Raise the Line

After more than a decade studying resuscitation science in the ICU, Dr. Stephen Trzeciak felt himself burning out. He was skeptical of “escapist” options, like more vacations. “I thought something had to fundamentally change at the point of care,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. Inspired by empirical studies linking human connections with increased resilience, he decided to lean into relationships wit...

David Blake -- rattled in the wake of a tough standardized exam – was doing some independent research in his high school library when it dawned on him that while he was a top-notch student, he was a terrible learner. From then on, he committed to changing a system that had encouraged him to merely “jump through hoops.” Through his companies Degreed, and more recently, BookClub, Blake has sought to...

On this episode of Raise the Line , we're going to learn about a company that sits at the intersection of three huge trends in U.S. healthcare: the unending growth in the number of people with chronic conditions, the advent of new virtual healthcare technologies, and moving more care into the home. And that’s just where the founder and CEO of Cadence, Chris Altchek, wants to be. “I’m very interest...

One night, Suzanne Peek was awoken by her son who thought he was having a heart attack. That began a drawn-out ordeal of misdiagnoses and ER visits until he was properly diagnosed with Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome, a rare disorder which results from a constriction of blood flow to organs in the upper abdomen. Fortunately, Peeks had an easier time than most navigating our complicated medical sy...

One of the most urgent issues Dr. Sanjay Desai sees in medical education is how to bring historically minoritized people into the physician workforce. “We need to have a physician workforce that resembles the patients that we care for,” he urges. In Dr. Desai's former role as program director of the prestigious Osler Medical Residency at Johns Hopkins University, he and his team more than doubled...

The good news is researchers have established a tremendous amount about how human memory is acquired, organized, and deployed. The bad news, according to Dr. Stephen Kosslyn, is this information has pretty much stayed in technical journals and textbooks and not been applied in classrooms. Adding to the problem is that popular misconceptions about learning abound, so most of us are not learning nea...

“It's impossible to be a physician and not be able to speak the language of medicine, which really is anatomy,” says Dr. Marios Loukas, who, in addition to his current role as a medical school dean, has written several books on anatomy and is former president of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists. In this episode with host Dr. Rishi Desai, find out how Dr. Loukas became interested in...

Listening to veteran healthcare entrepreneur and investor Carly Stockdale, the Co-Founder and CEO of BestLife Holdings, you get the feeling she is living her best professional life.  With BestLife -- a platform of age management organizations, including the Foundation for Healthy Aging and Cenegenics -- Stockdale has created a perch from which she can blend her interests in healthy aging, women’s...

“You don't have to change yourself culturally to be brilliant,” asserts Dr. Russell Ledet, a Black U.S. Navy veteran who has earned an MD-MBA as well as a PhD in Molecular Oncology and Tumor Immunologyand now works to remove barriers for those who want to follow in his footsteps. In this fascinating interview with host Dr. Rishi Desai, learn how Dr. Ledet went from being a security guard in a hosp...

Dr. Tom O’Callaghan thinks he’s already seen the future of medicine in this tech-heavy age, and it looks a lot like the personal, trusted healthcare he saw his father providing in the small community in Ireland in which he was raised. As he tells host Rishi Desai, if you have a good family doctor “you're far more likely to have a better healthcare outcome to every illness you have in your life.” I...

How can digital health benefit an ordinary patient? Today's guest, Tobias Silberzahn, enjoys taking a citizen perspective in his work in digital health—a field that, as he emphasizes, is far from a monolith, comprising over 25 categories from digital therapeutics to patient remote monitoring, to disease management. Tune in to this episode of Raise the Line with host Dr. Rishi Desai to learn how Si...

Telehealth has become ubiquitous, but Andy Flanagan thinks the word telehealth will soon disappear. “It’s just care,” said the CEO of the remote psychiatry service, Iris Telehealth. Flanagan anticipates that, just as concepts like “online banking” are now indistinguishable from what it simply means to use a bank, telehealth will soon be baked into the healthcare system. “The very best of it will b...

With new medical products constantly entering the market, it can be difficult for doctors to keep up. Interventional radiologist Dr. Aaron Fritts has experienced this first hand in his career, and often found himself calling friends and former colleagues with questions about how to use new devices he encountered. Realizing doctors everywhere are in the same boat he launched BackTable, a podcast pl...

“The role we play in healthcare is so much bigger than I could have imagined, and it's just exciting to be a part of it,” says Kevonne Holloway, Managing Director for Global Content Partners at Elsevier, when reflecting on the work of her large team. GCP is responsible for 2,500 publications and other content that health educators around the world rely on to provide the foundation for medical educ...

There is approximately $266 billion in administrative waste in the U.S. healthcare system each year, and much of it is tied to the complexity of insurance. Our guest today, Syam Palakurthy, co-founded SamaCare to help solve this seemingly intractable problem. SamaCare builds software to make the often-burdensome process of prior authorization as quick and easy as a credit card swipe, improving out...

“I think I've learned as much by watching and observing and being mentored by people as I have from any formal classes I could ever take,” says Dr. Dele Davies. Dr. Davies credits his incredible role models for teaching him that handling people well is key to a harmonious and successful work life. In this episode of Raise the Line , learn how Dr. Davies, who was born in Nigeria, became interested...

When a young Patrick McKeown had an important exam decades ago, he prepared as society had coached him: With big, deep breaths. He entered the testing room lightheaded and scatterbrained. “It was,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani, “the worst thing possible that I could have done. In fact, I should have done the opposite.” Long after his asthma and stress inflected youth, McKeown immersed himself in the...

“The biggest things I’ve learned about improving health equity are the importance of data and relationships,” says Dr. Aditi Mallick, who, in her role at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services counts that goal as a top priority. That knowledge was largely gained last year while she was director of North Carolina’s COVID-19 Response Command Center.  Data on testing and vaccination rates by...

On today's episode, we spotlight nursing education because trends in the profession and healthcare at large are making it more important than ever. "The job of nursing has become far more complex, and first-year nurses are being asked to make very complex decisions right away," says Brent Gordon, President of Nursing and Health Education at Elsevier. That underscores the urgency of developing clin...

We've been fortunate to speak to many medical educators in the United States over the past two years on Raise the Line about the state of medical education and how learning has been impacted by the COVID pandemic. On today’s episode, we happily broaden our scope on these topics to Central Asia with the help of two officials from Samarkand State Medical University in Uzbekistan. Mahzuna Nasretdinov...

“I want to be the home for the clinician in digital health,” says SteadyMD CEO and lover of complex business problems Guy Friedman. Taking care of clinicians by thinking about their needs and respecting their autonomy is key to the approach of Friedman's company, which he co-founded in 2016 as a way to improve primary care delivery. Tune in to this episode of Raise the Line with host Dr. Rishi Des...

Hurricane Sandy struck New York City when now-Dr. Jason Reminick was in town, interviewing for residency programs to which he’d applied. The whole process, which would shape the coming years of his life, was a huge mess. Interviews were canceled. Anxiety ran high. He remembers a fellow applicant whose car was lost in the storm. Desperate, the applicant took a cab to one interview, at a cost of $60...

“One of the pieces of advice I like to give young people is to collect knowledge, interests and a network of people you want to know. You don't know yet how you are going to use it all, but later it will become obvious which pieces fit with which,” says Youngsuk ‘YS’ Chi, Chairman of Elsevier. If you want a great example of how this approach works, you can look at Chi’s own remarkable career which...

“I'm in a part of my life where I like to have an impact that disrupts an industry,” says famed entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and his new online pharmacy CostPlus Drugs is already showing signs of creating a major disruption, indeed. Here’s just one example of what his no-frills operation is making possible: a 30-day supply of the cancer-fighting drug Gleevec is usually $2,500, but on CostPlusDrugs.com...

We’ve talked a lot on Raise the Line about the upsides of the telehealth boom, but our guest today, Dr. Mike Hoaglin, brings a new silver lining to light: it’s one way to help with the physician burnout crisis. “I've certainly been in the trenches of burnout in the past, and having the flexibility to be able to see patients when I'm at my best and when I'm able to be at home with my family is just...