Healthy Conversations
57 episodes - English - Latest episode: 11 months ago -Healthy Conversations brings together leaders and innovators in health care to talk about the biggest issues facing patients and providers today. Every month, we explore new topics to help uncover the clinical insights and emerging technologies transforming health care in real time.
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Episodes
Going Digital in Suicide Prevention
September 20, 2023 07:01 - 21 minutes - 48.4 MBWe’re re-releasing a special two-part episode about innovations in suicide prevention in recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. In this second episode, Dr. Seth Feuerstein, the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, talks about his company’s digital therapeutics aimed at reducing suicide – which he calls “the only leading cause of death without any prescription products.” He speaks with our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, about using software as a medical device and explains the road to FDA a...
Dispelling Misconceptions About Suicide
September 13, 2023 07:01 - 23 minutes - 54.9 MBIn recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, today we’re re-releasing a special two-part episode with Dr. Seth Feuerstein, a psychiatrist and researcher who’s made the study and treatment of suicide his life’s work. Dr. Feuerstein is the CEO of Oui Therapeutics, which is building life-saving digital therapeutics to help in preventing suicide. He and our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, have a wide-ranging discussion about misconceptions, data and innovations in suicide prevention. D...
Can the Future of Healthy Aging Be at Home?
August 09, 2023 07:00 - 15 minutes - 14.2 MBIf you look around, you’ll probably notice that the U.S. population is getting older. In fact, one in five people will be retirement age by 2030. And the latest Health Trends Report, The Future of Healthy Aging, quotes the U.S. Census Bureau that three out of five people over the age of 65 manage two or more chronic conditions. “If we go back maybe 60 years or so, 40% of health care in America was delivered at home. Today it's only about 1% of care that is delivered at home,” Sree C...
The Evolution and Challenges of Primary Care
July 26, 2023 07:01 - 17 minutes - 39.1 MBPrimary care is the backbone of the health care system. So the question is, how do you keep the primary care system itself healthy? That’s the timely topic of this Healthy Conversations episode, where Sree Chaguturu, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for CVS Health, addresses the challenges of delivering the right care at the right time, and in the right place. As he puts it, “Almost 80% of individuals in America say that they're unsatisfied with their current h...
Taking Clinical Innovation in Health Care to the Next Level
July 12, 2023 07:01 - 21 minutes - 50.2 MBWhile the health care industry can be challenging, with complex regulations and long-established bureaucracies, an innovative company called Redesign Health is working to transform it from within. Redesign Health is one of a number of organizations that received fresh funding last fall to boost health care startups from CVS Health Ventures, a unit of CVS Health which focuses on data-driven medicine and digital health investments. And in just the last five years, Redesign’s New York-...
Why Good Health Means Your Mental Health, Too
June 21, 2023 07:01 - 19 minutes - 45.6 MBHow are we doing right now in terms of mental health in the United States? According to Dr. Taft Parsons III, the Chief Psychiatric Officer at CVS Health, the situation is alarming: “Before COVID, we already knew that there was more need for mental health services than there were clinicians. And so we have seen an increased demand across all age groups, across all demographics taking place over the last couple years.” In a recent CVS Health Trends report, 39% of providers admitted ...
The Impact of Genomics is Closer Than You Think
June 07, 2023 07:01 - 21 minutes - 49.5 MBGenomics may seem like a field of study with minimal impact on our daily lives. But not for much longer — and certainly not to Dr. Deepak Srivastava, a cardiologist and president of the Gladstone Institutes. Rapid technological advances in this field are starting to surface across health care with significant and promising benefits. “The new world,” says Dr. Srivastava, “is going to be one where, as we identify the known genetic causes, we no longer have to accept that that mutation...
How Genomics Can Benefit Us All
May 24, 2023 07:01 - 26 minutes - 59.9 MBIt’s been more than 20 years since the human genome was first sequenced. And now, a new version that’s been updated with 47 men and women of diverse origins, including African Americans, East Asians, West Africans, and South Americans, among others, promises to benefit all people, regardless of their race, ethnicity or ancestry. This new version, called the “pangenome,” was announced earlier this month by the National Human Genome Research Institute, a government agency that funded...
Fighting Mental Health Stigma
May 10, 2023 07:00 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBAre Americans underestimating their mental health struggles? A new study from CVS Health and Harris Poll found that nearly three in four Americans describe their mental health as “excellent” or “good,” and only one in 10 say their mental health has gotten worse in the last year. Yet nearly 60% of physicians report declining mental health among their patients. Why aren’t more people willing to talk about their feelings of anxiety, sadness, or the “blues”? In honor of Mental Health Aw...
Autism Advocate Temple Grandin on Neurodivergent Thinking
April 26, 2023 07:00 - 15 minutes - 14.2 MBA recent CDC study reported that one in 36 children in the United States is diagnosed with autism. Today’s guest, Temple Grandin, is one of the country’s most renowned voices on autism with an incredible ability to open up and share her perspective on the world with us. A professor of animal science at Colorado State University, Grandin has been a pioneer in improving the welfare of farm animals for decades. She is the author or co-author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal ...
Diversity in Clinical Trials Leads to Richer Data
April 12, 2023 07:00 - 23 minutes - 21.8 MBIn part two of our conversation on clinical trials, we hear from two people directly involved in the effort to expand access to clinical trials in underserved communities. “There are challenges across the board, both in getting patients into studies and also getting them to stay in studies — what’s called retention,” says our first guest, Josh Rose, Vice President and Head of Clinical Trial Delivery, Site Solutions and Strategy for Clinical Trial Services at CVS Health. He explains ...
Getting More — and Different — Patients into Clinical Trials
March 29, 2023 07:00 - 19 minutes - 18.1 MBToday, in the first of a two-part episode on increasing diversity in clinical trials, we hear from Dr. Owen Garrick, Chief Medical Officer of Clinical Trial Services at CVS Health. The unit, launched in 2021, is creating a network of clinical research sites by equipping certain HealthHUB and MinuteClinic locations with the staff and resources needed to conduct complex clinical trial protocols. The goal is to expand access to clinical trials in underserved communities and encourage a...
Spurring Innovation in Service of Health Equity
March 15, 2023 07:00 - 14 minutes - 13.8 MBIn part two of our conversation about the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme from England’s National Health Service, our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, continues his discussion with Dr. Tony Young, the program’s founder. They talk about a number of innovations brought about through the program, including two aimed at addressing health disparities. CardMedic uses a collection of “digital flashcards” to help improve communication between health care staff and patients across barriers ranging fr...
How the NHS Evolved to Support Physician Entrepreneurs
February 28, 2023 08:00 - 16 minutes - 15.3 MBClinicians are problem solvers by nature but taking an idea for a new innovation from concept to commercial market is not a skill widely taught in medical school. In 2015, England’s National Health Service (NHS) launched a Clinical Entrepreneur Programme to help provide just that type of knowledge and expertise. Our host, Dr. Daniel Kraft, speaks with Dr. Tony Young, the founder of that program who is an avid entrepreneur himself. Young is helping the NHS retain some of their bright...
Speeding Up Care Delivery for GI Patients
February 16, 2023 08:00 - 20 minutes - 18.7 MBOne in four people in the U.S. has been diagnosed with a gastrointestinal (GI) condition, says the co-founder and CEO of Oshi Health, Sam Holliday. The patient journey to diagnosis is costly and long—often two to four years—and filled with tests, examinations and waiting rooms. Oshi Health is a startup and CVS Health Ventures partner that uses an integrated virtual care model to scale access to care and innovation for patients struggling with GI diseases such as irritable bowel synd...
The Many Ways VR is Getting Real - er
January 25, 2023 08:01 - 18 minutes - 17.1 MBIn Part 2 of the Healthy Conversations discussion with Dr. Brennan Spiegel, professor of medicine and public health at Cedar Sinai Health System, gastroenterologist, and VR pioneer, lets us peak into the future, and see some of the many ways VR is getting “real-er” – as he puts it: “You can experience life as someone with a disability, or as a different race, or with certain physical or visual handicaps. And that can give clinicians a bit of insight to what their patients are experi...
A Clinic in a Headset? The Exciting New World of VR
January 06, 2023 18:25 - 13 minutes - 12.7 MBIn the first of a 2-part episode on Healthy Conversations, Dr. Brennan Spiegel, a professor of medicine and public health at Cedars-Sinai Health System, gastroenterologist, and VR pioneer, discusses the exciting possibilities of virtual reality in terms of its affecting the human mind, as well as chronic diseases. As he puts it, "Rather than always bringing patients to the clinic, what if we can bring the clinic to the patient?"
Insights about COVID, Long COVID & More
November 18, 2022 18:18 - 23 minutes - 21.3 MBWhere do things stand now in terms of COVID, Long – and even Medium COVID? What have we learned after the past three years, and what should we, going forward? On the latest Healthy Conversations episode, Dr. Kirsten Anderson, senior medical director for New England for Aetna and CVS Health, shares insights with Daniel, and tells why she feels the role of public health is more important than ever before now.
Making the Most of Data
October 26, 2022 12:00 - 25 minutes - 23.2 MBListening to Brad Bostic, founder, chairman, and CEO of HC1 -- and Daniel’s latest guest -- you can’t help but be excited about the future: “We've got this incredible opportunity that's once in multiple generations to advance the ball, and it's because you've got access to medical information that's digital unlike you've ever had, and you've got this access to compute, and you have a collection of really intelligent, committed people working on these different areas of innovation. Y...
The Power of Community Medicine
October 12, 2022 19:49 - 15 minutes - 36.4 MBThis episode features Dr. James Allen, the founder and CEO of Health Systems Thinkers. Dr. Allen went from being a small-town physician in upstate New York, to working for a company in Borneo and later Bangladesh. In the process, he became one of the foremost authorities on community medicine. Being in a remote small town made him see the workplace as part of the community.
REPRISED -- Treating SCD before it hurts
September 29, 2022 17:43 - 20 minutes - 46.8 MBIn this episode, first released in the fall of 2021, Daniel sits down with Dr. Patrick Hines, the founder and CEO at Functional Fluidics and the leading Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he set up a transformational study on defining the health of red blood cells. Dr. Hines also introduces us to exciting new therapies — recently approved — and the importance of being proactive with SCD.
Tapping into the Potential of Digital Health
August 31, 2022 07:00 - 23 minutes - 54.6 MBTim Blake, the founder and managing director of Semantic Consulting, helps organizations grapple with digital change and digital disruption. And he talks with Daniel about the challenges and potential of digital healthcare – as well as what he learned as the chief information officer of the Tasmanian Health System, such as, “Sometimes problems can be far simpler than we think they are when you ask the communities that really genuinely own those problems.”
When Emotional Intelligence Means Higher Performance
August 17, 2022 17:19 - 17 minutes - 41.1 MBDr. James Stoller is the Chairman of the Education Institute at Cleveland Clinic, a pulmonary critical care physician, and author of Exception to the Rule. Daniel and James sat down to discuss deficit-based thinking, medicine being a team sport, and the simple fact that "doctors, like everyone else that join organizations, expect to grow over the course of their career."
Why Our Emotions Matter
August 03, 2022 14:57 - 24 minutes - 57 MBIn clinical settings, we often suppress our emotions, ignoring what is now considered a valuable professional dataset – yet harnessing the power of our emotional life helps improve so many aspects of our work from job satisfaction to patient outcomes. It’s only a matter of time until the industry pivots away from this seemingly learned habit. Dr. Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of 'Permission to Feel,' explains how to tap into the cruc...
The emergent genetic future of Parkinson's
April 27, 2022 19:38 - 26 minutes - 60.8 MBDr. James Beck, Chief Scientific Officer at the Parkinson’s Foundation, talks with Daniel about the role genetics can play with Parkinson’s, a progressive neurologic disorder with no known cause, and which affects nearly one million people in America.
Wearables: The Empowering Uses of Data
April 13, 2022 07:00 - 19 minutes - 45.4 MBAs Daniel Shaw, VP, Consumer Innovation Products at CVS Health tells us, "At the end of the day it's how you use this data. How are you looking at this data? In what ways are you interpreting it? And then ultimately getting to a place where you can make actual decisions on it.” He also explains how the voice-activated Symphony ecosystem and the Attain app can help encourage both proactive and preventative behaviors.
Kidney Care Goes Digital, More Accessible
March 30, 2022 13:50 - 29 minutes - 67 MBYonatan Adiri is out to revolutionize kidney care – and he’s already doing it. The founder and CEO of Healthy.io explains to Daniel how he’s been able to drive 53% compliance in urine testing among those patients previously noncompliant, across age groups – “The last cohort we did in the UK was 80% of which was above the age of 50. 25% between 71 and 80 years old, where we saw 40% compliance.” Key to his success is developing technology that’s clinical grade, affordable, and compute...
Kidney care is changing, disparities persist
March 23, 2022 07:00 - 21 minutes - 50.3 MBAccording to Dr. Bruce Culleton, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Kidney Care at CVS Health, 93% of Americans who have kidney disease don't know they have it. And he tells Daniel some of the ways physicians and nurses can address this health literacy issue. Dr. Culleton also explains some of the health equity and disparity challenges that exist in this space. For instance, African Americans are three-to-four times more likely to develop kidney failure than white Americans. ...
The incomparable Bob Wachter
March 09, 2022 08:00 - 27 minutes - 37.3 MBDaniel sat down with Bob Wachter to talk about the power of Twitter in public health, the continued evolution of patient-centered digital transformation, the very necessary adjustments to clinical education, his personal history as the founder of the hospitalist movement, and which technologies continue to lag in our industry.
Women & our new genomics age
February 09, 2022 11:54 - 20 minutes - 46 MBDr. Joanne Armstrong, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for women's health and genomics at CVS Health, talks with Daniel about the incredible impact genes can play in women’s lives, helping to shape prognosis and clinical decisions, in addition to improvements in prenatal screening. Dr. Armstrong also gives us a preview of Aetna’s new guided genetic health services — now expanding into enhanced maternity and transform oncology programs.
Clinical genetic testing: State law, cost, and myth-based biology
January 26, 2022 08:00 - 27 minutes - 37.2 MBDaniel explores the exciting world of genetic health with Dr. Robert Nussbaum, Chief Medical Officer at Invitae. Dr. Nussbaum dispels myths about interpreting genetic data, draws important distinctions around clinical-grade testing, and describes the many important ways genetic information can be used for reproductive planning, screening, and managing disorders.
A New age of pharmacists
January 12, 2022 08:00 - 21 minutes - 29.1 MBThe past few years may have been challenging but they’ve also brought about transformation in the pharmacy setting. Daniel speaks with Dr. Dan Knecht, the chief clinical innovation officer at CVS Caremark, about ways he’s working to provide more integrative, individualized care for patients with conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension — as well as behavioral health.
2021: A year of transformation
December 22, 2021 08:00 - 14 minutes - 33.2 MBWhile 2021 has been a rollercoaster year, Daniel was able to cover plenty of exciting and innovative topics. He sat down with experts in public health data (discovering the data supply chain), precision oncology care, functional medicine, cutting edge red blood cell research, a venture capitalist, a former CEO and more. Health care and health care innovation is going to continue to accelerate in 2022 as the industry evolves from “intermittent, reactive sick care to a future that's c...
2021: A Year of Transformation
December 22, 2021 08:00 - 14 minutes - 33.2 MBWhile 2021 has been a rollercoaster year, Daniel was able to cover plenty of exciting and innovative topics. He sat down with experts in public health data (discovering the data supply chain), precision oncology care, functional medicine, cutting edge red blood cell research, a venture capitalist, a former CEO and more. Health care and health care innovation is going to continue to accelerate in 2022 as the industry evolves from “intermittent, reactive sick care to a future that's c...
The First Wave
December 15, 2021 08:00 - 15 minutes - 35.1 MBDaniel speaks with award-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman, who had exclusive access in March 2020 to one of New York’s largest and hardest-hit medical centers for his powerful documentary, The First Wave — as well as Dr. Nathalie Dougé, internist & hospitalist — about the toll COVID has taken on health care workers. The film is in theaters now and available on Hulu.
Treating SCD before it hurts
October 20, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 45.7 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Patrick Hines, the founder and CEO at Functional Fluidics and the leading Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he set up a transformational study on defining the health of red blood cells — membrane stability, abnormalities, stickiness, and more. Dr. Hines also introduces us to exciting new therapies — recently approved — and the importance of being proactive with SCD.
The institutional challenges of sickle cell
October 06, 2021 13:30 - 18 minutes - 42.1 MBSome 100,000 individuals in America alone are dealing with sickle cell. Daniel speaks with Joel Helle, Vice President of Physician Services for CVS Health, about how to change the often one-size-fits-all approach to this painful disease — to care that is not only more continuous, but personalized, and proactive.
Reimagining private practice
September 16, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 45.3 MBDr. Nitin Gupta is the founder of Rivertowns Pediatrics, a very different type of private practice. Having practiced from Newark, NJ to Caribou, ME, he’s landed on a value-based, concierge model that works. Boiling things down, Dr. Gupta told Daniel, “You're spending more time on that computer than you are face to face with that patient. This gives you the opportunity to be the doctor that you were meant to be, and so that's why I started this.”
The Future of Oncology
August 25, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 43.8 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Kim Blackwell, former oncologist and Eli Lilly trialist who is now the Chief Medical Officer at Tempus, a technology company that has built the world's largest library of clinical and molecular data as well as an operating system to make that information accessible and useful for patients, physicians, and researchers. They discuss big data, genetic sequencing, and the tech that drives today’s transformative precision cancer treatments.
The future of oncology
August 25, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 43.8 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Kim Blackwell, former oncologist and Eli Lilly trialist who is now the Chief Medical Officer at Tempus, a technology company that has built the world's largest library of clinical and molecular data as well as an operating system to make that information accessible and useful for patients, physicians, and researchers. They discuss big data, genetic sequencing, and the tech that drives today’s transformative precision cancer treatments.
Treating the Whole Patient at CTCA
August 11, 2021 07:00 - 17 minutes - 39.2 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Pat Basu, President & CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, to discuss his unique point of view on the evolution of oncology care, precision medicine, the changing role of MD MBAs like himself, his early telemedicine work with Doctor On Demand, as well as his time as a Fellow advising the White House.
Treating the whole patient at CTCA
August 11, 2021 07:00 - 17 minutes - 39.2 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Pat Basu, President & CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, to discuss his unique point of view on the evolution of oncology care, precision medicine, the changing role of MD MBAs like himself, his early telemedicine work with Doctor On Demand, as well as his time as a Fellow advising the White House.
Defining Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic
July 14, 2021 07:00 - 18 minutes - 42.9 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Mark Hyman, Head of Strategy & Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine – “a paradigm shift in our thinking about disease.” Dr. Hyman says, “We've now got 155,000 diseases in our diagnostic category book, but they're really all driven by a smaller number of common root causes.”
Defining functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic
July 14, 2021 07:00 - 18 minutes - 42.9 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Mark Hyman, Head of Strategy & Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine – “a paradigm shift in our thinking about disease.” Dr. Hyman says, “We've now got 155,000 diseases in our diagnostic category book, but they're really all driven by a smaller number of common root causes.”
The evolution of “physician culture”
June 30, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 45.6 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Robert Pearl, former surgeon and CEO at Permanente Medical Group for 18 years, about the culture of medicine and his new book Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients (proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders). Dr. Pearl provides an unflinching diagnosis of “physician culture” dating back to Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis’ battered leather apron in 1844; second, he details the escalating costs of healthcare; and third, he addresses the danger of i...
The Evolution of “Physician Culture”
June 30, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 45.6 MBDaniel sits down with Dr. Robert Pearl, former surgeon and CEO at Permanente Medical Group for 18 years, about the culture of medicine and his new book Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients (proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders). Dr. Pearl provides an unflinching diagnosis of “physician culture” dating back to Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis’ battered leather apron in 1844; second, he details the escalating costs of healthcare; and third, he addresses the danger of i...
Venture Capital meets Primary Care (or PC2VC)
June 11, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 44.8 MBDaniel is a physician who wears many hats: inventor, founder, investor, and startup advisor. This week he sat down with another physician, Dr. Vineeta Agarwala, who has taken her clinical expertise to a whole other industry. Vineeta is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she leads investments for the storied firm’s bio fund (overseeing therapeutics, diagnostics, and digital health).
Venture capital meets primary care (or PC2VC)
June 11, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 44.8 MBDaniel is a physician who wears many hats: inventor, founder, investor, and startup advisor. This week he sat down with another physician, Dr. Vineeta Agarwala, who has taken her clinical expertise to a whole other industry. Vineeta is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she leads investments for the storied firm’s bio fund (overseeing therapeutics, diagnostics, and digital health).
Vaccination Insights: Part II
May 19, 2021 07:00 - 21 minutes - 50 MBDaniel sat down with Dr. Dylan George, a biosecurity and data expert from Gingko Bioworks. Dylan’s career spans academia and a number of roles in the federal government — advising the Obama administration on Ebola and, more recently, advising the Biden-Harris transition team on COVID-19. If data is the new oil, it's also the new way of protecting our kids, our families, and our communities.
Women’s Health: Part II
May 06, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 43.7 MBMay is Women’s Health month, and Daniel sat down with Dr. Joanne Armstrong, Chief Medical Officer for Women's Health & Genomics at CVS Health, for both a tactical and macro-level look at how we all measure up to the rest of the world in this area — including prenatal, maternal, and postpartum care, as well as breast cancer and the latest studies on unconscious bias.