Healthy Conversations

In clinical settings, we often suppress our emotions, ignoring what is now considered a valuable professional dataset – yet harnessing the power of our emotional life helps improve so many aspects of our work from job satisfaction to patient outcomes. It’s only a matter of time until the industry pivots away from this seemingly learned habit. Dr. Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emot...

Dr. James Beck, Chief Scientific Officer at the Parkinson’s Foundation, talks with Daniel about the role genetics can play with Parkinson’s, a progressive neurologic disorder with no known cause, and which affects nearly one million people in America.

As Daniel Shaw, VP, Consumer Innovation Products at CVS Health tells us, "At the end of the day it's how you use this data. How are you looking at this data? In what ways are you interpreting it? And then ultimately getting to a place where you can make actual decisions on it.” He also explains how the voice-activated Symphony ecosystem and the Attain app can help encourage both proactive and prev...

Yonatan Adiri is out to revolutionize kidney care – and he’s already doing it. The founder and CEO of Healthy.io explains to Daniel how he’s been able to drive 53% compliance in urine testing among those patients previously noncompliant, across age groups – “The last cohort we did in the UK was 80% of which was above the age of 50. 25% between 71 and 80 years old, where we saw 40% compliance.” Key...

According to Dr. Bruce Culleton, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Kidney Care at CVS Health, 93% of Americans who have kidney disease don't know they have it. And he tells Daniel some of the ways physicians and nurses can address this health literacy issue. Dr. Culleton also explains some of the health equity and disparity challenges that exist in this space. For instance, African America...

Daniel sat down with Bob Wachter to talk about the power of Twitter in public health, the continued evolution of patient-centered digital transformation, the very necessary adjustments to clinical education, his personal history as the founder of the hospitalist movement, and which technologies continue to lag in our industry.

Dr. Joanne Armstrong, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for women's health and genomics at CVS Health, talks with Daniel about the incredible impact genes can play in women’s lives, helping to shape prognosis and clinical decisions, in addition to improvements in prenatal screening. Dr. Armstrong also gives us a preview of Aetna’s new guided genetic health services — now expanding into enha...

Daniel explores the exciting world of genetic health with Dr. Robert Nussbaum, Chief Medical Officer at Invitae. Dr. Nussbaum dispels myths about interpreting genetic data, draws important distinctions around clinical-grade testing, and describes the many important ways genetic information can be used for reproductive planning, screening, and managing disorders.

The past few years may have been challenging but they’ve also brought about transformation in the pharmacy setting. Daniel speaks with Dr. Dan Knecht, the chief clinical innovation officer at CVS Caremark, about ways he’s working to provide more integrative, individualized care for patients with conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension — as well as behavioral health.

While 2021 has been a rollercoaster year, Daniel was able to cover plenty of exciting and innovative topics. He sat down with experts in public health data (discovering the data supply chain), precision oncology care, functional medicine, cutting edge red blood cell research, a venture capitalist, a former CEO and more. Health care and health care innovation is going to continue to accelerate in 2...

Daniel speaks with award-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman, who had exclusive access in March 2020 to one of New York’s largest and hardest-hit medical centers for his powerful documentary, The First Wave — as well as Dr. Nathalie Dougé, internist & hospitalist — about the toll COVID has taken on health care workers. The film is in theaters now and available on Hulu.

Daniel sits down with Dr. Patrick Hines, the founder and CEO at Functional Fluidics and the leading Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he set up a transformational study on defining the health of red blood cells — membrane stability, abnormalities, stickiness, and more. Dr. Hines also introduces us to exciting new therapies — recently approved — and th...

Some 100,000 individuals in America alone are dealing with sickle cell. Daniel speaks with Joel Helle, Vice President of Physician Services for CVS Health, about how to change the often one-size-fits-all approach to this painful disease — to care that is not only more continuous, but personalized, and proactive.

Dr. Nitin Gupta is the founder of Rivertowns Pediatrics, a very different type of private practice. Having practiced from Newark, NJ to Caribou, ME, he’s landed on a value-based, concierge model that works. Boiling things down, Dr. Gupta told Daniel, “You're spending more time on that computer than you are face to face with that patient.  This gives you the opportunity to be the doctor that you we...

Daniel sits down with Dr. Kim Blackwell, former oncologist and Eli Lilly trialist who is now the Chief Medical Officer at Tempus, a technology company that has built the world's largest library of clinical and molecular data as well as an operating system to make that information accessible and useful for patients, physicians, and researchers. They discuss big data, genetic sequencing, and the tec...

Daniel sits down with Dr. Pat Basu, President & CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, to discuss his unique point of view on the evolution of oncology care, precision medicine, the changing role of MD MBAs like himself, his early telemedicine work with Doctor On Demand, as well as his time as a Fellow advising the White House.

Daniel sits down with Dr. Mark Hyman, Head of Strategy & Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine – “a paradigm shift in our thinking about disease.” Dr. Hyman says, “We've now got 155,000 diseases in our diagnostic category book, but they're really all driven by a smaller number of common root causes.”

Daniel sits down with Dr. Robert Pearl, former surgeon and CEO at Permanente Medical Group for 18 years, about the culture of medicine and his new book Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients (proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders). Dr. Pearl provides an unflinching diagnosis of “physician culture” dating back to Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis’ battered leather apron in 1844; sec...

Daniel is a physician who wears many hats: inventor, founder, investor, and startup advisor. This week he sat down with another physician, Dr. Vineeta Agarwala, who has taken her clinical expertise to a whole other industry. Vineeta is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she leads investments for the storied firm’s bio fund (overseeing therapeutics, diagnostics, and digital health).

Daniel sat down with Dr. Dylan George, a biosecurity and data expert from Gingko Bioworks. Dylan’s career spans academia and a number of roles in the federal government — advising the Obama administration on Ebola and, more recently, advising the Biden-Harris transition team on COVID-19. If data is the new oil, it's also the new way of protecting our kids, our families, and our communities.

May is Women’s Health month, and Daniel sat down with Dr. Joanne Armstrong, Chief Medical Officer for Women's Health & Genomics at CVS Health, for both a tactical and macro-level look at how we all measure up to the rest of the world in this area — including prenatal, maternal, and postpartum care, as well as breast cancer and the latest studies on unconscious bias.

Daniel speaks with Dr. Laurie Zephyrin, VP of Health Systems Equity at the Commonwealth Fund. Laurie was a key player in transforming women’s health at the VA, having trained as an OB-GYN before scaling her attention to systems, structures and culture. 

Daniel speaks with Dr. Sree Chaguturu, Chief Medical Officer, CVS Caremark about vaccine hesitancy — citing original research around common objections and physician best practices — as well as current vaccination rates, variants and boosters, and what we’ve learned as an enterprise from long term care (LTC) facilities and the federal retail pharmacy program.

In this episode, we explore the latest thinking and newest innovations in at-home care for seniors. Guests include AgeWave founders,Doctors Ken and Maddy Dychtwald, our own Adam Pellegrini (SVP Enterprise Virtual Care & Consumer Health), and health care futurist Zayna Khayat (author of The Future of Aging).

We also connected with Dr. Kenneth Snow about innovative technologies like CGM (continuous glucose monitors), early detection, and the fine line between giving patients more autonomy and the risk of overwhelming them. Lastly, we’ll hear from Rebecca Rice, pharmacist and educator, about the evolving role she plays in the life of chronic care patients via the unique HealthHub model.