Improving Quality of Diagnostic Data

Posted on September 5, 2016September 7, 2016

Improving Quality of Diagnostic Data

Dr. Carolyn Compton, a panelist at the upcoming 2016 Health Connect South event September 21, took time out to join me on the show to talk about the need for improving the quality of data we get through diagnostic testing through better control of how specimens are gathered, handled, and stored.

She shared an example of how a specimen, collected knowing it was positive for tumor cells, can be made to return a “Negative” result for cancer if the specimen is not handled properly once it’s been collected. She will be talking about how many factors can affect the validity and thus, value, of given tests if there exists a wide range of variance across the pre-diagnostic phase of test gathering.

A pathologist by profession, Dr. Comptom is very familiar with how significant the impact can be if diagnostic testing is unreliable due to practices that could be prevented. Insuring that we are making decisions using the best, highest quality data available, means we need to look for any areas where variability creates what in essence is data artifact.

Arizona State University ranked by US News and World Report as the most innovative university in the
country and is the #1 producer of Fulbright scholars. Mayo Clinic is ranked by US News and World Report
as the best hospital in the US. NBDA is a 501C3 dedicated to collaboratively developing and implementing the crosscutting standards needed to reengineer the biomarker development process and increase its success rate, a critical issue and limiting factor for the implementation of precision medicine.

Special Guest:

Dr. Carolyn Compton, MD

Professor Arizona State University and Mayo Clinic

CMO NBDA; CMO CASI

Facilitating Clinical Trials

Posted on August 29, 2016August 30, 2016

Podcast: Download

Facilitating Clinical Trials

On this episode I caught up with Josh Mann, Co-founder/President of a non-profit organization, shareforcures.com, a digital platform that is facilitating clinical trials. The platform accomplishes this by creating a database that enables individuals to contribute various aspects of their personal health data that can be utilized by clinical trials.

We know securing test participants is one of the greatest challenges and sources of cost for clinical trials. So to have resources such as this becoming available should help tackle that problem as more and more patients and individuals populate the database with ever more information.

Data can come from wearable tech such as FitBits, Apple Watch, and others, as well as diagnostic equipment like glucometers, blood pressure, and even electronic medical records. The individuals contributing data have the ability to make as much or as little of their information accessible by clinical trials. And when it is utilized, it is possible to de-identify the individual to protect their privacy.

Josh talked about the fact that currently, most clinical trials end up with participants who as a group are often not truly representative of the patients who will be utilizing a medicine or device. The reason for this stems from the fact that typically, patients taking multiple medications are often not included, along with patients who have multiple diseases, or other factors that can contribute to effectiveness of a drug or treatment regimen.

Josh will be participating in the discussions at the Health Connect South event September 21, 2016 at the Georgia Aquarium, talking about the role of big data in healthcare and how its evolution and integration will impact patient outcomes and clinical trials. Be sure to use the promo code “RadioX” when you go to register for the event. And make sure your contacts know about our promotion for Radio X listeners!

Transition To Value-Based Healthcare

Posted on August 20, 2016August 20, 2016

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Sidney Welch, Tiff Wilson

Transition To Value-Based Healthcare

Recent changes in law have necessitated a transition to value-based healthcare delivery model, moving away from a volume-focused, treat-when-diagnosed approach to a pro-active, preventive “wellness” initiatives.

Sidney Welch works with clients to best position them in the explosion of heath care change. Focusing on operational, transactional, regulatory, administrative, and litigation matters nationally, Sidney works with clients to structure transactions and respond to compliance issues associated with federal and state health care laws and regulations. She is known for her work with specialty physician practices and health care technology companies across the country, and provides strategic counsel to clients regarding innovations in health care. See more.

Tiffany Wilson joined the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI) in 2011 during its startup phase, directing business development activities, building strategic relationships and bringing together core members of the medical device ecosystem. She was quickly promoted to Executive Director, leading all strategic direction and day-to-day operations of the center. Her strong background in medical devices, commitment to fostering innovation and understanding of business strategies have propelled Wilson into a leadership role in the Southeast and brought her into the national spotlight. Full bio

We talked about the transition to value-based healthcare and its impacts on all parties involved, patient, payor, hospital, and physician, and how this transition affects some of the top disease states such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and others.

Tiff shared the news of GCMI’s recent merger with T3 Labs, bringing the lifecycle of tech innovation R&D/commercialization ecosystem and user training under one organization to capitalize on efficiencies, communication, and more.

Special Guests:

Sidney Welch, Healthcare Innovation Practice Lead, Polsinelli

Tiff Wilson, Executive Director, GCMI- the Global Center for Medical Innovation

Precision Medicine

Posted on August 12, 2016

Podcast: Download

Dr. Dan Roden

Damon Hostin

Precision Medicine

On this week’s episode I talked with two healthcare leaders who are experts in precision medicine. One, Dr. Dan Roden, is one of the leading researchers on pharmacogenomic testing and its impact on patient outcomes at Vanderbilt University. His work, along with colleagues at Vanderbilt and nationally, is contributing to the growing body of evidence supporting the value of personalized care. The other was Damon Hostin, Administrative Vice President, Precision Medicine, at Catholic Health Initiatives, an organization that is an early adopter among health care systems putting precision medicine into action in their hospitals. Their two perspectives give insight into the “Why’s” and “How’s” of implementing precision medicine within our healthcare delivery model.

After obtaining his MD and completing internship, Dr. Dan Roden went to Vanderbilt where he trained in Clinical Pharmacology and Cardiology, and has been a faculty member there since. His initial career focus – that he has maintained – was studies of the clinical, genetic, cellular, and molecular basis of arrhythmia susceptibility and variability responses to arrhythmia therapies.

Over the last 10 years, Dr. Roden has led Vanderbilt’s broader efforts in pharmacogenomics discovery and implementation. He is principal investigator for the Vanderbilt sites of the National Institutes of Health’s Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) and the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network. He directs the Vanderbilt DNA databank BioVU, a discovery resource that as of spring 2014 included >175,000 samples linked to deidentified electronic medical records. He is a leader in Vanderbilt’s PREDICT project that since 2010 has been preemptively embedded pharmacogenomic variant data in the electronic medical records of >14,000 Vanderbilt patients; as of April 2013, PREDICT displays information on 5 drug-gene pairs and delivers point of care decision support when a target drug is prescribed to patients with variant genotypes.

Prior to joining Catholic Health Initiatives, Damon was a clinical business lead for Complete Genomics and Strategic Diagnostics. Earlier, Mr. Hostin served as VP of Scientific Operations for GenVis Labs, a genetic diagnostic company purchased by Pfizer in 2008. At Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Hostin managed alliances and licensing for the development of oncology therapeutic candidates. Earlier he served as Team Leader of Sequencing, at Celera Genomics- where he was co-published on the Human and Drosophila genome papers in Science as well as contributed to the launch of the commercial genomic database. Mr. Hostin’s education includes undergraduate studies at Tulane University; Master’s studies at Harvard University; and certificate programs at The Institute for Genomic Research, the NIH, and Wharton.

In its discussion of the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program, the National Institute of Health states, “Far too many diseases do not have a proven means of prevention or effective treatments. We must gain better insights into the biological, environmental, and behavioral influences on these diseases to make a difference for the millions of Americans who suffer from them. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. While some advances in precision medicine have been made, the practice is not currently in use for most diseases.

That’s why on January 20, 2015, President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative® (PMI) (link is external) in his State of the Union address. Through advances in research, technology and policies that empower patients, the PMI will enable a new era of medicine in which researchers, providers and patients work together to develop individualized care.

The President called for $215 million in fiscal year 2016 to support the Initiative, which includes several components with efforts from across the federal government. Of this total proposed budget, $130 million was allocated to NIH to build a national, large-scale research participant group, called a cohort, and $70 million was allocated to the National Cancer Institute to lead efforts in cancer genomics as part of PMI for Oncology.”

Special Guests:

Dr. Dan Roden, MD, Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Personalized Medicine, Vanderbilt University

Damon Hostin, Administrative Vice President, Precision Medicine, Catholic Health Initiatives

UCB on Epilepsy and Collaboration

Posted on August 5, 2016August 5, 2016

Podcast: Download

Chris Clark of UCB

Russ Lipari, Founder, Health Connect South

UCB on Epilepsy and Collaboration

On this week’s episode I hosted CEO/Founder of Health Connect South, Russ Lipari, and Chris Clark, Portfolio Strategy and Intelligence, Epilepsy at UCB, a pharmaceutical research and development company with a US location in Smyrna, GA. It’s been three years since I first met Russ when he joined me as a guest on the Top Docs Radio show to talk about Health Connect South and its genesis as a platform for collaboration among healthcare organizations in the region.

At the time, it was thought the primary approach to fostering introductions and the partnerships/collaborations that would follow would be via meeting events throughout the year. Over time, the platform has grown to include the weekly Health Connect South Radio show, regional educational events with subject matter experts, and a developing digital environment that will provide another means for organizations to share what they are doing, talk about resources they need, and potentially link up with partners that can meet them.

The primary needs of Health Connect South has relating to resources are funding and health care experts who are willing to support the initiative by making themselves available as thought leaders who can share information that will promote advances in healthcare outcomes for our communities. Historically, HCS has been funded primarily through event attendance fees. In order to insure sustainability and growth of this useful healthcare platform, the organization is actively seeking financial benefactors who will provide endowments or other ongoing funding beyond what is achieved through HCS events.

The 2016 Health Connect South event is fast-approaching—September 21, at the Georgia Aquarium’s conference facility. This year’s focus will be featuring health leaders talking about how they are working to tackle the World Health Organization’s Top 10 Disease States affecting large populations around the globe. Listeners of the show can take advantage of the promo code: RadioX and receive a discount on their registration fee.

Russ shared how UCB has been one of the first partners in making Health Connect South become a reality and they continue to do so today. Chris explained the work UCB is doing to develop medications to address a number of challenging health problems, particularly neurologic and immunologic ones such as epilepsy and rheumatoid arthritis.

More info soon!

Complying with MACRA

Posted on July 29, 2016July 29, 2016

Podcast: Download

Dr. Vergena Clark

Complying with MACRA

MCCI (Medical Care Consortium, Inc.) is a physician owned Medical Group who partners with Humana to engage Primary Care Provider offices successfully transition to a quality or value based model of care by providing practice support around quality related activities such as appropriate documentation and coding, care coordination, Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH), closing Preventive Health and Quality gaps, etc. and now MACRA.

More info soon!

Reducing Hospital-acquired Infections

Posted on July 25, 2016July 27, 2016

Podcast: Download

Sam Perkins

Jay Shaffer isn’t afraid of Ebola

Reducing Hospital-acquired Infections

Jay and I sat down with Sam Perkins, CEO of Pūrgenix™, a company that has developed a technology that enables healthcare organizations to contain, and in fact, reduce rates of occurrence of hospital-acquired infections. It is well known that pathogens such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile are challenging to treat and equally challenging to eradicate from a care environment once they have taken hold. The Pūrgenix™ platform addresses a component that is often overlooked in dealing with these dangerous organisms—the air.

Sam shared how they saw a need for a new solution to eliminating illness-causing organisms from the hospital environment, ultimately developing a system that is custom-designed and installed to be installed into the building’s air handling units. The Pūrgenix™ system employs powerful UV lights that use energy to kill air-borne organisms as they pass into the air handler from the return and again on the way back to the environment on the downstream side.

He shared some use-case examples where client hospitals were able to successfully reduce occurrences of infections for their patients, as well as experiencing a measurable reduction in absenteeism among their employees due to illness.

Sam also explained that deposits, including bioburden that is created by bacteria, as thin as a micron (a piece of paper is ~6 microns thick) can significantly reduce the cooling efficiency of a building’s air handling unit. By preventing a build-up of bacteria within the unit on the cooling coils, the deposit of bioburden is eliminated, leading to marked increases in energy cost to condition the environment of the building.

Pūrgenix™ creates PūrHospitals™, an environment in which patients and employees experience a purer
environment where they can heal and work. Hospitals deploying the system can advertise their status as PūrHospitals™, letting patients in the community know their environment is safer with less risk of hospital-acquired infection. As Mark Haney, President at WellStar Paulding Hospital, said about the Pūrgenix™ solution at the launch of their new hospital: “…we still have to do the basics, but we have the building working for us now.”

Special Guest:

Sam Perkins, CEO, Pūrgenix™

ChronicCareIQ

Posted on July 5, 2016July 5, 2016

Podcast: Download

Matt Ethington

ChronicCareIQ

This week Jay and I sat down with Matt Ethington, CEO of ChronicCareIQ to learn how this technology company is providing physicians and hospitals with tools that empower them to better manage patients with chronic illnesses. The Affordable Care Act has put in place measures around patient outcomes that can affect how much the provider is reimbursed for care they deliver. Managing patients with chronic illnesses is time-consuming and requires much patient education and follow up to facilitate compliance with the recommended care plan. The ChronicCareIQ platform not only provides the practice or hospital with an efficient tool for engaging patients, it also provides documentation of required patient contacts, along with current health status data such as glucose measurements, blood pressure, weight, and others.

Matt shared how he is a patient dealing with a chronic illness, Type I Diabetes. His experiences along the way helped him see how care delivery can be somewhat disconnected at times and inspired him to think about ways to bridge gaps in communication and give providers a better way to know what is happening with their patient between visits.

ChronicCareIQ enables healthcare providers to keep tabs on fragile and chronic patients through their smart phones. Recognizing the impact on patient outcomes when effective chronic disease management measures are in place, Medicare has begun to reimburse for patient engagement performed through the platform, allowing providers to simultaneously automatically meet compliance requirements, and measurably reduce call volumes. Identified as a “Best Practice” by leading consulting groups and with patient engagement rates that exceed 80% on an average weekly basis, practices, hospitals, or health systems can identify decompensating patients in real time, manage risk to prevent unnecessary hospitalization or ED visits, and advance material steps with payment reforms.

Special Guest:

Matt Ethington, CEO, ChronicCareIQ

Insights in Healthcare Innovation

Posted on June 27, 2016

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Glenn Pearson

Insights in Healthcare Innovation

Jay and I sat down with Glenn Pearson, of Pearson Health Tech Insights. Glenn’s background includes spending time in leadership roles in acute care hospital settings, as well as nearly 20 years with the Georgia Hospital Association. During his career he realized challenges companies with technology innovation solutions have when selling into a hospital or health system.

He is leveraging that experience to help health care organizations evaluate technology and more effectively implement it, as well as consulting with technology companies to help them assess their solution against the health organization’s perception of the problem the solution solves. In this way he is able to help the technology company have greater likelihood to be able to speak to the right leader with the right message about the right solution.

Check back soon for more information!

Special Guest:

Glenn Pearson, Principal, Pearson Health Tech Insights

Health-ePeople

Posted on June 21, 2016June 21, 2016

Podcast: Download

Satvinder “Pearly” Dhingra

Health-ePeople

We sat down with Satvinder “Pearly” Dhingra, founder of HealthePeople.com. HealthePeople is a platform where patients can aggregate their health information from a variety of sources, from wearable fitness devices to medical records, and have them available in a single portal. The users can opt to make their de-identified information available to clinical trials to support their work if they choose.

More info soon!

Satvinder “Pearly” Dhingra, Founder, HealthePeople.com

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Improving Quality of Diagnostic Data