PHIND Seminar Series
11:00-11:30 AM | Dr. Anoop Rao, M.D., M.S.
“Wearable Sensing for Neonates”
Clinical Instructor, Pediatrics (Neonatology)
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
Stanford University School of Medicine
11:30-12:00 PM | Dr. Eric Dy, Ph.D.
“Crowdsourced data and machine learning to design the future of prenatal care”
Co-founder and CEO
Bloomlife
12:00pm – 1:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here: https://www.onlineregistrationcenter.com/PHIND061620
This seminar will be available in person and via a Zoom live stream.
Meeting URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/92848236311
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536
Meeting ID: 928 4823 6311
Dr. Anoop Rao Bio
Anoop Rao is a Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics (Division of Neonatology) at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. After completing early medical training in India, he obtained his MS from MIT, and completed clinical training in Pediatrics from Columbia and fellowships in Neonatal Critical Care from Stanford and Biomedical Informatics from Harvard. He spent over 5 years at AgaMatrix, a startup focused on developing high-accuracy blood glucose meters.
At Stanford, his research is on contact and non-contact monitoring of infants. Anoop collaborates extensively with industry and is actively supported by NIH/Maternal and Child Health Research Institute.
Dr. Eric Dy Bio
Eric Dy, PhD is co-founder and CEO of Bloomlife, a women’s health company designing remote prenatal care solutions to improve the health of women and babies. Eric brings unique perspective on the opportunities and challenges in emerging healthcare technologies and delivery models informed by multidisciplinary technical expertise leading business development for Europe’s leading R&D institute, imec. Eric earned his BSc in Bioengineering from Cornell and his MSc and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from UCLA. Bloomlife has been recognized for their pioneering work winning Fast Company World Changing Ideas, Johnson & Johnson Quickfire Challenge, Richard Branson’s Extreme Tech Challenge, MedTech Innovator Award, and speaking at the White House Precision Public Health Summit.
Dr. Eric Dy Abstract
The period from conception through the first 1000 days of life are the most critical for lifelong health and development, yet too often we are failing women and babies at this time. High risk pregnancies are on the rise, access to care is increasingly a problem, and pregnancy complications such as preterm birth now affect 1 in 10 babies. Despite these growing challenges, the way we deliver prenatal care has not fundamentally changed in over 60 years. We need smarter tools, better data, and scalable solutions to improve the health of moms and babies globally.
In this talk Bloomlife co-founder and CEO will share their strategy for designing the future of prenatal care. He will discuss how clinical grade wearables, in the hands of mom, has helped create the largest dataset on pregnancy in the world, and how AI applied to this dataset is seeding breakthrough screening and diagnostic tools to help solve global maternal health issues including preterm birth.
Hosted by: Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, M.D., Ph.D.
Sponsored by: PHIND Center, Department of Radiology and eWEAR Initiative
PHIND Seminar Series: What is in your sweat and what can it mean for health and disease?
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Seminar & Discussion
RSVP: https://www.onlineregistrationcenter.com/VShankar
Presenter:
Vishnu Shankar, M.S.
Department of Chemistry
Stanford University
Principal Investigators:
Michael Snyder, Ph.D.
Stanford W. Ascherman, MD, FACS Professor in Genetics
Stanford University
Robert Tibshirani, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Data Science and of Statistics
Stanford University
Richard Zare, Ph.D.
Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and Professor, by courtesy, of Physics
Stanford University
Location
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/99817512229?pwd=QitCTjRXMEdBTWZyd29MTHYyNU5Xdz09
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536
Webinar ID: 998 1751 2229
Password: 489011
ABSTRACT
Sweat is a complex fluid known to be rich in electrolytes, small molecules, and fatty acids. Although adults can sweat up to 10 liters per day, little is still known about the chemical composition of sweat, how this changes, and what are its implications for health and disease. We demonstrate a powerful approach to help elucidate this link, where collecting samples simply requires swabbing a glass slide across one’s forehead in less than 30 seconds. Using the combination of desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry and statistical machine learning, our approach can successfully detect over 10,000 metabolites in sweat and identify metabolic changes in the sweat profile related to gender, age, and disease. As an example, we demonstrate in a cohort of 65 subjects the possibility of using just a few metabolites detected in sweat to successfully identify patients with renal disease. More generally, our approach suggests the possibility of using the sweat profile to non-invasively assess individual risk for metabolic diseases in the theme of “Precision Medicine.”
ABOUT VISHNU SHANKAR
Vishnu Shankar recently graduated with his master’s degree in computer science, with a specialization in artificial intelligence from Stanford University. He completed his bachelor’s degree with honors in mathematical and computational sciences in 2018, also at Stanford, with his senior thesis on Bayesian networks for incorporating effect modifiers in meta-analysis. In addition, his background spans biology, mathematics, chemistry, statistics, operations research, physics, and computing. Vishnu has published 6 papers and 3 articles in fields including protein structural prediction, comparison of clinical guidelines cost-effectiveness in type 2 diabetes, development of programs to combat mental illness, cancer diagnosis with analytical chemistry and machine learning, and related areas. He is also the founder of the CARES organization to support peer student wellness at college campuses, for which he won the Asoka Youth Changemaker award sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim. Vishnu has enthusiastically pursued science since his middle school days and has worked on demonstrating the possibilities of DNA computing, simulating protein folding, studying the genetic modifications in fruits and vegetables, and more. He has been recognized for his scientific research as an Intel Science Talent finalist, Google Science Fair Regional finalist, recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Excellence award for his work on epidemiology modeling. Vishnu has interned at Caltech and Genentech, where he applied experimental techniques to purify and study protein behavior including dialysis, titration, chromatography for early stage drug development. He was also selected as one of the two high school students to represent the western US Confucius Institute in Student Leaders Exchange Program in China as a non-native Mandarin speaker.
Hosted by: Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, M.D., Ph.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Identifying Fibroblasts Subtypes Contributing to the Progression of Preinvasive to Invasive Lung Adenocarcinoma
Sylvia Plevritis, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Data Science and of Radiology
Integrative Biomedical Imaging Informatics at Stanford
Stanford University
Location
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/93945120934?pwd=a29GNjFCUzBtWjRsbFdnUnVUOTMzUT09
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536
Webinar ID: 939 4512 0934
Password: 767148
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP: https://www.onlineregistrationcenter.com/SPlevritis
ABOUT
Dr. Sylvia K. Plevritis is Professor and Chair of Biomedical Data Science, Professor of Radiology at Stanford University and Program Director of the Stanford Biomedical Informatics Graduate Training Program. Dr. Plevritis leads a computational biology cancer research program that bridges genomics, imaging and population sciences to decipher properties of cancer progression and treatment response. Dr. Plevritis received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Health Services Research, both from Stanford University, with a focus on cancer imaging physics and modeling cancer outcomes, respectively. She has had a primary authorship role on over 100 scientific cancer-related articles. She is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and Distinguished Investigator in the Academy of Radiology Research. She serves on the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors, the Program Leadership Committee of the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Leadership Council of the Stanford Bio-X Program. Dr. Plevritis has served on numerous NIH study sections, chaired scientific programs for the several professional societies including the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and presented keynote lectures across multiple scales of computational cancer biology. Currently, she is the Program Director of the Stanford Center in Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) and has been a Principal Investigator with the NCI Cancer Intervention Surveillance Network (CISNET) for over fifteen years. She has served as Program Director of the Stanford Cancer Systems Biology Scholars Program (CSBS), and co-Division Chief of Integrative Biomedical Imaging Informatics at Stanford (IBIIS).
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Maintaining Competitive Advantage through Intellectual Capital
Soody Tronson, M.S., J.D.
Founder
Presque
Location & Timing
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/98817009379?pwd=U21pYnpCTUlxY3U2TEh4RmhvMXpvQT09
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536
Webinar ID: 988 1700 9379
Password: 767148
RSVP: https://www.onlineregistrationcenter.com/STronson
ABSTRACT
Digital health has provided a range of solutions, including health and wellness-related management, machine learning algorithms for pattern recognition, AI for genetic analysis, AI-enhanced clinical decision making, and virtual doctors that use AI for patient intake triage. Intellectual property can play an important role in providing a competitive advantage in the digital health industry. We will explore opportunities and challenges for protecting digital health technologies during the program, including patent eligibility challenges and the use of trade secrets.
ABOUT SOODY TRONSON
Soody Tronson is Founding Managing Counsel at STLG Law Firm, counseling domestic and international clients in IP and technology transactions in a wide range of technologies. In 2016 she formed, Presque, a company developing a line of medical devices for mothers and infants.
Soody has over 25 years of operational experience in technology, business, management, and law in start-up and fortune 100 companies, including Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals, Hewlett-Packard Co., Avantec Vascular, and the law firms of HellerEhrman and Townsend and Townsend.
Soody serves in board and leadership capacities with several organizations including the Association of Women in Science STEM to Market national accelerator; Licensing Executives Society USA/Canada, California Lawyers Association, and the Palo Alto Area Bar Association. Soody is a Commissioner with the city of Menlo Park; and an active hands-on volunteer with several civic organizations including Defy Ventures, an entrepreneurship training program for currently and formerly incarcerated. Soody has instructed courses in IP, licensing, and entrepreneurship at the University of California, Stanford University and European institutions. She is the co-author of the book “Women Securing the Future with TIPPSS for IoT: Trust, Identity, Privacy, Protection, Safety, Security for the Internet of Things.”
Hosted by: Garry Gold, MD
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Serum Modulation of Mitochondrial Function as a Scalable Sensor of Insulin Resistance
Andrew Lipchik, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow – Michael Snyder Lab
Stanford University
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
12:00pm – 12:15pm Reception & Light Refreshments
RSVP: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/7716009863360/WN_dbeuo7csS8q_AhR88XET0g
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: . https://stanford.zoom.us/s/96358568342
Webinar ID: 963 5856 8342
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Password: 767148
ABSTRACT
The global epidemic of obesity is associated with the dramatic increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) with an estimated 400 million people worldwide will have T2D by 2030. T2D is proceeded by insulin resistance (IR) for up to decades prior to onset of T2D. Current estimates suggest approximately one in three individuals are sufficiently insulin resistant to be at risk for IR complications including T2D, coronary heart disease and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. IR often goes undiagnosed due to the complex, invasive and laborious nature of clamp assays preventing their universal application in the clinic. Surrogate measurements using fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels can estimate IR but are imprecise. There is a need for the identification of new biomarkers and assays for the detection and monitoring of IR. Here, we demonstrate the utility of cellular mitochondrial respiration in response to individuals’ serum as a sensor for personalized monitoring of insulin sensitivity. The modulation of insulin-dependent mitochondrial function by patient serum was highly correlated with insulin sensitivity as determined by the gold-standard modified insulin suppression test (IST). We further applied this methodology to monitor insulin sensitivity over time in response to illness as well as treatment with the insulin sensitizing medication, pioglitazone. Our results demonstrate the development and application of a novel surrogate measurement for the determination and monitoring of insulin sensitivity. This assay offers the advantages of minimal invasiveness and complexity compared to IST as well as superior correlation with IST compared to existing surrogate measurements.
ABOUT ANDREW LIPCHIK
Andrew Lipchik majored in Chemistry at Xavier University where he preformed research on the development of oxygen activation Ni(II) complexes with Dr. Craig Davis and Dr. Michael Baldwin at the University of Cincinnati. He went on to obtain his PhD from Purdue University under mentorship of Dr. Laurie Parker. His thesis work focused on identifying determinants of kinase substrate specificity. This understanding was applied to the development of novel kinase-specific peptide biosensors to monitor intracellular kinase activity. Following his graduate work, he joined the laboratory of Michael Snyder at Stanford University where he has focused on understanding the impact of the immune system on insulin resistance and glucose metabolism.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Identifying Microbiome Markers of Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease
Ami Bhatt, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology) and of Genetics
Stanford University
Gavin Sherlock, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Genetics
Stanford University
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/8016040837299/WN_iBOM7R4XQjOPSb20rkUxbw
Location: Zoom Webinar
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/99730716280
Webinar ID: 997 3071 6280
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Password: 767148
ABOUT AMI BHATT
In perpetual awe of how ‘simple’ microbial organisms can perturb complex, multicellular eukaryotic organisms, Ami Bhatt has chosen to dedicate her research program to inspecting, characterizing and dissecting the microbe-human interface. Nowhere is the interaction between hosts and microbes more potentially impactful than in immunocompromised hosts and global settings where infectious and environmental exposures result in drastic and sometimes fatal health consequences.
Ami’s group identifies problems and questions that arise in the course of routine clinical care. Often in collaboration with investigators at Stanford and beyond, the group applies modern genetic, molecular and computational techniques to seek answers to these questions, better understand host-microbe interactions and decipher how perturbation of these interactions may result in human disease phenotypes.
GAVIN SHERLOCK’S RESEARCH INTERESTS
Adaptive Evolution and the Fitness Landscape: When yeast are evolved under various selective pressures in a chemostat, mutations that arise and provide an adaptive advantage will expand within the population. We have pioneered the use of high throughput sequencing to determine the identity of such mutations, as well as to understand the dynamics of the mutations within the populations, and the interactions between the mutations (such as epistasis). Further, we have developed a DNA barcode based lineage tracking system to determine the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) for newly arising beneficial mutations. We have also characterized what we call the genotype-fitness map for beneficial mutations, and have investigated why beneficial mutations provide a positive fitness effect. We are also interested in how beneficial mutations trade-off for different traits, and how those trade-offs constrain adaptive evolution.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Topics Below
Ahmed Metwally, PhD
“Pre-symptomatic detection of COVID-19 via wearables biosensors”
Postdoctoral Scholar – Michael Snyder, PhD Lab
Department of Genetics
Stanford University
Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, MS
“Continuous remote cardiorespiratory and health monitoring using the Hexoskin biometric shirt”
Co-founder and CEO
Hexoskin
Location: Zoom Webinar
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/98925964231
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 989 2596 4231
Passcode: 298382
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bruT-pvvQUePuBLqm2SLkQ
Ahmed Metwally Abstract
Wearable devices digitally measuring vital signs have been used for monitoring health and illness onset and have a high potential for real-time monitoring and disease detection. As such, they are potentially useful during public health crises, such as the current COVID-19 global pandemic. In my talk, I’ll discuss how wearables biosensors can be used as a tool to early detect COVID19 onset using physiological and activity data. By using retrospective smartwatch data, we showed that 63% of the COVID-19 cases could be detected before symptom onset in real-time via the occurrence of extreme elevations in resting heart rate relative to the individual baseline. Our findings suggest that consumer wearables may be used for the large-scale real-time detection of respiratory infections, often pre-symptomatically, and provide an approach for managing epidemics using digital tracking and health monitoring.
About Ahmed Metwally
Ahmed Metwally is a postdoctoral scholar in the Snyder lab at Stanford University. Ahmed received his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics/Bioengineering and MS in Computer Science (focused on Deep Learning), both from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2018. He currently works on developing novel machine learning methods for longitudinal multimodal biomedical data fusion (omics and wearable biosensors data) to early detect cardiometabolic diseases and personalize their treatments. Ahmed has received numerous awards, such as NIH Predoctoral Translational Scientist fellowship, ISMB’20 best talk award, Stanford COVID-19 RISE Grant, second-place award at Stanford Health++ Hackathon, and many travel awards NSF, IEEE, ISCB, and UIUC for various educational and scholarly activities.
Pierre-Alexandre Fournier Abstract
The Hexoskin Connected Health platform will be discussed as an example of a biometric shirt validated for use in telehealth and clinical research. Hexoskin has the only clinically validated biometric garment which provides continuous monitoring of numerous and unique physiological parameters. Hexoskin is an enabling technology for telehealth use cases, such as remote patient monitoring, rehab, and detect the onset of illness. Hexoskin offers a unique set of high-resolution biometric data that can continuously monitor activity, sleep, cardiac and respiratory data. Projects in fields such as cardiology, respiratory, behavioral and physiological psychology, biofeedback research, sleep research, and health will be described. The Hexoskin Connected Health Platform provides researchers with accessible solutions such as the Hexoskin Dashboards, Open API, and Apps to manage, visualize, annotate, analyze, and export raw & processed health data. Data extraction tools allow access to the raw data with time series for machine learning and artificial intelligence projects.
About Pierre-Alexandre Fournier
Pierre-Alexandre Fournier is co-founder and CEO of Hexoskin, a Montreal-based company focused on clinical-grade wearable sensors and AI software for health and clinical research. Hexoskin was founded in 2006 and in 2013 released the first iPhone compatible smart clothing for health monitoring, winning several international awards. In 2018 Hexoskin launched a remote health monitoring system for astronauts on the International Space Station. Hexoskin recently reached the milestone of 100 scientific publications. Pierre-Alexandre earned his MASc and his BEng in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and became a lecturer there teaching machine learning. He completed the Harvard Business School HBX Core program with high honors. Pierre-Alexandre is also an advocate for transparency in healthcare, patient empowerment, and healthcare innovation through design.
Hosted by: Angela McIntyre, Executive Director, eWEAR Initiative
Sponsored by: PHIND Center, Department of Radiology, eWEAR Initiative
PHIND Seminar Series: Maternal Trauma History, Attachment Style, and Depression Are Associated with Broad DNA Methylation Signatures in Infants
Thalia Robakis, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/95483174518
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 954 8317 4518
Passcode: 179384
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
Background: The early environment provides many cues to young organisms that guide their development as they mature. Maternal personality and behavior are an important aspect of the environment of the developing human infant. The molecular mechanisms by which these influences are exerted are not well understood. We attempted to identify whether maternal traits could be associated with alterations in DNA methylation patterns in infants.
Methods: 32 women oversampled for history of depression were recruited in pregnancy and provided information on depressive symptoms, attachment style, and history of early life adversity. Buccal cell DNA was obtained from their infants at six months of age for a large-scale analysis of methylation patterns across 5×106 individual CpG dinucleotides, using clustering-based criteria for significance to control for multiple comparisons. Separately, associations between maternal depression, attachment style, and history of adversity and psychobehavioral outcomes in preschool-age children were examined.
Results: Tens of thousands of individual infant CpGs were alternatively methylated in association with each of the three studied maternal traits. Genes implicated in cell-cell communication, developmental patterning, growth, immune function/inflammatory response, and neurotransmission were identified. The result sets were highly coextensive among the three maternal traits, but areas of divergence exhibited intriguing parallels with behavioral outcomes.
Conclusions: Maternal personality traits are an important aspect of the infant environment that shapes offspring development in many ways. Infant genes that are epigenetically modified in reponse to maternal traits are potential candidate mediators for these effects. We have identified a large number of such genes and demonstrated parallels to clinically measurable outcomes in children.
ABOUT
Dr. Robakis is a psychiatrist with clinical and research interests in perinatal mood disorders and in the contribution of early life experiences to adult mental health and illness. She completed her M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in developmental neurobiology at Columbia University’s Medical Scientist Training Program, residency training in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a research fellowship in perinatal mood disorders also at Stanford. She remained on the clinical faculty at Stanford until 2019, when she accepted a position at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she is currently Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Assistant Director of the Women’s Mental Health Program.
Dr. Robakis’ research interests include the effects of early life stress and disordered attachment on risk for psychiatric illness in the perinatal period, on alterations in metabolism and cognition, and on psychobehavioral development in offspring. She is particularly interested in using epigenetic marks to help identify the biological pathways through which early life experiences exert their effects on outcomes in adulthood and intergenerationally.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Impact of the Veterans Affairs National Abdominal Aortic Screening Program
Manuel Garcia-Toca, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Surgery
Chief, Division of Vascular Surgery
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC)
Oliver O. Aalami, M.D.
Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery, Vascular Surgery
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/98417624095
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 984 1762 4095
Passcode: 111283
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
Background: The U.S. Federal Government enacted the Screen for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms Very Efficiently Act in January 2007. Simultaneously, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) implemented a more inclusive AAA screening policy for veteran beneficiaries shortly afterwards.
Our study aimed to evaluate the impact of the VA program on AAA detection rate and all-cause mortality compared to a cohort of patients whose aneurysms were identified by other abdominal imaging.
Methods: We identified veterans with an AAA screening study using the two existing Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes (G0389 and 76706). In the comparison group, eligible abdominal imaging studies included ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) queried according to CPT codes between 2001 and 2018.
We used a difference-in-differences regression model to evaluate the change in aneurysm detection rate and all-cause mortality five years before and eleven years after the VA implemented the screening policy in 2007.
We calculated survival estimates after AAA screening or non-screening imaging of patients with or without AAA diagnosis and used multivariate Cox regression model to evaluate mortality in patients with a positive AAA diagnosis adjusting for patient characteristics and comorbidities.
Results: We identified 3.9 million veterans with abdominal imaging, a total of 303,664 of whom were coded has having an AAA US screening between 2007 and 2018. An AAA diagnosis was made in 4.84% of the screening group vs. 1.3% in the non-screening imaging group P<0.001, yet more aneurysms were found with general imaging studies (50,730 vs.15,449) (Fig 1).
On Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, patients with an AAA diagnosis had higher overall mortality than patients who screened normal; patients with aneurysms found with non-screening imaging had the highest mortality, log-rank P<0.001 (Fig 2).
The difference in differences regression analysis, showed that the absolute AAA detection rate was 1.55% higher (95% CI 1.2- 1.8), and the mortality was 13.89 % lower (95% CI 10.18 %-16.66 %) after the introduction of the screening program in 2007.
Multivariate Cox regression analysis in patients with AAA diagnosis (65-74-year-old) demonstrated a significantly lower 5-year mortality [HR 0.45 (95% CI 0.43-0.48)] for patients in the US Screening group P<0.001.
Conclusions: In a nationwide analysis of VA patients, implementation of AAA screening was associated with improved survival and a higher rate of AAA diagnosis. These findings provide further support for this program’s continuation versus defaulting to incidental recognition following other abdominal imaging.
ABOUT MANUEL GARCIA-TOCA
Dr. Garcia-Toca earned his medical degree at the Universidad Anahuac in Mexico 1999. He has a master’s degree in Health Policy from Stanford University.
He received his general surgery training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brown University in 2008. He then completed a Vascular Surgery fellowship at Northwestern University in 2010. Dr. Garcia-Toca is board certified in both surgery and vascular surgery.
Dr. Garcia-Toca joined Stanford Vascular Surgery in 2015. He is currently Clinical Professor of Surgery in the Division of Vascular Surgery. Dr. Garcia-Toca had previously served as an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Brown University. Dr. Garcia Toca is a Staff Surgeon at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.
His research interests include new therapeutic strategies and outcomes for the management of vascular trauma, cerebrovascular diseases, dialysis access, aortic dissection and aneurysms.
ABOUT OLIVER O. AALAMI
Dr. Aalami is a Clinical Associate Professor of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery at Stanford University and the Palo Alto VA and serves as the Lead Director of Stanford’s Biodesign for Digital Health. He is the course director for Biodesign for Digital Health, Building for Digital Health and co-founder of the open source project, CardinalKit, developed to support sensor-based mobile research projects. His primary research focuses on clinically validating the sensors in smartphones and smartwatches in patients with cardiovascular disease to further precision health implementation.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Tests – “Liquid Biopsy Tests” – Are Here – But Will Payers Provide Insurance Coverage?
Patricia A. Deverka, MD, MS, MBE
Executive Director
Deverka Consulting, LLC
Kathryn A. Phillips, PhD
Professor of Health Economics and Health Services Research
Founding Director, UCSF Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS)
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/99194110894
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 991 9411 0894
Passcode: 044958
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
The emergence of Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Tests (MCED) – “liquid biopsy screening tests” – has generated enormous interest because they could fundamentally shift how cancer screening is done. One company is already offering an MCED test for clinical use as a “lab developed test” (LDT) – and thus addressing the question of “who will pay” has become urgent. These tests offer potentially transformative screening and clinical benefits, but their characteristics present unique challenges to payer coverage decision-making and generate concerns about the potentially high cost of widespread adoption.
We will present our ongoing work on examining the unique challenges that MCED present for payer coverage decision-making, drawing on our extensive experience with coverage and reimbursement for new technologies. We will focus on identifying the evidence generation strategies that could be pursued now to inform payer decision-making so that coverage policies can be developed that are appropriate and equitable for this ground-breaking technology.
ABOUT PATRICIA A. DEVERKA
Dr. Deverka is the Executive Director at Deverka Consulting, LLC where she focuses on helping biotechnology companies and start-ups develop evidence to support payer coverage and clinical adoption of innovative technologies. Her most recent projects have focused on breakthrough tests and drugs focused on population genomic screening, cancer, and ultra-rare disorders. Prior to starting her consulting practice, Dr. Deverka has worked in the fields of health economics and outcomes research in both non-profit and for-profit settings as a researcher, educator, and department head. She has extensive experience with patient-centered outcomes research, drug and diagnostic reimbursement planning, cost- effectiveness analysis, and bioethical issues surrounding the use of new technologies. While working in academia and several non-profit firms, she has participated in numerous NIH-funded studies to evaluate policy barriers to clinical integration of new genomic technologies and has published extensively on strategies to promote evidence generation and data sharing. She is a member of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)’s Genomic Medicine Work Group and serves as a member of NHGRI’s Advisory Council. Deverka has a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh and is board certified in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health. She also has a master’s degree in bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a policy fellowship at Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.
ABOUT KATHRYN A. PHILLIPS
Kathryn A. Phillips founded and leads the UCSF Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS), which focuses on developing objective evidence on how to effectively, efficiently, and equitably implement precision/personalized medicine into health care. Kathryn has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles in major journals including JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and Health Affairs. She has had continuous funding from NIH as a PI for over 25 years and was recently awarded a 5-year NIH grant to examine payer coverage and economic value for emerging genomic technologies (cell-free DNA tests and tests based on polygenic risk scores). Kathryn serves on the editorial boards for Health Affairs, Value in Health, JAMA Internal Medicine, Genetics in Medicine; is a member of the National Academy of Medicine Roundtable on Genomics and Precision Health; and has served on the governing Board of Directors for GenomeCanada and as an advisor to the FDA, CDC, and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She has also served as an advisor to many diagnostics, sequencing, and pharmaceutical companies. Kathryn is Chair of the Global Economics and Evaluation of Clinical Sequencing Working Group, and a member of an evidence review committee for the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER).
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology