Tag: Scott Endicott

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Greetings and Felicitations

Greetings and Felicitations: The Future of Healthcare…Is Now: Part 5 – Down the Road

What is the future of healthcare and when will it arrive? To explore these and similar questions I visited with Dr. Ben Locwin and Scott Endicott in a five-episode podcast series. Over this series we have explored why the future of healthcare is now; gene and cell therapy, the use and misuse of statistics, Hippocrates and modern healthcare and where healthcare will be headed down the road. In this concluding Part 5, we look down the road at the future of healthcare.

The rapid advancement of technology has changed the way we live and work, and it’s also changing the way we receive healthcare. From smaller and smaller silicon wafer chips to quantum computers and micro dosing insulin pumps, technology is becoming more and more prevalent in healthcare.

At the same time, however, this technology poses several potential risks and ethical implications. Data privacy is a major concern, as there have been cases of lost or de-anonymized patient data from electronic health records getting out into the public sphere. AI and machine learning are also being used to collect and predict data, which could lead to further data privacy issues.

Ben and Scott recently discussed the potential risks and benefits of technology and the need for appropriate regulation and oversight to control the future of medical decision making. They also discussed the importance of patient advocacy and self-advocacy, as well as understanding and controlling how data is used.

Taking a counterfactual approach to contemplate the future of healthcare, it’s clear that technology advancements are here to stay. Software as a medical device is an open access point for hackers to get into highly critical medical devices. According to an IBM report, 550 organizations had a data breach between 2022 and 2023, and healthcare organizations had the highest average cost of data breaches at $11 million, up 8% from last year and 50% from a couple of years ago. With malware and ransomware looking to steal data due to the potential financial gain, the loss and risk to patient data from electronic medical and health records is a major concern.

Moore’s Law applies to both good and negative aspects of technology growth. Within 10-20 years, medications will be administered trans-dermally instead of through a bottle, and micronization of diagnostic capabilities will be available. Healthcare services, decisions, and other roles will be available through Amazon-like delivery. AI and ML are becoming more of a buzzword challenge, with many references being made to them in conversations. AI is currently being applied to chat and other spaces but is still five years away from being able to be transformational in medical applications. Genomics data is now accessible for criminal investigations, creating a downside risk. Technology is shrinking and getting faster, with microprocessors being built on five nanometer dies. Computers are beginning to take over for human decision making, with the widespread use of AI being seen in the future.

To ensure that these advancements are used responsibly, appropriate regulation and oversight is key. Ben believes that the human race has a tenacity to revert back if things become too extreme. Scott believes that patient advocacy and self-advocacy will be key to the change that needs to happen. Understanding and controlling how data is used is essential, as well as having more ethicists involved in the industry.

We hope that this blog post has provided you with some practical advice and data-driven insights to help you navigate the world of healthcare technology.

Key Highlights

·      Medical Technology Risks

·      AI in Healthcare

·      Moore’s Law and Medicine

·      Data Privacy and Telemedicine

Resources

Dr. Ben Locwin on LinkedIn

Scott Endicott on LinkedIn

Tom Fox on LinkedIn

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Greetings and Felicitations

Greetings and Felicitations: The Future of Healthcare…Is Now: Part 4 – Exploring Healthcare Trends: QALYs, CRACO and Hippocrates

What is the future of healthcare and when will it arrive? To explore these and similar questions I visited with Dr. Ben Locwin and Scott Endicott in a five-episode podcast series. Over this series we will explore why the future of healthcare is now; gene and cell therapy, the use and misuse of statistics, Hippocrates and modern healthcare and where healthcare will be headed down the road. In this Part 4, we look at some current trends in health care including QALYs, CRACO, and more.

This episode of the podcast explored the emerging health care trends that will impact patients and family caregivers, such as Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), which is a metric used to measure the quality of life; and Clinical Research as a Care Option (CRACO), which is an emergent option for cancer treatment, combining traditional standard of care drugs with cutting-edge therapies. Tom, Ben, and Scott discussed the potential benefits and risks of virtual healthcare, including the ability to access care remotely and the potential for nefarious actors to access sensitive information. They also discussed the importance of advanced directives and the need to consider quality of life versus end of life when making decisions.

They also discussed the potential benefits and risks of virtual healthcare, including the ability to access care remotely and the potential for nefarious actors to access sensitive information. They also discussed the importance of advanced directives and the need to consider quality of life versus end of life when making decisions.

Having an appropriate document in place and giving the decision-making power you want to make that designation is important. Quality of life versus end of life is an important consideration when making decisions. Immunotherapies can extend life, but it is important to consider the quality of life that the individual is seeking. Prostate cancer is a condition that affects many males as they age, and advanced directives are a crucial piece to the end-of-life equation, as they help bring a thread of logic to the sequence of events.

Personalized medicine and healthcare have changed drastically in the last five to seven years. Telemedicine and decentralization of healthcare have made tremendous advancements, particularly in rural areas where access to healthcare is often limited. Telemedicine eliminates the need to physically go to a clinic, reducing the risk of exposure to infectious diseases. However, there is a risk of overprescribing medications due to the ease of telemedicine visits, and there is ambiguity in the data regarding the effectiveness of telemedicine. There is also a risk of data breaches due to the use of telemedicine, which could include personal information and medical histories. Technology is advancing, which could help to overcome some of the barriers of telemedicine.

Making end of life decisions is a difficult process, but it is important to consider the quality of life versus end of life when making decisions. Quality Adjusted Life Years and Clinical Research as a Care Option are emerging health care trends that can help to make these decisions easier. With the advancements in telemedicine, more people have access to healthcare, and it is possible to get a better understanding of the quality of life that an individual is seeking.

Key Highlights

·      Digital Health Benefits and Risks

·      Clinical Research as Care

·      Telemedicine Benefits

·      End of Life Decisions

 Resources

Dr. Ben Locwin on LinkedIn

Scott Endicott on LinkedIn

Tom Fox on LinkedIn

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Greetings and Felicitations

Greetings and Felicitations: The Future of Healthcare…Is Now: Part 3 – The Specifics of Managing Obesity

What is the future of healthcare and when will it arrive? To explore these and similar questions I visited with Dr. Ben Locwin and Scott Endicott in a five-episode podcast series. Over this series we will explore why the future of healthcare is now; gene and cell therapy, the use and misuse of statistics, Hippocrates and modern healthcare and where healthcare will be headed down the road. In this Part 3, we turn to the specifics of managing obesity.

This episode of the podcast discussed the importance of personal behavioral health in managing obesity, which is a crisis in the US. Starting with the FDA’s Rumor Control Initiative to combat misinformation, Tom Fox, Scott Endicott and Ben Locwin discussed the need for critical thinking when evaluating pharmaceutical products, the importance of involving a healthcare provider in the discussion, and the use of telemedicine to manage obesity remotely. They also suggested that digital fitbits can be used to monitor activity and that physicians can use this data to make recommendations.

The FDA has recently released the Rumor Control Initiative to combat misinformation. This initiative encourages people to check the source of the information and cross-check it with reliable sources, and to look beyond the headlines to get full context. Drug companies are required to list potential adverse effects of treatments, so it’s important to consider the benefits and risks of treatments together. It’s also important to note that people spread misinformation for various reasons, such as wanting to protect those they care about or feeling connected.

Randomized clinical trials are required for all licensed and marketed pharmaceutical treatments. Hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and analysis of variance are used to evaluate the efficacy of a drug compared to a placebo. Tom suggested that a physician can track a patient’s activity with a digital fitbit and make recommendations during the patient’s 30 days of a month.

It is important to apply critical thinking and use common sense when evaluating pharmaceutical products. Pharmaceutical products are subject to advertising and branding, which can be difficult to evaluate. Pharmaceutical companies used to employ detailers to provide information to healthcare providers and try to get them to prescribe their product, but now they can buy television time to directly advertise to patients. There is a concern that patients may not have the knowledge to understand the biochemistry, biological impacts, and toxicology of the drugs they are taking, so it’s important to have a trusted healthcare advisor and provider to help interpret the data.

Key Highlights

·      Statistics in Healthcare

·      Managing Obesity Remotely

·      Obesity and Behavioral Health

·      Pharmaceutical Advertising

 Resources

Dr. Ben Locwin on LinkedIn

Scott Endicott on LinkedIn

Tom Fox on LinkedIn

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Greetings and Felicitations

Greetings and Felicitations: The Future of Healthcare…Is Now: Part 2- Revolutionizing Healthcare: Personalized Medicine

What is the future of healthcare and when will it arrive? To explore these and similar questions I visited with Dr. Ben Locwin and Scott Endicott in a five-episode podcast series. Over this series we will explore why the future of healthcare is now; gene and cell therapy, the use and misuse of statistics, Hippocrates and modern healthcare and where healthcare will be headed down the road. In this Part 2, we consider personalized medicine.

The use of personalized medicine, such as cell therapies, gene therapies, and digital therapeutics, is revolutionizing the healthcare industry. In this Part 2 of a special five-part series, Tom Fox, Ben Locwin, and Scott discussed the changes to regulatory pathways and expanded access programs to speed up the approval process for drugs and treatments, as well as the long-term risks associated with taking certain drugs. They also provided advice on how to engage with them on the topics discussed, such as using LinkedIn and Google Search, and concluded the episode by inviting listeners to join them for their next episode. This podcast episode provides an insightful look into the future of personalized medicine and the potential risks and benefits associated with it.

Digital therapeutics, for example, have enabled the ability to measure and install a pump that replicates the functions of the pancreas in real time. Regulatory pathways for device and diagnostic approvals have been simplified and expectations and standards have been shifted. Expanded access programs have been created to allow access to treatments between the end of a clinical study and formal approval. These programs have been especially beneficial for rare disease patients and pediatric patients, as well as late stage oncology patients. Advocacy groups have successfully lobbied for access to treatments for MS and other rare diseases. Risk-benefit utility curves can be used to understand the implications of healthcare decisions.

Personalized medicine is defined as medical therapies that are designed specifically for each individual patient to whom they’ll be administered. An example of personalized medicine is personalized dosing of warfarin, which could prevent 17,000 strokes in the United States annually and avoid 43,000 emergency room visits. Cell therapies, such as Chimeric antigen Receptor T cell Therapy (Car T), are personalized using either a donor or the patient’s own blood. Gene therapies are also used in personalized medicine. Supply chain, as it is currently understood, may well no longer  exist in ten years from now and instead it will look a lot more like a disc that is going to be placed into a personalized sort of therapeutic pump that’s attached to your body. Insulin delivery has become extremely personal, used to be broad based, and required separate measurements of blood sugars and titrating a dose based on that. Dexcom has been providing personalized medicine for a number of years.

Personalized medicine is revolutionizing the healthcare industry, and it is important to understand the long-term risks associated with taking certain drugs. It is also important to understand the regulatory pathways and expanded access programs that have been created to speed up the approval process for these drugs and treatments. With the right resources and guidance, individuals can make informed decisions about their healthcare and take advantage of the many benefits that personalized medicine has to offer.

Key Highlights

·      Cell and gene therapy

·      Personalized medicine

·      Risk-benefit utility

Resources

Dr. Ben Locwin on LinkedIn

Scott Endicott on LinkedIn

Tom Fox on LinkedIn

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Greetings and Felicitations

Understanding Lyme Disease – Episode 6, Capstone Wrap up


Scott Endicott and Ben Locwin with host Tom Fox are back for this concluding capstone episode in the Understanding Lyme Disease Podcast series. In this episode, they talk about the most current developments in Lyme Disease treatment, what’s new in diagnostic treatments and what is on the horizon for both treatments and Lyme Disease patients.
Resources
Scott Endicott | LinkedIn
Ben Locwin | LinkedIn | Twitter
American Lyme Disease Foundation www.aldf.com
 LymeDisease.org
International Lyme and Associated Diseases Educational Foundation ILADEF
International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society

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Greetings and Felicitations Understanding Lyme Disease

Understanding Lyme Disease Episode 1: Origins and Evolution

Scott Endicott and Ben Locwin are Tom Fox’s guests on the first episode of the Lyme disease series. Scott is the Executive Leader of Healthcare Solutions at CliniHealth Solutions. Ben is a TEDx speaker, healthcare and pharmaceutical executive with experience in senior management teams. They join Tom to talk about how Lyme disease first came about, symptoms, and the misinformation surrounding the disease.
 

 
The Discovery of Lyme Disease
Lyme disease has been around for millions of years, however, it evaded detection until the 1960s. The first diagnosed cases were occurring around Old Lyme, Connecticut which is how the disease got its name. It was first detected within children who had pediatric rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. A man named Willy Burgdorfer, who was a researcher, was trying to find the cause of the symptoms. He had been looking at spotted fever as well as other tick-borne diseases at the time and turned his attention to Old Lyme, Connecticut. In 1981 he found an organism within the affected children, and so the organism itself is named Borrelia Burgdorferi after him. 
 
The First Diagnosis
There has been a lot of confusion regarding the symptoms related to Lyme disease, so it is important to know what the true symptoms of the disease are and what to look out for. “The diagnostic criteria has been a moving target since 1975,” Scott begins. The original Lyme disease epidemic was juvenile arthritis, and that was the trigger that pushed the community at the time to do further investigation as arthritis is not contagious. That confusion set the tone on how the disease was first diagnosed.
 
The Evolution of Lyme Research
Lyme has been detected in all US states of America except Hawaii. At one point it was believed that germs in the air was the cause for the disease going around. This was called germ theory. Today, the research and science has evolved, and information exchange and diagnostic criteria are becoming aligned. Nowadays, Lyme disease can be treated with simple antibiotics with very high efficacy. This is because there are more clinical professionals who are able to identify the disease early, and treat it effectively.
 
Resources
Scott Endicott | LinkedIn 
Ben Locwin | LinkedIn | Twitter