music is based on. It's wearable music for your body,” explains the company’s co-founder and chief medical officer Dr. David Rabin, a neuroscientist, psychiatrist, health tech entrepreneur and inventor who has been studying the impact of chronic stress in humans for over fifteen years.  A close reading of non-Western medical practices led him to realize that, generally speaking, the focus was on reducing the “fight or flight” response and increasing our parasympathetic rest and recovery system. With that in mind, the Apollo device acts on the vagal nervous system with a gentle vibration that delivers safety signals to your skin in the form of low frequency music that you can't really hear, but you can feel. In this revealing conversation with host Shiv Gaglani, you’ll learn more about how and why Apollo works and its connection to Rabin’s interests in psychedelic-assisted therapy, the importance of safety in the provider-patient relationship, and how to effectively blend Western, Eastern and tribal approaches to medicine and healing. 

Mentioned in this episode: https://apolloneuro.com/

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You may have seen today’s guest, Dr. Raj Dasgupta, on Chasing the Cure, The Doctors, CNN or ABC News and if so, you’ll understand why he is an award-winning medical educator and a force in the field. His irrepressible enthusiasm for patient care and teaching pours out in every moment of this fun and illuminating conversation with host Shiv Gaglani. “I really have this desire to make my teaching engaging and educational at the same time. To be a good teacher, you have to change your style with the times and for who your audience is,” Dasgupta says. Beyond his work with students, residents and fellows at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the many attendees at his USMLE exam prep classes around the world over the past twenty years, Dr. Raj has touched a multitude of others through a series of books published by Elsevier that include the popular Morning Report: Beyond the Pearls and Case Reports: Beyond the Pearls. It’s a wide-ranging discussion -- he is quadruple board certified in pulmonary, critical care, sleep, and internal medicine, after all -- that offers insight on everything from licensing exams to AI to mentorship to battling burnout to the power of a smile. Don’t miss this whirlwind wisdom drop from the kind of teacher you always wish you had. 

Mentioned in this episode: The Dr. Raj Podcast

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Something as complicated as starting a medical school is bound to include unanticipated obstacles, but few schools can match the roller coaster ride of the American Canadian School of Medicine in the Commonwealth of Dominica which just welcomed its first class of students. Our Raise the Line guest, Dr. Ramin Ahmadi, along with colleagues from Yale and Penn State medical schools, had worked for years to design an innovative curriculum and train faculty for a new medical school in Kazan, Russia. Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Because of the war, we had to pull out. That was the end of the project at that point and we were all very sad,” Ahmadi tells host Shiv Gaglani. Tune in to learn how the project was given new life and how Ahmadi and his team are meeting the needs and preferences of modern students with a flipped-classroom, case-based approach to education. You’ll also hear about ACSOM’s different approach to clinical training, new model for residency programs and other innovations. And be sure to stay tuned to hear about his remarkable experiences in global health and human rights, and gain from his insights on how physicians can protect themselves from burnout.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.acsom.edu.dm

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Of the many hopeful developments in psychedelic research in recent years, perhaps the most important is that FDA approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for treating post-traumatic stress disorder appears likely within the next year. That prospect is due in no small part to our Raise the Line guest, Dr. Michael Mithoefer, who has spearheaded clinical trials of MDMA-assisted therapy for more than twenty years and is a senior leader at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Public Benefit Corporation which has led this groundbreaking research. Although he notes that FDA approval isn’t guaranteed, Mithoefer is contemplating what the practicalities will be of implementing this multi-stage therapy regimen, and he has cause for concern. “I think now the question is going to be, if it's approved, how does it fit into this medical system we have, which I think is quite dysfunctional, especially with mental health. To me, the challenge is going to be not to try to distort the treatment to fit the system,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. In this enlightening conversation, Shiv and Dr. Mithoefer discuss the need for specialized therapist training, the importance of making the therapy available regardless of ability to pay, and other potential therapeutic uses for MDMA. This is a great opportunity to hear from an important voice about the current and future state of psychedelics as a treatment modality. 

Mentioned in this episode: https://mapsbcorp.com/

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On this episode of Raise the Line, we’ll introduce you to a relatively new company in the digital health space focused on treatment-resistant mental health patients, which constitute about 30% of people in the US with a mental health diagnosis. Our guest is Jimmy Qian, the co-founder and president of Osmind, who believes mental health practitioners could benefit from a more data-driven approach. “We can't understand the biology of neuropsychiatry unless we get more and more multimodal data and work together as a scientific community to really understand how mental health even works, and that requires rethinking diagnosis and treatments from the ground up using data,” says Qian. As he tells host Shiv Gaglani, Osmind is sharing its data with researchers to help improve scientific understanding of hard-to-treat conditions and has already published two studies with Stanford, including the largest ever real-world analysis of ketamine as a treatment for depression.  Check out this informative conversation to learn how Osmind’s platform is also giving patients the opportunity to provide real-time information on how they're doing between visits and helping providers smooth out their workflow.

Mentioned in this episode: https://www.osmind.org/

If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast