Healthy Communities Online

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Susmita Pati, Chief Medical Program Advisor for the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, founded by the legendary actor and PBS science show host who felt science and health professionals needed to learn better communication skills. The “Alda Method” applies traditional actors’ training like improvisation and other speaking techniques to improve the ability of health care and science professionals to better disseminate their complex information.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with David Houlding, Microsoft’s Principal Healthcare Lead and international expert on blockchain, AI and cybersecurity issues impacting health information technology. He discusses the challenges of keeping health data safe, while improving access to patients and clinicians, with a growing emphasis on blockchain, AI and the cloud to advance health data security capabilities.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Jitin Asnaani, Executive Director of the CommonWell Health Alliance which is on a mission to make a nationwide health data exchange a reality. They discuss the national network of payer, provider and EHR vendors joining the Alliance to advance interoperability across multiple electronic health record platforms with health data flowing seamlessly from patient to providers.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Jeanne Pinder, Founder and CEO of Clear Health Costs, which seeks to unmask the true cost Americans pay for health care. They discuss the online platform she created that compares prices for hospitalizations and procedures offering consumers real transparency in health pricing, utilizing crowd sourced patient payment data vetted by journalists around the country.

This week on Conversations on Health Care, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Louis Wade Sullivan, Founding Dean and President Emeritus of the Morehouse School of Medicine, and former HHS Secretary under the first Bush Administration. Dr. Sullivan discusses his efforts to build diversity in the health professions through his organization, the Sullivan Alliance, and his contributions to building equity in health systems around the country and the world.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter with renowned health industry analyst Susannah Fox who served as Chief Technology Officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services. Ms. Fox has been studying the growing impact of the internet on health care and discusses her recent report on how young health consumers are accelerating the adoption of digital technologies in the health care experience.