Empowered Patient Podcast Karen Jagoda

Kristen Helton, CEO and Co-Founder of Herself Health, provides comprehensive primary care designed specifically for women over 65, considering the unique health challenges these women face. The emphasis is on the importance of addressing women's health beyond reproductive health and the need for tailored treatment and screening for conditions that affect women differently than men. Kristen notes the underrepresentation of women, especially older women, in clinical trials and the need for further investigation. They aim to reduce bias and improve the quality of care for older women by adopting a person-centric approach, listening to patients' concerns, and building trust.
Kristen explains, "Almost half of the burdens of disease that women experience stem from conditions that affect women differently than men. So, a lot of these diseases, cardiovascular, chronic illness, gastroenterology, and depression, affect men differently than they affect women. We're very focused on how we treat women and screen them for different diseases. We take a really comprehensive health history. Women have a lot of data that we need to understand as we're putting together the picture of their overall health."
"I mean, 65 is young old, in fact. It's just the beginning, and there are a lot of differences between 65 and 75 and 85 and 95. We're talking about decades. So I'm also remiss in grouping 65 and up even into a single category. But you hit on something super important there, and that is women are not satisfied with the answer that's just what happens as you get older. It comes back to, in essence, the quality of life. I think this is where we're seeing some real success in our approach, which is yes, we want to do all of the important preventative, physical, behavioral health care. But we also want to understand the patient's goals and what they're trying to get to and maintain."
#HerselfHealth #WomensHealth #Healthcare #ValueBasedCare #PrimaryCare
herself-health.com
Listen to the podcast here

Kristen Helton, CEO and Co-Founder of Herself Health, provides comprehensive primary care designed specifically for women over 65, considering the unique health challenges these women face. The emphasis is on the importance of addressing women's health beyond reproductive health and the need for tailored treatment and screening for conditions that affect women differently than men. Kristen notes the underrepresentation of women, especially older women, in clinical trials and the need for further investigation. They aim to reduce bias and improve the quality of care for older women by adopting a person-centric approach, listening to patients' concerns, and building trust.
Kristen explains, "Almost half of the burdens of disease that women experience stem from conditions that affect women differently than men. So, a lot of these diseases, cardiovascular, chronic illness, gastroenterology, and depression, affect men differently than they affect women. We're very focused on how we treat women and screen them for different diseases. We take a really comprehensive health history. Women have a lot of data that we need to understand as we're putting together the picture of their overall health."
"I mean, 65 is young old, in fact. It's just the beginning, and there are a lot of differences between 65 and 75 and 85 and 95. We're talking about decades. So I'm also remiss in grouping 65 and up even into a single category. But you hit on something super important there, and that is women are not satisfied with the answer that's just what happens as you get older. It comes back to, in essence, the quality of life. I think this is where we're seeing some real success in our approach, which is yes, we want to do all of the important preventative, physical, behavioral health care. But we also want to understand the patient's goals and what they're trying to get to and maintain."
#HerselfHealth #WomensHealth #Healthcare #ValueBasedCare #PrimaryCare
herself-health.com
Download the transcript here

Robert Towarnicki, CEO and Co-founder of SIRPant Immunotherapeutics, discusses cancer-specific immunotherapy for aggressive tumors, the role macrophages play in the immune response to cancer, and how cancer cells can shut down this response. SIRPant Immunotherapeutics aims to modify macrophages by reducing SIRPα expression, triggering them to eat cancer cells and educate other immune cells. Early evidence demonstrates potential effectiveness for various cancers, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and solid tumors. Robert emphasizes this therapy's scalability and cost advantages compared to other cell therapies like CAR-T. He also highlights the potential for treating rare diseases and the ability of SIRPant-M to target a wide range of cancers without the need for pre-identified targets.
Robert explains, "Macrophages are a normal immune cell type in your body. They normally function to recognize foreign invaders and process them in the sense of phagocytizing or eating the foreign protein and invader, if it's a virus, a bacteria, or a cancer. Unfortunately, cancers are very good at shutting down this immune response. So, we need to modify the macrophage and re-empower it to elicit the other immune cells in the body to do their job and eliminate cancer."
"I think one of the mistakes we've seen with others working with the macrophage in this situation was the lack of appreciation for the role of SIRPα. Our inventor, Dr. Yuan Liu at Georgia State University, identified this early on through a knockout mouse, a mouse where SIRPα was genetically removed from it. With that mouse, she could discover and learn how macrophages function and react. It directed us to the whole concept of removing SIRPα from the macrophage. Now, removal alone is not enough. You also have to activate a macrophage. So, a macrophage exists in multiple states. There's an active state, and then there's an inactive state."
#SIRPant #Immunotherapy #Macrophages #Oncology #Cancer
sirpantimmunotx.com
 Listen to the podcast here

Robert Towarnicki, CEO and Co-founder of SIRPant Immunotherapeutics, discusses cancer-specific immunotherapy for aggressive tumors, the role macrophages play in the immune response to cancer, and how cancer cells can shut down this response. SIRPant Immunotherapeutics aims to modify macrophages by reducing SIRPα expression, triggering them to eat cancer cells and educate other immune cells. Early evidence demonstrates potential effectiveness for various cancers, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and solid tumors. Robert emphasizes this therapy's scalability and cost advantages compared to other cell therapies like CAR-T. He also highlights the potential for treating rare diseases and the ability of SIRPant-M to target a wide range of cancers without the need for pre-identified targets.
Robert explains, "Macrophages are a normal immune cell type in your body. They normally function to recognize foreign invaders and process them in the sense of phagocytizing or eating the foreign protein and invader, if it's a virus, a bacteria, or a cancer. Unfortunately, cancers are very good at shutting down this immune response. So, we need to modify the macrophage and re-empower it to elicit the other immune cells in the body to do their job and eliminate cancer."
"I think one of the mistakes we've seen with others working with the macrophage in this situation was the lack of appreciation for the role of SIRPα. Our inventor, Dr. Yuan Liu at Georgia State University, identified this early on through a knockout mouse, a mouse where SIRPα was genetically removed from it. With that mouse, she could discover and learn how macrophages function and react. It directed us to the whole concept of removing SIRPα from the macrophage. Now, removal alone is not enough. You also have to activate a macrophage. So, a macrophage exists in multiple states. There's an active state, and then there's an inactive state."
#SIRPant #Immunotherapy #Macrophages #Oncology #Cancer
sirpantimmunotx.com
Download the transcript here

Jeff Surges, CEO of RLDatix, offers global cloud-based solutions for risk management, compliance management, and regulatory management in healthcare. To address patient safety, Jeff emphasizes the need for a collaborative workforce, data analytics, and AI. RLDatix uses technology to automate information gathering, facilitate incident reporting, and analyze data to determine proactive actions to prevent incidents and improve safety.
 Jeff explains, "The simplest analogy when I get asked this is: how does this relate to other industries? We all fly in airplanes, and we've seen in the airline industry most recently with doors coming off, the emergency exit doors, close calls, or what we'll call incidents where you need to look at the root cause. The key difference is if a plane goes down, as tragic as that is, the pilots and the crew go down. But in healthcare, if there's an incident or a procedure or an event that has occurred, it's likely only affecting the patient and the patient's family. That's not meant to say that people don't care, everybody cares, but it doesn't affect the entire circumference. What we try to do is make it automated, make it easy to use, engage with what we call a culture of safety, which starts at the very highest level, and then using data analytics, now, generative AI."
"For 20 years, an article written in our industry called To Err Is Human kicked off the energy around improving patient safety. I think the first phase of that for over ten years, 15 years, was just documenting the event after it happened. Let's document. Let's run around and automate, document, and report on it."
"Today, that's no longer the case. All of our customers and our industry want to prevent this. We use terms like highly reliable- I want to be an HRO, a highly reliable organization. We're competing on safety. Everybody wants to go to the safest place for care. We're trying to use data and analytics to both prevent and gain the insights to make sure that we can continue that not just one time. The data is telling us there are some decisions we can make in our policies and our procedures, in our staffing levels, and in our credentialing of staff to make sure that we can continue. So, going from reactive to proactive risk mitigation." 
#RLDatix #ConnectedHealthcareOperations #PatientSafety #HealthTech #AI
rldatix.com
Listen to the podcast here

Jeff Surges, CEO of RLDatix, offers global cloud-based solutions for risk management, compliance management, and regulatory management in healthcare. To address patient safety, Jeff emphasizes the need for a collaborative workforce, data analytics, and AI. RLDatix uses technology to automate information gathering, facilitate incident reporting, and analyze data to determine proactive actions to prevent incidents and improve safety.
 Jeff explains, "The simplest analogy when I get asked this is: how does this relate to other industries? We all fly in airplanes, and we've seen in the airline industry most recently with doors coming off, the emergency exit doors, close calls, or what we'll call incidents where you need to look at the root cause. The key difference is if a plane goes down, as tragic as that is, the pilots and the crew go down. But in healthcare, if there's an incident or a procedure or an event that has occurred, it's likely only affecting the patient and the patient's family. That's not meant to say that people don't care, everybody cares, but it doesn't affect the entire circumference. What we try to do is make it automated, make it easy to use, engage with what we call a culture of safety, which starts at the very highest level, and then using data analytics, now, generative AI."
"For 20 years, an article written in our industry called To Err Is Human kicked off the energy around improving patient safety. I think the first phase of that for over ten years, 15 years, was just documenting the event after it happened. Let's document. Let's run around and automate, document, and report on it."
"Today, that's no longer the case. All of our customers and our industry want to prevent this. We use terms like highly reliable- I want to be an HRO, a highly reliable organization. We're competing on safety. Everybody wants to go to the safest place for care. We're trying to use data and analytics to both prevent and gain the insights to make sure that we can continue that not just one time. The data is telling us there are some decisions we can make in our policies and our procedures, in our staffing levels, and in our credentialing of staff to make sure that we can continue. So, going from reactive to proactive risk mitigation." 
#RLDatix #ConnectedHealthcareOperations #PatientSafety #HealthTech #AI
rldatix.com
Download the transcript here