Raise the Line

A new generation of medical technology has produced endless new rivers of biometric data, and attuned regular people to their own health in new and complicated ways. On today’s episode of Raise the Line, we turn to a pioneer in connected medical devices, Dr. David Albert, to understand more about these influential trends. He founded AliveCor, whose smartphone-enabled heart monitors anticipated the remote monitoring technology that helped the medical system run during the pandemic. Dr. Albert believes the technology -- and the population-scale data it produces -- opens up new possibilities for preventative medicine and, as he tells host Shiv Gaglani, allows patients to be increasingly fluent in the dynamics of their personal health and empowered to take control of their medical future. Check out this lively discussion to hear about a “mobile-first” medical future, Dr. Albert’s early forays into inventing medical technology, and how college wrestling prepared him for healthy aging. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“In life, I feel like you always know what the right thing to do is, it's just hard,” says Dr. Omar Lateef, who runs Rush University Medical Center in the Near West Side of Chicago. Lateef has embraced the challenging path necessitated by Rush’s community-based mission which involves providing services like tutoring, food subsidies and jobs programs in addition to acute care. In this episode of Raise the Line, you’ll find out how this mission shaped RUMC’s COVID response which involved overcoming bureaucratic hurdles to take in hundreds of transfers. Learn how Dr. Lateef went from studying theology, to specializing in pulmonary and critical care medicine, to his current role as a hospital leader. Plus, learn about the importance of having reliable, open-source data on healthcare quality, and hear Dr. Lateef's advice on both addressing the public health crisis of racism, and keeping up motivation when the adrenaline and sense of community support present earlier in the pandemic has diminished. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Despite being a self-described “data geek” Josh Schoeller is well aware of the challenges in making sense of the ever-expanding amount of healthcare-related data. As he puts it, “More data doesn't necessarily mean more knowledge.” As president of Global Clinical Solutions at Elsevier and CEO of Healthcare for LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Schoeller is in a unique position to see how all of this data can be leveraged in better ways to support learners, practitioners, patients and the healthcare system at large. “On the LexisNexis side, we have a mission to create healthier communities and on the Elsevier side, it's to improve every patient outcome. So, they're very much aligned and are both mission-driven organizations built around people that are very committed to using data and analytics and content to help improve healthcare in the U.S. and throughout the world.” Check out this penetrating discussion with host Shiv Gaglani as he draws out valuable insights from Schoeller on the current and future role of data in clinical decision-making, patient privacy, health equity, the efficiency of healthcare delivery, and much more. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“Software can keep in its mind a million more things than a doctor can,” explains Dr. Tom Kelly, who started a company in Australia called Oscer that aims to eliminate misdiagnosis. It all started with Dr. Kelly's desire to improve the lives of others, after he saw first-hand the impact that mistakes in diagnosis were having in rural Australia. In this fascinating talk with host Michael Carrese, learn more about Dr. Kelly's path and the important work of his company, whose education platform is now used to teach clinical reasoning by more than 150 universities across 35 countries and counting. Listen in for a glimpse of the technology behind the scenes at Oscer, including their gigantic maps called knowledge graphs, their virtual patients, and their clinical products that Dr. Kelly says will eventually be able to consider all the symptoms a patient has ever reported and hopefully provide “a superhuman level of diagnostic support.” Plus, hear Dr. Kelly's philosophy on what humans are meant to do, and what makes this moment in time especially significant. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“We're in the business of empowering students,” explains Dr. Joshua Courtney, who joins host Shiv Gaglani on this episode of Raise the Line. Dr. Courtney's company, TrueLearn, served 60 million practice questions last year, and over 90% of osteopathic medical students use his flagship product COMBANK. If learning is a contact sport, as he likes to say, then Dr. Courtney himself has made possible some serious winning streaks. His initial draw to medicine? His own childhood struggle with leukemia. Tune in to hear Dr. Courtney's fascinating story and find out what makes TrueLearn's data-driven approach to medical exam prep unique. Listen to his take on how COVID has revealed the fragmentation of knowledge as a mass vulnerability, and find out why he thinks physicians should better understand the brain disease of addiction. Plus, hear his advice to students to seize the moment and not go it alone. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“I'm a tinkerer by nature,” says today's guest, Dr. Harsh Vathsangam. “Left to my own devices, I'll start opening up remotes and breaking apart bicycles.” That curiosity in how things work, combined with a knack for technology and drive to make a positive impact in people’s lives, led Vathsangam to focus his efforts on cardiac rehabilitation, a greatly underutilized treatment even though its effectiveness has been well-established for decades. In this engaging interview, find out how Movn -- the virtual cardiac rehabilitation solution created by his company, Moving Analytics -- creates an at-home experience geared toward making lifestyle changes that impact the whole individual. Tune in to hear how the company has overcome challenges of innovating within the healthcare space, and why he thinks there's potential to extend this model to high-risk patients. Plus, discover his advice for anyone looking to work in healthcare, including how empathy and knowing the business side of things can make you a better clinician. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Even though women are the backbone of the healthcare system in the U.S., comprising 77% of the patient-facing workforce, studies have shown they're not paid or promoted equitably and this gender equity problem extends to medical education as well. On today’s episode of Raise the Line, you’ll hear from someone who is focused on turning this around. Dr. Nancy Spector is executive director of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program at Drexel University College of Medicine, which has been making an impact in this area for many years. In fact, approximately half of all female deans at U.S. medical schools are graduates of ELAM. But Spector says there is much more to do. “We know that more diverse teams have better outcomes, so our main mission is to create equity at every level of leadership in academic medicine.” Tune in to learn about the challenges women face once they do make it into the leadership ranks, what can be done about the burnout crisis among women in the healthcare workforce, and how leaders are managing a state of unending crisis during COVID-19. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“The nursing workforce is truly the backbone of the healthcare delivery system,” observes today's guest, Dr. Michelle Cummings, who has straddled clinical nursing and the nursing academic world for the past 20 years. “Many people don't realize that there are four times as many nurses as there are doctors, and by 2030, we will need more than 1.3 million new nurses to address the current shortage. We really need to find some solutions.” One key approach is to make education, training and upskilling more affordable and accessible for working nurses, something she pursues in her role at Academic Partnerships which supports the online offerings of not-for-profit universities. Tune in to this episode of Raise the Line with host Shiv Gaglani to discover what Dr. Cummings believes is the biggest current concern facing the healthcare industry, and hear her advice to nurses on managing their careers in this dynamic and challenging COVID environment. Plus, find out what Dr. Cummings means when she encourages a “Pac-Man approach” to career advancement. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Early on in his psychiatry career, Dr. David Mou found to his surprise that most mental health professionals didn’t prioritize using data to measure outcomes. Today, he attributes much of the early success of Cerebral -- the new and fast-growing mental telehealth company he helps lead -- to its data-driven approach to supporting quality of care. “This is the first step towards precision psychiatry,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. Mou notes that on the basis of relatively little user data, companies like Facebook and Netflix successfully predict users’ future behavior for commercial gain. “We should just use that principle for good instead of using it to market to people,” he says. For instance, analyzing behavior patterns to predict suicide. He argues that a data-oriented psychiatric model not only opens up new research possibilities and makes for happy doctors, but also enables the treatment of the most serious mental health disorders via telemedicine, which is not currently a common practice. Tune in to hear about Olympic gymnast Simone Biles’ new role at Cerebral, why even doctors often don’t get the psychiatric care they need, and why Dr. Mou is “bullish” on the clinical future of psychedelics. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Dr. Isaac Eliaz begins his work from a place of contemplation. “Nothing is solid. Nothing stays the same,” he tells host Dr. Rishi Desai. He has focused in part on Galectin-3, which he calls the survivor protein, for its role shielding cells that decide “I’m not going to die”—cancerous cells. Yet, whether he’s operating at the level of one of the 50 trillion cells in a human body, or at the level of the human those cells constitute, Dr. Eliaz understands himself as basically treating an inability to accept change. He calls it the “survival paradox.” The idea has been central to a career devoted to the integration of the scientific and the holistic—a career in which Dr. Eliaz has incorporated Buddhist practice into his pioneering research, oncology, and more. Tune in to hear what makes the heart fundamentally different from other organs, why some doctors get worse over time, and why healing means more than simply getting rid of a disease. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast