There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology

This episode features Dr. Brett Giroir, CEO of Altesa BioSciences, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical firm working to develop new medications for viral respiratory infections with a focus on vulnerable populations. And Dr. Giroir knows plenty about infections, having served as the COVID-19 “testing tsar” on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. 

In this episode, Dr. Giroir describes how his interest in immunology and infectious disease in medical school led to vaccine research and related clinical practice, which led in turn to serving the nation in various roles (and at one point this included a top-secret clearance).

“I do believe you’re put here for a purpose,” Dr. Giroir says. “And looking back on all the chance events that came into my life, I think that’s what it all meant.”

Innovative, Compassionate, Future-Focused. Those three words characterize Rina Shah and what she wants for her patients, for the care Walgreens delivers, and for the industry at large. 

In this episode, we talk with Shah, who is Walgreens Group Vice President of Pharmacy of the Future and Segment Strategy, about just how she envisions the FUTURE of PHARMACY. The topic couldn’t be more of the moment: the Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that by 2034, the U.S. will face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians. Pharmacists in particular are well-positioned to fill gaps in care—if they can get the tools, information and support they need. We’ll talk with Shah about how to do so and how Walgreens—under her leadership—is also fighting to address health equity issues in the communities they serve.

Healthcare interoperability has been a buzzword for years. After decades of incremental progress, the industry is making traction. Information is being exchanged—and in massive quantities; clinicians and healthcare leaders are now pushing for it to be consumable. Meanwhile, we’re still not far along in interoperable systems to allow for national information exchange. American healthcare is messy, innovative, brilliant, fragmented and often proprietary and parochial, which gums up the momentum.

So how do we get to Interoperability 2.0?

In this episode, Melanie talks with Micky Tripathi, a leading expert in health information technology and data interoperability. Dr. Tripathi is the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he leads the formulation of the federal health IT strategy—and is responsible for advancing interoperability and the exchange of health information nationwide. In other words, Dr. Tripathi “owns” the federal effort to make nationwide interoperability a reality.

Welcome to the second season of There's a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology, an award-winning podcast series from Surescripts. In each episode, host Melanie Marcus, Chief Marketing Officer of Surescripts, sits down with some of the most inspiring leaders in healthcare today for in-depth and personal conversations about the industry’s challenges and opportunities. By the end of each episode, you’ll walk away with real-world stories—stories that show a better way to tackle healthcare’s most stubborn issues as well as what the future might hold for an industry undergoing rapid change. If you’re up for smart, energizing and story-driven conversations with some of the nation’s top leaders in healthcare and technology, tune into There’s a Better Way, premiering on all major podcast apps this April. Learn more—check out the whole first season.

As President of Kroger Health, Colleen Lindholz leads a team of 23,000 healthcare professionals in nearly 2500 pharmacies in 37 states who care for more than 14 million patients annually. In this episode, Colleen shares passion for wellness and nutrition, and health and how Kroger is working to deliver whole patient care. Melissa and Colleen also discuss how the pandemic laid bare existing inequities and how technology can help pharmacists get the right therapy to the right patient at the right time, increasing adherence and improving patient outcomes. Finally, Colleen explains what keeps her motivated in her career, and what’s currently inspiring her.

In this episode, Melanie sits down with Lee Barrett, Executive Director and CEO of EHNAC, a national healthcare accreditation organization. Previously, he was the President and CEO and sat on the board of directors at HealthEC, a consulting and solutions provider of products for ACOs, Population Health, HIEs, web portals, EMR and transactional platforming. As a health IT and security guru, Lee has plenty of thoughtful perspectives to share on data privacy, cyber security and tech innovation in the healthcare space. He explains how we've come a long way as an industry in providing a level of support and assurance for stakeholders, and why stakeholder trust is the name of the game in the industry today. Lee also shares his perspective on what’s on the horizon for the future of the industry, including in areas like telehealth, medical devices and cryptocurrencies.

In this episode, Melanie sits down with community pharmacist Michele Belcher. Michele is president of the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) and the owner of Grants Pass Pharmacy, which dates to 1904 and is the last independent pharmacy in Grants Pass, Oregon. Elected president of NCPA in 2022, Michele has long been active in state and federal legislation impacting community pharmacies as well as Oregon’s state pharmacy coalition. When Grants Pass was hit hard by the Delta variant, Michele led the charge for her community pharmacy to rise to the occasion and rallied colleagues to administer COVID-19 vaccines to a particularly vulnerable population: the developmentally disabled. And as the country continues to face a shortage of primary care physicians, Michele is advocating for pharmacists to expand the clinical services they provide. A community pharmacist that easily moves between small town America to the nation's capital, Michele is a leader to watch as the healthcare industry continues to undergo rapid change.

In this episode, Melanie sits down with Dr. Nele Jessel, the Chief Medical Officer of athenahealth. With two medical licenses—one to practice in Germany and one to practice in the U.S.—Dr. Jessel is a board-certified clinical informaticist and pediatrician with a passion for improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes through technology. A self-described EHR cheerleader, she first became interested in clinical informatics as a means to bring the revolutionary potential of HIT to pediatrics, a specialty where its adoption has lagged. During the episode, Melanie sits down with Dr. Jessel for an in-depth conversation about her childhood in Germany, her decision to go into medicine, and why she believes the solution to clinician burnout could potentially lie in more technology, not less. Dr. Jessel also explains why it’s always been her goal to use technology to allow her and the clinicians she supports to practice old-fashioned medicine in a high-tech setting.

As other guests have shared, there’s often a strong link between a parent’s professional world and the career their child chooses. In other words: “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” In this episode, Melanie sits down with someone who understands this connection firsthand: Sam Lambson, the Vice President of Interoperability at Oracle Cerner. While Sam was growing up, his father worked in tech and manufacturing, which led him to move the entire family to Hong Kong just as Sam was entering high school. During his time in Hong Kong, Sam learned about the power of connection and the role of technology in the world—lessons which stuck with him as he moved into adulthood. Today, he calls himself a “technologist at heart” as well as an evangelist for “all things interoperability.” Since joining Oracle Cerner in 2015, his mantra has been to “make care more affordable, accessible and better coordinated.” During the episode, Sam shares his beliefs on innovative solutions for healthcare affordability in America, and how technology can drive results at scale to improve care for millions. He also shares more about his remarkable career path, what inspires him, and how he navigates such a critical and exciting role.

As the U.S. population ages, it’s also getting sicker: According to the CDC, more than a quarter of U.S. adults face multiple chronic conditions. An ever-increasing number of Americans are on a specialty therapy or medication—more than 66 million in 2022. The good news? Conditions that were untreatable decades ago now have effective therapies. The bad news? The journey from diagnosis to treatment remains costly and onerous: CVS reported that specialty medications accounted for more than 52% of drug spend in 2020. In addition, underserved and minority populations often don’t get the specialty medication access and education they need to improve their outcomes. Melanie will chat with Joel Helle on what's needed and what's next with specialty prescribing & dispensing—and how technology and innovation play important roles. We’ll ask Joel to share his professional and personal experience with improving the specialty journey—and why he’s passionate about making this process better for the pharmacist, for the patient, for the doctor. We’ll also talk about what inspires Joel—and what he thinks the future holds for a market ripe for innovation.