Raise the Line

COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on dentistry, says Eve Cuny, who has worked in the area of dental infection prevention and patient safety for the past 30 years. Many dental procedures create fine mists and sprays, including respiratory secretions, that can travel long distances, so dental professionals have had to go to great lengths to adapt. Throughout the pandemic, Cuny has been a guiding voice in dentistry, counseling a number of professional organizations, including the American Dental Association. In this episode of Raise the Line, she speaks with Jannah Amiel about the airborne precautions dentists have had to adopt, and the permanent changes to dentistry that she envisions with regard to ventilation, PPE, and sick worker protocol. Tune in to hear Cuny's take on the pandemic-driven renewal of interest in the crossover between medicine and dentistry, as dentists are increasingly performing oral diagnostics and even administering vaccines. Plus, learn what drew Cuny to dentistry and hear her advice to those new to the field.

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If you’re one of the millions of Americans who just received a smart speaker as a holiday gift, you’re joining an enormous group. Earlier this year it was estimated that 90 million people in the U.S. own one, and that number is growing fast. They offer an easy way to get news, weather, listen to music and control functions in your home, but there are many other uses for these devices and health care is one area where they may play a major role, according to our Raise the Line guest Rachel Jiang who is Head of Alexa Health & Wellness at Amazon. COVID has only underscored this potential. “More than ever it's really important to help people remotely manage their health care needs, and we think Alexa is in a great position to do that,” she says. In fact, Jiang and her team have been working closely with health care providers to develop “skills” (the equivalent of an app on your smartphone) to facilitate safe care both in clinical settings and at home. As Jiang shares with host Jannah Amiel, RN, the video capability of the Echo Show adds power to the instructional value of these interactive devices. For instance, imagine videos showing post-op patients how to change a dressing or do physical therapy while at home. Check out this fascinating discussion to learn more about how this technology might help both patients and providers, how privacy concerns are being addressed and the role software developers will play in tapping what Jiang sees as the endless possibilities ahead.

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Sara Miller’s advice for those in training to be healthcare professionals is fairly simple. “This is your opportunity to learn to be nimble and develop a spirit of innovation.” Miller believes taking this approach early leads to embracing lifelong learning, the benefits of which can be implemented in a provider’s job everyday. As Senior Director of the Quality Improvement Institute at Med-IQ, a leading healthcare improvement company, Miller's work centers around helping healthcare systems identify areas for improvement and to develop and evaluate programs addressing those needs. She has obviously had her hands full helping providers rapidly adjust to the challenges of COVID-19, and believes healthcare professionals and consumers should demand that things not return to business as usual after the pandemic. COVID has revealed too many inadequacies in the old “normal” with regard to emergency preparedness, structural racism, senior care services, and approaches to mental health and substance abuse, she says. In this episode of Raise the Line, Miller also tells host Shiv Gaglani about her work and career, including programs that helped organizations shift Hepatitis C care from specialized settings to primary care, and a popular question/answer series that Med-IQ ran in response to COVID.

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Although the dental industry is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think of tech entrepreneurs, this is precisely where Alex Frommeyer has found himself. Frommeyer is the CEO and co-founder of Beam Dental, one of the country’s fastest-growing dental benefit providers offering employers a unique approach to coverage by incorporating dental hygiene behavior into policy pricing. This behavior is determined using artificial intelligence to interpret data gathered from the smart toothbrushes used by members. In this episode, Frommeyer describes to host Shiv Gaglani how Beam is trying to make dental hygiene more enjoyable, how their business has adjusted to the pandemic, and why you should aspire to be a disruptor in your field. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You

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Battling stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a teenager exposed Dr. Omar Dawood to many flaws in the healthcare system and sparked a desire to find ways to improve them. Although his early experience in medicine was in the public health realm, he eventually saw how he could blend his clinical expertise and strategic mindset to make an impact in the business world, thereby expanding the positive difference he could make in people’s lives. He had opportunities to do just that in leadership positions at Ginger IO and AliveCor -- two of the leading companies in digital health – and has brought that experience plus decades of work as a clinician and researcher to his post as Chief Medical Officer and Head of Sales at Calm. It’s not exactly surprising that this hugely popular app has seen usage grow due to pandemic-related stress. In this episode, he joins host Shiv Gaglani to talk about Calm’s commitment to addressing clinician burnout, its growing work with employers to offer Calm to employees, the launch of Calm Coaching and the wisdom in building mental fitness and resiliency to handle whatever life throws at you.

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Dr. Benjamin Young knows what it’s like to confront a pandemic early in one’s medical career but in his case, we’re talking about AIDS, not COVID-19. Trained as an enzymologist, Young was studying drug resistance in cancer cells, but he quickly pivoted to become an HIV specialist when AIDS surfaced in the U.S. “You would have to have a heart made of a lump of coal not to understand the human spectrum and burden of what it meant to live and die of AIDS,” says Young, who is now the Head of Global Medical Directors for ViiV Healthcare, a pharmaceutical company focused on advancements in research and development of new medicines for people living with HIV. After decades of work in science, medicine, policy development and human rights, Young sees all of these fields as being very closely connected. “The distance between discovery in the basic science lab, what happens in the clinic, what happens in therapeutics, what happens at the governmental level and what happens in a social, racial, or judicial justice environment is very short.” Join Young and host Jannah Amiel to learn about the current state of the global AIDS fight, and lessons from the long HIV journey that can apply to today’s struggle with COVID and pandemic battles yet to come.

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Have you wondered what it was like for the doctors who treated the very first COVID-19 patients when so little was known about the disease? Well, you can find out directly from the source in this episode of Raise the Line. The initial cases were in Seattle where Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips works as the chief clinical officer at Providence Health, one of the nation’s largest health systems. In that role, she was deeply involved in quickly creating protocols to triage, test and treat the COVID patients who started to flow in. She was also involved in making masks for providers in the basement of the hospital as the crisis took hold. The COVID experience has deepened her commitment to make great healthcare available and affordable for everyone in the U.S., and in this insightful conversation with Shiv Gaglani, she shares many examples of the innovations Providence is employing to reach that goal. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You

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If you’re curious about the impact “big box” retailers are going to have on healthcare delivery in the U.S., this episode of Raise the Line has some answers. Host Shiv Gaglani welcomes Marcus Osborne, a senior leader at Walmart Health, who is helping to build a new approach that could shake-up the whole industry. “If we can create a model that is actually compelling for consumers, and consumers are willing to pay for it, then we don't really care what the payers do about us,” says Osborne, who has plenty of other candid insights to share. For instance, he believes the challenge the U.S. is facing is a “vast underconsumption” of healthcare, not overconsumption as many healthcare policy experts contend. His point is that too many people simply don’t get the care they need due to the cost and complexity of the current system, and that delay inevitably drives costs up over time. He’s hoping to change that with in-store clinics that will offer a variety of medical and dental services under one roof at an affordable price. Check out this fascinating discussion as Osborne speculates that worsening shortages of healthcare workers will make it necessary to find new ways to leverage new technology and types of providers, and that much greater accountability for the quality of care delivered will be a reality sooner rather than later. This is a great opportunity to get a peek at the future of healthcare.

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