Episode Transcript

Kirk: All right, Trevor, let's talk about episode.

Trevor: I've Lost Track. do you know.

Kirk: Yeah, I do know because our advisers are telling us we're in a new season.

Trevor: OK,.

Kirk: So this is Season three, Episode two. I think and this is spontaneous. Let's call it CannaCurious.

Trevor: Yeah, no, that's a great title. It's going to come up obviously right away, why we went with that. But I love that for title.

Kirk: CannaCurious.  We should also advertise before we get started on our CannaCurious discussion with Mr. Dave Berg.

Trevor: Yeah.

Kirk: From Strainprint is we belong to a group of other podcasters.

Trevor: We do. The Cannabis Media Collective. They've got all sorts of neat things. What have I heard lately? Some more stock tips from, some more stock tips. There's been all sorts. There is a trip to Toronto that Michael Peterson did and interviewed a guy who is doing cannabis tourism in Toronto. So that was another neat one.

Kirk: Yeah, there's about five or six of us all in this collective. And you don't you can you can listen to it to us individually or as a collective.

Trevor: Yeah. Just sign up for the Cannabis Media Collective whenever you get podcast. It's good.

Kirk: So, I've been online looking at Stats Canada. Cannabis use in the past three months. So, the last quarter of 2018. Cannabis use in the past three months by provinces. Well, Nova Scotia.

Trevor: Are they winning?

Kirk: They're winning. 21% of Nova Scotian have tried cannabis in the last three months of 2018. Manitoba.

Trevor: I'm going to guess.

Kirk: Oh, you're going to like this.

Trevor: Thirteen lucky. Thirteen.

Kirk: Well, a little higher. But you know what? British Columbia, 15.3%.

Trevor: Really? Yeah, I would have guessed that higher.

Kirk: Well, I'm not sure how many of them have memories. Oh, sorry that's Cheech and Chong. We don't want to do that. But in Manitoba we have 15.1.

Trevor: Wow. So getting close to one in five.

Kirk: Well, it's also like for close to BC, as many Manitobans have admitted to smoking cannabis as British Columbians.

Trevor: Well, yes, I'm not doubting stat's can, but they also sound like still hard numbers to get because not everybody really wants to admit to that in a survey because of this still ongoing stigma.

Kirk: It seems low to me. You know, it just seems low to me. But again, we'll have to see in years time. 19.4% of Canadian men have smoked cannabis again. That seems low to me. Didn't more people say they're smoking before legalization?

Trevor: Yeah, maybe this is people who have actually got legal stuff. But again, but it's interesting that, again, somewhere around one in five of us are trying cannabis or using it regularly or something along those lines. Again, the sky hasn't fallen. Legalization has been OK and hopefully the stigma is fading.

Kirk: So it's interesting, the stats of 15 year old legalization is eighteen by federal, but they're still trying to figure out how many kids. So I don't know why they don't just go 15 to 18 and then go eighteen to twenty four. But the biggest group is fifteen, twenty-four.

Trevor: And they get not shocking.

Kirk: No. And my group represents 10%. So the baby boomers are ten percent and after sixty-five, 5.2. Interesting.

Trevor: What is. So, before we get into just that interesting anecdote that came up last week, speaking, even older than you. Because it goes well into the Strainprint stuff, there's still a disconnect in pharmacies. So, one of my colleagues last week got called into the private counseling office by a long, long time patient in his 70s. A few medical conditions like we all get when we 70, but nothing too exciting. And he called him in and close the door because he and he pulled out this thing from Tweed, our local store, which is fine, you know, but he was just he'd gone in, I have nothing... I'm not saying nothing bad about the Budtender. The Bud tender, when the pharmacist went over this, it was a reasonable thing for him to give this 70-year-old guy. But the Budtender has no idea about this guy's medical conditions, the medication he's on and and and and and the patient, frankly, didn't really know all the right questions to ask. What he wanted was something to help him sleep.

Kirk: Right.

Trevor: So it was good that he eventually brought this down to the pharmacy and had one of my colleagues go over it with them. But again, I know selling like a broken record, shouldn't this be in a pharmacy? And as we're going to get to shortly and shouldn't I have access to some wonderful software from someone like Strainprint to help people use it?

Kirk: You seem awfully CannaCurious.

Trevor: I am CannaCurious yes.

Kirk: So let's talk about CannaCurious. We are interviewing Dave Berg, who is the president and chief technical officer, technology officer for Strainprint. Obviously, we wear it on our sleeve. We are big proponents, very excited for Strainprint as a business and what they offer us as clinicians.

Trevor: But I had no idea all the stuff they were into.

Kirk: Yeah, yeah. He goes on about how they've grown. Now, this is our advertising. Strainprint does support Reefer Medness, and we appreciate that. But this is a story beyond the marketing. This is a story about a tool, about a business. About statistics. About cannabis. How people use it.

Trevor: Yeah. From here to Israel.

Kirk: It's a it's a deep, rich story. So let's get David introduce himself and like basically the first part of the interview, I just had to listen. So listeners, listen to Mr. Dave Berg.

Kirk: Here's the most open-ended question I can ask you about Strainprint and your what you're building here. This community you're building is: how do you help people use cannabis better?

Dave: Helping people to use cannabis better is really fundamental to what we are and what we do. We all started off as patients. Entering into what was the MPR or way back when the MMPR program and we were patients that were looking to find out how to treat a variety of maladies, whether it was for us individually or for family members. And when we went to go and speak to physicians or other caregivers about cannabis as a viable option, they really didn't have any knowledge about cannabis or specifically strains or compositions and how they relate to the human condition. So, you know, we went and we did a lot of secondary research to see if we could find research and there really wasn't anything that good quality out there. So, what we do along the patient's journey is we give them the ability to log their interactions as it pertains to their malady. And they begin to learn what treatments are working well for them, what products, administration methods, dosing. And we provide that data back to the patient in a visualization in the app. So, they can learn as they go. What we do is we take that data and that is rolled up anonymously into a larger database. And what that database allows people like doctors and pharmacists and researchers and clinicians to do, is to analyze patient interactions so that they can make the right recommendations. So if you go to a pharmacy as an example and you want to say, I like a product that is going to work well for my arthritis in my knees, but I don't want to be drowsy. What product would you recommend? We have the data that allows or enables that practitioner to make a recommendation based on the experience of our users. So that's really what it's about, is we leverage the power of other users, give them a voice, and then when we group those voices together, they help formulate opinions by presenting the data to the decision maker.

Kirk: Perfect. You know, we're making a huge assumption. And I think it's fair to our listeners that they understand your application, that you've developed. This Strainprint app that goes on your phone, your smartphone, and you can trace and track your use of cannabis. So, if people are sort of jumping into this episode, I refer you back to episode Season one, Episode six, The Advocates where we first started when we first were introduced to Strainprint. So, I want to talk a little bit about that because I didn't have an opportunity with the last time we talked was about the statistics. Essentially, I see from your work-up on the Webpage that you're, the stats guy, you know, the software and the hardware.

Dave: Yeah, I'm the resident nerd.

Kirk: OK.

Dave: on the founder team.

Kirk: So, let's be a little nerdy now as a as a nurse. And Trevor, both of us jumped on this project because we saw how it would help us as practitioners in our field. To help and guide people. But some critics might say you're taking subjective information from somebody who is inputting their data. So how do you take subjective data and quantify it and say this is relevant? And again, I'm going qualify you know, someone's just smoked a joint man. They're high. How do they going to add that data? You know, how do they qualify that?

Dave: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's one that we get asked quite often by physicians and people that come from a clinical background. So being a Nurse Practitioner or being a pharmacist, you know, these are things that we would have to deal with regularly. So the challenge with cannabis as a medication, aside from the fact that it's been restricted for almost you know. Essentially, as a result of that restriction, there hasn't been a lot of study about the interactions. If you look at the typical drug and the way that it's formulated or compounded, it goes through a clinical vetting process. And the goal of that, that process is to deliver a standardized molecule to market that is that has replicated, that replicable effect to a large population of users, along with the side effect. Cannabis as a medicine is different because it's a plant-based medicine. It changes as the plant evolves. As it mutates.  As you have different growing conditions. You have different genetics. You have different typologies of growing. This all affects the outcome of the medicine. So, a patient typically would not have the understanding of their cannabis. The way we see it. When we look at cannabis as a medicine, we're looking at it not just in terms of its genetic category. It's funny name. It's producer and it's THC or CBD rating. What we're actually looking at is the other chemical composition of the plant. Being the terpene from the cannabinoids. So, when we're looking at the way people use this medicine, they are self-medicating. It's not as if you would go to a doctor and he's going to say, take these pills twice a day, make sure you have a full stomach. Patients are medicating on their own as they feel that they need it. So, there's no way for a clinician to really observe the use of the product, let alone a standardized product that has a single composition. Because of that, you have to observe the use of the product in real life. And we've got tens of thousands of patients that are using Strainprint regularly. So, when we're looking at the behaviors, someone's going to rate the severity of their symptoms before they start logging. Like, let's say I've got inflammation in my knee. I've got a lot of joint pain. It's about a seven. I'm going to tell the application, the mobile app, that I'm using a product. And the products that you're able to use, are products that we've cataloged from the adult recreational and ACMPR legal market. And then we ask you how you're going to administer it. Are you going to smoke it?  Are you going to vape it? Are you eating it in a cookie? Are you taking a gel cap? We're going to ask you how much you took and then we're going to wait for a period of time. And the period of time that we wait is dependent on the method of administration. If you're going to smoke it or vape, we're going to ask you in twenty minutes once onset effect has occurred. And we're going to ask you a simple question. How is your joint pain now? Are you aware of your pain? We'll also ask them at that time to report any of their emotive outcomes. Do they have a dry mouth or their eyes red? Are they feeling giggly? Are they talkative? These are all things that we gathered. The data that we gather is very relevant to the situation. And I would actually hazard to say that it's more accurate because we're gathering it at the time, rather than gathering after the fact.

Kirk: And you're gathering and you're gathering it from the actual individual patients who are entering the data into the app.

Dave: Yeah, so, this is an individual patient experience that we then combine to other like patients. So, if I was looking at arthritis in the knees and we were talking about joint pain as an example. The way I would look at that as a statistician or a health care practitioner would be, show me all the forty something year old males that are living in Ontario that are making use of medical cannabis to treat knee inflammation or joint pain. Then group the products based on most frequent use by number of users and number of users. And then we also ascribe an efficacy rating. So whenever we look at a product and it's used, it's a weighted average based on the population use of a given product. So, it actually evens out as we remove outliers and do various statistical methods.

Kirk: So, you know, I've used the app. I'm familiar with the app, and there's an awful lot of data I put in there, you know, in regards to how I've used it, how many puffs or how much I've rubbed on my shoulder or how many cookies I've eaten. How many grams per cookie. Now, if you put all that data into a relationship database like a I guess a huge Excel database, you can extract a whole lot of data. You can like I said, you could, if there are Dauphin users, you could easily go. OK, well, let's see how many people in Dauphin are using X strain from X store. So, you actually can offer something not just to the patients. You're offering something back to the to the Licensed Producers.

Dave: Yeah. You've hit the nail on the head. I mean, where the only difference there as we've grown beyond an Excel database and we have an enterprise grade system. But that's exactly what we're doing. So, the way the system is set up by Health Canada resellers or producers are not allowed to make representations about their product. They're allowed to represent them as a genetic as a product name, as a batch or a lot. But they really can't tell you if one is good for one or, you know, one malady or another. Whereas when we look at and roll it up, we have a lot of data about and this is all, by the way, fully confidential. So, it's HIPPA, PHIPA and FIPPA compliant, which means we we meet or exceed the needs confidentiality needs of Health Canada and various government entities. But what we do when we roll all that stuff up with that in mind is that it gives you a very clear picture of what various consumers are buying and why they're buying it.

Kirk: Yeah. I'm just trying to make it so as myself walking into a store. I choose, you know, I talk to the budtender and choose x flower because the budtender recommends it. I take it home, put it into the app and realize, you know, that didn't work as well as I thought it did. So, I put the information into the app. It goes back into the cloud. You pick it up and you start realizing, you know, Bubble Gum Kush doesn't work very well for arthritis. But, boy, a lot of people are getting a lot of hits on the Pineapple Express and I'm just throwing those names out. But so that's what you can do with this data. You can say what's not working and what is working.

Dave: That's exactly what it is. And we actually make we give patients access to that recommendation data about statistical data through the Explorer section of the app. So if you're CannaCurious or new to cannabis or you're an existing patient and you want to start treating for a different malady or symptom flare. You can actually go into the app and get recommendations and we'll recommend, you know, the top-rated flower as well as oils that that are being used by patients like you in a similar situation.

Dave: Now, you get away with doing that because essentially, it's not really your data. It's it's your client's data. So you what you're doing is a business isn't promoting a strain of cannabis or even promoting cannabis. What you're doing is providing information.

Dave: That's exactly right. Where, like I always tell people, we're a longitudinal study. We're an academic study that, you know, our goal, in addition to supporting academics, is to also help the industry supply chain, growers, pharmacy formularies to better understand how they can make products to meet the changing needs of the consumer.

Kirk: That's a wonderful segue into the study component of this interview. I just want to nail a couple things down first. When we're when we look when we look at the choices you have the Pineapple Express, the hubabba, where do you get those you actually go to? Now, you said ACMPR growers. So before legalization, you actively solicited from people who were part of the program, or did they come to you for what they were growing?

Dave: Well, I mean, thankfully, because we're in Canada. Canada is the ideal area to study, you know, interaction because of the processes put in place by the government. What we actually do is as patients, in the early days, what we would do is we would sign up to a Licensed Producer under the program and the producer would publish to the patient the composition of the products they were buying. So, compliance with what they are reporting changes from producer to producer. But it's becoming more relevant. So you're starting to see producers publish, you know, how much Humulene is in a given strain or how much beta-caryophyllene is in a strain. So, when we look at a strain, we translate the I guess, the human name, which is the Pineapple Express down to its chemical constituents. So the idea is always to make it easy for a patient, but then to draw the relevant correlations when we're studying it. And that is really about the chemicals. So initially we started manually scraping it. And as customers have come online to actually utilize the data for decision support, they've started providing their data for their products into the system.

Kirk: So, after October 17th, 2018, you now as a business could go to the I guess I'm going to call them LPs, but the recreational shops. So are you now adding those strains, into Strainprint as well?

Dave: We absolutely are. We have currently in the system we have support for adult recreational products that are available through standard retail. And we also have all the medical products that are available, either direct from Licensed Producer or through channels like Shoppers Drug Mart that are coming online. So, the idea is we don't delineate between a recreational product or a medical product. There are essentially two different supply chains. But essentially you could have a medical patient that's using a recreational product to treat the symptom because it works well for them. So, we need to make sure that we cover both supply chains. Currently, today we have over fifteen hundred legal products in the system that are being tracked.

Kirk: Fifteen hundred strains. So different species of cannabis flower or.

Dave: Well, flower or oils.

Kirk: Products

Dave: Those are the legal ones. Now we also have over 17,000 illicit products as well.

Kirk: So no wonder no wonder the medical industry is having such a tough time understanding this medicine. I mean, so your product, your product. Like I said, we are fans. I mean, when Trevor and I first saw your product many months ago, we just saw how it was and we sat down and said, these guys are going to grow and grow and grow. And so let's talk a little bit about the growth. So, gee whiz, Dave, I got so much. I'm going to backtrack. I want to talk about a little bit about populations now. I was listening to another podcast. You are primarily in a woman's market, are you not like you? Most of your clients are women, which I find interesting because today I'm on the Stats Canada webpage and 19 percent of males in Canada say they've smoked or done cannabis within the last three months of twenty eighteen, whereas 11 percent of the women. So obviously, more men are consuming cannabis in Canada. You have more women using Strainprint.

Dave: Well, I think that comes down to the genesis of Strainprint and where it came from. I mean, we you know, Stephanie Karasick is a founder and Chief Creative Officer. She came about the idea, you know, she is a mom living in Toronto and she was struggling with PTSD. And, you know, she went out to seek a solution from my doctor. And that actually led to the creation of the journal, which later evolved into Strainprint. So, it actually came from the mind of a very bright female. And we've been fortunate enough to surround ourselves with some very strong females that are passionate about care. And, you know, that's reflected in our user base. You know, over fifty two percent of our users are female.

Kirk: I would tell you that. I was just going to say I was going to tell you that validates just the fact that you're able to tell me that more females are using your app, your Strainprint app, validates for me because in the clinical space, women tend to be a little bit more interested in their health than men. So, having more women track their use of cannabis to me, anodically makes sense, so I'm not surprised by it. I think it's interesting. I think it validates Strainprint.

Dave: The other thing beyond that, I absolutely agree that women are more engaged on the platform in terms of the quality of the data. But we also start to see other interesting things. As an example, women don't like to smoke product. They prefer to vape products. Women are also larger users of processed oils over men. Most men prefer to actually smoke joints and they tend to use, they use oil less. So, we start to see differences in the treatment. The other thing that we see in females specifically is, is as females age and the hormonal level changes, their response to various strains of cannabis changed dramatically. So, it's not the type of thing where you have one strain that's going to work for you for the rest of your life. As the plant changes and your body changes, your interaction with the plant will change. So, you need to be mindful of that. And this is something we've only been able to see because we've been observing the behavior, you know, over the last two years.

Kirk: Wow. That is that is rather interesting.

Dave: Really interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, the other thing that we're doing with females, you know, because of who we are and our DNA is we are doing an international study on endometriosis with a partner in Israel. Actually, a couple of partners, Lumia Labs, Guernica, and also the Tel Aviv University, specifically to study endometriosis in Canada and in Israel and the interaction.

Kirk: Wow. And again, doesn't that validate because Israel is the is the mecca of cannabis research.

Dave: So, yeah, there's a lot of cannabis rock stars in Israel, that's for sure.

Kirk: Again, another validation for you guys. Earlier, I was talking about how you've grown in the six months since we've been aware of you and tracking you. You have a community online. You're able to you're able to provide statistics to clinicians and to LPs. What would you like to talk about first as so much you could share with us how you've grown from just from just the app?

Dave: I think one of the things that we're most excited about, aside from the app is, is our community. If we're talking about patients. There's a variety of sites out there that provide a lot of ratings, like whether it's Yelp or TripAdvisor, like ratings for products. But they don't really allow patients to get into the dialog that they want to get. They don't have peers that they can talk to and in a safe environment where they're not going to be judged or spammed or what have you. Originally, we tried to do this on Facebook. With a Facebook group. But we found that Facebook was getting in the way of us having the discussion because they, you know, they're hosted in the US and federally it illegit. So, we went and we developed their own platform. We spent about six months developing this for patients. And what it is, is that's integrated with the mobile application. So, if you already have the app, you can log in to community. it's one sign on. It's the companion to Strainprint. So, this is where you can go and ask questions about your treatment. There's a variety of forums that have been set up. We have private groups. There is it has its own messaging system built into it. So, if you want to securely communicate with other patients that are treating similar situations to you, you can do so in a safe environment. So, we set this up and we launched it towards the end of last year. And it's the community is growing exponentially. So, it's a dialog about the cannabis use and how you can be mindfully Medicated.

Kirk: It's a nice resource for people because there are lots of questions. What's the average age in your in your community and using Strainprint.

Dave: The largest cohort is actually between 30 and 38. Hold on I can actually as we're having a chat, I can pull up some stats. So, in terms of our breakout, about 20 percent of our audience is between 18 and 27. Thirty-eight is between 28 and between 28 years old and thirty-seven years old. Twenty five percent of it is between thirty-eight and forty-seven. And then the remainder of the remaining 21 percent is from 48 up.

Kirk: So it's so it's the 30 somethings that are enjoying using it.

Dave: Yeah, I think yeah. I think there's a lot of people in that area. If you look from 28 to 47, that's really the bulk of our data set right now. Where I think one of the most promising areas for cannabis as a medicine is specifically in elder care. As we all age, our dependence on pharmaceuticals increases. And that has a cost to the patient's physical well-being as it pertains to side effects and managing the side effects. It also has an impact to the health care practitioners as well as, you know, insurance companies and drug companies. So, if we can understand cannabis as a medicine, there's a variety of really good applications. As people age, it's a more cost-effective medication, in some cases less invasive. So, we need to understand how we can properly be used. It's not a magical pill, but it is definitely a very valuable tool in the medicine cabinet.

Kirk: But I would imagine some of the statistics, how long has Strainprint been in use? How long is the app been available?

Dave: So, the app, we started about two years ago, we launched the app.

Kirk: So, you don't really have you don't really have a lot of time yet to see trends. But in 20 years from now, you'll be able to follow a cohort and see how they have changed through cannabis or how cannabis has changed for them.

Dave: Exactly.

Kirk: So, I mean, in two years, I imagine right now, two years you've got to. How many did I hear correctly? A million data points?

Dave: No. One million complete interactions.

Kirk: What does that mean? What does that mean? That means when one million people are going through a use of Strainprint app.

Dave: Yeah. So that's one million recorded sessions.

Kirk: Wow.

Dave: So that means they sound that unidentified user with a date of birth, a gender, a set of conditions, a set of symptoms that has logged a symptom flare. Used the product. Told us the dosing that they used. Told us how they felt after onset occurred, and then also reported their side effects.

Kirk: Wow.

Dave: We've done that a million times.

Kirk: That, that. So now you can take that and split it down to how many people from America, how many people from Australia, how many people from Canada, how many countries are you involved with?

Dave: So currently we have Strainprint up and running in Canada and the US. I'd say about, you know, 90 percent of our data is generated in Canada. But in terms of users of the data for decision, support, and research, we've got customers in Colombia. We've got customers throughout the U.S. We've got coverage throughout Canada. We have customers in Israel. We also have the European Union coming online very soon with Germany in the way. And we're also in various discussions pertaining to the Australian market as well.

Kirk: How about how about your Uruguay? You're down there? The other legal question.

Dave: We're not we're not we're not down there yet. But I do like the sun and nice weather. So you may be able to twist my arm.

Kirk: I was going to say to I'm a cheap traveler. If you need somebody to go and scope something, I would just let me know. I'll get my backpack and off I go.

Dave: We can Air B&B together.

Kirk: Well, I was going to couch surf, but that's. A couple more quick questions for you. Did I give you enough time to talk about the studies? The Endometriosis? I'm sorry, I cut you off. Is there more you wanted to say about that study?

Dave: Sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, the endometrium study that we're conducting is an international study. So, it's been designed with leading gynecologists as well as researchers in the States, and it will run in Israel and Canada. The goal of the study is to analyze patient behavior for females that are suffering from endometriosis related flares and to understand which strains of cannabis provide the highest level of release. Our goal after collecting that data is going to be to formulate next generation therapeutics that we can then also trial on the platform. So, we have the ability to conduct clinical-type study on Strainprint. That's a function that is not typically seen by the average consumer. But doctors and clinics across the country do use Strainprint to track patient interaction.

Kirk: Now, you've just you've just quantified it for me. So again, walk through this. So you've got doctors and PhDs and doctorates who have a cohort of patients that they're studying, who have endometriosis. They have their control group. They have their sick group. Then they give they give a certain group some cannabis and they say, we want you to ask you some questions. We're going to put those answers into this app called Strainprint. And then we'll go to the group that that is not using cannabis and we'll have some equal questions to compare. So, in this sense, Strainprint is being used strictly as a database for these researchers. So, it's not the patients entering the data, it's the doctors?

Dave: No this is patient reported.

Kirk: So OK.

Dave: But what but what we do also do with the Strainprint is we also have a survey engine built into the platform. So, what we can do is when we're doing a clinical study is based on the number of recorded observations. As an example, I as a clinician may then say after 10 recorded interactions for Endometriosis flair, send this patient an extended questionnaire because they're part of the study, and then we'll send an expanded questionnaire and they can complete that questionnaire and submit it back. So depending on the way or the protocol that study wants to support, we can we can integrate a variety of different data capture methods.

Kirk: Wonderful.

Dave: And along the way, what we do to keep patients or consumers engaged is, we're rewarding them for interacting with the behavior by giving them Strainpoints. What they can do as they can as they interact and build up a point balance, they got rewarded for reporting their data.

Kirk: That's wonderful. Now, also, you're involved with not just that one study, there's 10 others. So briefly, what are some of the interesting thing we should be following?

Dave: Yes, that was the first one. We've also been academically published in the Journal of Affective Disorder. Specifically looking at dosing rubrics for stress, depression, and anxiety. We have another academic paper that is going to be published within this quarter, specifically on migraines. So, you know, what is the appropriate way to dose for a migraine. When that paper comes out and that's published, I think it's going to and I think it's going to be very big based on the results that we've seen. We are also conducting a PTSD study with patients. We have an oncology study that we're working on with some folks at University Health Network. As well as the chronic pain study.

Kirk: That's exciting.

Dave: University Health Network.

Kirk: That's very exciting.

Dave: So, we're it's exciting, especially when you have, you know, schools like Duke University reaching out to you and saying, you know, we want to work with you and figure out a way to utilize this data. So, it's starting to go places, which is exciting for Strainprint, but also for patients. We are giving them a voice.

Kirk: For me as a clinician, two years is not enough time. You guys got to be out there longer, right? I mean, I need more data.

Dave: We're not going anywhere my friend.

Kirk:  I get it. But I'm truly excited for you. I'm excited for us as clinicians. I'm not directly involved with cannabis as a clinician, but I do obviously have clients that come into the room who I have to discuss cannabis with. But when this kind of data comes out, it validates for me what I think I know about cannabis. And I can only say what I think I know because there are too many Westerners out there that say we don't have enough data. Well, Strainprint data nerds are creating the data as we go. It's quite fascinating. I'm going to just turn. Trevor, do you have any questions? Trevor just walked in the room halfway through, so.

Dave: Hey Trevor

Trevor: Hi, Dave, That was that was great. Like, I don't know, smiling from ear to ear. So those clinical practice guidelines is basically what you're talking about, because that's what we all want. We want someone to walk in with anxiety, depression, and for me to say, OK, well, if you've got symptom X, we should reach for Strain Y.  And that's what it looks like you're getting published as we speak. So. Phenomenally exciting.

Dave: Yeah, I mean, as a pharmacist, I think you will also appreciate the challenge that the cannabis poses for the retail pharmacy. So, you know, we not only talk about the challenges associated with what works for my knee inflammation or for my cluster headache or whatever the case may be. But as a matter of if you go into a pharmacy and say to your pharmacist, you know, I want to make sure that I'm not going to have any bad interactions with the molecular drugs I'm taking. What should I do? Or, you know, someone comes in and says to the pharmacist, hey, do I. Is cannabis a viable therapy for what I'm taking this other drug for? Can you give me some advice?

Trevor: Yeah, those are absolutely questions I get every day.

Dave: Right. So we actually built decision support systems for the retail pharmacy industry that are actually deployed across the country. We'll be announcing sometime soon officially. But it's been up and running for a couple of months where we've been, we actually now provide decision support for pharmacists so they can make appropriate suggestions to patients that have questions about which products they should be using.

Trevor: Well, I'll just say thank you because, yeah, I get the interaction question easily once a week. And yeah, I can dig through some literature and go, well, theoretically this Cytochrome P450 may be here, but yeah, have it all in one tool. That's well that's what I have for the rest of pharmacy world. Right. I've got drug interaction software. I can plug things in so yeah I can make a Strainprint drug interaction software. I'm very excited.

Dave: The other thing that that I think as a pharmacist you'll be excited about is we're now starting to profile products in terms of Strainsheets. So what that means is when we look at patient interaction, that's one way to look at the product. The other thing is that we spin it around and we look at a given product or strain. What we can now do is say what is the strain most often used for? Where does it have the highest efficacy? What is the mix between gender use? Is there a difference between, what is the most effective dosing methodology? Where in the country is use of this product most prevalent? So, you know, what time of day is this product typically is? What are the reported side effects on a rated scale?

Trevor: Well, that's all fantastic. So I get a 49-year-old woman with MS who walks into the pharmacy and goes, you know, my biggest problem is spasticity. I should be able to look up sort of 49-year-old woman in Manitoba with MS spasticity. And these are the most popular strains.

Dave: That's not most popular.

Trevor: Or most effective. Yeah.

Dave: These are the ones that are most frequently used as categorized by number of patients, as well as a number of recorded users, and then the weighted average expressed as an efficacy measure so that you can tell how well it works for the given situation.

Trevor: Well, I'll turn it back to Kirk, but sorry, one last little geeky thing. So I know you guys are linking strain's to patient outcomes and things like the which Terpene to a patient outcome. And those are all very exciting. What about as I think the LP's are now having to report genetic. Are you guys to the point yet of being able to link, you know, such and such, but batch of genetics to patient outcome yet? Or is that kind of down the road?

Dave: That's a great question. So, we don't we are not a vendor that genetically certifies the genetics. So, there's great companies out there like Block Strain. There are a company that does that. You have companies in the US as well, like Phyla by Violence Bioscience that also take DNA of strains. I think that's very helpful to the industry and I think we're going to see more of that come into play. That basically tells a patient or a pharmacist or a doctor that the genetics that you are using are, in fact, said genetics. And the reality is we see this in the US market. There's a lot of product substitution that goes on which just would not fly in Canada. So, it's important to have those measures in place and to understand the way a strain is profiled from a genetics perspective. The way we look at it is we're recording the chemical composition that you would see and a C of A that's a Certificate of authenticity or analysis. Those are the lab reports. We're analyzing interaction with patients not only from supplier to supplier product to product, but we're also analyzing the differences in interaction as batches or lots change.

Trevor: Oh, that's amazing.

Kirk: Dave.

Trevor: I better turn back to Kirk. I'll take too much time. Thanks, Dave. That was fantastic. Back to Kirk

Kirk: You know, as a data nerd. You'll get the science nerd I've got in the corner here because it's hard to get a pharmacist excited about something. You got my buddy here just he can't stay still now. He just sees the Science in all of this. It's fantastic. Final word, sir. We need to sum it up. Final words. Go ahead.

Dave: Anyone who CannaCurious, medical or otherwise, who wants to learn more about the way they can use cannabis more effectively. Come on over the Strainprint. You know. Take a look at Community. Download the app. We're here to support you. We're patients like you and we want to help you to live more functional lives. That's why we're here.

Trevor: I know I say it a lot, but another good one.

Kirk: Another good one. OK, everyone is playing the Reefer Medness drinking game. Have a drink. Another good one.

Trevor: But no, he was so good. He went over everything from endometriosis in Israel to, you know, obviously one of my favorites. I get asked about interactions with cannabis all the time. They are creating a software that's going to help me answer that question for patients.

Kirk: Well, the last time I was deeply in a relationship database was when I was doing my own masters and the way I could correlate information. How I could take one bit of data and related to another bit of data, I was sitting here relating back almost 20 years since I did that study. My own study. Is to think about how much information they have. It's and it's only two years.

Trevor: Yeah, no, they're definitely going places. And I think it bears repeating though, they're working really hard on privacy of your information. They've hit all I don't know if you call it the alphabet soup, but he listed. But they're basically hit all the pieces of legislation that you and I and all of the health care practitioners have to follow about keeping people's information private. They hit all those too.

Kirk: So that's really the only information they have on you, if you become part of this community, is your user name or your or your email. Like, you don't like on the Strainprint, if you don't have to put your name in it. You just put your email into it your age. Some demographics, they got it. So they don't even have your name. They don't have your address.

Trevor: No, but just, you know, people worry about, you know, entering especially medical information into apps, I think Strainprint has you covered.

Kirk: Right. So, Trevor, let's talk about My Cannabis Story.  So you have a contest.

Trevor: Yeah, we're going to run a contest with Strainprint. They gave us some fantastic merch. You're really going to like this stuff. And we'll give you some more details coming up. But the long and the short of it is, please give us a My Cannabis Story. You go to the website, www.reefermed.ca. Record My Cannabis Story. Email it to us. Use your voice memo app on your phone. Keep it to about a minute. And of all the My Cannabis Stories that come in, I think we decide we have enough merch for three big prizes.

Kirk: Yeah, actually quite large prizes. They've been very kind.  The My Cannabis Story. We're getting feedback from you, on social media that you want more stories. Well, people, we can give you more stories if you give us more stories. So we're going to incentivize it. Yes, we're going to make it worthwhile for you. You're going to get Strainprint merch.

Trevor: Or shot at it anyway.

Kirk: Or a shot at it. And you're also going to get some great stories. This is going to run over a couple of months. Please follow us on social media. We have Reefer Medness on Instagram.

Trevor: Twitter, Facebook. Yeah, yeah. And we'll post more details. But.

Kirk: My Cannabis Stories.

Trevor: Give us a My Cannabis Story. You'll be entered in the contest.

Kirk: And stay tuned. And guys, tell a friend, tell a friend about our podcast. We are still going by word-of-mouth. And the other thing is, if you want to help perpetuate and you think that we can offer a voice, help sponsor us and help support us and we'll send you a package, how you can support the podcast and get some advertising for your business. It's always good to help information flow.

Trevor: Absolutely. Go to the home of Reefer Medness on the Web. www.reefer.ca. For all the details, Kirk. Another good one. So music today. Who are we doing?

Kirk: We're going to listen to the Dust Poets. They're still within the 100-mile diet.  The Dust Poets, sort of kind of in Onanol where the major lead singer songwriter lives. People that know our district will know Michael's bookstore.

Trevor: Poor Michaels

Kirk: Poor Michael's bookstore. So the album is Lovesick Town and the song is a Walk Away, the Dust Poets.  Thank you Trevor Shewfelt the pharmacist.

Trevor: Thank you. Kirk Nyquist the nurse.

Kirk: This has been fun.

Trevor: From the city of Sunshine, Dauphin, Manitoba,.

Kirk: Produced by the Parkland poet.