nafld care pathways

Our week of "Greatest Hits" episodes from the vault concludes with this conversation from the episode discussing the inaugural Innovations in Clinical Care - Barcelona (or INCBCN) conference that convened this past May. This conversation reviews two controversies about the meaning of patient empowerment that arose at the conference.

One key event that 2022 witnessed was the inception of the Innovations in NAFLD Care series, a global effort to discuss clinical care pathways and patient treatment processes in a systematic way. Surfing the NASH Tsunami is a media partner and advocate for this series. 

This conversation comes from our review of the conference. The discussion itself is triggered by Roger Green's question about controversies at INCBCN 2022 and addresses two issues. The first is the ongoing controversy over what to call the disease itself. The second addresses the concept of biohacking, which either empowers patients by providing them with extensive data for self-management or disempowers them by divorcing the individual patient's interpretation of this data from disease understanding.

On May 6 and 7, over 100 NAFLD stakeholders convened in Barcelona and on-line for the inaugural Innovations in NAFLD Care 2022 conference (#INCBCN.) Surfing the NASH Tsunami was there, with Jörn Schattenberg serving as event co-founder and Louise Campbell and Roger Green moderating sessions. This week's episode is less a formal recap of the meeting than recollections of key moments and messages from the co-founders and Surfers.

While the question in this conversation comes from Roger Green, who asks about controversies, the two pivotal controversies center around views of patient empowerment. The conversation begins where the last one ended, which Louise Campbell and Roger Green commenting that calling the entire disease class simply "Fatty Liver Disease," as proposed by Primary Care participant @Jean Mareis, would remove a controversial issue and foster stronger communication between doctor and patient. In response, Jeff Lazarus and Jörn Schattenberg note that there is an ongoing delphi exercise led by Jeff and his team, which will report on July 8 and 9. From here, the discussion around controversy shifts focus to the varying reactions to #HumanEdge founder Marcus Ranney's presenting about #biohacking and his developmental Mito app. Questions ranged from how much data to put in patients' hands to where analysis should be controlled. This element wraps up with Jörn Schattenberg noting the research value of the data that Human Edge proposes to collect. The last part of this conversation covers plans for the 2023 conference and congratulates Jeff as he departs.

On May 6 and 7, over 100 NAFLD stakeholders convened in Barcelona and on-line for the inaugural Innovations in NAFLD Care 2022 conference (#INCBCN.) Surfing the NASH Tsunami was there, with Jörn Schattenberg serving as event co-chair and Louise Campbell and Roger Green moderating sessions. This week's episode is less a formal recap of the meeting than recollections of key moments and messages from the co-founders and Surfers.

This discussion starts with #INCBCN co-founder Jeff Lazarus and Roger Green what Jeff considered the successes and surprises of the conference. Jeff speaks about the "palpable" energy of the attendees, the number of people who attended virtually and engaged through Q & A and the range of issued addressed at the conference as three strong positives. On a more prosaic note, he also mentions how well the technology worked throughout the meeting. Roger Green suggests that much of the energy came from merging three separate streams of activity -- medical specialists, primary care and patient advocates -- into a single conversation that touched on all three groups' issues. He also suggests that having Marcus Ranney and Jeff to share a digital health vision of the future added additional energy and the prospect of what Roger calls "radical patient empowerment." As co-founder Jörn Schattenberg and then Louise Campbell join the conversation, levity ensues as the four discuss the surprise closing statement from Jeff and Jörn and then a more serious tone as the group discusses the benefits that multidisciplinary conversation brought to all the participants.

Last week, all three #NASHTsunami co-hosts participated in the inaugural Innovations in NAFLD Care (#INCBCN) 2022 conference in Barcelona. Today, co-chair Jeff Lazarus joins Jörn, Louise and Roger in reviewing the conference's high points and key messages.

The meeting itself brought a diverse group of Fatty Liver stakeholders to Barcelona last week to explore NAFLD care from several distinct perspectives. Research Key Opinion leaders discussed not only advances in medicines and diagnostics but also the best ways to utilize what is available today. Patient advocates shared their goals, victories and frustrations working within the current system. Primary care physicians discussed some challenges in incorporating a whole different set of disease screens and thinking into their overloaded practices and ways computing power can help identify patients who need help. Finally, entrepreneur Dr. Marcus Ranney shared a visionary app called Mito that his company, Human Edge, is developing.

This episode is less a recap of the meeting itself than a discussion of its key themes and highlights. The Surfers share their own impressions of the event along with feedback from other attendees. The conversation conveys the enthusiasm and energy present in the room throughout the conference. Along the way, it touches on some of the key concepts presented at the conference.

The final segment of this episode is an abbreviation of a 1:1 interview Roger Green conducted with Marcus Ranney on the specific history of how he came to develop Mito and a broader discussion of the power that decentralized data and analytics can have in improving the health of any patient with a hand-held phone that connects to the internet.