Voices in Health and Wellness

Send us Fan Mail

Cancer treatment is full of breakthroughs, yet many patients still feel boxed into a narrow sequence of “try this, then try that”. We sit down with Dr Raymond Chang, integrative oncology physician and founder of Meridian Medical in New York City, to talk about what happens when you step just outside standard protocols without stepping outside good medicine. He shares the moments that pushed him out of a major institution, how he thinks about the word “unconventional”, and why regulation, reimbursement, and culture can shape care as much as data does.

We get into the heart of his philosophy: linear care versus a cocktail approach. Dr Chang explains why one-regimen-at-a-time cancer pathways can lead to diminishing returns, and how a strategic combination mindset, common in many Eastern medical traditions, aims to match the complexity of cancer biology and the individual patient. We also talk honestly about the limits: drug–drug interactions, liability, and the real-world barriers created by insurers and healthcare systems that often require cheaper options to “fail” before better ones are allowed.

You’ll also hear a grounded take on repurposed drugs and off-label oncology. Many of the medicines people ask about are generic, inexpensive, and therefore hard to study at scale because there is little financial incentive to fund large clinical trials or pursue new approvals. Dr Chang connects that reality to a bigger theme: the future of oncology looks hopeful with immunotherapy and AI, but the cost of new treatments risks widening inequality worldwide.

If you found this conversation useful, subscribe for more thoughtful health and wellness interviews, share it with someone navigating cancer decisions, and leave a review to help others find the show. What part of cancer care needs the biggest rethink next?

Dr Raymond Chang, MD FACP, is an integrative oncology physician and founder of Meridian Medical. Based in New York, he has spent decades working at the intersection of conventional oncology, complementary medicine, and what he describes as “unconventional” cancer care. His work focuses on helping patients explore options beyond standard protocols, including second-opinion consultations, repurposed medicines, off-label strategies, prevention-focused approaches, and access to emerging treatments not always available through mainstream pathways.

Dr Chang’s perspective is shaped by his background in institutional medicine, his long-standing interest in traditional and complementary medical systems, and his belief that cancer care often requires a broader, more strategic view than a single linear treatment sequence. Through Meridian Medical, he continues to support patients seeking thoughtful, evidence-aware guidance in complex cancer situations.

Contact Details

• Website: meridianmedical.org
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymond-chang-md-facp-b6235014/

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

Cancer care is consolidating, costs keep climbing, and more clinicians find themselves employed by giant systems. So how does an independent oncology practice not only survive, but grow to around 15 doctors while promising faster access and lower-cost care for patients? We sit down with Dr Neil Sharp, a haematologist and oncologist in Northwest Indiana and a leader at Northwest Cancer Centers, to unpack the real mechanics behind building a community cancer centre that patients trust. 

We talk about the leap from “a practice” to “an organisation”, the sleepless early years, and the business skills medical school doesn’t teach: hiring, communication, decision-making under pressure, and keeping a team aligned when the stakes are life and death. Dr Sharp shares concrete operating choices that shape patient experience, from seeing new cancer diagnoses within 24 hours to building a foundation that helps with everyday needs like fuel, groceries, and childcare. 

We also get into the hard systems issues: private equity incentives, hospital reimbursement advantages, prior authorisations, and why independent practices are often the lowest-cost place to receive the same care. On the clinical operations side, we explore how oncology has expanded from a few dozen drugs to hundreds, what that means for staff training, compliance, oral oncology pharmacy services, and how nimble groups can adopt new therapies quickly, sometimes faster than major academic centres. 

If you care about independent practice, oncology leadership, patient access, and the future of healthcare delivery in the US, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest question about keeping high-quality care independent.

Guest Biography

Dr Neel Shah is a hematologist and oncologist at Northwest Cancer Centers, an independent, multi-location oncology practice serving patients across Northwest Indiana.

After training at Rush University Medical Center, Dr Shah joined a fellow physician in developing an independent oncology practice that has grown from a single rented office into an organisation with approximately 15 doctors.

Alongside his clinical work, Dr Shah teaches at Indiana University School of Medicine and is involved in developing the practice's research and clinical trial programmes. His approach combines access to advanced cancer treatments with a commitment to patient-centred, community-based care.

He is also president of a charitable foundation supporting cancer patients with practical needs, including transportation-related expenses, groceries and childcare.

An advocate for independent medicine, Dr Shah believes that physician-led practices can deliver high-quality, accessible care while remaining financially sustainable. His experience spans medical practice growth, healthcare leadership, staffing, reimbursement challenges and the evolving role of technology in healthcare.

Contact Details

• Website: https://www.nccindiana.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neel-shah-297a76b/

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

Scaling an ophthalmology clinic sounds like a simple win until you feel the friction: longer waits, stressed teams, inconsistent service between sites, and leaders stretched across too many decisions. Dr Andrew Greenland sits down with Ed Yee, General Manager at Fraser Valley Cataract and Laser in British Columbia, to get specific about what breaks as a multi-location, patient-facing healthcare organisation grows and what you can build to prevent it. 

We talk candidly about the business model behind sustainable eye care, including why publicly funded services often cannot cover the full cost of running a high-quality operation, and how private-pay options like premium cataract lenses and refractive vision correction can support both access and patient choice. Ed shares what it means to manage four sites with nearly 60 employees, where the biggest operational bottleneck lives, and why patient flow and wait times are not just a scheduling issue but a culture and staffing issue too. 

You will also hear practical approaches to protecting patient experience at scale: using Google reviews as feedback, investing in customer service training, bringing in external audits, and creating leadership routines that turn problems into process improvements. We dig into the metrics that matter, including conversion rates, cost per lead, booking rates, turnover, and forward-looking referral and capacity signals. Finally, we explore shifting patient expectations around online information and online booking, plus how AI already speeds up marketing and hiring documentation even before it touches clinical care. 

If you are building a healthcare organisation, running a multi-site clinic, or trying to grow without losing what made your service trusted, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review. What is the one operational bottleneck you would fix first?

Guest Biography

Ed Yee is General Manager of Fraser Valley Cataract and Laser, where he oversees business operations on behalf of the ownership group across a multi-site ophthalmology organisation in British Columbia.

After beginning his career in consumer packaged goods and cosmetics, Ed moved into senior executive roles in healthcare before joining Fraser Valley Cataract and Laser. His responsibilities span clinical operations, marketing, physician relations, HR, business development, and increasingly the strategic work required to support the organisation's next phase of growth.

With four sites and almost 60 employees discussed during the episode, Ed is focused on building the processes, leadership structures, culture and patient experience required to successfully transition from a smaller operator into a larger and more complex healthcare organisation.

Contact Details

• Website: https://fvcl.ca
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edyee1/

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

You can have perfect technique and still create a disappointed patient. That tension sits at the heart of my conversation with Dr Scott R Miller, a board-certified aesthetic plastic surgeon and founder of Miller Cosmetic Surgery, who argues that great cosmetic surgery starts with understanding the person, not just the procedure.

We talk about why plastic surgery attracts people who love both art and problem solving, and how mentorship shapes judgement beyond the operating theatre. Dr Miller shares how he approaches the psychology of the patient experience, using curiosity and deeper questioning to find what someone truly hopes will change in their life. That leads to one of the most important skills in aesthetic medicine: knowing when to say no, and being able to explain it in a way that protects trust and safety.

From there, we widen the lens to the “sweet spot” where excellent clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, and provider happiness intersect. We also get into integrative medicine versus “functional medicine”, why clear terms matter for patients, and how to stay open-minded without letting scientific standards slip. Even “natural” supplements can have real effects, and that cuts both ways.

Finally, we go behind the consulting room door: leadership, private practice overhead, slow sustainable growth, and bringing in minimally invasive technologies without overselling what they can do. If you care about authentic beauty, ethical cosmetic surgery, and patient-centred care, you’ll take away practical tools and sharper questions to ask. Subscribe, share with someone who’s considering a procedure, and leave a review with the biggest insight you’re taking into your next health decision.

Guest Biography 

Dr. Scott R. Miller is a board-certified aesthetic plastic surgeon and founder of Miller Cosmetic Surgery in La Jolla, California. His approach brings together technical surgical expertise, aesthetics, patient psychology and a strong emphasis on understanding the individual goals behind a patient's decision to pursue treatment.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Miller has developed a philosophy centred on what he describes as the “sweet spot” between excellent clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction and provider fulfilment. He is also the author of Authentic Beauty: Defining a New Standard for Care and Results in Plastic Surgery, through which he shares lessons for both patients and practitioners about informed decision-making, individualised outcomes and building a patient-centred practice.

Social Media Handles

• Website: https://www.millercosmeticsurgery.com/
• LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottrmillermdfacs/),
• Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/millercosmeticsurgery/)
• Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/millercosmeticsurgery/)
• YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/ScottMillerMD)
• Authentic Beauty:
  https://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Beauty-Defining-Standard-Results/dp/164225780X

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like a high-performing leader with eight businesses who can’t stay asleep, can’t switch their brain off at 3am, and needs sheer force to focus on a single task. That’s where our conversation with Dr Maryna Yudina gets practical fast, because she works with the people who look “fine” from the outside while their cognition, sleep and emotional regulation are quietly fraying.

Marina is the founder of Pacific Neurocentre and Quant Synaptic Solution, with a background that spans medical training in Ukraine, hospital leadership roles in the US, and more than a decade refining an EEG-based neurofeedback approach. We talk through what neurofeedback actually is, why it’s non-invasive and medication-free, and how it uses real-time feedback to help the brain learn self-regulation. She also explains EEG brain mapping as a roadmap, not a diagnosis, and why protocols must change with the person’s week, not just their baseline.

We also explore what she sees across very different groups: veterans with PTSD, women in crisis, and executives with burnout. You’ll hear the common red flags, the big misconceptions she has to undo, how she measures “success” with symptoms and remapping, and what it takes to scale a white-glove, personalised healthcare service without losing what makes it work. If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with someone who’s running hot on adrenaline, and leave a review with the one sign of burnout you think people ignore most.

 
Dr. Maryna Yudina is the founder of Pacific Neurocenter and Quant Synaptic Solution and works in the field of neurofeedback, brain health and cognitive performance.

Originally medically trained in Ukraine, Maryna described training across family medicine, neurology and gastroenterology before moving to the United States. Her career subsequently included hospital leadership roles in areas including infection control and quality improvement before she moved towards a more holistic and individualised approach to brain health.

For more than a decade, Maryna has worked with EEG-based neurofeedback. Her approach combines detailed client history and goals with EEG brain mapping and highly personalised neurofeedback protocols that can be adjusted according to an individual's response and circumstances.

Her work has included children, veterans experiencing PTSD, women in crisis and high-performing professionals dealing with issues including stress, sleep, focus and cognitive performance. More recently, she has been developing ways of taking her highly personalised approach into teams and organisational settings.

Maryna is also a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme.
 

Contact Details

• Website: https://pacificneurocenter.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-maryna-yudina-bb843643/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marynayudina/

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

Crooked teeth are easy to spot. The harder question is what they might be trying to tell us about a child’s growth, breathing, and sleep.

We sit down with Dr Vishal Sharma of Aura Orthodontics in British Columbia to unpack a broader view of orthodontics rooted in dentofacial orthopaedics. We talk about jaws as the foundation that teeth “ride on" and why crowding can be a sign of an undersized airway as much as a dental problem. Along the way we explore practical warning signs clinicians and parents can notice early: paediatric snoring, restless sleep, bedwetting, teeth grinding, fatigue, and the “bags under the eyes” look that often gets normalised.

We also tackle the uncomfortable middle ground between compelling clinical outcomes and research that has not fully caught up. Vishal shares how he thinks about evidence-based practice when the data is promising but incomplete, what he wants future university research to measure around palatal expansion and airway dimensions, and how to talk honestly about uncertainty without over-claiming. Finally, we zoom out to leadership: building a multi-site team while protecting culture, communication, and a clear clinical philosophy.

If you care about airway health, facial development, paediatric sleep apnoea, and earlier orthodontic assessment, this conversation will give you new questions to ask at the chairside. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

 
Dr Vishal Sharma is an orthodontist based in British Columbia, Canada, and a leader at Aura Orthodontics, a growing orthodontic organisation with three locations and a team of approximately 40.

After completing dental school and orthodontic training at New York University (NYU), Dr. Sharma returned to British Columbia, where he has now practised orthodontics for approximately 15 years.
 
His clinical interests extend beyond dental alignment into dentofacial development, airway health and the potential relationship between jaw development, breathing and sleep. His interest in this area became particularly personal through observing the growth and development of his twin sons.
 
Alongside his clinical work, Dr. Sharma is interested in strengthening the research base surrounding airway-focused orthodontics and discusses his work to develop further research in collaboration with a local university.
 
He also leads the continued growth of Aura Orthodontics while developing educational initiatives aimed at healthcare practitioners.

Links 

• Dr. Sharma's website: www.meetdrvishalsharma.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/bigbrotherenergy
• Dr. Sharma's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-vishal-sharma/
• Aura's website: www.auraortho.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/auraortho
• Aura's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aura-orthodontics 

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

Nobody warns you that medicine is also payroll, leases, audits and phones that never stop ringing. We sit down with Dr Mike Daniels, a podiatrist with an MBA and the president and CMO of WeTreatFeet, to talk about the business of being a doctor and what happens when clinical training collides with the realities of running an insurance-based healthcare practice in the US.

We get into the moment many clinicians face: you can look after patients brilliantly, but still feel lost when you have to hire and lead a team, manage cash flow, negotiate with payers, and survive declining reimbursement. Mike explains why overhead is so high in American healthcare, how the revenue cycle works from documentation and coding through claim scrubbing and clearinghouses, and why “just see more patients” eventually breaks both quality and capacity.

From there, we explore what it means to build an organisation rather than a single practice. Mike shares how service lines like durable medical equipment, diabetic shoes, wound supplies, compression garments, in-office procedures and clinical trials can improve patient compliance and satisfaction while diversifying revenue. We also talk expansion strategy: acquisition versus starting a new site, the churn that follows a practice purchase, and the internal resistance that comes with any operational change.

If you’re a clinician, practice owner, or healthcare leader thinking about sustainable growth, physician entrepreneurship, or an eventual exit strategy, this conversation offers a clear-eyed look at the trade-offs and the skills nobody teaches. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest question about the business side of medicine.

Dr. Mikel Daniels, DPM, MBA is a podiatrist, healthcare executive and President, CMO and Managing Member of WeTreatFeet Podiatry and WeTreatFeet MSO, LLC.

Over his career, Dr. Daniels has progressed from clinical practice and partnership into the development of a broader podiatric platform incorporating multiple offices and service lines. His experience spans patient care, practice operations, medical billing, healthcare administration, clinical trials and the financial realities of operating within the US insurance-based healthcare system.

Alongside his clinical training, Dr. Daniels earned an MBA in healthcare administration, an experience he describes as learning the “language of business” and finance. Today, his perspective combines the responsibilities of a practising physician with those of an owner and healthcare executive navigating growth, staffing, reimbursement pressure and long-term succession.

Contact Details

• Website: https://www.wetreatfeet.com/
• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmikeldaniels/
• Additional website: https://thepodiatryvoice.com/
• X: @DrMikelDaniels

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

Healthcare often waits for the crash, then celebrates the rescue. We wanted to explore the opposite: a model that treats prevention as the main job, not a side note. Dr Andrew Greenland sits down with Dr Russell Van Maele, a functional medicine physician and founder of Black Sheep Health, to unpack what he calls “longevity primary care” a proactive, data-driven, relationship-led approach designed to improve healthspan and daily quality of life. 

Russell explains why most conventional primary care struggles to deliver real lifestyle medicine: it is not a knowledge problem, it is a time problem. When appointments are rushed and incentives are reactive, patients feel unheard and clinicians feel boxed in. We dig into how a premium, high-touch virtual clinic creates space for shared decision making, personalised goals, and ongoing coaching. We also talk about the buzz and the substance in longevity medicine, including GLP-1s, cardiometabolic risk, insulin resistance, and why no single biohack replaces fundamentals. 

The conversation goes behind the scenes of telemedicine and medical entrepreneurship: HIPAA compliant systems, patient portals, EMRs, labs, pharmacy logistics, and the complexity of being licensed across all 50 US states. Russell is candid about the hype machine too, from influencers without credentials to the challenge of staying evidence-led when social media is loud. If you care about preventive healthcare, functional medicine, and the future of primary care, this is a practical look at what it really takes to make it work. 

If this raised questions about your own care, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find it. What would you want your doctor to track with you over the next 12 months?

Dr. Russell Van Maele is a functional medicine physician and founder of Black Sheep Health, where he practises what he describes as “longevity primary care”- combining proactive prevention, health optimisation and personalised primary care through a virtual model.

After completing his medical training around the emergence of widespread telemedicine during COVID, Russell transitioned into full-time virtual care. His approach emphasises healthspan, strong doctor-patient relationships, shared decision-making and understanding the individual goals and circumstances behind a patient's health.

Russell has built a telemedicine infrastructure capable of serving patients across all 50 US states and has firsthand experience navigating the clinical, technological, regulatory and entrepreneurial challenges involved in independent medical practice.

His longer-term mission includes growing Black Sheep Health around his faith and values while helping other physicians develop the confidence, infrastructure and independence to create practices of their own.

Contact Details

• Website: https://blacksheephealth.com
• Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-van-maele-834511228/

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

A doctor with 27 years in family medicine doesn’t usually shut the clinic doors and start again from scratch. Dr Malea Jensen did exactly that, moving from a traditional, insurance-driven model to fully online consultations built around patient education, physiology and prevention. The thread running through our chat is simple but uncomfortable: the system often rewards speed, documentation and prescribing, while real preventative medicine demands time, curiosity and honest informed consent.

We talk about what changed her thinking, including the pressure of performance targets, the limits of seven to ten minute appointments, and the nagging sense that chronic disease care too often starts when metabolic dysfunction is already entrenched. Dr Jensen shares how her new model lets her take a detailed lifestyle history and then go line by line through lab results, helping people understand what “normal ranges” may hide, when insulin resistance is brewing, and how sleep, stress, training, nutrition and even environmental exposures can matter. She also explains why she now does more deprescribing than prescribing, and what it looks like to help patients think clearly when they feel stuck between conflicting medical advice.

One of the most striking stories is the tipping point that forced her to re-open the evidence for herself: patients refusing statins, and one man handing her seven books to read. We explore how reading, questioning and self-education can turn patients into active participants, not passive recipients, and why that same independence matters for clinicians too.

If you care about root-cause medicine, metabolic health, patient empowerment and the future of telemedicine, press play and join us. Subscribe, share with a colleague or friend, and leave a review: what’s one health question you wish your clinician would actually take time to explain?

 
Dr. Malea Jensen, DO is an osteopathic physician and family practice doctor with nearly three decades of experience in medicine.

After many years working within both corporate and independent family practice, Dr. Jensen closed her physical practice in 2025 and transitioned to an online educational consultation model. Her current work focuses heavily on health education, detailed patient histories and helping individuals better understand laboratory results and the physiology underlying their health.

Known online as Ironladydoc, Dr. Jensen is passionate about prevention, health literacy, informed decision-making and encouraging patients to ask deeper questions about their healthcare.

She is associated with Center Stage Primary Care and shares health education through her online content under Dr. J's Prescription for Health.

Contact Details

• Website: https://ironladydoc-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maleajensendo/
• Instagram: instagram.com/ironladydoc 

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Send us Fan Mail

Everyone seems to be asking how AI can do a doctor’s job. We go the other way and it changes the whole picture: what if AI’s best role is deleting the admin work that crushes clinicians and slows down care?

I’m joined by Dr James Ries, a board-certified family medicine physician, active duty US Navy provider, and founder behind 20 Mile Medical. James explains how years in telehealth exposed a hard truth about modern healthcare efficiency: the real bottleneck is not clinical decision making, it’s the clutter around it. We dig into where costs actually hide (patient communication, coordination, follow-ups, fragmented systems) and why targeting clinicians first is the wrong optimisation.

James walks us through his AI layer, Telora, built to compile patient intake, highlight red flags, and surface evidence-based protocols in one place before a consultation even starts. We unpack deterministic AI vs generative AI, why patient-facing chatbots can be unsafe at scale, and how reducing cognitive load can lead to more personalised care even in shorter visits. We also explore why more frequent follow-ups can improve continuity and reduce the “three-month pile-up” of questions, plus the broader shift in telehealth towards lifestyle and concierge care.

If you care about AI in healthcare, clinician burnout, telehealth platforms, electronic health records, and safer automation, you’ll take a lot from this conversation. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave us a review with your take: where should AI stop and the human clinician begin?

Guest Biography

Dr. James Ries is a board-certified family medicine physician, active-duty US Navy Commander and healthcare entrepreneur who has spent approximately a decade working in telehealth.

He is Co-Founder of Twenty Mile Medical, a telehealth platform created from his experience of trying to improve inefficient healthcare systems from inside them.

After finding existing software poorly aligned with real provider workflows, James began developing his own technology, combining an electronic health record with an AI-enabled layer called Telora. The system is designed to reduce the administrative and cognitive workload surrounding clinical care by organising patient information, supporting evidence-based workflows and streamlining processes such as documentation and communication, while keeping providers responsible for clinical care.

His work focuses on improving healthcare access, provider efficiency and patient experience without treating AI as a replacement for the clinician. Longer term, James hopes that dramatically reducing the cost of delivering telehealth could help make care accessible to uninsured and underserved populations.

• Websites: https://www.twentymilemedical.com and https://www.telora.health
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjamesries/

Subscribe on Substack

Voices in Health and Wellness is published on Substack, as part of The Diagnostician. Every episode lands there with written notes and reflections you won't find in the podcast feed. Free to subscribe.

👉 https://thediagnostician.substack.com/s/voices-in-health-and-wellness

About the podcast

Voices in Health and Wellness features conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential, with clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of care.

About Dr Andrew Greenland

UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Trained in both conventional and root-cause approaches, Andrew helps people optimise health, performance, and longevity, with a focus on cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.