The Intersection of Virtual Reality and Behavioral Health with Shan Padda and Kameron Helmuth

On "Beyond the Ordinary," host Tommy Martin explores innovative healthcare solutions with guests Shane Pata and Cameron Hellmuth. Shane, a serial entrepreneur, discusses his company Harvard MedTech, which integrates virtual reality (VR) and behavioral health interventions to manage pain and conditions like PTSD without relying on narcotics. This approach offers significant benefits for patients, physicians, and insurers by reducing opioid dependency and enhancing patient outcomes. Cameron, from Vestia Personal Wealth Advisors, highlights the technology's potential to improve surgical results and provide ancillary revenue for medical practices. Harvard MedTech's proactive solutions are gaining traction, with insurance companies endorsing their effectiveness.

• The podcast features guests Shane Pata, a serial entrepreneur, and Cameron Hellmuth from Vestia Personal Wealth Advisors.
• Harvard MedTech combines virtual reality with behavioral health interventions to manage pain and symptoms like PTSD, anxiety, depression, and poor sleep without narcotics.
• The host, Tommy Martin, discloses that his fund is an investor in Harvard MedTech.

"We have Shane Pata with us today. Shane is a serial entrepreneur who has built and scaled three companies that have all been truly disruptive in their space."

• Shane Pata is recognized for creating and scaling disruptive companies, highlighting his innovative approach in various industries.

"Harvard MedTech... combines virtual reality and behavioral health interventions to allow patients to manage their pain and other symptoms... without the use of narcotics."

• Harvard MedTech's program is significant for offering non-narcotic solutions for managing various health issues, showcasing a pioneering approach in healthcare.

• Shane Pata was born in India and moved to the U.S. after his father received a scholarship to Cornell.
• He grew up in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, and attended Harvard at 16 due to his curiosity and desire to learn.
• His entrepreneurial journey began with starting a consumer products company in Minneapolis.

"I grew up on a small island in the Caribbean. I went to Harvard at 16 and it was just like the candy store to me, just all these really bright people."

• Shane's early exposure to diverse environments and education at Harvard fueled his curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit.

"I was actually on my way out to San Francisco from Boston to go work as a software engineer. And I ended up stopping that journey in Minneapolis. We started our first company that summer."

• Shane's entrepreneurial journey began serendipitously, leading to the creation of his first company, highlighting the importance of seizing opportunities.

• Shane's education at Harvard was broad, exploring various fields before focusing on neurobiology.
• He was initially inclined toward becoming a doctor, influenced by cultural expectations, but pursued diverse interests.
• His first company was a consumer product, a painter's hat, which achieved significant success.

"I took courses in everything from art history to applied math. And actually, my passion ended up ironically being neurobiology."

• Shane's diverse educational background and eventual focus on neurobiology illustrate his wide-ranging interests and adaptability.

"It was a painter's hat, which at the time was a big deal. It was sort of the replacement to the traditional baseball cap."

• The success of Shane's first company in consumer products demonstrates his ability to innovate and capitalize on market trends.

• Shane emphasizes the importance of patient experience in healthcare, drawing from his consumer marketing background.
• He believes in maximizing the patient experience to improve health outcomes, a philosophy that guides his ventures in healthcare.
• His approach involves using creativity and asymmetric strategies to overcome financial constraints and achieve success.

"It's always been how do we maximize the patient experience? Because if you have a better patient experience, the consumer, in this case, the patient will get better faster."

• Shane's focus on enhancing patient experiences reflects his commitment to improving healthcare outcomes through innovative solutions.

"Everything was done off of creativity. You know, asymmetric marketing using asymmetric financing strategies, basically trade debt to finance the company."

• Shane's entrepreneurial success is attributed to his creative and strategic thinking, enabling him to build and scale companies effectively.

• Entrepreneurs often seek to add value by innovating and solving problems uniquely.
• A personal health crisis led to the development of an ambulatory infusion device, enhancing patient care outside hospital settings.
• The device allowed home-based care, reducing costs and improving patient experience compared to hospital stays.

"I helped develop the first truly ambulatory infusion device. It could do everything that a hospital pump could do, except it could do it in the patient's home."

• This quote illustrates the innovation of creating a portable medical device that brought hospital-level care into patients' homes, revolutionizing home healthcare.

"If we can move the point of care out of an institutional setting into a patient's home, it's a much better environment to heal in."

• Emphasizes the benefits of home-based care, including a more comfortable healing environment and cost savings.

• The opioid crisis persists, with opioids being used to mask pain rather than address its root causes.
• Opioids work by hijacking the brain's pleasure center, providing temporary relief without solving underlying issues.

"They take opioids to help manage their pain... All we are doing is giving people a masking agent, band aid."

• Highlights the ineffectiveness of opioids in treating pain, as they only provide temporary relief.

"The pleasure you get from the agent, whether it's alcohol or opioids, overrides the pain sensations."

• Explains how opioids mask pain by stimulating the brain's pleasure centers, leading to potential addiction.

• Harvard MedTech focuses on non-opioid solutions, such as virtual reality and behavioral health interventions, to manage pain effectively.
• Chronic pain often stems from emotional trauma or a hyperactive thalamus, rather than structural issues.

"The behavioral health Interventions were seven times more effective in helping the patients than the usual care that's administered today with the opioids."

• Demonstrates the effectiveness of behavioral health interventions over traditional opioid treatments for chronic pain.

"We use virtual reality as a tool to help patients learn how to master or optimize the way their thalamus is functioning."

• Describes the use of virtual reality to help patients manage pain by retraining the brain's response to pain signals.

"The level of pain relief it provides is about 50% analgesic benefit, which is the exact same benefit you'd get from taking an opioid."

• Highlights virtual reality's effectiveness in providing pain relief comparable to opioids without addiction risks.

• The concept of neuroplasticity is integral in utilizing VR for pain management, where repeated exposure to VR therapy can lead to the brain rewiring itself to become more resilient to pain.
• Patients continue to experience pain relief for a period after VR sessions, as the brain transitions from a hyper-focused state back to normal.
• Over time, consistent VR therapy can lead to the brain hardwiring new neural pathways to manage pain effectively.

"If you repeatedly expose the patient to this therapy over 90 days, another concept in neurobiology called neuroplasticity kicks in."

• This quote highlights the role of neuroplasticity in establishing long-term pain management through repeated VR therapy.

"We're making patients more pain resilient, where they can manage and they don't feel any impairment because of whatever pain signals they're receiving."

• This statement underscores the goal of VR therapy in enhancing patients' ability to manage pain without feeling impaired.

• VR therapy can be beneficial for soldiers with PTSD, addressing a combination of anxiety, depression, and poor sleep architecture.
• The therapy provides an end-to-end solution, particularly effective for soldiers with both PTSD and wartime injuries.
• Behavioral health interventions are critical for processing traumatic experiences, while VR aids in managing associated pain.

"PTSD is kind of a broad term that captures a combination of anxiety, depression, they have poor sleep architecture."

• This quote explains the multifaceted nature of PTSD and the potential of VR therapy in addressing these diverse symptoms.

"Oftentimes these soldiers may also have wartime injuries where they're having some level of pain. And that's where the VR part of our program really helps them manage that pain as well."

• This emphasizes the dual role of VR in managing both psychological and physical symptoms in PTSD patients.

• The VR therapy program is integrated with the VA, allowing any physician in the country to prescribe it, addressing long wait times for appointments.
• The program serves both reactive and proactive uses, aiding in pain management and emotional stability pre- and post-surgery.
• The therapy offers a non-opioid alternative for pain management, crucial for better surgical outcomes and patient recovery.

"We also have a contract with the VA. Any physician anywhere in the country can prescribe our product."

• This highlights the accessibility and integration of the VR therapy within the VA healthcare system.

"We give a way for the patient to manage their pain preoperatively without introducing opioids or narcotics into the bloodstream."

• This quote underscores the importance of non-opioid pain management solutions for surgical patients.

• The program provides orthopedic surgeons with a complementary tool to improve surgical outcomes without needing to manage pain and behavioral health issues directly.
• It helps surgeons avoid the complications associated with opioid use and enhances patient emotional stability for faster recovery.
• The therapy supports value-based medicine by improving outcome scores and offering ancillary revenue streams for practices.

"Orthopedic surgeons know that if the patient already has opioids or narcotics in their bloodstream, they're going to have poorer outcomes."

• This statement explains the negative impact of opioids on surgical outcomes and the benefit of VR therapy as an alternative.

"From an orthopedic surgeon's perspective, we're the perfect complementary product."

• This quote outlines the supportive role of VR therapy in orthopedic practices, addressing challenges outside their expertise.

• The VR program is designed to be easy for physicians to implement, requiring only a prescription, with all logistics handled by the provider.
• Physicians receive regular updates on patient progress, maintaining their central role in patient care without additional administrative burdens.
• The shortage of behavioral health clinicians makes the remote VR solution an attractive option for immediate patient support.

"All they need to do is prescribe the product, we take it from there."

• This highlights the simplicity and efficiency of integrating VR therapy into a physician's practice.

"We send them weekly notes so that they know how their patient is progressing, so that they're still in charge of that patient's care."

• This ensures that physicians remain informed and involved in their patients' treatment progress.

• The VR therapy model offers economic benefits to practices through ancillary revenue, helping offset downward pressures on insurance reimbursements.
• It allows practices to provide additional services without the need for increased manpower or overhead.
• The model is likened to drop shipping, where the prescription acts as a ticket for direct delivery to the patient, streamlining the process.

"You're really helping them achieve higher outcome scores. And as we move more and more into value based medicine, those are going to continue to matter more and more."

• This quote emphasizes the importance of outcome scores in modern healthcare and the role of VR therapy in achieving them.

"What you've done is turn the physician's prescription really into a dropship ticket."

• This analogy illustrates the streamlined and efficient delivery model of the VR therapy program.

• Drop shipping in healthcare allows products to be sent directly from the manufacturer to the consumer, bypassing traditional inventory management.
• This streamlined process is particularly beneficial for medical prescriptions, enabling equipment and protocols to be sent directly to patients without requiring a visit to the doctor's office.

"There's drop shipping, as you were talking about, the process for the doctor. They fill out the prescription that gets entered into the system and that triggers the, all of the equipment and the protocols to be sent directly to the patient. They never even have to come to the doctor's office. It's incredible."

• The drop shipping model enhances efficiency in medical services by reducing the need for patient visits and expediting the delivery of necessary medical equipment and protocols.

• Successful entrepreneurial ventures in healthcare must provide value while minimizing friction for partners.
• Solutions should be clinically, financially, and process-wise optimal for healthcare providers like orthopedic surgeons.

"You need to create an environment that adds the most value and creates the least amount of friction for whoever you're trying to partner with."

• The focus is on making processes easier for healthcare providers, adding revenue, and improving patient outcomes.

• Insurance reimbursement is crucial for gaining traction in the healthcare market, as 95% of the system relies on it.
• New programs typically take years to get insurance reimbursement, but successful articulation of value can expedite this process.

"If you don't have a solution that works for the Insurance companies, you're never going to get true traction."

• Insurance companies prioritize financial outcomes and are interested in programs that reduce long-term costs, such as those associated with opioid dependency.

"Insurance companies know that if a patient becomes dependent on opioids or narcotics, that in workers compensation, for example, that patient then costs the insurance companies $40,000 a year for years on end."

• Insurance companies are moving from defensive to proactive strategies, using analytics to identify patients who would benefit from innovative programs and enrolling them directly.

• The movement towards value-based medicine aims to reduce costs by eliminating waste, with opioid dependency being a significant target for reduction.
• Programs that reduce opioid dependency are seen as major cost savers for the healthcare system.

"Opioid dependency? Absolutely the biggest waste in the entire system. Completely non value add, past the point of, you know, reducing or band aiding the pain."

• Eliminating opioid dependency is a primary goal for improving financial and patient outcomes in healthcare.

• Harvard MedTech offers a unique technology that complements surgeons, improves patient outcomes, and requires minimal input from physicians.
• The company's approach is seen as disruptive not only to orthopedics but to all of medicine, with numerous potential use cases.

"It is very hard to find a technology that can complement their ability to be a good surgeon, improve patient outcomes, take very little, if at any input from them physically as a physician in their time and their energy, and can add financial revenue to their bottom line."

• The technology is recognized for its potential to transform healthcare by improving efficiency and outcomes.

• Interested parties, including patients, providers, and insurance companies, are encouraged to contact Harvard MedTech via their website.
• The website provides detailed information about the program and a form to facilitate contact with the company.

"I would respectfully ask folks to go to our website, harvardmedtech.com it describes our program and the benefits. But also on the website you will find a form to give us your contact information and we'll have one of our teammates reach back out to you very quickly."

• Engaging with Harvard MedTech can lead to improved patient care and financial outcomes through innovative healthcare solutions.