About the Episode
In this episode of HealthTech Remedy, we delve deep into AccessHope, a groundbreaking company that is revolutionizing cancer care delivery. Join hosts Dr. Trevor Royce, Dr. Paul Gerrard, and Dr. Timothy Showalter as they welcome special guest Dr. Yousuf Zafar, Chief Medical Officer of AccessHope and a nationally renowned GI medical oncologist.
Discover how AccessHope is bridging the gap in healthcare access by connecting patients and local care teams with subspecialists at the nation's top cancer centers, all without requiring a change in providers or location.
AccessHope addresses the critical problem of inequity in cancer care, which often leads to varied outcomes and higher costs based on where patients live. By offering their services as an employee benefit to large employers and health plans, AccessHope provides cutting-edge, evidence-based cancer care, democratizing access to specialized oncology expertise across the country.
Learn about their innovative solutions, including automated Accountable Precision Oncology (APO) services, personalized Expert Advisory Reviews, and dedicated Cancer Support Teams comprising oncology nurses.
Dr. Zafar shares his unique journey from academic medicine to leading healthcare innovation in the industry, emphasizing the importance of identifying real-world problems and leveraging clinical experience as a "superpower" in health tech.
The discussion highlights how AccessHope empowers community oncologists, standardizes treatment approaches, and facilitates crucial access to the latest clinical trials, ultimately improving patient journeys and ensuring that every cancer patient benefits from the highest level of subspecialty insight.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Hey, guys.
[00:00:01] Dr. Trevor Royce: Hey, good morning. You know, you know you're starting to become a professional podcaster when you feel totally paralyzed when your hosting site crashes. I think we're ready for the big leagues, guys.
[00:00:10] Dr. Timothy Showalter: We had our first technological scare. Thankfully, we're back up on Riverside, so all is well.
[000:00:16] Dr. Paul Gerrard: I live in Maine. I have technological scares on a daily basis.
[00:00:19] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Yeah, I don't think our, because it's all audio, people don't see that your video cuts in and cuts out. You're always frozen. But I guess that's all what you'd expect up there.
[00:00:28] Dr. Trevor Royce: Is it hammer time?
[00:00:29] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Paul, you do the honors, man.
[00:00:31] Dr. Paul Gerrard: Can't touch this.
[00:00:33] Dr. Trevor Royce: Welcome to HealthTech Remedy, where three physicians and health technology unpack the stories behind emerging and established healthcare companies, focusing on technology. Talk to the leaders shaping the future of care. I'm Trevor Royce, a radiation oncologist and researcher focused on real-world evidence, informatics, and AI diagnostics.
[00:00:50] Dr. Paul Gerrard: I'm Paul Gerrard. I started off as a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician before focusing on reimbursement policy, molecular diagnostics, and market access for AI products.
[00:00:58] Dr. Timothy Showalter: And I'm Tim Showalter, a radiation oncologist and former MedTech entrepreneur, now building AI tools for oncology.
[00:01:05] Dr. Trevor Royce: This week, we're discussing AccessHope, a company redefining how cancer expertise is delivered by connecting local oncologists and local teams and patients to subspecialists at the nation's top cancer centers, all without requiring a change in providers or location.
[00:01:20] Dr. Paul Gerrard: Founded in 2019 by City of Hope, AccessHope partners with some of the leading institutions in cancer care, including Dana-Farber, Fred Hutchinson, Emory, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern, to bring expert guidance to patients and clinicians no matter where they live.
[00:01:35] Dr. Timothy Showalter: We're going to spend some time talking about the AccessHope business model and their general background. But later on, we'll get a chance to speak to Dr. Yousuf Zafar, who's their Chief Medical Officer and nationally renowned GI medical oncologist, who's also led efforts around quality, innovation, and the financial toxicity of cancer care.
[00:01:54] Dr. Trevor Royce: AccessHope is a remote cancer support company that offers its services as an employee benefit to large employers and health plans. And today, they serve nearly 7 million members through more than 400 employers, including over 60 Fortune 500 companies and two of the largest health plans in the U.S. And basically, their mission is to bring cutting-edge, evidence-based cancer care to the people in places that need it most by bridging the local care teams with those top subspecialists at NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers. And we'll go into some detail of kind of why that is particularly useful and important in oncology.
[00:02:30] Dr. Paul Gerrard: Patients don't have to leave home or switch doctors. Instead, their community oncologists receive timely insights and recommendations and second opinions from the specialists with deep knowledge of the latest research, clinical trials, and evolving treatment standards.
[00:02:43] Dr. Trevor Royce: So cancer remains one of the most complex and costly conditions in medicine. Cancer is really an infinite number of diagnoses, even though we often simplify things by saying prostate cancer. Really, prostate cancer can look a lot of different ways, and the treatment and guidelines reflecting those treatments are always changing as knowledge develops. And there have been, Tim and I both come from a world of health services research where we spent many, many years sort of describing and articulating a lot of these phenomena. But basically, treatment can vary significantly by region, depends on your physician, how they were trained. A lot of that is baked into their recommendations. And so there's a lot of heterogeneity there. And also those local teams who may not be specialists or be generalists have the burden of staying up to date with all the latest and greatest ways to treat cancer across all these different disease sites. And so that's where this idea of having a subspecialist, a physician that focuses only on a specific condition and spends their entire career focusing on all the details and nuance of that single condition. There can be differences and recommendations there. And I think that AccessHope is trying to bridge a lot of that. The idea of basically fragmentation of expertise, I think, is one of the terms that they use, basically ensuring that any cancer patient anywhere in the country can benefit from the same level of subspecialty expertise and insight that they'd receive no matter where they are in the country.
[00:04:07] Dr. Trevor Royce: And their goal is to have a model that can provide a scalable alternative beyond traditional second opinions by offering asynchronous remote expert reviews that can influence care early and meaningfully without burdening the patient or delaying treatment. Basically, the traditional model is you're diagnosed in your community. You have this cancer diagnosis. You want to know what the best path is for you to take to deal with that cancer. And you see your local team and often to get another opinion, to make sure you're doing your diligence and taking the right path with a very big decision of how you want to treat your cancer, you could travel to some big city far away and get that second opinion to sort of make you feel good about the decision that you're making. And they want to eliminate some of those barriers. There are all sorts of reasons someone might not want to travel that far or have the resources to do so. What do you think, Tim?
[00:04:56] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of interesting. I always wonder for this, I've had the experience of being one of the academic oncologists, and I can see how for very rare diagnoses, let's say there's an oncologist who specializes in a rare leukemia, for example, and sees all the patients in the U.S. in his or her clinic. I can imagine that that's really helpful. What I wonder about though, is, I've really focused on prostate cancer in my career and cervical cancer as well. And those are conditions where the treatments are relatively standardized for localized disease. And I always wonder, how would the community, board-certified oncologist who's got plenty of years of experience, how would they welcome guidance from me? And I think that that's kind of an interesting question that I'm sure AccessHope probably has a nuanced answer for how they approach the bread and butter cases versus the more infrequent or highly subspecialized cases.
[00:06:00] Dr. Trevor Royce: I just want to hop in here quickly and build on that a little bit, Tim. It always struck me during training, even within the same institution with subspecialists focusing on the same disease site, you can get a lot of heterogeneity in care. And I think some of those differences in care on the radiation side, something as simple as how many treatments of radiation you give or not, some of those may not matter and some of those may matter. And hopefully AccessHope can try to figure out which of those do matter.
[00:06:27] Dr. Paul Gerrard: As the only non-oncologist on the call, so obviously I'm highly qualified to talk about oncology practice. Living here in Maine, I feel like I've seen something similar to this, where you get patients with these obscure cases. They stay with the community oncologist here in Maine, but for just some big picture treatment recommendations and occasional check-ins, they'll drive down to Boston or some other specialized cancer treatment center. I tended to see it with things like neurological cancers or, as Tim was referencing, these highly specialized cancers that I'm guessing the community oncologists don't see day in, day out.
[00:07:05] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Yeah. I mean, I guess on that note, from looking at their AccessHope website, just to get a sense of what their services are, I do get a flavor of that, which is, they have expert advisory reviews. So the idea is that the treating physicians can sort of refer in the case or receive information from some specialists within the AccessHope sort of bench of talent. There is also a cancer support team available. So I can imagine that some centers may not have all the care navigation, patient education, and psychosocial support available for patients and families. So maybe that can help extend the services locally. And then they have this arm of accountable precision oncology. And it's described as a comprehensive model that really integrates clinical guidance, population health insights, and QA or quality assurance across the cancer care journeys. And so, I think to your point, Trevor, about the heterogeneity of care, I think this is one of the tenets of that that can really help standardize and lead to more uniform care.
[00:08:13] Dr. Paul Gerrard: In early 2024, they closed a $33 million Series B round that was led by City of Hope. And the plan was that this funding would support expansion to Medicare and government programs, continued product and technology development, and further growth of their oncology network. The leadership team includes the CEO, Bradley Crick, and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Yousuf Zafar, a nationally recognized oncologist and researcher from Duke. Dr. Zafar is especially known for his work on financial toxicity, which is the burden of out-of-pocket costs on cancer patients and has held leadership roles both at Duke and in health tech companies like Optum and Change Healthcare.
[00:08:53] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Yeah, I think this is an interesting business model. So, looking at their list of customers, as I understand it, the main way they generate revenue is through contracts with employers and payers. So basically, we'll go after large employers who want to offer this service to their employees who may eventually become a cancer patient. And I can imagine that, actually, if you think about it from an employee, I think it's a really appealing benefit to know that you can get timely access. And I can imagine from an employer's perspective that they want to make sure that their employees are well taken care of and receive the best care.
[00:09:39] Dr. Timothy Showalter: I think it's interesting. We had a great chat with Othman Laraki and talked about Color recently. Pretty similar, I think, set of customers that they would be talking to. This offering seems a little bit different. So I think the real angle here is primarily access to the most prestigious cancer centers. And it seems to me like it's different in terms of the focus on what they're going after, but it's ultimately serving some of the same needs, which is to make sure that cancer patients ultimately receive the right care that they need. I mean, Trevor, I'm curious your thoughts on this. I know we talked about this a little bit before the show.
[000:10:24] Dr. Trevor Royce: Two big takeaways for me here are the following. Number one, I really, just to state it again, I think people underappreciate just how different care can be in different places. There's a lot of heterogeneity there, even amongst subspecialists. And some of those differences are going to matter and some of those aren't. And it's important to appreciate which is which. And two, there are many, many reasons well beyond what we can cover today in the show of why it's important and useful and essential to get your care from your local team. And we've seen that, even from hearing family members unable to transport patients or just the burden that it takes to travel somewhere distant to get care. We talked about that on the clinical trial side. The whole premise behind decentralized clinical trials is to move the care to your local setting. And I think AccessHope is really trying to enable that by the services that you mentioned earlier. And I think we'll hear more from Yousuf later. He's the Chief Medical Officer there, but he has built his career and his reputation on being very patient-centric and being a patient advocate. And so it'll be really fun to hear from him how AccessHope is doing that.
[00:11:30] Dr. Paul Gerrard: Okay, so pulse check. Let's share our top takeaways.
[00:11:33] Dr. Timothy Showalter: To me, I think this is particularly appealing if you think about the entire cancer journey, where they're offering access to the latest trials of precision medicine. And it's done in a way where it scales beyond just the resources available at the prestigious list of academic cancer centers, where it's actually empowering local clinicians to take care of patients closer to home. And so I think it's a pretty elegant solution for that need.
[00:12:06] Dr. Paul Gerrard: I'm impressed by their ability to operationalize the second opinions across millions of lives. I mean, conceptually, that sounds, "Hey, get second opinions," but bringing that into operational reality can be a challenge. So I'd love to hear how they do it and how they measure their outcomes.
[00:12:23] Dr. Trevor Royce: Yeah, I mean, they've got a pretty impressive roster of not only the employers that they have, they're using their services, but obviously on the product side, the NCI-designated cancer centers that they're working with. So they clearly have access to international experts of these different cancer types. And it's a nice way to democratize that specialty care. Looking forward to hearing from Yousuf about that. So I guess to summarize, and as we transition to our interview with Yousuf, we've got AccessHope to bring in the best minds in cancer care to every corner of the country. We've got Dr. Yousuf Zafar on deck, and we're going to go deeper into how this model works and where it's headed next.
[00:13:01] Dr. Paul Gerrard: Yousuf, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Your work has spanned academic medicine, health policy, and health innovation, and we're excited to hear how all that comes together in your leadership at AccessHope.
[00:13:12] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Thanks, Paul. It comes together absolutely seamlessly every day. No hiccups, no problems.
[00:13:17] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Completely pre-planned, right?
[00:13:19] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Totally.
[00:13:20] Dr. Paul Gerrard: Then we really want to hear about how you managed to make that happen.
[00:13:23] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Right. Well, I think that's my cue to leave. This has been great.
[00:13:28] Dr. Trevor Royce: Yeah, I guess, on that note, to kind of kick things off, probably best to start with a little bit about your personal journey. I know you're a practicing oncologist, a prominent researcher who's become a national and international leader in quality, innovation, the economics of cancer care, how much burden is placed on cancer care to the patients, and particularly on the financial side and otherwise. And certainly you've been an inspiration to many, including myself, about thinking about careers beyond academia, how we can translate some of what we've done in academics into industry and bring things all the way to the bedside. So I guess tell us a little bit about your transition to the industry role versus clinical practice and kind of how you got to where you are today.
[00:14:10] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: It's been a path, right? I'll tell you, I started off with this dream of becoming a clinician researcher with an NIH-funded research program, and that was a dream.
[00:14:26] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: And I think I was really fortunate one day to wake up and realize I was living the dream. I don't think a lot of people get to say that. And I loved it. I did my oncology training at Duke and I spent 17 years there as a GI oncologist, as a clinician, as a researcher, as an administrative leader. And I realized that, I learned a ton in that role. And I hope I had a little bit of impact and maybe moved the needle a little bit in terms of research and practice in oncology. And I started to realize, you know what, this is great.
[00:15:10] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: And I need to think about what else I can do and how can I have an impact in a different way. And I spent a good at least two years just really repeating that same thought over and over in my head saying, I really should try something different. But finding it super challenging to actually take the leap and move to this sort of new area. And so I think that, the lesson I have for anybody who's listening who's thinking, maybe I should take a leap, maybe I should do something different is, yeah, it's hard and it takes time. But if you go with your gut and move towards something where you feel like you can have an impact in a different way, it's hard to go wrong. And I think, you guys have probably had similar experiences as well.
[00:16:03] Dr. Timothy Showalter: You seem to have recognized that it was time to start looking for something else. What was missing? What was, was it a, were you starting to get bored or was it looking for a new challenge or a broader way to have impact? I'm just curious to know a little bit more about what sort of journey along the way for your more recent decisions.
[00:16:23] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Yeah. You know, I think Tim, I've always been somebody who needs to be doing a bunch of different things at the same time. And that's how I had set up my academic career where I was doing a bunch of different things simultaneously. And I think it got to the point where even those things, even those things had, I was starting to see patterns. I was starting to see the same things again. Writing a grant didn't really change in terms of the skill set required there. Same with writing paper, the other academic aspects of our career. And so I really was looking for a new challenge and a new way to use my brain. And I'll tell you, sort of going into the corporate world, I felt like, and I was going to say I felt like an intern, but more like, you know, I felt like that third year medical student where you go into clinic for the first time and you're just like, wow, there's, I know so little of what's actually happening here around me. And that's sort of what I felt like going into the business world of, you know, starting over and just working my way up again in terms of just the knowledge that's required to be successful in that world.
[00:17:31] Dr. Trevor Royce: That resonates with me so much. Like every time I try something new, this kind of mantra pops into my brain. It's like, oh man, this is intern year all over again. And, you know, that pain is probably, there's probably some healthy components to that. It's good. It's like, it's a way that we thrive a little bit. You know, it's challenging yourself, getting out of your comfort zone and being an intern all over again.
[00:17:49] Dr. Paul Gerrard: It's what keeps things interesting.
[00:17:51] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: It definitely keeps things interesting, for sure. I remember I was at this leadership retreat at the end of the first company I joined after I left Duke, this company called Change Healthcare. We're sitting around all these, and I was looking around the table, and there are all these seasoned leaders in business who are running, you know, multi-million dollar pillars just within one company. And I'm like, you know, I just spent the past few hours watching YouTube videos on what EBITDA is. And I'm like, it's so out of my depth here. And it is, it does keep things interesting and it's a steep learning curve.
[00:18:33] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Well, I think maybe that's a good transition talking about learning curves and the challenges of entering industry to hear a little bit about, your current role at AccessHope. I mean, I guess for our listeners, maybe you could give us a bit of background about, what is the focus of AccessHope? What problem are you solving for? What's sort of the main line of business and focus there?
[00:18:57] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Sure. So at AccessHope, I think of it as, we are solving for the problem of inequity in cancer care delivery. And unfortunately, that inequity in care is often based on where people live and how close they are to expertise in cancer care, and that inequity leads to worse outcomes and higher cost. And so that's the, that's sort of the problem we're solving for, and we're doing it, we're solving cancer care through remote expert opinions.
[00:19:37] Dr. Timothy Showalter: My clinical practice has also been an academic medical center. And I'm curious what your experience has been like engaging with the community oncologists, what that sort of partnership looks like in terms of, informing the patient's overall care journey.
[00:19:52] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Yeah. You know, I think of us at AccessHope as having four key stakeholders, right? We have our customers, of course, who are paying for our products.
[00:20:05] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: We have our, what we call our foundational partners, who are our seven academic centers that we have partnered with, who actually provide that subspecialist expert review. We have our treating oncologists, and we have the patients. And what's interesting about those four stakeholders is each requires a different type of interaction, but they all have to work together. The treating oncologist, the community oncologist, is actually our end user, right? It's actually the person who uses our review to impact care for the patient. We really have to hold that relationship in high esteem and pay a lot of attention to it. And we approach it in a way, we approach the relationship with a community oncologist in a way that comes from a place of deep respect. These are people who are incredibly compassionate, incredibly knowledgeable, and incredibly overworked, right? And how can you expect a community oncologist who's seeing 20, 40 patients a day with a different cancer diagnosis in every room that they're going into, how can you expect that community oncologist to understand the deep complexity within any particular cancer diagnosis? And that's where sort of we can come in, is we can say, look, you've done a really great job with this patient.
[00:21:31] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Here are some additional insights that can improve that care that much more, coming from somebody who just treats colorectal cancer.
[00:21:40] Dr. Paul Gerrard: You use the term, you've got the customers paying for your products. I guess, how would you describe your product? Is there one kind of typical product? Are there suites of products? Or is it more it's customized in a bespoke way for wherever you end up going or whomever you end up serving?
[00:22:02] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: So as of today, at least, we have two products that are variations on the same theme. The first is something that we call Accountable Precision Oncology, or APO. And this is our most commonly used version of our expert opinion. And this is something that is an expert opinion service that is automated, initially technology-based, and just runs in the background for our employers. So when one of our customers has an employee or a member, a patient who has cancer, and we determine through our automated process that that person has cancer, we're able to obtain their medical records, collate those medical records, clean them up, summarize them, send them to our expert reviewer who then completes that expert opinion remotely.
[00:23:01] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: We then take that review and send it to treating oncologists. So that APO process is automated. It doesn't require a member or an employee to say, hey, raise their hand and say, hey, I would like a second opinion. It doesn't require them to do that. And what that does is overcome a really important barrier around services that we see provided, not just in cancer care, but in healthcare today. And that's a barrier of low member engagement, where there's a really important service that's out there that's really hard to get that member engaged and say, yes, this is something I want to do.
[00:23:37] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Our second product is something we call expert advisory review, and it's that same review that our subspecialist oncologists provide that requires a member to raise their hand and say, I would like an expert review. And then a third product that we have is our cancer support team, where if a member can reach out and talk to our oncology nurses for support, understanding how to prepare for their appointments, to help them understand information about their cancer and their treatment, and help them with their emotional and psychosocial concerns.
[00:24:10] Dr. Timothy Showalter: I like your point about wanting to have something, some touch for that patient that doesn't require their active involvement. I think for a lot of people who have a new diagnosis that there are so many boxes to check and things to get done that sometimes, it's asking a lot for them to schedule another phone call or another appointment. And I think it's, I can imagine from the patient perspective and more broadly, if I'm viewing this as an employer or payer, that there's a lot of peace of mind and a lot of value from having a component of your offerings be, sort of happening in the background, instead of requiring that they raise a hand and ask for engagement. So it makes a lot of sense.
[00:24:55] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: And, I think this is something that a lot of people don't realize. Is I think a lot of people feel that an expert opinion or a second review has to happen when a patient goes and sees somebody or says, I want to go see somebody. And you guys will know this from your practice as well. The majority of these second opinions and expert opinions happen behind the scenes. I'm in clinic. I get a call on my cell phone from a community oncologist that I have a relationship with who says, hey, I have this patient with pancreatic cancer in my room right now. I'm not really sure what the next step is. Can you help me? I provide an opinion. I provide help for that oncologist right there, who then goes and delivers the care. That patient may never have even known that that happened in the background, right? But it happens every hour of every day, way more than that second opinion of a patient going to that academic center does. And so we're still retaining that communication.
[00:25:48] Dr. Trevor Royce: Yeah, I think that's a really important concept. And just to double down on what you said earlier, one of your core end users is the treating local oncologists. And this whole infrastructure is built to support that team. I think that's, I'm just sort of pausing for effect there because I think that's a key concept here. Reflecting to the other stakeholders involved, can you tell us a little bit about the interaction with the employers, which I think is who you're dealing directly with in terms of on the business model side?
[00:26:15] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Yeah, absolutely. Employers and plans, payers as well. Our interactions with employers happens simply because they see a need for better cancer care. And, they think of, not surprisingly, they think of, you know, a lot of people do think of cancer as this black box of what happens there? What does immunotherapy mean? And what can be, I mean, to be honest, as a medical oncologist, it's kind of the same way I think about, what you guys do in radiation oncology. It's this black box where you guys shoot these magic rays at cancer and things shrink. That's the extent of my understanding.
[00:26:57] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Well, that's how I feel when I go to ASCO and I hear the, the phase two results of the other imab, you know, like the things that are unpronounceable.
[00:27:05] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Right, right, right. Exactly. So we have some common ground there in terms of black boxedness. And so our customers really want more insight into cancer care. They see care happening and they see that it's expensive and they see that, their employees may not have an experience that aligns with what they expected. And so where we come in is to say, look, let's give you some transparency into what's happening there. Let's help align the guidelines and the evidence with the care that's being delivered without having to have that member leave, go, four hours down the road to that academic center for their care. Let them stay at home. Let them stay with the oncologist that they know and they're comfortable with. And maybe we can play a role in that. Elevating the level of care, aligning that care with the evidence.
[00:28:01] Dr. Paul Gerrard: I want to pivot a little here. And it sounds like you guys started not long before the COVID-19 pandemic came in, which sort of upended, maybe in a good way even, some of the ways we practiced medicine, things that are related to telehealth, for example, I think everybody agrees, have come much further, much faster than they ever would have without the pandemic. That seems to have some similarities in some sense to what you guys do in that it's, you know, there's electronic telecommunications become a critical piece of delivering the service and enabling care to happen outside of, or enabling analysis to happen outside of that face-to-face interaction. How did the pandemic impact your business? I mean, did it impact that at all?
[00:28:53] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: It did. And this was, before my time at AccessHope. So fortunately, we've got actually published data that shows what happened to our cases and our case volume in our business as a result of COVID. And so this was a study that was published in JCO Oncology Practice a few years ago, where we sort of looked at the trends and care and interactions with AccessHope during that period of time. You know, we see this like steady rise during late 2019 and then this huge peak in early and mid 2020. As we started to realize the benefit of having this remote expert opinion where you didn't have to leave home, you could stay with your oncologist and, get access to that expert opinion. So, so I think the timing was right. And, you know, it's not that it's always the right way or the perfect way for everybody to deliver care, but we, you know, we clearly found a niche there and have, have thankfully been able to sort of expand on.
[00:30:04] Dr. Timothy Showalter: One of the things I'm just thinking about, like the patient journey, and it certainly seemed, I can see how this fits in really well. And I think, I mean, you guys, the timing was impeccable to, to have a sort of technology-based platform to give access to specialty care. And then, of course, the pandemic really showed how wise that was. When I think about a couple of the things that may not be available in the community, I'm curious how you guys approach that. I guess the biggest example would be access to the latest clinical trials, for example. So let's say that, presumably there would be more trials available in the academic settings, like many of the centers where your expert second opinions are coming from, or maybe even some specialized technologies. How have you guys found, working solutions like that where, perhaps there's a patient who may benefit from participating in a really promising therapeutic trial, for example?
[00:30:59] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Tim, this is a huge area for us. We're spending a lot of time thinking about clinical trials as a next area of growth for us. And that's because it is naturally an important part of cancer care. And as we think about how do we do more around improving cancer care delivery, it is only natural to think about clinical trials as a part of that. And so I think what we've realized as we've thought about clinical trials as an additional solution is that a lot of people focus on this idea of matching, right? Can we match a patient to a clinical trial? And I think that's really important. And it's only the first part of that process of actually getting a patient to a trial that is appropriate for them. And so as we think about how clinical trials should be a more comprehensive part of cancer care, we have to think about how do you match a patient to a trial? How do you find that needle in a haystack? How do you navigate and educate patients around the benefit of trials? And how do you help that patient actually get to the trial site? Right. And how do you know in a sort of just-in-time way that a trial actually has a slot available? For any of you who've ever enrolled a patient in a trial, you know that that can change on an hourly basis sometimes.
[00:32:26] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: And so we need to have that suite of capabilities for patients who are interacting with AccessHope to be able to identify trials for them, help them navigate through the process, and then help them ultimately enroll in the right trial. And then you bring up an important point, Tim, around, you know, those trials are not always available in the community. That's true. And that's where we can help sort of make, help a community oncologist make that determination of, well, look, maybe this is the right time for that patient to actually travel because this is where they could gain the most benefit from the trial. So it's all part of the, all part of the process of, you know, identifying the right care for the patient at the right time. So.
[00:33:12] Dr. Trevor Royce: I guess on that theme, focusing on the patient, and having the pleasure of known you for many years now, I know you're very patient-centric and basically everything you do in the world of healthcare. Can you give us either a patient example of how you've impacted their journey just to kind of illustrate, you know, what it actually is you do on the patient level? And then two, kind of what are your metrics of success? Like, how do you measure that what you guys are doing is working on the product side, not the business side, but like, how do you actually know you're making an impact? And I think those two are probably going to be related.
[00:33:42] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Yeah, there's a number of patients and cases that come to mind. There's one, this patient who was treated in a, this just happened a few months ago, a patient who had advanced kidney cancer in a fairly rural area. And this patient was on an immunotherapy combination regimen. Their cancer grew. It was started on another immunotherapy combination regimen. Their cancer grew again, and they stayed on that regimen. Our subspecialist reviewer looked at the medical records and immediately realized that there was a problem here. Got very concerned about, you know, can we really need to realign this patient's care with the standard of care and the evidence. So provided a recommendation, not just for another standard care option that was available for the patient, that the patient had not yet received, but also provided a clinical trial option that was relatively close to this patient geographically. So, you know, we, as we typically do, we sent that review to the community oncologist. But because of the sort of discrepancy in care, we did something else that we do some of the time, that we reached out to the community oncologist. One of our oncologists on our AccessHope team called that community oncologist and said, hey, look, we just wanted to review this with you and make sure you saw this and see if you had any questions.
[00:35:11] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: That community oncologist was so appreciative of that recommendation that they had received, again, just in time. They said, you know, I was looking for what to do next. I've already implemented the recommendation, and I know my patient's going to be really interested in looking for that trial. And so I've started to investigate that trial option as well. That was a case that really stuck out because it highlighted a bunch of different things in terms of the access that that patient had. That community oncologist who was trying to provide the best care possible for their patient but was sort of overwhelmed by the data, right? And by their own clinical volumes. Potential for clinical trial. It really sort of put everything together for me and it reinforced in my mind of why I'm here, of the role that I can have at AccessHope. And I was really appreciative of that.
[00:36:05] Dr. Timothy Showalter: You know, Yousuf, you mentioned the sort of looking for what was next for you in terms of impact. And that story is a great example of really pulling that thread through on all the levels. I mean, obviously, supporting oncologists in the community, supporting patients to have access to the right care, and enabling clinical trial enrollment, too, I think in sort of an accelerating discovery, I think is, it's a really powerful example. I know we're coming up on time, and I wanted to be sure that we had a chance to maybe circle back to your own sort of career learnings and advice that you've picked up over the years. I'm curious if you could just share, maybe as our last question to cover, thinking about young people starting their careers or doctors who may be in clinical practice now that are, maybe like you were years ago, thinking about how to make an impact and maybe a different venue. What advice might you have for those who are contemplating a change in their career?
[00:37:11] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: Yeah. I think there's so much opportunity in our field. There's so much opportunity in healthcare. You can impact care at the level of a patient, and you can impact care at the level of a population. And so how do you do that? Well, I think particularly for clinicians who are interested in moving into industry, I would say figure out first the problem you want to solve. Really identify that particular problem. As opposed to saying, oh, you know, we have this technology, we have this AI, let's go figure out what we can use AI for, right? AI is a tool, right? It's a tool for the problem. And we shouldn't confuse the tool for the solution. So figure out the problem first, and then second, align incentives with stakeholders. I think this is the biggest challenge we have in healthcare today, is that it is so challenging to align incentives between the multiple stakeholders that are involved in almost every healthcare decision that happens at every level.
[00:38:29] Dr. Yousuf Zafar: And I think the third, which is sort of the most important, particularly for clinicians, is that what I would say to any clinician who's thinking about going into healthcare industry or health tech, your superpower is your clinical experience. Learn from it, particularly if you're early in your clinical journey, spend some time there, go through your training, spend some time after training really learning the ropes and understanding what it means to be a clinician, what it means to practice, to provide care for a patient, to understand the challenges that patients experience every day, then use that to take in your next steps, to take in your next steps of your journey. That's your superpower.
[00:39:22] Dr. Timothy Showalter: Thank you so much. That's such great advice. I think that's a great place for us to wrap up. We've been fortunate to have time with Dr. Yousuf Zafar, Chief Medical Officer of AccessHope. That's it for this episode of HealthTech Remedy. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share the show. See you next time.
