EPISODE 18 - Michael Winlo and Alistair Vickery
“Let’s use this opportunity to learn from every patient”
Michael Winlo
In today’s podcast, I spoke with Dr. Michael Winlo and Dr. Alistair Vickery, who are the respective managing and medical directors of Emyria - a drug development company that specialises in the fast-track development of novel therapies for difficult to treat conditions. See below for their full bios.
In today’s podcast We Discuss;
Their path to psychedelic medicine,
The history of the Clinical Care Model at Emyria, and their attempts to consolidate the mountain of anecdotal evidence about the efficacy of cannabinoids,
Michael’s feelings of being underprepared to deal holistically with patients after medical school, and his shift away from the coalface of clinical practice towards medical research and business development,
Alistair’s professional past working with big medical data sets, and his path to working more directly and medicinally with cannabinoids,
The war on drugs,
Alistair’s experience with the ubiquity of mental health in General Practice,
The ‘organizational delivery challenge’ of the current medical model,
The Clinical Care Model at Emerald Clinics, and the hope that it will lead to innovation in the delivery of healthcare,
The origin story of the company,
The undifferentiated nature of the average Emeral Clinic patient’s medical presentation - and how their co-morbidities allow the company to take a ‘broad sweep of well-being data’,
The potentially generalizable nature of cannabinoids,
The referral sources for the company, and the predominance of pain as a primary presenting issue,
Tep Kaptchuk’s research on placebo,
The potential opportunity to ‘package’ care programmes,
Emyria’s exclusive partnership with UWA to research psychedelic therapies, and their partnership with Mind Medicine Australia
The recent publication in nature of the following study: MDMA-assisted therapy for severe PTSD: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 study
Matt Piggot’s chemical work with novel psychedelic therapies
The concept of an atelier, and how to navigate the ‘hype-cycle’ of psychedelic investment, and the need for commercial incentivization,
The concept of a window of tolerance in MDMA treatment,
The potential paradigm shift from palliative care to curative care and Johan Hari’s book Lost Connections,
The risk of a premature circumscription around certain therapeutic modalities alongside psychedelics,
The Master and his Emissary and the ‘betweenness of things’
Dr. Michael Winlo
Managing Director, Emyria
Dr. Michael Winlo is the Managing Director of Emyria, one of Australia’s most exciting druge development start-ups. Michael holds a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery with Honours from the University of Western Australia as well as a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University. Prior to Emyria, Michael was CEO at Linear Clinical Research Ltd (Linear) – a company providing clinical trial services for US- and Asia-based biotech companies. Linear was the first site in Australia, and one of the first few in the world, to successfully adopt electronic data capture technology. Michael retains a Directorship at Linear. Prior to Linear, Michael was Health Lead at Palantir Technologies – a Big Data company based in Silicon Valley California.
Dr Alistair Vickery
Medical Director, Emyria
Dr Alistair Vickery is a specialist medical practitioner with over 30 years’ experience. Prior to Emyria, Alistair was an Associate Professor of Primary Health Care at the University of Western Australia and Deputy Chair of the Postgraduate Medical Council of WA.