Raise the Line

“One of the reasons The Pitt has been so successful is because it's showing real expertise in a time when everybody thinks they're an expert,” says Dr. Mel Herbert, who brings decades of experience as an emergency medicine specialist to his work as a writer and consultant on the hit HBO Max show. Dr. Herbert, who was also a consultant on the groundbreaking TV drama ER, is one of seven physicians on The Pitt’s writing and production team, which explains the high degree of medical accuracy that is a hallmark of the show. But Dr. Herbert is also proud of the emotional accuracy captured on screen. “It's about the emotions. It's about the stress. It's about how it really affects the doctors and the nurses that I've found the most interesting to write about.” In this candid conversation with host Lindsey Smith, Dr. Herbert talks about his own struggles coping with the demands of life in the emergency room and the importance of letting clinicians know that help is available. “You don't have to suffer. We can help you now in ways we couldn't even do ten years ago. That's the story I want to tell.”  In addition to his work using TV as an educational vehicle, Lindsey and Dr. Herbert discuss his real world efforts to provide emergency medicine education across the globe through his companies EM:RAP and EM:RAP GO. 

Stay tuned to this very special episode of Raise the Line with Elsevier in which you will also:

Learn how writers tackle misinformation and hot button health topics;

Get a behind the scenes look at how actors learn complex medical terminology;

Discover who Dr. Herbert’s favorite characters are.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Pitt
Mental Health Resources from American College of Emergency Physicians
EM:RAP
The Extraordinary Power of Being Average

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"Headache is just a teeny piece of the puzzle," says Dr. Regina Krel, an insight that’s at the heart of why migraine syndrome, one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, remains so persistently misunderstood. In this informative conversation with Raise the Line from Elsevier host Michael Carrese, Dr. Krel, the director of Headache Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center, explains migraine as a storm that sensitizes the entire brain, not just the site of the headache, which explains the long list of symptoms people experience including sensitivity to light and sound, brain fog, fatigue and problems with balance. “The headaches can be severe, but it’s the other symptoms that really kind of take over your whole body that make patients dysfunctional.” Dr. Krel also explains why migraine disproportionately impacts women in the prime of their working and caregiving years, and offers guidance for treating migraines in women, whose symptoms are commonly dismissed by non-specialists.

Stay tuned to also learn about:

The "migraine triangle";

Why stigma around migraine persists even in doctors' offices;

New treatment options including neuromodulation devices.

Mentioned in this episode:

Headache Center at Hackensack University Medical Center

If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

To mark the sixth anniversary of Raise the Line from Elsevier we're revisiting one of the most remarkable stories we've had the privilege of sharing over the last 575 episodes. To do that, we're delighted to welcome back Dr. David Fajgenbaum, a physician-scientist who repurposed an existing medication that saved his own life from Castleman disease, an ultra-rare condition that nearly killed him on five occasions. Because there was no treatment specifically for Castleman, Dr. Fajgenbaum set out to find a previously approved medication that might work. “I eventually found a drug that was made for another disease 50 years ago. It's been over 12 years that I've been doing great on this medicine.”  

When he first joined us in 2022, Dr. Fajgenbaum was just launching a non-profit organization called Every Cure with the hope of replicating the success he achieved in his own case, and as you’ll learn in this inspiring interview with host Lindsey Smith, its work has already saved thousands of lives. “It's a tragedy if someone dies while there's already a drug in their local hospital that could help them.” 

In the latest installment of our Year of the Zebra series on rare conditions, you’ll hear an inspiring example of a life saved by this approach and also learn about:

The role of artificial intelligence in scanning thousands of medications and diseases to find possible matches;

How Every Cure decides which drugs merit the costly research needed to confirm a match; 

Dr. Fajgenbaum’s philosophy of “living in overtime.”

Mentioned in this episode:
Every Cure

Osmosis Video on Castleman Disease

Dr. Fajgenbaum's Bestselling Memoir, Chasing My Cure

If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

How AI Could Strengthen the Doctor-Patient Relationship: Dr. Ashwin Vasan, Senior Fellow in Health Policy and Global Affairs at Yale School of Public Health and Affiliate Faculty at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

“Ultimately, AI needs to be a tool that doesn't break down trust or empathy or clinical judgment, but rather helps enhance those things.” That aspirational perspective from Dr. Ashwin Vasan, Senior Fellow in Health Policy and Global Affairs at the Yale School of Public Health and Affiliate Faculty at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, frames a nuanced conversation about one of healthcare’s most consequential changes. Drawing on his experience as New York City Health Commissioner during the COVID-19 crisis and decades in global and public health, Dr. Vasan argues that the future of AI in medicine should be shaped less by the technology itself than by the values guiding its implementation, and that physicians need to play an active role in this process. “I think it behooves us to engage with this technology and steer it in the directions that we want as a society.”

This timely discussion also offers Dr. Vasan’s thoughtful perspectives on:

How AI could allow physicians to focus on the human side of care;

The risks of AI reinforcing inequities and driving costs higher;

Public health as the marriage of science, society and trust.

Join host Lindsey Smith for a valuable Raise the Line episode on how AI can be harnessed to benefit patients and provides alike. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Yale School of Public Health

Yale Jackson School of Public Affairs

If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Imagine you had a tutor who was with you every time you were studying and, because they knew your learning style, strengths and weaknesses, could hand you the right content at the moment you needed it to deepen your understanding of a topic.  That’s the pedagogically powerful experience students are having with AI-enhanced learning systems such as Osmosis AI, making possible what our guest, Elsevier’s Chief AI Officer Paul Crockett, describes as a new era of precision learning.  “We now have signal from how students actually engage with content – such as where they get stuck and how they learn – and that behavioral data can tell you more about what a learner needs than any sort of static assessment. That's a profound transformation,” he says. In this fascinating conversation with Raise the Line host Lindsey Smith, Crockett also highlights how AI enables tutoring-like interactions with students which supports deeper reasoning rather than rote memorization. That in turn, helps Elsevier achieve the goal of getting students ready to practice medicine, not just ready to take tests. In addition, limiting the AI’s sources to the evidence-based material in the Osmosis and Elsevier content libraries provides both students and faculty with the level of trust and verifiability they desire. Tune in to learn how this meaningful shift from static content delivery to dynamic, data-informed learning experiences is changing healthcare education.

Mentioned in this episode:

Osmosis AI

If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast