As the rate of new medical knowledge continues to accelerate, how can medical students and practitioners keep up with it all and make sure they are providing the most up-to-date care to their patients? One answer is being provided by AMBOSS, a German medical technology company whose platform has greatly improved the way medical knowledge is acquired and utilized at the point of care. In this episode of Raise the Line, AMBOSS Co-founder Dr. Sievert Weiss joins host Shiv Gaglani to explore ways to...
Oct 12, 2022•29 min•Ep. 321
Imagine 60% of your skin having open wounds every day. That's the grim reality of those with Epidermolysis Bullosa, or EB, a rare genetic connective tissue disorder which results in blisters and tears to the skin being created from even minor contact or friction. The range of complications this causes for almost every normal activity – from eating to bathing to sleeping – is daunting, leading our guest today, Brett Kopelan, to call EB “the worst disease you’ve never heard of.” He should know. Br...
Oct 06, 2022•40 min•Ep. 320
Just a few weeks ago we shared the story of John Crowley’s family and their battle with Pompe disease on Raise the Line, and in this episode, we’re honored to share another remarkable story of a rare disease parent and the contributions they've made beyond their efforts to help their own loved ones. Nick Sireau is the CEO and Chair of Trustees of the AKU Society, an award-winning patient group that helps people with Alkaptonuria (AKU), sometimes referred to as black bone disease, a rare disorder...
Oct 05, 2022•33 min•Ep. 319
As Dr. Katie Kay reflects on what adjustments need to be made to nursing curricula in light of the pandemic, she is not focused mainly on academic content. “We have to address some gaps in curriculums across the board that really prepare individuals for what they're going to encounter in the healthcare setting.” Assessing grit, making sure students seek out resources when they are struggling and adding resilience and wellness training to the mix are top-of-mind examples. As University Dean for W...
Sep 29, 2022•28 min•Ep. 318
The increasing integration of oral healthcare with medical care could lead to a reconsideration of roles and responsibilities on care teams in both fields. That’s just one of the emerging trends in oral healthcare we explore on this episode of Raise the Line with guests Laura Skarnulis, CEO of the Dental Assisting National Board and the DALE Foundation, and Ann Battrell, CEO of the American Dental Hygienists Association. Both agree this trend, among others, is making oral healthcare an increasin...
Sep 28, 2022•44 min•Ep. 317
It was on a Friday the 13th in late winter 1997 when John Crowley’s life changed forever. John and his wife Aileen had been noticing concerning symptoms in their infant daughter Megan for several months, and after a few rounds of testing she was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy known as Pompe disease. Doctors told the Crowleys their daughter likely only had a few years to live, an outlook that ultimately sparked John’s remarkable efforts to find treatments for Megan as well as he...
Sep 22, 2022•28 min•Ep. 316
Direct-to-consumer healthcare and how technology can empower people to be active participants in achieving and maintaining their own good health is a favorite topic on Raise the Line. Today we’re going to take a closer look at how one consumer health device that’s growing sharply in popularity, continuous glucose monitors, can be used to drive healthier decisions. Millions of Americans wear the devices to see the impact of what they eat on their bodies, but it can be difficult for people to use ...
Sep 21, 2022•23 min•Ep. 315
Unlike many young children who are fearful of visits to the doctor, Dr. David Canes was fascinated by his. This early interest set the foundation for a career in medicine, leading him to become a skilled urologist and robotic surgeon. But he started to feel unsatisfied with the repetition of information he needed to deliver during patient appointments. “I think there's a lot of other doctors like me who really love making a connection with another human being who needs your help, but if you are ...
Sep 15, 2022•27 min•Ep. 314
There’s good news in the world of organ donation and transplant. For the first time last year, more than 40,000 transplants were performed in the U.S. and donations from deceased donors increased for the eleventh year in a row. And as we’ll learn from today’s guest Leslie McMahon, newer technologies are making it possible to evaluate organs for viability that previously might have been rejected due to concerns about trauma-inflicted damage or other factors. “They can put the heart in a box and w...
Sep 14, 2022•31 min•Ep. 313
Inspired by her own challenges with fertility a few years ago, serial entrepreneur Halle Tecco saw a tremendous opportunity to rebuild the fertility and pregnancy experience for families from the ground up. She wanted to bring a human-centered approach to physical products that were largely designed and sold by male-owned incumbents in the space. She came home one day after interviewing a few potential CEOs and told her husband, "I'm so sorry. I know I said I wouldn't start a company, but I thin...
Sep 08, 2022•30 min•Ep. 312
Victoria Repa has known from her earliest days growing up in Ukraine how difficult it can be to lose weight. “In my family, everyone is overweight. It's our family problem and we can't overcome it.” Breaking that cycle provided Repa with the motivation to start her own journey toward better health, but she wanted to help others find their own motivation as well, and sustain it. Armed with business degrees from Kyiv University and Stanford, she launched the tech company BetterMe five years ago wh...
Sep 07, 2022•22 min•Ep. 311
It was a decade after NY Giants great and Super Bowl champion Leonard Marshall retired when he first started to notice cognitive issues and a concerning change in attitude. Five years, many doctor visits and countless hours of research later, the two-time Pro Bowl defensive lineman received a diagnosis of CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that’s common in former NFL players. He estimates taking over 30,000 blows to the head in his entire college and pro footb...
Sep 01, 2022•23 min•Ep. 310
“I knew I wasn't going to survive unless I found a drug that could save my life,” says Dr. David Fajgenbaum, who has almost died five times from the rare disorder idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease, which he developed while in medical school. Now a physician and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Fajgenbaum has led research efforts into a cure for Castleman, discovering a drug that has kept him disease-free for eight years and is helping other patients. As he continues...
Aug 31, 2022•27 min•Ep. 309
On this special episode of Raise the Line , we get an eyewitness account of how medical needs are being met in the midst of the war in Ukraine from Ukrainian-American anesthesiologist Dr. Oleg Turkot, who has been coordinating resources and treating patients since the war started. As he tells host Shiv Gaglani, one important focus for him has been working with the Butterfly Network to distribute hand-held ultrasound devices. “If you have an ultrasound that weighs sixty pounds, lugging that as yo...
Aug 30, 2022•26 min•Ep. 308
When Akiva Zablocki found out his infant son Idan had a one-in-a-million immune disorder, he and his wife Amanda were terribly worried, as all parents would be. But unlike most parents of children with rare diseases, Akiva could draw on the expertise in navigating the healthcare system he gathered when successfully overcoming his own rare and scary ordeal with a brain stem tumor. Thanks to that know-how, his wife’s background in healthcare law, some amazing clinicians, the couple’s tenacity, and...
Aug 25, 2022•32 min•Ep. 307
In this super insightful conversation with host Shiv Gaglani, Dr. Karim Lakhani breaks down the difference between “strong” and “weak” artificial intelligence, and how the healthcare world can not only adapt to it, but harness its full potential. But, he stresses, the system has some important groundwork to do before that can happen. “Process change is the biggest work that has to happen in healthcare, from discovery to the clinic and beyond. Otherwise, we're basically pouring digital and artifi...
Aug 24, 2022•35 min•Ep. 306
As a young girl, Dr. Maria Guevara was inspired by her parent’s volunteer medical missions in the Philippines where they helped repair cleft lips and palates. The deep impression that work created led her on a path to medicine and eventually to her role today as International Medical Secretary at Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders). In her eighteen years with the agency, Dr. Guevara has traveled the world tending to the needs of people who have been victimized by armed conflic...
Aug 17, 2022•32 min•Ep. 305
“From the beginning, my approach was that we need to challenge the system,” says Dr. Ronald Harden, General Secretary of the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE). In the 1970’s as a young medical professor in Scotland, this mindset led Harden to create the Objective Structured Clinical Examination, or OSCE, which dramatically improved the way medical students are evaluated. Many years and contributions later, he continues to push the field through AMEE, which is holding its popular...
Aug 16, 2022•32 min•Ep. 304
“So much of healthcare actually does have parallels to the business world, insofar as much of our job is to help align people to the next steps that are in their best interest,” Dr. Robert Lord tells host Shiv Gaglani. Dr. Lord, who recently completed his medical degree at Johns Hopkins, understands the parallels between the business world and the healthcare world better than most. As a Partner at early-stage digital health venture capital firm LionBird Ventures, Dr. Lord works with all sorts of...
Aug 10, 2022•36 min•Ep. 303
“It's a strange odyssey being a rare disease parent. It sort of forces you to question everything about life,” says Philippe Pakter, whose daughter Lysiane was born with Pierre Robin Sequence, a condition that impedes normal breathing and feeding. In this compelling interview with Shiv Gaglani, he shares the wrenching details of his family’s daunting emotional, medical and legal journey. “It's tough, but you just have to keep going and from the hardship can potentially come very beautiful things...
Aug 09, 2022•50 min•Ep. 302
Ryan McQuaid was facing chronic back and joint pain so intense he could barely stand up in the morning. Without a primary care doctor to reach out to about his symptoms -- and little experience navigating the healthcare system -- he turned to a friend, James Wantuck, who happened to be a Stanford-trained physician. Through this relationship, which was largely conducted via text messages and FaceTime calls, Ryan’s condition was diagnosed and he received effective treatment. It was out of this exp...
Aug 04, 2022•22 min•Ep. 301
With its mission to bring the benefits of modern medicine to places that have been impacted by poverty and injustice, Partners In Health has been at the forefront of the battle for global health equity since it began in 1987. Founded by a group of like-minded physicians and philanthropists, including the late Dr. Paul Farmer, it has focused on strengthening health systems in the communities that need them most. “Paul really saw that the link between academia and clinical and the community had to...
Aug 03, 2022•28 min•Ep. 300
Like many academics, Dr. Peter Decherney wears many hats, but in his case you can also add a virtual reality headset. That’s because in addition to being a professor of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, he’s also a filmmaker working in both the traditional “flatty” format and virtual reality, with subjects ranging from artists in Puerto Rico to a Jewish community in Ethiopia. Choosing which medium to use to tell which story is a newer part of the process he enjoys. “F...
Jul 28, 2022•22 min•Ep. 299
“Curriculum is at the heart of everything a university does, so it only makes sense to architect the solution we provide based on the core offering of the universities,” says Greg Vanclief, President & CEO of Elentra. The tech industry veteran and his team are on a mission to transform the delivery of higher education and nurture life-long learners through an end-to-end platform featuring a wide range of tools to support everything from scheduling to curriculum mapping to testing and accredi...
Jul 27, 2022•20 min•Ep. 298
In the last decade, a projected physician shortage drove the establishment of new medical schools across the country. Among these was the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, where Dean Dr. Paula Termuhlen is working to forge an identity for the young institution. She says they’ve settled on “health equity” -- a vision that emphasizes teaching and practicing among the undeserved in the local community. This, she tells host Michael Carrese, doesn’t just mean more peo...
Jul 21, 2022•21 min•Ep. 297
In medical school, when taught about differential diagnoses, students are often taught, "if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras” says Rebecca Aune, the Director of Education Programs at National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD).NORD, she says, represents twenty-five million American zebras living with rare diseases every day, many of whom undergo a deeply frustrating and isolating odyssey as they seek an accurate diagnosis. The reasons for this are numerous, Dr. Edward Neilan, the...
Jul 20, 2022•23 min•Ep. 296
The Student National Medical Association has been fighting for equity and diversity in the medical field for almost 60 years. Unfortunately, it’s a need as pressing today as it was when the association began, with Black doctors making up only 5% of the physician workforce in the nation. And beyond making sure Black Americans are aware of the path to, and through, medical school, SNMA Executive Director Bridgette Hudson also works closely with her team to make sure medical students have the oppor...
Jul 14, 2022•24 min•Ep. 295
One of the things that convinced Dr. Steve Riley to remain in Wales after leaving his native England as a youth to attend Cardiff University is what he calls its sense of citizenship and social accountability. It was a good fit with his own values, and when given the opportunity to help shape the curriculum at the University’s School of Medicine, he wanted it to reflect those sensibilities. “For me, it’s about trying to structure a course that recognizes the needs of the local population and see...
Jul 13, 2022•22 min•Ep. 294
The current interest in using psychedelics for mental health treatment is a ‘back to the future’ moment for Dr. Jim Fadiman, a pioneer in psychedelic research known as the father of microdosing. “The method that's been developed for administering high doses in a supervised environment is replicating exactly what we developed in the 1960s,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. At that time, the federal government approved his research, but when the Nixon administration criminalized this class of drugs for...
Jul 12, 2022•56 min•Ep. 293
As a child, Dr. David Perlmutter developed an uncommon familiarity with the human brain. Exploring the surgical ward -- and eventually, the operating room -- with his neurosurgeon dad, he observed the possibilities of modern brain medicine, but also its limits. After becoming a neurologist himself, he grew dissatisfied with the medical status quo which he says tended to react to brain diseases like Alzheimer’s after they took effect. The numerous bestselling books he has since written draw on th...
Jul 06, 2022•35 min•Ep. 292
