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Democratizing Access to Clinical Trials | Jason and Ariana of Sagely Health
33 Plays6 months ago
In this episode of The Healthcare Theory, we’re joined by Jason Sager, founder of Sagely Health, and Ariana Paness to discuss their groundbreaking work in transforming cancer care.
Sagely Health addresses a critical gap in the healthcare system: the lack of visibility into drugs and clinical trials that target new genetic mutations. Even when a perfect treatment exists, many patients and providers remain unaware of these options. We explore how their platform leverages AI-driven clinical decision support to bridge this knowledge gap, connect patients with life-saving therapies, and empower oncologists to deliver personalized care. Don’t miss this deep dive into the future of precision oncology and the challenges of navigating innovation in cancer treatment.
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Transcript
Introduction to Healthcare Theory Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the healthcare theory podcast. I'm your host Nikhil Reddy and every week we interview the entrepreneurs and thought leaders behind the future of healthcare care to see what's gone wrong with our system and how we can fix it.
Spotlight on Sagely Health
00:00:15
Speaker
On today's episode, we have Sagely Health, a healthcare startup that uses AI to ensure cancer patients get the best treatment possible. Today, we're speaking with Jason and Ariana, who are a the co-founder and an analyst at the firm, and we can't wait to hear your guys' a story, and thanks so much for coming on today.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hi, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. I'm really excited to to talk to you and and really honored that my my colleague Ariana has joined us today. We're very deeply embedded in the Northeastern co-op ecosystem. And so as part of that, really thrilled to be here.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, of course. And I'm excited too. And before we get into safety health, I mean, you guys both have a bit of background in health care. I know you're cooping with Northeastern and then Jason, you've been in this space for quite a while. Can you guys give a little bit about your background and what brought you into health care as a whole?
Meet Jason and Ariana
00:01:08
Speaker
Absolutely. I'll jump in first and just give a quick word to say that I'm ah actually a medical oncologist, pediatric oncologist by training. I did my training at Johns Hopkins and then at Medical University of Cornell in New York, and then um have been practicing in Dana-Farber, in Boston, as well as other places, and developing drugs, ah mostly for cancer patients. ah About 10 years ago, I became dissatisfied with all of that, knowing that it takes a really long time to make new drugs for patients and that those patients aren't really taking advantage of those medicines very quickly. And so I started Sagely Health to change that.
Role and Challenges in Cancer Treatment
00:01:50
Speaker
What I wasn't expecting is that Northeastern students would be one of the main ways in which we've been able to really bring success to our patients. And so for that, I'll introduce you Ariana, who's no longer a co-op, or actually was maybe never co-op, but has come to us after graduation. So go ahead, Ariana.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, so my name is Ariana. I am one of the patient advocates here um at Sagely Health. I recently just graduated from Northeastern. I got my degree in biology. um I've always been interested in medicine. I've known I wanted to go to medical school for a very long time. um I have always like enjoyed working with patients and just like the relationship building um with patients, also just learning about like you know new innovative treatments, ways to improve ah
00:02:40
Speaker
healthcare in a variety of different um ways, but really have enjoyed the relationship building aspect um of medicine and and getting to work closely with patients. So yeah, so this is what I'm doing after graduation. I have really enjoyed my time here a lot. It's um been an awesome opportunity to work with. Dr. Sagerin got to you know see the way that he um has like benefited so many of our patients and I really enjoy everyone we work with. so Yeah, really excited to chat today, but that's awesome. Yeah.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, no, thanks thanks. Thank you guys for sharing the background. I think that's awesome. And I think I definitely agree that healthcare care is very people focused because they're working with people every day. You understand their problems and you're connecting with them. And I mean, of course you guys have been in the space for a little quite a bit. And one of the problems that we've seen and that you guys are trying to address is like a lack of awareness of not only what are these like new therapies, but like how to access them and get accessibility
Innovative Drug Visibility Issues
00:03:35
Speaker
there. I mean, what was the problem you identified before starting Sagely Health?
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah. And you know from my perspective, seeing the world of innovative drugs and what's coming down the pike is so exciting. And the science involved is really deep. And this is complex. you know Cancer is a complex topic. And so there's genes that are driving this mutations and all the whatnot. and pharmaceutical companies and biotechs are now creating drugs specifically against specific mutations. ah We were just discussing this morning, for example, KRAS, G12D, and G12R, and all of these different specific mutations. And so and yet, as you mentioned, like there's very little visibility. There's almost no visibility to patients. There's even quite limited visibility to oncologists.
00:04:27
Speaker
And so it was that gap that 10 years ago, I kind of looked at this and said, well, gosh, you know it would be wonderful to close that gap and to spread this education sort of across. We've learned a lot since then. And as you mentioned, the implementation, so the identification is one part.
00:04:45
Speaker
and we have a technology system that we've put into place to achieve that and accomplish that. Instead of taking 50 hours of research, it takes about 50 seconds because our co-ops and curators are putting in the information so it bubbles up very quickly for the right patient.
00:05:02
Speaker
But the implementation is another part. And this is where sort of one of the greatest surprises for me was that it's actually the co-op students and our patient advocates of which Ariana is is is a representative today, um they are able to actually help these patients with that information.
00:05:22
Speaker
actually get on to the trials um and get better diagnostics. And it's not easy. And yet, you it takes continuous effort. um But maybe Ariana could speak a little bit more to that if you're interested. Sure. Yeah. So um kind of like what Jason touched on, um obviously, we're A lot of our patients are coming to us um that have exhausted like standard of care treatment um or are like nearing that kind of part in their cancer journey and they're looking for what else is out there. They're not satisfied with just the standard of care of just, you know, you exhaust your options and that's kind of all that's left for you. They're really wanting to like fight um ah for more time and for hopefully like obviously a better treatment. So a lot of them, you know, will come to us and we'll kind of look at like what
00:06:09
Speaker
is out there. Like I said, we have a system that we use to help us find um trials that are running that could be of benefit. We do ah a ton of a lot of what we do is research into looking to see what's out there. um and We have yeah like a nice team that works really well together um to do that with um Jason's help Of course, but yeah, definitely the challenge of once we find the treatment, implementing it um and getting the patient actually to a doctor that can help implement that treatment, getting them onto a trial, it be a challenging process. ah Just navigating the healthcare system as a whole um can be really difficult, but it can be done. It's just challenging.
00:06:56
Speaker
That makes sense. I think it's like a, ah it's it's an interesting solution that you have the cops, they filter in the data, get that in, and then you have the employees to kind of implement it and help get these patients access. But before we talk about that, there's one thing I kind of want to hit on is, so you said that Ariana, like people exhaust like the standard of care right now, and then now they go to a company like Sagely Health. I mean, can you talk about touching like, what is the standard of care and why is it failing these like specific patient
Standard of Care and Clinical Trials
00:07:21
Speaker
groups? Like what is the type of people that usually come across Sagely Health and what issues did they face?
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, I can start. And then Jason, I'm sure you'll have more to add, but, um, yeah, the standard of care essentially is, um, like the approved treatments that are out there for, so the NCCN guidelines basically outlined for like each specific diagnosis, kind of like what the, uh, the different treatments that patients will go through. the So there'll be like a couple of maybe one or two, sometimes more like lines of treatment that they can follows So essentially, like you would start with the first line of treatment. And if you fail that, meaning like you either have progression or um your cancer comes back, you move on to the next line of treatment. And eventually, at some point, there's no more approved drugs that are still working effectively or that are out there to treat that specific um cancer. So that's when patients will turn to clinical trials or um off-label drugs that could be of potential benefit. um Clinical trials are
00:08:23
Speaker
for drugs that are still in that approval process. they're you know They haven't been approved by the FDA, but they're in the testing process. They're hoping that it's going to show good efficacy and they'll be able to improve it. And that will then become part of the standard of care. So um that's kind of the patients that... But that's essentially what it means when they run out of standard of care options. There's no more approved treatments that are ah left for them.
00:08:52
Speaker
And I'll just add that you know at the same time, understanding what someone's risk is with cancer and different cancers behave differently. So a patient with a stage one breast cancer is very different than a stage one pancreatic cancer.
00:09:08
Speaker
and certainly stage four pancreatic cancer, which is yeah know what we commonly ah come to find. And so yeah helping patients to understand what their options are at every step along the way in their experience with cancer We like to not to call it a journey because that makes it sound exciting and there's nothing exciting about this. But you know but every every step along the way, we're there to guide them to make sure that they know what their options are. And the question is that they can ask their doctor, their oncologist to get the most out of that cancer care.
00:09:41
Speaker
And I just wanted just a little correction. The co-op students are actually working directly with our advocates and the patients on a day-to-day basis. And so it wasn't always that way, but we've figured out now how to get that to happen. And it's working well, I think. At least you know it's it's it's really exciting from my perspective to have these young folks who are really health you know health care bound, oftentimes looking for medical school and applying to medical school as Ariana is, um but coming in to us either for a co-op or for a year as a gap year and um and really working one-on-one with patients. To me, there's nothing better that gets them that experience
00:10:28
Speaker
yes, you can get some in the hospital, but to really see the gaps in the healthcare care system really takes an outside perspective, and we're able to share that perspective with them. And maybe if you maybe Ariana could comment a little bit about what it's like to actually work with patients day in and day out. And Ariana, I'm thinking of our our germ cell tumor patient as a hint of how you might be able to contextualize that sort of interaction. Yeah, so I would say definitely this The background I had coming into this, I had worked at the hospital as like a medical assistant and I had worked in like a private practice but doing a similar thing. And obviously those are amazing experiences and they're great to have and it's great to see the way a clinic is run. But um definitely here I have just one learned more than I ever could have thought I would learn about cancer treatment, but also just the relationships. We're working really, really closely with patients and we'll we're working with patients um
00:11:26
Speaker
sometimes for a couple of weeks, but sometimes it's you know many, many months um where we're working pretty closely with them um and their family. Just getting to learn like their story. and um you know we're We do many different things. like We look for treatments, but we also help patients in other ways. There's you know helping with side effects and um planning for the future, maybe something that's not immediate like an immediate need, but helping make plans for you know, six months out, whatever that is, helping them find a new doctor. um So we do many different things, but just to touch on that one patient, Jason had referenced, um we get to work really closely with their families. Obviously we have a lot of patients that come to us and their families are really passionate and care a lot about them and really want the very, very best for them and they will do anything for them. And our job is kind of to help guide them in that way and do what we can. And also to offer that, um
00:12:23
Speaker
you know, knowledge and a way for them to kind of, they'll come to us with lots of different ideas and we can help kind of focus on like, what would be the best way to focus their energies? What are, you know, what are the best things that mean you kind of help guide them in that way. But yeah, we definitely get to work really closely. A lot of getting to like have meetings with patients, um, and just kind of help. We work really closely with them. So we're, we're, We get a lot of frequent communication with our patients. Although not in person, right? We're always on the video like kind of this sort of setting. But they're all over the country, even all over the world. We have patients in Israel, in France, in England, here in the US. s You know, it's it's sort of it's a universal problem, unfortunately, for cancer patients, and we can help. yeah
00:13:08
Speaker
But I like the solution a lot. I mean, a lot of it's kind of like the thought leadership and expertise to know
AI in Cancer Treatment at Sagely Health
00:13:12
Speaker
how to navigate the field. But I mean, one thing you guys talked about earlier that's pretty unique about Sagely Health is that you're kind of serving as an aggregator, like getting all this data about clinical trials and what's going on in the cancer oncology space and then extrapolating that to a specific patient. I mean, what are the tools that you guys are using to make this all work? Whether it's like AI machine learning, data analytics, like how do you how do you guys go about that? Especially considering you sort of the almost around I think 10 years ago you said, which is definitely before this huge like LLM AI boom. So how'd you approach that? Yeah. Ariana, do you want to start and say a little bit about the curation piece? Sure. Um, so we have a system that, um, Dr. Shaker created, um, that essentially allows us. So clinical trials.gov is a site where they post all the trials that are running. Um, and,
00:14:06
Speaker
It's a really difficult site to navigate. ah Many clinicians say like you know they spend a lot of time on the site. They can't really find trials for their patient, and it's really hard to find trials. If you're not looking at a specific um cancer center, you you really can't find trials. And if you do, they don't apply to your patient, or they're just like then they're not so right thing. um So our system essentially allows us to do a really refined search for a patient and take all of those thousands of trials that are running at any given time and find the, you know, whether it's sometimes, you know, a couple hundred come up, sometimes it's just a dozen, whatever it is, and we're able to kind of make a really refined search that only applies to like our specific patient. We can even look for
00:14:49
Speaker
um specific like targets. for trying to target us you know Let's say we're only looking for like antibody drug conjugates or we're trying to target like a specific um protein or a specific area we're only looking for trials and um we're able to make a really refined search. and That's ah at its core because of the curation shouldn that we do that Jason had kind of touched on that the co-ops and patient advocates help with um where we essentially take all those trials from clinicaltrials.gov and put them into our system in a way that allows us to do a really refined search.
00:15:20
Speaker
yeah does your does your um Does this system allow for a screen share? Because I could certainly share my screen and show you an example of that. I wish it did, but it's audio only, unfortunately. Oh, that's okay. that's yeah we We'll come back with a Zoom, maybe follow up and expand from there. Definitely. ah Later on, we could definitely do that. and i think i mean yeah I think a visual interpretation is important because i mean you have this kind of like abstract concept of like you get a lot of data and then you apply to a person and try to identify the best approach. And then you have the implementation, which is like a tangible part where the patient's seeing them, like you're going to work in clinical trials, speaking with people and what processes, what does that look like for you guys in terms of like not only interacting with the patient, but like conducting outreach for these clinical trials and getting the patients like the best standard of care.
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah. And again, it's interesting um because, again, you from my perspective, patients have actually a different definition of what they're looking for than necessarily what the government or the FDA has or what even biotech and pharma have. And so it's really so what we've done is to actually put together rubrics and algorithms that help us to digest. And now with the the advent of ah AI, ah we're using AI tools to help summarize the literature and references that are being imported in ah into our system and associated with those drugs and those trials.
00:16:45
Speaker
so that you know we have like a five-star rating that I was going to show you. But um we're wherere we're saying, well, you know this is a this one's a five-star, and this one's a two-star, and both for efficacy, how well it's going to work, as well as for side effects, what sort of quality of life is a patient going to have.
00:17:02
Speaker
to us those are the two really important aspects to capture and represent to patients so that they know this isn't just a clinical trial where they're a you know like a like an experiment no there's actually a history of this drug it's been in clinical trials before or the science it shows that it's really good for your mutation or your cell surface protein that can be targeted with an antibody drug conjugate. I mean, it's really complex.
00:17:33
Speaker
And yet we boil it down to patients in ways that they can really understand and then represent that as a report, piece of paper or our emails to a doctor, print this out, give it to your doctor, see what they think about it. And again, those questions, ask this question.
00:17:51
Speaker
And by doing this and really being sort of the the whisper in the patient's ear, ah myself, and by virtue of my supervision, the advocates and co-ops are able to conduct the relationship in a way that really helps to ah empower and get the patient to optimize their outcome and supports them.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, and definitely. I mean, that that makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting, right? I think, I mean, I guess you guys are almost kind of coming as counselors or working with providers and integrating through their workflow. What does our relationship look like between you guys and providers? Is it kind of direct or is it through the patient or how do you guys solve that? It's a great question. um and And in the sense that, you know, when we say, well, we are empowering patients, you know, we don't want to say that we're making this into an adversarial sort of relationship. We're there to support patients.
00:18:44
Speaker
through their experience. and so But you again, in general, you know physicians have and oncologists have their day job. right They check the labs. They're doing all sorts of things, setting appointments, checking the scans, writing the the meds. They're looking up sort of what's the next standard of care. They don't have a lot of time to consider clinical trials, innovations, or even what's down the pica, a ah treatment roadmap for a patient.
00:19:12
Speaker
That's where we come in and we provide one to the patient and and send the patient back to the oncologist to ask what they think about it. We expect that the oncologist is going to say, yes, this is great. But there may be pieces that are more exciting to that oncologist than others. We had a ah patient say, we oh like go back and say, well, you know how about this drug or this drug? Well, I like this drug. OK, well, that's that's good. you know We're open-minded to that. But again, making sure that the conversation comes up and doesn't lay hidden, because a lot of patients, it won't come up unless
00:19:46
Speaker
they prompt it. And so again, we we look to make this into like sort of supercharging the relationship between the patient and the oncologist. And that's the way it usually works out, which is nice. Definitely. Ariana, did you have anything to add to that? I was just going to say, I think one of the things that we do really well is helping patients feel like they're in the driver's seat of their situation. Because um obviously, like with a diagnosis, it's a really stressful time. And There's a lot of people that just genuinely don't have the knowledge of like they don't come from a science background or a medical background. So just kind of helping them break things down in a way that's understandable to them, help them understand like there are other options out there that they might not be aware of and just kind of equipping them. Like Jason had said, you know, we give patients questions that they can ask their oncologist, just kind of helping um empower them. So when they go to those appointments, they feel like
00:20:39
Speaker
you know, they're part of that conversation and they're able to take like an active stance in their, um, be a, like, be a part of their care instead of just like letting, you know, just kind of being told what the next thing are. They can be like empowered and, uh, I'm thinking of our most recent patient with pancreatic cancer where the doctor said, they asked the doctor, Hey, we're interested in clinical trials. And the doctor said, well, there there are no clinical trials.
00:21:05
Speaker
but the doctor that Then they turn to another group in one of the advocacy groups like Pan Can, which is great. And they get a list of like 300 trials. And it's sort of like, well, what do i like like what do I do? The doctor says zero.
00:21:21
Speaker
Pantan gave me 300. How do I, I can't process 300. Why is it so different from the doctor's zero, right? So you we're able to come in and say, well, the doctor didn't mean that there's no trials. The doctor doesn't have any trials to give you. And so in the sense that, you know and they don't have the time to look up where other trials are. So in that sense, that's understandable where the zero comes from. It's not really zero, but in that person's hand, that doctor's hands, it may be zero.
00:21:49
Speaker
On the other hand, the 300 is also not particularly helpful. And so what we can do is triangulate between where the patient lives. Again, that that literature, where is there a history of success. um And, you know, again, we're focused on this one drug for KRAS.
00:22:05
Speaker
ah ah k rats actually any of the KRAS mutations, um and then we were brought that to them. And still there's three trials. And so is it going to be the phase three? Is it going to be a phase two that they can get? And so we're working on validating those with the actual trial sites. Again, it's deep, right? And there's a lot of work to do.
00:22:26
Speaker
But there's not no better feeling when then when we can bring a ah novel or innovative approach to a patient, something or an option that they weren't aware of that they had, even if it's for symptom management. And just the other day, we found a ah new drug, actually Ariana found a new drug for menopause and hot flashes.
00:22:49
Speaker
We had a patient who was at risk for breast cancer and who needed to stop the estrogen replacement therapy because it was adding to the risk of breast cancer. And you know we felt really passionate about that, but didn't really have any great answers. We don't want the woman suffering from menopause, hot flashes, and she started this patch because she was suffering.
00:23:10
Speaker
And so finding that there was a new drug out there that controlled hot flashes was amazing. And we're so excited to see what now how ah how that works out for her and the possibility that we can lower that chance of breast cancer. So again, we could go on forever. yeah there There are stories being born every minute and every day.
00:23:31
Speaker
and every week and and so obviously it's really you know on the sagely health side for me that's what I wake up thinking about and what I go asleep thinking about at night and it's really um it's really fulfilling to be able to do this and I have to say you know I knew that that's what I was trying to do.
00:23:51
Speaker
What I didn't know is I'd be on my journey and business journey with a bunch of team members who are co-op students from Northeastern and patient advocates hired mostly from Northeastern.
00:24:04
Speaker
and that together as a team, we're also impacting their futures as well. And we have now had, I think it's around 100 or so co-op students, many of whom are out there in medical school, graduating from medical school. We have a genetic counselor that we just reached out to for this ah patient with a BRCA mutation. And um and again, we're we've got a network of what I call the Sagely Health Alumni.
00:24:32
Speaker
that continue to to come back and be part of the system. And it's just, it was unexpected and yet so, so inspiring and fulfilling.
00:24:43
Speaker
No, that's great. And I think one thing you touched on was like the story aspect aspect is that like, you're hearing about so many different stories every single day. They're coming up or they're ending. They're kind of, they don't need help anymore because you solve the solution. But I guess one thing I had to curious about, I guess more for Jason is that when you found the solution, thought of this idea quite a while ago, I mean, you kind of had two options is to go direct to consumer like you're doing now being like,
00:25:06
Speaker
a consultant almost or you could have kind of sold the technology or license the technology out to like providers so they could ideally kind of do this themselves. I mean what kind of provoker made you decide that this is the best route to impact and help the most amount of people.
Direct-to-Consumer Decision
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's not an easy one. um Just like cancer and its complexity, you're starting a business and trying to figure out a successful business model is a challenge. And so, you know, one of the ways that you know, one of the things is that being direct to consumer is able to keep us basically always unbiased but for anything other than with the patient because the patient is our is our end a customer and therefore we are enabled to think about the patient and always recommend something that would benefit the patient as opposed to let's say
00:26:01
Speaker
biotech, and pharma. um And again, working on that side and helping them to develop their drugs, I know that world really well. um At the same time, you know it it doesn't feel great to have to charge patients. And through the technology, number one, we've been able to lower the price of that from even tens of thousands of dollars to something like $500.
00:26:24
Speaker
And we're going to go beyond that. you Could it be $50? Could it be $5? At some point, it will not matter. Everyone would be able to participate. And that's our goal. The second thing is, though, that um and along the way, we're still growing up and we're still figuring things out. I'd say that patients and activated patients, as well as their benefactors. So about 80% of the patients have a friend or family who pays on their behalf.
00:26:51
Speaker
But certainly, um the the you know as we grow, right now we have sort of that those early adopters. And those are those proactive patients, like the one Ariana was talking to about, who's really passionate and and thinking about and wanting to help a lot.
00:27:08
Speaker
um I expect that once we get to a certain stage that oncologist providers will be someone who will be very interested in this solution as well. And so we're not we're not saying no to those. It's just that they're not Like they already have a system that works with them. And so we have to kind of create a level of stability first and have a level of, I think, um maturity and have enough patients who are utilizing it to then go and enable those others to say, wow, what's the value that they're providing to this? Let's say 10,000 people. Wow. I've got to get a piece of that. And then we'll start to see that flywheel roll even faster. That's awesome. I think it's super exciting and I think
00:27:53
Speaker
It definitely is like a difficult solution because there's other options which could kind of probably pay more, but then you want to be like mission-aligned and like where you have the same mission as a patient, which I think is great that you guys are able to do. And kind of looking out towards the future of Sagely Health, you guys have changed quite a bit, but of course have stayed very much within your mission.
AI and Future of Cancer Care
00:28:13
Speaker
I mean, what do you envision being the future of Sagely Health and what are you guys doing to kind of fit into the new landscape of healthcare right now?
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean I have to say that I mentioned it before the advent of AI has been like just wild and we're just at the beginning of it but you know the day that it came out we started using it and you know initially at first we were giving it some prompts and those prompts would work sometimes and not other times and sometimes it would hallucinate it's getting really good. yeah And so you know when we can have the AI doing some of the processing of the data, again, it's it's sort of like this the you know like the Turing machine where you know the computer can be really complex, but unless you give it some structure to be able to go faster and work well, that really makes the difference. So when you combine these two pieces, the expertise,
00:29:08
Speaker
and the processing power of AI, I think you know we're in for a world of bringing a better ah better future for cancer patients to them quite soon. And that's, to me, the most exciting aspect of where I think Sagely Health is going. um and And then to benefit not handfuls or thousands or tens of thousands, but actually millions of patients is the goal.
00:29:35
Speaker
But maybe let me let me ask Ariana what she thinks about the future of Sagely Health, but also maybe her future and sort of you know the the the idea of where the Northeastern collaboration could go. Sure. um I mean, I would say, obviously, like Jason said, the goal is just to serve more patients um because like that's obviously the greatest way that we can ah make a difference. So yeah, I'm obviously aligned with that goal. And it's so exciting when we um like just recently we had like ah pretty large like influx of patients and like that was so exciting because it was like oh my gosh all of these people you know that were able to like serve and um you know obviously that's the goal is just to be able to to help more people um with Northeastern I mean I think what we have right now is really amazing like the co-ops that are working with us I know are all really enjoying it um anybody that's had this co-op that I've spoken to I actually
00:30:30
Speaker
found Sagely Health from somebody else who had done this during their um gap year before medical school and also said how you know impactful it was for her um in her like preparation for school. And also like she just went into school with such a you know unique perspective of getting to kind of see, we're werere able to see the problems in the healthcare sphere and also how much there is to do and ways that we can make an impactful difference. And just seeing that on such a large scale, I think is so meaningful and so helpful for whatever you decide to do. Like we have ah public health students that come that aren't necessarily planning to go to medical school, but just have a general interest in kind of um identifying those gaps in the healthcare sphere and are interested in that and passionate about helping patients. um So people come from like, you know, all different backgrounds, but I think the co-op program is amazing. I think honestly what we're doing right now, I think it's really awesome and I think
00:31:27
Speaker
all the students are so grateful for the opportunity, so. as you As you think about going into medical school and beyond, becoming a doctor, how do you think your time with Stagley and what you've learned might influence how you might be a doctor, maybe differently than what you were thinking of before?
Reflections and Learning at Sagely Health
00:31:43
Speaker
That's a great question. I mean, obviously, just learning from you and the way that it, like, you don't have to, you know, when when you're in school, you learn like a certain amount of information and then you graduate and there's, you know, the NCCN guidelines and there's the path that you know you're recommending to patients and like that's what there is. But just seeing like there is more out there and how important it is to just stay up on like the literature and things that are like changing in um medicine like in whatever field you decide to go into. But i mean so seeing the changes, how rapidly they occur in oncology has really shown me how important it is to just
00:32:22
Speaker
stay up on that to make sure you're giving your patients like the best opportunities. And sometimes those opportunities are not things that you can specifically do. Sometimes you have to recommend your patient to a different cancer center or a different provider and like just being open-minded to um the new things that are out there and just educating yourself. I think it's such an important thing to just be like a lifelong learner as a physician. That's been a really big takeaway for me and how important that is. And it goes so much beyond just medical school and like residency. so That's been a big takeaway for me. Definitely. And I really thank you for coming on today and kind of sharing your stories, but also what's going on with Sagely Health.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:32:59
Speaker
and And please, you know, if anyone's interested, come to our website, you know, www.sagleyhealth.com and fill out a form, contact us, reach out to us. We're happy to to engage and talk to folks and happy to come back if this is what you're doing is great and looking forward to more. Thanks for listening to The Healthcare Theory. Every Tuesday, expect a new episode on the platform of your choice. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, any streaming platform you can imagine. We'll also be posting more short-form educational content on Instagram and TikTok. And if you really want to learn more about what's gone wrong with healthcare care and how you can help, check out our blog at thehealthcaretheory.org. Repeat thehealthcaretheory.org. Again, I appreciate you tuning in and I hope to see you again soon.