Innovation In Medicine

Announcer 0:00

Welcome to the MedEvidence Monday Morning Radio Show, hosted by Kevin Geddings of WSOS and Augustine Radio, and powered by ENCORE Research Group. Each Monday morning, Dr. Michael Koren calls in to bring you the latest medical updates with a insightful discussions. MedEvidence is where we help you navigate the real truth behind medical research, both a clinical and research perspective. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data in medicine and healthcare. This is MedEvidence!

Kevin Geddings 0:31

Dr. Michael Koren is here with us, and he's a big part of our family here at WSOS, medical doctor, of course, cardiologist and research scientist. And uh he just got back from New Orleans, a major cardiovascular health conference that went on there. And I guess coming away from that, you know, what would be the uh what would be the headline, Dr. Koren?

Dr. Michael Koren 0:49

Well, the talk is all about innovation and how innovation is going to be implemented in the next generation of medical products. And the the two big things that were talked about in terms of innovation were how is AI going to impact healthcare, number one, and gene editing as the second concept is how our understanding of human genetics will change the way we treat patients. So I guess I shouldn't say one or two. They were both sort of equally important. And honestly, that's what people talk about. And there's a lot of uncertainty, but also incredible excitement about what can happen based on these technologies.

Kevin Geddings 1:29

Yeah. And Dr. Koren, it seems like from a layman's perspective, from my perspective, we seem to talk more about treating disease, you know, helping someone who has a cancer diagnosis live for, you know, perhaps for many, many years, uh, as opposed to curing a disease, right?

Dr. Michael Koren 1:44

Yeah, it's a great point. So a lot of things that we do in medicine historically have been management issues. So we don't cure high blood pressure, we don't cure cholesterol. In many cases, we don't even cure AIDS, we just suppress it, or we don't cure cancer, we we suppress it. And as we understand more about genetics, we're learning that there is actually a very distinct possibility to cure things. So, as you allude to, we're about to start these gene editing studies for cholesterol problems. We actually cure the underlying genetic basis for the problem. And it's just so incredibly exciting that we have the opportunity to do that. And one of the nice things, Kevin, is that here in Northeast Florida, we are actually leading the country. We are going to be the first place in the U.S. to really get this thing rolling. So I couldn't be more excited about that.

Kevin Geddings 2:35

Uh innovation's key to the country, right? We were talking off the air about it's one of our founding principles, correct?

Dr. Michael Koren 2:42

Yeah, I recently read a biography about Benjamin Franklin, who is arguably the first American. His concepts were so incredibly important in terms of the founding of this country. And quite frankly, he probably won the Revolutionary War by getting the French to agree to give us naval support against the British fleet, which was overwhelming. And of course at that time the US didn't really have a navy. So Benjamin Franklin is such a key pivotal figure in in America. And he was all about describing ingenuity through scientific experiments, through uh creating better better government, through creating hospitals and educational facilities that would promote ingenuity. And he famously said is that in Europe people care about who you are. But in the United States or the colonies, we care about what you can do. And it's such a fundamental different way of thinking that here we don't care if you're relatives with the king, or I don't care if you came from this family or that family, as long as you're capable, as long as you're ingenious, as long as you can get things done. And I and I think that is so important to the success of the United States over the years, and I think it's reflecting itself on the fact that the U.S. is leading in medical ingenuity. And hopefully through clinical trials and other things that we're bringing to communities, we can continue to work on that leadership and and use that leadership to get better treatments and health care for our patient population.

Kevin Geddings 4:10

Dr. Koren, give us a sample. I know there's so many clinical trials that folks listening can participate in, but help us understand, you know, how relatively easy it is for any of us to participate and the obvious benefits of doing so.

Dr. Michael Koren 4:24

Well, the easiest thing is just we're enrolling in dozens of studies, Kevin. So it could be a very simple study like a vaccine study where we give you a shot to protect you against the flu or RSV or COVID. Or it could be one of these more complex studies. For example, the things that we're doing now with gene editing for severe cholesterol issues, or somewhere in between. We're doing a lot of things in weight loss. We're trying to understand how fat cells in the abdomen influence our tendency to be overweight, and how we can actually block the underlying source of what causes our appetite to be overstimulated. And we're doing this in in psychiatry and for depression patients, we're doing this for fatty liver disease, we're doing this to prevent blood clots and atrial fibrillation and athero orthropedic surgery, and on and on and on. So there's a lot of innovation going on, and we're not sure how any individual might fit in, but well, go through your medical history, and somebody who is knowledgeable will spend some time with you and see if there's a good fit for some of the things that we're doing on the cutting edge based on what your medical issues are or what your concerns are for yourself and your family.

Kevin Geddings 5:32

Yeah. Well, I can tell you you will get some of the best healthcare you've ever experienced. You'll get people that are actually paying attention to what you have to say, and I'm participating in one of those trials right now and highly recommend the experience. Karen and our team has done that as well. Dr. Koren, before we let you go, any closing thoughts on this Monday?

Dr. Michael Koren 5:50

Let's all be supportive of ingenuity and innovation, Kevin. Absolutely.

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