Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Shafiq Rab is the Chief Digital Officer and System Chief Information Officer at Tufts Medicine and an advocate for cloud-based health ecosystems. Healthcare is one of the last industries that has not moved into the cloud to integrate the entire ecosystem of patient data, clinical trial updates, provider information, and payer processes and allow for research and advanced analytics. The cloud provides the flexibility to scale operations and reduce costs related to physical space and administration. While it is hard to get the variety of electronic health record databases and applications to work together, it is even harder to get the humans involved to adjust to new technologies in the workplace. Shafiq explains, "So in the world that we live in, where everybody wants an Amazon-like experience, healthcare has to go a little forward. On paper, things are still a little less efficient. To make that happen, there are three stages that everybody has to go through. One is digitizing everything, then digitalization, and finally, digital transformation, which is a cultural thing." "Why into the cloud? That ecosystem means all the applications that you want to use to deliver healthcare. You have it in a place in the cloud because the cloud has the computing power. It allows you to compute things faster and quicker. In the world of healthcare, the consumer consumes on a phone, on an iPhone or Android, at the edge, which is known as edge computing. The connectivity depends upon the strength of the internet and the interoperability between the different systems. So, if you do not have an ecosystem up in the cloud with your major electronic health record, it becomes hard to deliver that information." "We also benefited by decreasing the number of portals for our patients, for our consumers. We now have one app. Before, we had about 84 different portals and different ways of getting the information, and it was not in one place. So the North Star is how to make it easier and more welcoming, the access to care for the consumers and the communities we serve. Simultaneously, making it also easier for care providers to provide the care, and the employees who work here, and the vendors who are part of the ecosystem, because that's how we complete the ring of healthcare." @TuftsMedicine @CIOSHAFIQ #TuftsMedicine #DrShafiqRab #AWS #DigitalHealth #HealthIT #HealthTech #Cloud #EHR  #DigitalTransformation #HealthcareInnovation  #DigitalHealthEcosystem #PatientExperience tuftsmedicine.org Download the transcript here

Dr. Harvey Kaufman is the Senior Medical Director at Quest Diagnostics and Director of the Quest Diagnostics Health Trends Research, and he raises the alarm about the impact of delayed diagnostic testing for cancer due to the disruption of the COVID restrictions. While progress has been made on more effective treatments, early-stage cancer diagnoses significantly contributed to the 32% decline in cancer deaths between 1991 to 2019. The delay in cancer screening can turn one public health crisis caused by the pandemic into another crisis, with more advanced-stage cancers requiring more aggressive therapy and having worse outcomes. Quest Diagnostics is the leading provider of diagnostic testing services and information in the United States and a leader in cancer diagnoses and testing. Harvey explains, "We looked at people who had missed testing for diabetes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis, and a host of other conditions, including cancer. And we showed that in the early months of the pandemic, particularly March, April, and May of 2020 when a lot of healthcare was shut down other than for caring for COVID-19-affected individuals. During that early period, it was hard to get care because everyone was in essence, shut down. And sure enough, there were dramatic declines in people who were diagnosed with a host of conditions, including cancer." "Now, there was a study done in Japan, clearly different patients, clearly different approach. And they found virtually the same thing that in the early part of 2020, there was a 30% decline in newly identified patients with cancer. And that in early 2021, there was a 17% decline, matching our data, confirming that different approaches and different countries had the same impact from the pandemic." #QuestDiagnostics #CancerDiagnostics #CancerScreening #COVID #Pandemic #CancerDeaths questdiagnostics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Charlotte Jones-Burton is the Senior Vice President of Product Development and Strategy at Chinook Therapeutics, which is on a mission to change the course of kidney care by discovering and developing precision therapies to maintain kidney function in people who have rare, severe chronic kidney diseases. Charlotte explains, "Our lead clinical program is atrasentan, a highly potent and selective endothelin receptor inhibitor. We believe that it's going to be a best-in-class molecule that's going to target the endothelin pathway. And the condition for which we are developing it is IgA nephropathy. Now, IgA nephropathy is an autoimmune disease that attacks the kidneys, and it affects how our blood is filtered in the small blood vessels of the kidneys that I spoke about. And what happens with IgA nephropathy is that immune complexes can deposit in the kidney and really damage those filtering units inside the kidneys. And when this happens, individuals can have symptoms such as protein spilling into their kidneys. And we know that proteinuria, as we call that, is a strong risk factor for those who will then develop end-stage kidney disease, which means that they may need dialysis or a kidney transplantation to survive." "Now, we know that there are few treatments that are available, and that's why it's really important for patients to also ask the question if there are any clinical trials. And we at Chinook Therapeutics are enrolling patients into clinical trials who have IgA nephropathy. We also are enrolling patients into our AFFINITY clinical trial if they have FSGS, which is also a type of kidney disease, Alport syndrome, or diabetic kidney disease." #ChinookTherapeutics #KidneyDisease #ChronicKidneyDisease #Atrasentan #BIO1301 #PrecisionMedicine #Nephrology #ClinicalTrials #IGAN #RareDisease chinooktx.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Sonia Chopra, endodontist and Founder of Ballantyne Endodontics is an expert on alleviating tooth pain. Sonia points out the advantages of using the Sonendo GentleWave procedure to change outcomes and expectations of root canal pain. Not only is this procedure more effective and faster, but it also requires just one dental appointment instead of multiple visits, freeing up resources to handle more patients and respond more quickly to emergencies. Sonia elaborates, "It's really important to understand our world of endo because we deal with tooth pain. And I would say about 80%, a good majority of patients seek us, dentists, out when they have pain, so having that deep understanding of tooth pain is really important. Plus, we are the specialty that saves teeth, and in my opinion, just based on my own experience and being born without eight teeth, saving teeth has really become a very important topic for me." "I started my practice back in 2008 before GentleWave came onto the scene. I implemented GentleWave back in 2018, and so I've been working with this technology for about four years. And what I can honestly say is that it has allowed me to provide my patients with an elevated experience, elevated cleansing of the tooth, and just an overall better experience altogether." "I also noticed a decrease in the amount of pain my patients were having aftercare. I wasn't having patients call my practice so often afterward. I would call them on the post-op call, and they would be fine, and then that was the end of the story. I didn't have patients calling me after the fact saying, "Hey, I'm still pretty sore. I think I need an antibiotic." Those conversations started to dwindle drastically, and I think that's a huge benefit of the technology." #Endodontics #Endodontist #RootCanalTherapy #RootCanal #Sonendo #GentleWave #GentleWaveProcedure BallantyneEndo.com Download the transcript here

Keri Yale Head of Patient Centricity and Engagement at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, brings deep understanding of the need for pharmaceutical companies to be patient-centric in their culture and focus, including all the employees who do not deal directly with patients. Patient engagement is defined as engaging and listening to patients while integrating their input into the design of clinical trials and the development of products and resources for patients and doctors.    Keri elaborates, "I was just thinking recently about how much the work that I've done over the past two decades has come full circle to the work that I just mentioned that I do today. I started at BI in sales. I was working in Los Angeles, and it was the height of the AIDS epidemic. I was calling on AIDS service organizations because we had HIV/AIDS medications, and I was meeting a number of people who were truly inspirational. One of those people who inspired me the most was the director at the time of an organization called Being Alive. And he was the first of many advocates that taught me how much I didn't know." "We knew there were pockets of excellence, and we knew there were a number of people working in this way, but we wanted to make it across all employees, even those working in IT or HR or finance. We set up an approach where each leader is responsible for having a patient-centricity plan. These plans identify objectives and activities, and they should look very different because we want them to be authentic to the nature of their work. I think it also shows that our leadership recognizes that being patient-focused is everyone's job." @boehringerus #BoehringerIngelheim #PatientEngagement #PatientCentricity #PatientInput #PatientAmbassador #PatientPartner boehringer-ingelheim.com Download the transcript here