Neil Klompas, President and CEO of Augurex, has a mission to improve the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases, with a primary focus on axial spondyloarthritis, a form of inflammatory back pain that is often misdiagnosed. The Augurex blood test SpineStat is designed to differentiate axSpA from mechanical back pain by identifying a specific biomarker present in axSpA. Currently, there is an average nine-year delay from the onset of symptoms to an accurate diagnosis of axSpA, causing irreversible spinal damage and years of using drugs and therapy with no benefit.

Neil explains, "I think we're all familiar with back pain. Some of the NIH data and WHO data out there show that almost 28% of adult Americans live with chronic back pain, back pain lasting more than three months. It can be a real journey to figure out what the drivers are, with some patients really never getting resolution, resulting in pain management and, in some cases, even opioid pain management. But if you dive deeper into that category of back pain, there are really two broad classifications we can think about. We can think about mechanical back pain, which is due to lifting, twisting, sports injury, or maybe a car accident. But then there's this whole other category, as you indicated, called inflammatory back pain, which really has its roots in autoimmune, where the body's immune system is actually attacking itself. "

"Well, this is when the body's immune system attacks its peripheral joints. In inflammatory back pain, or as you said, axial spondyloarthritis, it's an autoimmune condition where the body's immune system actually attacks the spine. This can lead to pain increasing over time, new bone growth, fusion of the spinal cord, and permanent stiffness and loss of mobility. It's progressive. It keeps getting worse, and because it's an autoimmune condition. Simply stretching or swearing to take up yoga or getting a new pair of runners or doing PT or massage, while it might help with some of the symptoms, it's not going to slow down or stop the disease. The challenge with axSpA, with axial spondyloarthritis, is that while it's not really that well known or talked about in the media, it's actually more than twice as prevalent as rheumatoid arthritis, a condition which many people have heard about."

#Augurex #AdvancedDiagnostics #AutoimmuneDiseases #axSpA #AxialSpondyloarthritis #BackPain

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Dr. Petri Bono, Chief Medical Officer at Faron Pharmaceuticals, describes the development of bexmarilimad, a novel first-in-class immunotherapy that, unlike existing checkpoint inhibitors targeting T cells, targets the Clever 1 receptor on macrophages. This treatment is designed to reprogram the tumor microenvironment by switching marcophages from suppressive to active, enabling the patient's immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. The primary disease target is higher-risk Myelodysplastic syndromes because the cancer cells in virtually all MDS patients express the Clever 1 target.

Petri explains, "We are developing a completely new type of treatment. Currently, cancer patients are treated with immunotherapies called checkpoint inhibitors that target immune checkpoints. But our approach is targeting completely different cells, not T cells, but rather macrophages. And that's why we are first in class with a novel mode of action. And that's why it's important that these macrophages are shown to, for example, contribute to treatment resistance in many tumors."

"Clever 1 actually is a receptor that was identified about 20 years ago. It found a certain macrophage as well as myeloid cells. And Clever 1 keeps the immune system in a tolerant and suppressive state. In cancer, for example, these Clever 1-positive macrophages essentially help the malignancy grow instead of helping to fight against it. And then our approach is that we want to block Clever 1 with our monoclonal antibody, bexmarilimab. So those macrophages switch the phenotype into an active antigen, preventing a pro-inflammatory state, and this reawakens immune surveillance. It allows T cells in the system to actually recognize the malignant cells themselves as dangerous and mount a proper antitumor response. So, a completely new mode of action by targeting Clever 1, we are not just adding another cytotoxic mechanism. We are removing the immune break and enabling the patient's own immune system to do the job that it was originally designed to do."

#FaronPharmaceuticals #BloodCancer #MDS #MyelodysplasticSyndrome #HR-MDS #CancerResearch #novelimmunotherapy #Bexmarilimab #Clever1

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Todd Doze, CEO of Janus Health, specializes in bringing AI to hospitals to connect the hospital revenue cycle management with the overall patient experience. Automating some manual RCM tasks, such as prior authorizations and referrals, has led to significant reductions in claim denials, faster processing times, fewer errors, and better compliance with recent legislation. Challenges remain to ensure the AI model's accuracy and to demonstrate clear ROI and a direct impact on the hospital's revenue.

Todd explains, "Today at Janus, we focus on helping providers improve their operational and financial efficiency. We work with about 250 acute care hospitals across the country, servicing some of the largest health systems in the nation by providing automations and AI-driven operational intelligence. This gives management insight into what their revenue cycle folks are doing to ensure they're taking the optimal paths to adjudicate claims and also automating as much of the laborious, tedious work that goes into treating patients in the most optimal manner."

"There are a lot of very manual pain points within the rev cycle experience. For example, many of us have been referred by our primary care physician to a specialty provider. A very common example is referring to an imaging center for an MRI or X-ray. And many times, to access an appointment with that specialty provider, the provider may need to submit a prior authorization request to the patient's insurance. And then there's also the communication loop process focused on the referral. And so there are many areas for error, and there are a lot of ways the patient experience can go south very quickly."

#JanusHealth #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareAI #HealthTech #HealthcareOperations #RCM

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Susan Grant, Chief Clinical Officer at symplr, reviews findings from their annual Compass Survey, which revealed the significant challenges hospitals face, driven by financial pressures, clinician burnout, and operational inefficiencies. Fragmented technology systems create significant administrative burdens, and there is growing recognition that unifying healthcare operations and strategically implementing AI are crucial to streamlining workflows. Clinicians' involvement in the design and implementation of new processes and procedures is essential to ensure that patients' real-world needs are properly addressed.

Susan explains, "The annual Compass Survey, is actually our fourth survey that we've done here at symplr, and the goal of the survey is to drive awareness around the need for and benefits of streamlining healthcare operations software. So it's a way to get feedback from our customers, clients, and leaders out in the healthcare world."

"I've been a Chief Nurse for the last 30 years in different health systems around the country, and we do tend to be a very reactive industry. However, I think it's built and intensified over the last few years because of issues we're seeing that have also intensified, including finances, workplace violence, clinician burnout, and cybersecurity. Those are some of the top issues our healthcare systems are dealing with. So I think that the reactivity of trying to really deal with those various issues has intensified and created this reactivity."

#symplr #CompassSurvey #HealthcareIT #HealthcareOperations #symplrOperationsPlatform #HealthcareAI

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Fawad Butt, Co-Founder and CEO of Penguin AI, is addressing the workflow challenges faced by healthcare payers and providers, particularly in prior authorizations and claims adjudications. These processes are inefficient and often yield inconsistent results because human reviewers interpret rules differently, and patients are denied care due to minor administrative errors. Penguin AI is bringing consistency and speed to adjudication, breaking down data silos and handling non-clinical administrative work, enabling agents to address patient-specific problems and ensure accuracy and safety.

Fawad explains, "When you look at the healthcare ecosystem, there are obviously the pharma side, the payer side, the provider side, and the PBN side. So there are lots of areas where opportunities exist. We think payers and providers are especially challenged, and I think the area where they struggle is in the administrative workflow. And these are things like prior authorization and risk adjustment, claims adjudication, and payment integrity on the payer side."

"There are things like scheduling and patient 360, or onboarding and referrals, as well as some risk adjustment for entities that are risk-bearing, and ultimately, all the functions around revenue cycle management for providers. I think the payers and providers have a tremendous amount of technology and resourcing support, but these functions have not really been what I would say reimagined in over a decade. And I think with AI, there is a real opportunity to come back and try to optimize."

#PenguinAI #HealthAI #HealthcareAdministration

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Alexander Tsiaras, CEO and Founder of StoryMD, is addressing the critical problem of the fragmented health information landscape. The StoryMD platform unifies a patient's health history, including clinical records, wearable data, and personal diary entries, along with relevant data from a vast validated medical library of text and strong visualizations. This provides a coherent narrative about the patient that informs the patient, their healthcare providers, and caregivers, enabling more informed decisions and better outcomes.

Alexander explains, "So one of the huge problems that we have in healthcare is that when people go through a health journey, they have to cobble information together from so many disparate sources. You get a PDF here, you get a URL there, you get a screenshot somewhere else. And fundamentally, what happens is that you're trying to cobble the story of your journey together, and it's totally fragmented. You get fragmented medical records, you get fragmented information, and you share fragmented information with other sources. So really the story is constantly evolving, and you're trying to figure it out, and it's problematic."

"What we have now built is the largest coded medical library in the world, where we can take all of the information using HL7 codes. Now, HL7 is Health Level Seven International, which basically is the way that your medical records are coded. And we have mapped a piece of information using AI to your medical records. So when we see a lab report, we tell you a beautiful story about what your labs mean, and this way, we can actually keep longitudinal stories going, giving you insights into what's going on in your biomarkers."

#StoryMD #HealthTech #DigitalHealth #HealthAI #HealthJourney

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Seth Cohen, President of Cedar, is addressing the affordability of health care by shifting the emphasis from billing functionality to patient financial navigation by using technology to connect patients to underutilized financial resources. The Cedar Cover platform is designed to identify and enroll eligible uninsured or underinsured patients into Medicaid, ACA, available pharmaceutical copay subsidies, and untapped Health Savings Accounts, which can be used retrospectively to cover previous medical and ongoing bills, benefiting the patient and providers. An AI agent handles patient service calls to help patients navigate the challenges of connecting to these resources and identifying new coverage options in these uncertain times.

Seth explains, "Cedar is the largest independent solution focused entirely on the patient financial experience in healthcare. As you probably know, in the revenue cycle space, there are lots of vendors out there selling solutions up and down the revenue cycle, mostly with an emphasis on insurance reimbursement. We are the only one that we're aware of that is really driving at scale a better patient experience, so fully focused there. And so what that means is we are the entity responsible for sending bills to patients and helping those patients navigate their financial obligations to large hospitals, health systems, and large physician groups."

"But that word advocacy, I think, is very relevant now because what we've discovered and a huge, huge shift over the last decade is that most patients cannot afford the bills they're receiving. We're really in an affordability crisis. And so it's less about sending a bill with good billing functionality. It's more about helping the patient navigate how to manage that bill. And so there is a lot of advocacy in that."

#Cedar #FinancialSupport #MedicalBills

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Jim Foote, Co-Founder and CEO of First Ascent Biomedical, is changing the standard of care for cancer treatment from 'try and hope' to 'test and treat'. The First Ascent platform combines functional drug testing of fresh biopsies, genomic sequencing, and an AI engine to assess a large panel of drugs and identify the most likely to be effective. Clinical data show a high correlation between how cancer cells respond in the lab test and how patients respond to the same drug, and is seen as a treatment guide for refractory cancer patients to identify novel drug combinations.

Jim explains, "Fundamentally speaking, if we look at everybody on this planet from a DNA and RNA perspective, there are 8 billion people, and each one of us is different from the others due to our DNA and RNA. So if we acknowledge that biologically we're all different, then the problem that we're trying to solve is if we're all different, why are we treating each patient with the same standard of care? A process that has existed for a hundred years, and again, they've made substantial advancements, but functional precision medicine is really an opportunity to move away from a standard that's based on the laws of averages and really treat people based on an individual level, developed by results that come from their individual biology."

"In oncology, these practices and standards have been developed over decades. And in some situations, some of these cancer protocols haven't been updated in decades. There had been continual advancements in things like immunotherapy. What I'll say is that in oncology, they're always looking for the silver bullet. It's in the genome, it's in a biomarker, it's in immuno-oncology, it's in an organoid, it's in all of those types of things. So they have always tried to find that silver bullet. Fundamentally, what we do in First Ascent is that we believe that we have enough bullets, per se. We have enough drugs, per se. We're just not using them in the right ways. "

#FirstAscentBiomedical #Cancer #Oncology

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