Healthcare Unfiltered

Alex Herrera, MD, associate professor of medicine and lymphoma “guru” at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, joins the show on the last day of the ASCO Annual Meeting after being on stage for his Plenary session. Dr. Herrera shares the remarkable, resilient story of his family life, upbringing, life-altering injury, and improbable journey from playing baseball in Miami to a leadership ro...

Tyler Olson of Olson Consulting LLC joins the show to share his financial advice and planning for physicians and medical students as they go through their careers. Chadi and Tyler hit on the early financial decisions that medical students and early career physicians should make to support their lives as they deal with delayed income, why Tyler decided to open his own consulting firm, and why he fo...

Nitin Jain, MD, associate professor in the department of leukemia, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is the guest of honor to provide a comprehensive and simplified overview of the major advances in chronic lymphocytic leukemia over the past two decades. Dr. Jain talks mutations and time to treatment, prognostic markers, BTK inhibitors, combination regimens, current research, toxiciti...

In this pivot episode, James Winterman, Vice President of Scientific Marketing at Caris Life Sciences, joins Chadi as a citizen of England to discuss and reflect on the passing of the late Queen Elizabeth II. He begins with a condensed history lesson of the United Kingdom, how the healthcare system differs slightly across the UK and how it compares to that of the US, and where government power res...

Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, Professor of Health Policy, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, makes her long-awaited return to the show to cover all things related to pharmacy benefit managers. Stacie talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly, starting with the history of the PBMs and how they grew within the healthcare industry. What exactly is the role of the PB...

Tiffany McConathy, an oncology nurse practitioner in Arkansas, tells the sombering story of her infant daughter’s battle with pediatric brain and spinal cancer. She details Nora’s course of events, including the long pathology and diagnosis journey, the decision to move forward with treatment, and the months of good responses that followed prior to her passing. Tiffany also shares how Nora’s COVID...

Kyle Kiser, CEO of Arrive Health, joins the show to highlight his company’s unique approach to lowering costs of prescription drugs for patients in the US. He explains how physicians often make changes to their prescription recommendations based on Arrive Health’s presence as an “invisible component within the EMR,” how they aggregate data to generate clinical alternatives and relevant alternative...

Chadi hosts a duo of Canadiens to discuss quality of life and patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials: Christopher Booth, MD, and Michael Brundage, MSc, FRCPC, MD, both of Queen's University. They begin by pontificating on whether quality of life is a “must” endpoint in designing interventional clinical trials today, the timeline of how “PROs” came to be a term and an important component...

Mike Rucker, PhD, a behavioral scientist and organizational psychologist, joins the show to discuss his writing and publishing of the book “The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life.” Dr. Rucker explains how you can build having fun into an “actionable and effortless habit” and simultaneously reduce burnout. He shares why Americans have a difficult time enjoying themsel...

How do you design clinical trials in the era of precision oncology? Are prospective randomized controlled trials necessary anymore? Drs. Ray Kurzrock, Vivek Subbiah, and Christopher Booth drop the gloves and debate these questions - beginning with the definition of “precision oncology,” what phase the trials should be when initially designing, and whether accelerated approval and surrogate endpoin...

In a change-of-pace episode, Chadi has the tables turned on him as he is interviewed by two supporters and reviewers of his new book “Toxic Exposure: The True Story behind the Monsanto Trials and the Search for Justice.” Kelly Ryerson, MBA, GlyphosateGirl.com, and Mikkael Sekeres, author of “Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust” and “When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons...

In the latest book review, Chadi hosts the authors of the successful expose of his former colleague in “Taking On Big Pharma: Dr. Charles Bennett's Battle.” Julius Getman and Terri LeClercq share how they met Dr. Bennett on a cruise and became interested in his story about his massive achievements and legal charges against him - mishandling government grant money and violating the False Claim...

A story about adverse reactions, the FDA, the FBI, and patients - Linda Martin, a healthcare executive, shares with Chadi a riveting dialogue about the events in her life that have transpired since she got sick and started taking a standard prescribed antibiotic. Linda tells the story of when and why she was prescribed the antibiotic, how it made her feel worse than before, and how she found simil...

To better understand the role and importance of Advanced Practice Providers in oncology care, Chadi hosts Sarah Wyman, MSN, ACNP-BC, and Katie Simon, MMSc, PA-C, both co-leads of the APPs on the inpatient malignant hematology services team at Emory University Winship Cancer Institute. They begin by explaining the similar training and skill sets of NPs and PAs, the history of these positions over t...

In the world of whole-genome sequencing, do we really need cytogenetics anymore? To answer this question, Chadi brings on two cytogeneticists: Linda Baughn, PhD, and Yassmine Akkari, PhD. They begin by describing their unique career paths to becoming cytogeneticists, their day-to-day responsibilities, and what tests they perform and on what specimens. They then simplify the commonly used assays in...

Today is the day of the official launch of Chadi’s first book “Toxic Exposure: The True Story behind the Monsanto Trials and the Search for Justice.” Throughout the book, Chadi details his experience as an expert physician witness and the true story of the first three litigation trials against Monsanto and their herbicide "Roundup" which is linked to the development of Non-Hodgkin Lympho...

In this special episode, Chadi hosts his previous mentor from his days as a fellow at Northwestern: Martin Tallman, MD, previous president of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and world renowned leukemia expert. Together, they discuss mentorship and what makes a good mentor, where Dr. Tallman’s interest in leukemia came from and why he decided to begin his career in Seattle, his road to bec...

Nathan Vardi, managing editor at MarketWatch, and author of the new book “For Blood and Money: Billionaires, Biotech, and the Quest for a Blockbuster Drug,” is the guest of honor on today’s show. Nathan divulges on what happened behind closed doors for the creation of BTK inhibitors. Everything at the intersection of Wall Street, investigators, doctors, regulatory agencies, investors, and VC is de...

Few drugs in oncology have transformed the way we take care of patients. Ibrutinib is one such drug, and it belongs to a class called "BTK inhibitors"In this episode, Chadi captures the story of developing the drug through the eyes of Dr. Jeff Sharman, a prolific investigator and researcher; he is the director of research at the Willamette Valley Cancer Institute as well as the medical d...

Jennifer Fried, MBA, most recently the CEO of ExplORer Surgical, joins the show to share her story as a co-founder of a successful startup health technology company. She begins by telling her inspiration to start the company with her partner, when and how operating room workflow and efficiency was discovered as an area of unmet need, the steps she took to create the software platform solution and...

What do we know about various diets and their association with cancer? Have you ever wondered what the evidence shows? To answer this important question, Chadi hosts two specialists from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: Urvi Shah, MD, hematologist oncologist (myeloma expert and a cancer survivor herself), and Neil Lyengar, MD, medical oncologist (breast cancer expert). They discuss whether...

Scott Eggener, MD, University of Chicago, and Jonathan Epstein, MD, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, join the show to debate whether Gleason Score 6 prostate cancer should be renamed to non-cancer. The trio hit on what should happen upon diagnosis and Gleason grade 6, which patients should be offered active surveillance, the benefits and risks of not calling this diagnosis “cancer,” how oft...

Chadi is delighted and honored to host an icon and pioneer in precision medicine and the molecular understanding of cancer as we know it: Ray Kurzrock, MD, FACP, Center Associate Director and Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin as well as CMO of the WIN consortium. Nobody knows the history of precision medicine like Ray does. She was doubted when she started, but her resilience and perse...

To educate on oncology in the Arab world—home to over 400 million people—Chadi welcomes a new and renowned guest: Humaid AlShamsi, MD, President of the Emirates Oncology Society and Adjunct Clinical Professor of Oncology at the University of Sharjah (UAE). Dr AlShamsi shares his unique journey training as an oncologist all over the world before returning to the UAE, initial challenges he encounter...

To shed light on the differences in oncologic care between the US and the EU, Chadi invites a returning guest as well as a newcomer: Jarushka Naidoo, MBBCH, MD, Chair of the Thoracic Oncology Division, Beaumont RCSI Cancer Centre (Dublin, Ireland), and Marina Chiara Garassino, MD, Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago Medicine. The trio discuss discrepancies in diagnostics and pathology, ho...