Jayme Heim, MSN: Hidradenitis Suppurativa, New Research on the Horizon for Dermatology

This interview segment with HCPLive featured a discussion with Jayme Heim, MSN, she spoke on several topics including current therapies and future research regarding teledermatology and artificial intelligence.

Heim is both a Family Nurse Practitioner for West Michigan Dermatology and the Clinical Manager of the Psoriasis and Eczema Treatment Center, in which her role involves protocol development and day to day operations.

She was first asked about developments in the dermatology space with regard to the skin disease hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), and other similarly rarer diseases.

“So for patients with HS, to tell you the truth, I'm glad that we're going to have another option,” Heim explained. “Pretty soon there will be another medication as an IL-17, that is hopefully going to be approved shortly. So we have other options for those patients with HS. Also, we're looking at more JAK inhibition for HS patients. And I really think that we need these options. Because right now, the current therapy that we have just with a TNF-inhibitor, and a lot of my patients are not adequately controlled on medication. I don't think that we've directly hit that mechanism of action for those patients to really go ahead and control their disease.”

Heim was then asked about what kinds of new research and potential treatment options there are on the horizon in general, based on her observations and experiences.

“There are so many right now,” Heim explained. “There are therapies, not only looking at the different skin diseases like Behcet's and vitiligo, but also there are better therapies for HS. There are a lot of orphan diseases that we've considered in the past that haven't really been looked at. Now they're being looked at, and it's really important.”

Heim also noted that dermatologists are looking at, instead of injectable biologic therapies, converting that over to oral forms. She added that many encouraging developments are happening within the world of dermatology.

Later, she commented on how far she felt the dermatology world had to go before new technologies such as artificial intelligence and teledermatology were more widely implemented.

“I think we still have a long way to go,” she said. “I think that the skin itself lots of times is something that you need to see, you need to go ahead and assess it in other ways.”

For further information from the interview, watch the full segment posted above.

The quotes used here were edited for clarity.