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The Benefits of a Direct-to-Consumer Healthcare Model—featuring Melynda B

In traditional healthcare, patients don’t control the flow of funds. And that leaves payers or health systems in the driver’s seat when it comes to decision making. But <a href="https://ro.co/" target="_blank">Ro</a> designed a business that gives control back to patients. A business where health insurance doesn’t stand in the way of patients being able to access the care they want and need. Dr. Melynda Barnes is Chief Medical Officer at Ro, a direct-to-patient health care platform that provides high-quality, affordable care without the need for insurance. Dr. Barnes is one of Fierce Healthcare’s Most Influential Minority Executives and a 40 Under 40 Leader in Health, and she is passionate about democratizing access to quality care.  On this episode of HLTH Matters, Melynda joins hosts Dr. Jessica Shepherd and Dr. Gautam Gulati to discuss the future of vertically integrated primary care. Melynda walks us through Ro’s suite of product offerings, explaining how her team addresses stigmatized conditions and why patients are more willing to discuss these issues with the Ro care team. Listen in to understand why Ro built out its own pharmacy and learn how patients benefit from the company’s scale—and its very high bar for asynchronous telehealth care. Topics Covered<ul><li>What inspired Melynda’s shift from practicing medicine to healthcare startup exec</li><li>How Ro offers a direct-to-patient model where insurance doesn’t stand in the way of quality care</li><li>The stigma around obesity and why there’s debate on covering medication to address it</li><li>Ro’s suite of product offerings and why Melynda’s team focuses on stigmatized conditions</li><li>Why patients are more willing to discuss conditions that carry stigma virtually</li><li>How Ro sets the bar very high for asynchronous telemedicine</li><li>How patients pay for Ro’s services through memberships, cash pay and insurance</li><li>What members of the Ro Body program get with their membership</li><li>What enabled Ro to scale so quickly and get their visits down to a $15 price point</li><li>How the Ro platform is built for patients, providers and pharmacists</li><li>Ro’s patient-first approach to expanding its service offerings</li><li>Why Ro built out its own pharmacy and the benefits of such vertical integration</li></ul> Connect with Melynda Barnes<a href="https://ro.co/" target="_blank">Ro</a>Melynda on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/melyndabarnes/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> Connect with Dr. Jessica Shepherd &amp; Dr. Gautam Gulati<a href="https://www.hlth.com/" target="_blank">HLTH</a>Dr. Shepherd on <a href="https://twitter.com/JShepherd_MD" target="_blank">X</a>Dr. Shepherd on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-shepherd-md-mba-5ba9ab66/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>Dr. Gulati on <a href="https://twitter.com/drgautamgulati" target="_blank">X</a>Dr. Gulati on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gautamgulati/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> Resources<a href="https://biodesign.stanford.edu/programs/fellowships.html" target="_blank">Stanford Biodesign Fellowships</a><a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/expert-answers/byetta/faq-20057955" target="_blank">GLP-1 Obesity Meds</a><a href="https://ro.co/weight-loss/" target="_blank">Ro Body Program</a>

S4 E9: The Benefits of a Direct-to-Consumer Healthcare Model—featuring Melynda Barnes

Chief Medical Officer

Normalizing Stigmatized Health Issues — featuring Melissa Waters of hims & hers

On this episode of HLTH Matters, Melissa joins Dr. Kuku to explain how Hims &amp; Hers provides care in stigmatized categories like erectile dysfunction and sexual wellness. She shares Hims &amp; Hers’ ambitions around normalizing these stigmatized issues, democratizing access to care, providing price transparency and delivering a high-quality experience. Listen in for insight on Hims &amp; Hers’ stand on access to contraception as a human right and learn how the platform is building trust and credibility with consumers.

S1 Ep6: Normalizing Stigmatized Health Issues — featuring Melissa Waters of hims & hers

Technology for High-Quality Care—featuring Dr. Taha Kass-Hout

The next decade will be about making sense of all digitized data; to structure it, AI, the cloud, and machine learning will play an important role.  Nowadays, patients walk around with thousands of unstructured data points on everything they interact with, their devices, the cloud, and their paper records. In this episode, Taha Kass-Hout, Director of Machine Learning and Chief Medical Officer at Amazon Web Services, talks about how AWS enables healthcare customers with AI, ML, and cloud technology to offer convenient, personalized, and high-quality care. They’ve developed purpose-built health services that extract and structure digitized information using analytics and machine learning. He breaks down the Amazon HealthLake Imaging and Analytics services, and briefly speaks about Comprehend and Transcribe Medical, all machine learning tools that allow storage, structure, and secure data analytics.  Tune in and learn how AWS will help healthcare make the most out of patients’ data with the help of its new features! About Taha Kass-Hout:Taha Kass-Hout, MD, MS is the Director of Machine Learning and Chief Medical Officer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and leads AWS Health AI strategy and efforts. He led teams at Amazon responsible for developing the science, technology, and scale for Covid-19 lab testing, including Amazon’s first FDA authorization for testing our associates—later offered to the public for at-home testing. A physician and bioinformatician, Taha served two terms under President Obama, including as the first Chief Health Informatics officer at the FDA. During this time as a public servant, he pioneered the use of emerging technologies and the cloud (the CDC’s electronic disease surveillance) and established widely accessible global data sharing platforms: openFDA, which enabled researchers and the public to search and analyze adverse events data, and precisionFDA, part of the Presidential Precision Medicine initiative. Taha holds Doctor of Medicine and Master of Science in biostatistics degrees from the University of Texas and completed clinical training in Interventional Cardiology at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Things You’ll Learn:<ul><li>Amazon invented the cloud with Amazon Web Services, the widely available and adopted cloud platform with over 200 features and services from data centers worldwide. </li><li>AWS helps healthcare and life science customers with breakthrough and ever-evolving medical innovations.</li><li>In the last ten years, digitized medical record data went from 15% to almost 98%. </li><li>Although medical records are digitized, about 97% of this data goes unused.</li><li>Amazon HealthLake allows customers to store, transform, and analyze their structured and unstructured health information in the cloud at a petabyte scale. </li><li>Amazon HealthLake has an Imaging service and an Analytics service.</li><li>Just looking at medical imaging, 5.5 billion studies and procedures are done every year globally, which doubles the amount made ten years ago.</li><li>Healthcare costs $8 trillion globally, and yet, 40% of the world’s population currently doesn&#39;t have access to care.</li></ul> Resources:Connect with and follow Taha Kass-Hout on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahak/" target="_blank">LinkedIn.</a>Follow Amazon Web Services on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/amazon-web-services/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.Discover the Amazon Web Services <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Website</a>!

S3 Ep3: Technology for High-Quality Care—featuring Dr. Taha Kass-Hout

Why Obesity Is a Chronic Disease (Not a Failure of Willpower)—featuring Isabelle

42% of adults in the US qualify as obese. But there are only a few thousand doctors board-certified in obesity, most of whom work exclusively in academic medical centers.  So, what can we do to address the obesity epidemic in our country? How do we give the 200 million Americans struggling with metabolic health access to the information and support they need? Isabelle Kenyon is Founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.joincalibrate.com/pages/hello" target="_blank">Calibrate</a>, a metabolic health company on a mission to change the way the world treats weight. In two years, Calibrate has raised more than $125 million and published clinically-reviewed results from its One-Year Metabolic Reset that exceeded the best outcomes from clinical trials across all metabolic markers. On this episode of HLTH Matters, Isabelle joins host Dr. Jessica Shepherd to explain how Calibrate partners medication and lifestyle interventions to promote long-term weight loss. Isabelle discusses the biggest contributors to sustained success with Calibrate, describing how the program helps members improve their metabolic health. Listen in for Isabelle’s insight on treating obesity like a chronic disease (not a failure of willpower) and learn how Calibrate tailors its program to your biology, your goals and your life for sustained weight loss—guaranteed. Topics Covered<ul><li>How her mom’s struggle with weight inspired Isabelle to build Calibrate</li><li>The 4 pillars of metabolic balance Calibrate uses to instill lifestyle change</li><li>How metabolic health sets us up for long-term, sustained weight loss</li><li>What it looks like to work through the Calibrate program</li><li>Why Calibrate partners medication with lifestyle interventions</li><li>How Isabelle thinks about educating consumers on metabolic health</li><li>Why Calibrate is designed to prove sustained results after medication</li><li>How engagement and community contribute to sustained success with Calibrate</li><li>How Calibrate sets expectations with clients and guarantees results</li><li>Treating obesity like the chronic disease it is vs. a failure of willpower</li></ul> Connect with Isabelle Kenyon<a href="https://www.joincalibrate.com/pages/hello" target="_blank">Calibrate</a> Connect with Dr. Jessica Shepherd<a href="https://www.hlth.com/" target="_blank">HLTH</a><a href="https://twitter.com/JShepherd_MD" target="_blank">Dr. Shepherd on Twitter</a><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-shepherd-md-mba-5ba9ab66/" target="_blank">Dr. Shepherd on LinkedIn</a> Resources<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/prevention/index.html" target="_blank">National Diabetes Prevention Program</a><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2017/16_0287.htm" target="_blank">The CDC Definition of Metabolic Health</a>

S3 Ep28: Why Obesity Is a Chronic Disease (Not a Failure of Willpower)—featuring Isabelle Kenyon

Podcast

S4 E9: The Benefits of a Direct-to-Consumer Healthcare Model—featuring Melynda Barnes

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