Featured episodes of Definitively Speaking

More than 131 million people in the U.S. take a prescription drug every day, but nearly half don’t take their medications as directed. Charles Gellman, CEO and co-founder of HiDO Health, joins Justin to discuss how technologies like AI, RFID, and robotics can help patients and caregivers adhere to complex drug regimens without direct support from a doctor or pharmacist. Charles explains how his company leverages this tech to eliminate barriers to health equity and reduce the 125,000 preventable deaths and $300 billion in preventable care costs associated with medication non-adherence each year.

Justin and Charles dig into the factors driving non-adherence and why the private sector has largely failed to address them. They examine how AI’s role in healthcare has expanded from drug discovery to care delivery, break down its most exciting and worrisome aspects, and ask why so few healthcare leaders seem to really understand the potential of this technology.

In the U.S., payors and providers need each other to deliver the highest-quality care at the lowest cost—but they don’t always get along. Russ Thomas, CEO of Availity, joins Justin to discuss the systemic factors driving the misalignment between payors and providers. Russ and Justin discuss how technology and a new perspective might be able to simplify two of biggest points of friction: utilization management and authorization workflow.

Justin and Russ ask the tricky questions facing our overly complicated system of healthcare reimbursement: How can payors and providers create more transparency in the claims process? Can AI and other tech solve payors’ yield problems? And is a single-payor system really the answer to our healthcare woes?

On a snowy January day in 2022, Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, director of cardiac xenotransplantation at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, oversaw the first transplantation of a pig heart into a human body. Dr. Mohiuddin joins Justin to discuss this landmark procedure—from the selection of patient David Bennett to the complications that ultimately led to the transplanted heart’s failure 60 days after the successful surgery—and what comes next for this rapidly advancing field.

Dr. Mohiuddin describes the next ideal xenotransplant recipient and explains how drug companies can support the field. Plus, Justin and Dr. Mohiuddin examine how xenotransplantation has evolved over the past 30 years and why on-demand organs may be closer to reality than science fiction.