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.

More than 4.8 billion prescriptions were filled in the U.S. in 2022, and a medical affairs team had a hand in each one—even if the average patient doesn’t know they exist. Steve Casey, managing partner of Omni Healthcare Communications, joins Justin to explain the evolving role of medical affairs and why life science organizations are struggling to find KPIs that accurately measure the impact of their work from drug development through provider and payor education and beyond.

Justin and Steve look at the big questions facing medical affairs teams and the life science organizations they work for: Can developers use behavioral science to more effectively gauge MSL influence? How does the role of medical affairs change over the next decade? And how clearly defined is the line between medical affairs and marketing?

For hospitals and health systems, the lifetime value of a patient is around $1 million. So why are more than half of U.S. hospitals operating with outdated tech that adds friction to the patient experience and increases the likelihood of losing that patient to a different system? David Bennett, CEO of pCare, joins Justin to discuss how technology, amenities, and basic bedside manner intersect in a patient’s care experience—and what consumers can do to stay informed and navigate the healthcare system more effectively.

Justin and David explore the overwhelming wealth of data available to healthcare consumers and how hospitals can take steps to improve patients’ experiences before they even walk in the door. Plus, they examine the ongoing shift from patient-centric to family-centric care, and Dave shares how his wife’s recent healthcare journey has changed how he views his job as a CEO working in the healthcare industry.

Women make up more than half of the U.S. population and over two-thirds of the global healthcare workforce, but within the American healthcare system, they face significantly poorer outcomes than those in other similarly wealthy countries. Jo Lim, SVP of growth and engagement at Babylon, joins Justin and guest contributor Kate Shamsuddin, chief product officer at Definitive Healthcare, to explore how virtual care, artificial intelligence, and value-based reimbursement could help address the care disparities faced by women and improve population health management to make U.S. healthcare more affordable and accessible for everybody.

Justin, Kate, and Jo look across the pond to see what lessons we can learn from the U.K. and ask what incentives could get U.S. payors and providers to align on preventive, value-based care. They also examine how social determinants of health deliver insights into patient populations—and why AI excels at turning those insights into interventions.