The Doctor Weighs In

The results of President Trump's heart health tests were the topic of much discussion and a lot of confusion. Cardiologist Andrew Waxler, MD, joins Pat Salber MD (@docweighsin) to discuss heart health testing.

David Metcalf, Director of the METIL lab at the University of Central Florida joined Pat Salber to discuss the growing role of Alexa in the management of health and healthcare. She makes it easy to remember to take your meds. She can connect you to your doctor for a video conference. She can even turn your hospital room into a smart room so you can use your voice to close the blinds, turn on the TV or ask your nurse for more medication. Who knows what she will be doing in the future as the form factors evolve and her functionality grows.

Nomad Health has made it easy for hospitals and clinics to find clinicians (docs and nurses) to fill open positions. Dr. Alexi Nazem joins Pat Salber MD (@docweighsin) to discuss how the company finds and helps credential and license doctors and nurses across the country. They have recently expanded their services in NY to include doctors as well as nurses.

It is so much easier to see how digital health things can work, interact, and provide value when you can see them in the context of life. Pat Salber MD interviews Harry Pappas, Founder and CEO of the Intelligent Health Association and the Intelligent Health Pavilion that creates full-on iHomes and iHospitals so prospective purchasers can see digital health devices in context.

UPMC is so much more than just a Medical Center, it is an innovation powerhouse leading the charge to transform healthcare. Pat Salber MD (@docweighsin) talks with Rasu Shrestha MD, Chief Innovation Officer who explains all of the ways the organization is pushing the cutting edge of healthcare innovation.

In today's interview, we will be speaking to Dan Fronczak, CEO of HealthRoster. What is HealthyRoster? What should I know about this company and how is it related to me? Well, if you are an athlete or a trainer or even a parent, friend, or relative of one, this may interest you. According to Dan, "Healthy Roster is the only injury documentation tool that allows athletic trainers to build deeper relationships with parents and prove outreach works." Tune in to find out more. About HealthRoster At Healthy Roster, we're empowering Sports Medicine departments to easily prove their immense value through end-to-end injury tracking and reporting. By providing AT's with a dramatically better mobile injury documentation and communication tool, and integrating Healthy Roster with your healthcare system's main EHR, we can help prove the value of outreach to your healthcare organization!

Today, we will be interviewing Dr. Nick van Terheyden, Chief Medical Officer of BaseHealth. As BaseHealth's Chief Medical Officer, he brings a distinctive blend of medical practitioner and business strategist, both national and international, to the realm of healthcare technology. At BaseHealth, van Terheyden will bring the physician perspective, helping the company bring practical solutions to market that always keep an eye first and foremost on the patient. About BaseHealth BaseHealth is the comprehensive predictive analytics company for population health management. The company’s proprietary platform leverages machine learning to sift through millions of medical journals and patient records curated by scientists and physicians to offer healthcare providers the ability to identify patients with underlying risks for 43 chronic diseases and prevent costly treatments before they’re needed. At BaseHealth, we take the guesswork out of risk and population health management and put science in the driver’s seat. BaseHealth was founded in 2011 by an interdisciplinary team of leading clinical geneticists, healthcare executives, software engineers, and physicians. Learn more at basehealth.com.

Today, we'll be talking about the importance of flossing. Now, most Americans think that if they floss, they will just have a prettier smile. What they don't realize is that if they don't floss, they are more susceptible to periodontitis. Periodontitis, unfortunately, can contribute to other health problems. To understand the importance of flossing, we have Deborah Lyle, RDH, BS, MS, Director of Professional and Clinical Affairs, Waterpik, joining us today. She will be discussing why it is important to floss and how water flossing (if string flossing isn't your thing) can be easier and more beneficial to your health. As Lyle says, it is so important to floss once a day as a means to prevent plaque from building up. "It starts building up within minutes of visiting your dental hygienist and can cause visible signs of infection in as little as two weeks. You simply can't rely on professionals alone to care for you. String flossing will not work for most people. You need the pulsating action of water flossing to clean bacteria out of deep pockets. Only water flossing can find its way into hard to reach places."

Today, we will be speaking to Jeanne Pinder, CEO and Founder of ClearHealthCosts. In this episode, Jeanne will be focusing on how they are bringing transparency to the healthcare marketplace by telling people prices for medical procedures and items. According to Jeanne, by revealing prices, they are empowering consumers to make informed decisions about the costs of their medical care and coverage.

Today, we will be speaking to Rebecca Lord, VP of UX at Medullan, a Boston-based digital health consultancy. In this episode, Rebecca will be focusing on the role of patient advocacy in healthcare: partnering with patient organizations to offer the support, context, and guidance that individuals need after receiving their test results for specific diseases and partnering with well-known organizations (like Susan G. Komen for breast cancer-related diagnoses, for example), which could provide the credibility and specificity needed to deal with these kinds of results.

On-air with us is Dr. Kelly Sullivan, one of the nation’s pre-eminent board-certified plastic surgeons at Sullivan Surgery and Spa in Annapolis, Maryland. As a world-class plastic surgeon for over 20 years with expertise in breast surgery, body contouring, facial rejuvenation, and cancer reconstruction, Dr. Sullivan is a renowned expert in her field, and has been recognized as one of America’s Top Plastic Surgeons, receiving Most Compassionate Doctor and The Patient’s Choice Awards, selected for the Top One Hundred Women in Maryland, as well as Castle Connolly’s Top Doctors. In this episode, she will be discussing with us the new data released by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). It reveals that Americans want to put their best face and body forward as their annual plastic surgery procedural statistics show a 3% growth in cosmetic procedures over the last year. According to ASPS statistics, there were 17.1 million surgical and minimally-invasive cosmetic procedures performed in the United States in 2016. The data also shows new cosmetic trends in both facelifts and fat.

San Francisco-based ConsejoSano, which makes a health services navigation platform for Spanish speakers in America, has raised $4.9 million in Series A funding in a round led by 7wire Ventures. The company, whose name means “HealthyAdvice” in Spanish, mainly works with health plans, employers and at-risk providers who are trying to increase engagement from their Spanish-speaking customers, employees, and patients. ConsejoSano’s integrated platform arms clients with multi-channel messaging, care navigation, data analytics and 24/7 access to native Spanish-speaking medical navigators. The latest funding will be used to develop more sophisticated data collection and analytics that will be parlayed into preventive care. While many healthcare and technology companies offer Spanish-language options, like Anthem BlueCross's Spanish telemedicine and messaging capabilities, most function as add-ons to the more comprehensive services offered mainly in English. That's where ConsejoSano wants to set itself apart.

By the age of 35, two-thirds of American men will experience some degree of hair loss. By the age of 50, approximately 85% of men will have significant thinning hair. August is National Hair Loss Awareness Month and more than 95% of hair loss in men results from androgenetic alopecia, or male pattern baldness. Thankfully to technology and medicine, there more and more treatments are being developed to help with hair loss. Today, we have Dr. Kenneth Anderson, board-certified hair restoration surgeon from Atlanta, GA and a specialist in Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy for hair loss, joining us for the discussion. From the most innovative stem cell research to the older strip surgery procedures, Dr. Anderson expert doctor can educate you on what really works and what does not work.

A new breakthrough treatment for advanced bladder cancer has just received FDA approval under the accelerated approval program. The new treatment is Genentech's new cancer immunotherapy medicine TECENTRIQ (atezolizumab). This is the first cancer immunotherapy approved to treat this form of cancer. And until now, there have been no treatment advances for advanced bladder cancer in more than 30 years. Join us as we talk to Dr. Daniel P. Petrylak, medical oncologist and Professor of Medicine and Urology at the Yale Cancer Center and one of the lead investigators on the TECENTRIQ (atezolizumab) clinical trial, and Lou, a patient from the clinical trial, about the new breakthrough treatment.

We'll be interviewing Co-Founder, Swathi Kiran, about her company, Constant Therapy, who provides mobile applications for continuous and customized therapy to people with speech, language, cognition, memory, and learning disorders. In this interview, we'll drill into what Constant Therapy is, what their goals are, and just exactly how they are different from Lumosity and all those other brain games apps. A little about Constant Therapy Born out of groundbreaking research at Boston University and in use at prominent and nationally recognized rehabilitation institutions, Constant Therapy provides the most comprehensive set of tools for traumatic brain injury (TBI) and stroke survivors and for people with aphasia or dementia. Therapy tasks are based on the latest research and are easy to use. With 65 task categories and a growing library of over 60,000 exercises, patients can continue to make progress at home or even after traditional care ends in the clinic. For more information: http://constanttherapy.com/.

Today, we will be talking to William Rosenzweig, Dean and Executive Director of The Food Business School, about what The Food Business School (FBS) is and what aspirations and goals they envision FBS to be. William B. Rosenzweig has spent more than twenty-five years integrating the practices and perspectives of an entrepreneur, venture investor, and educator. He is regarded internationally as an expert in cultivating and transforming impactful ideas into thriving enterprises. Will was founding CEO (and Minister of Progress) of The Republic of Tea, an award-winning specialty tea company that is credited with creating the premium tea category in the United States. As an entrepreneur and investor, he has been involved in Odwalla, Stonyfield Farms, Trinity Springs, Winetasting.com and Brand New Brands, a functional food incubator he founded in 2003. In November 2014, Will joined forces with The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) to launch The Food Business School (FBS), the CIA’s new center for executive and graduate education. As dean and executive director of The Food Business School, Will is working with industry experts to create specialized programs that enable and empower entrepreneurs to design, deliver, and lead transformative innovations that address the world’s most pressing food challenges—and its greatest business opportunities. A little about FBS's mission The Food Business School enables and empowers entrepreneurial leaders to design, deliver and lead transformative innovations that address the world’s most pressing food challenges—and its greatest business opportunities.

Today's guests are Adam and Neal Kaufman of Canary Health, formerly known as DPS Health. Why the sudden change in name? And exactly what are they intending to do going forward? Well, that's what we'll be asking Adam and Neal so tune in. About the company... DPS Health, the leader in digital health self-management, announced that effective immediately on May 27th, it has renamed the company Canary Health to better align with its mission to engage consumers to arrest the trajectory of chronic illness. While organizations have traditionally invested in the healthy and very sick populations, they must now invest in a third group, the "Emergent-Risk" population—adults with one or more prechronic and early-stage chronic conditions. Canary Health enables health plans, provider systems, and employers to impact the health of the Emergent-Risk; a group now comprising 25%-30% of the U.S. adult population.

Five years ago, the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. And today, we have Navigant’s Paul Keckley looking at the goals of the law and discussing what’s working and what’s ahead for the ACA. So Is It Working? - Has it increased access to coverage? Yes, at least for some, and at least for now. - Has it reduced costs? It’s too soon to know. - Has it improved the public’s understanding of the U.S. health system? Regrettably no. What’s Ahead? - The stakes in the states are higher - The winners and losers are shaking out - Innovators with value-driven solutions are disrupting the status quo - The ACA will be a spotlight issue in Campaign 2016 Tune in to listen to more of what Paul Keckley has to say with our host Patricia Salber (@docweighsin).

Today's guest is Boston emergency physician, Dr. Sean Kelly, Chief Medical Officer of Imprivata, healthcare IT security company. He will be discussing the state-of-the-art of electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS) and as well New York's groundbreaking legislation known as I-STOP that will be implemented in March 2016. EPCS is an emerging technology that is just now moving into the national healthcare IT spotlight in part because of I-STOP. I-STOP mandates that all medications be prescribed electronically, including highly addictive opioids and other controlled substances. New York is the first state to require electronic prescribing, which is a major shift in how medications will be prescribed in the future. It is hoped that EPCS will streamline order workflow, reduce patient wait times for prescriptions, improve provider andpatient satisfaction, reduce prescription errors, and help meet Meaningful Use goals. It should help address prescription drug abuse, including opioids and other controlled substances.

Today's guest is Neil Smiley, CEO of Loopback Analytics, a pioneer in empowering hospitals and post-acute care providers to more effectively manage care transitions and reimbursement challenges in a “pay-for-outcome” environment. Loopback Analytics's vision is to serve as the management platform that helps transform health care to a performance-based model. And they promise to provide clients with reliable, cost-effective, technology-enabled solutions to improve clinical outcomes and increase patient satisfaction. As we know, the number of narrow networks continue to increase in this area. We'll be talking to Neil to see just how he has come up with a solution to this problem.