Faces of Digital Health (Tjasa Zajc)

This episode explores the role of at-home diagnostic testing in managing and preventing sexually transmitted diseases. More than 1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which include syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, HIV hepatitis, and other infections, are acquired every day worldwide. The majority of STIs are asymptomatic early detection that much more important to prevent the spread of these diseases. According to WHO, globally, 38.4 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2021. Science has advanced immensively to help treat and manage HIV. For over a decade, populations at risk can take preventative pills, which prevent HIV infections by over 99%. Unfortunately, access to this prophylaxis shouldn’t be taken for granted. In the US, prevention is supposed to be covered by insurance under the Affordable Care Act. However, in September, a district court ruling in Texax potentially endangered this access. A Christian-owned company argued against the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that insurers and employers offer plans that cover PrEP for free. The argument was that this statutory provision “forces religious employers to provide coverage for drugs that facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity, and intravenous drug use.” The company won the case, and the ruling opened up concerns about what this will mean for future efforts and coverage for preventative health measures.  In this - which was published before the Texas Court ruling -, you will hear from  Emma Rayer is the Head of Strategic Partnerships for Ash Wellness, a remote diagnostics solution. Ash Wellness supports traditional healthcare systems, universities, public health initiatives, and digital health companies in giving patients access to at-home sample collection kits that are then sent and analyzed in laboratories.  Emma talked about the differences in the attitude towards testing for STIs in South Africa, where she grew up in and the US, where she lives now. She also explained how the Ash platform works, how is at-home diagnostics market evolving, and more.  www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Recap of this episode: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/std-prevention-through-platform Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Thank you! :) !Subscribe to the monthly newsletter! - https://fodh.substack.com/

Being a doctor can be very gratifying when a life is saved or a patient is cured. However, the number of jobs and skills physicians need to master is increasing with the advancement of technology and science. This makes the medical environment increasingly stressful, also because at the moment, many IT solutions are burdensome and add the bureaucratic workload to the schedules of doctors. Today’s topic is how to doctors approach and manage medication prescribing. I spoke with David W. Bates, Patient Safety Expert and Harvard MD, who is an internationally renowned expert in patient safety, using information technology to improve care, quality-of-care, cost-effectiveness, and outcomes assessment in medical practice. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he co-directs the Program in Clinical Effectiveness. He directs the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and serves as external program lead for research in the World Health Organization’s Global Alliance for Patient Safety. He has published over 700 peer-reviewed papers.  We discussed:  How is patient care changing and impacting medication management, Why doctors ignore alerts of decision support systems, What are healthcare IT systems missing in the UX design,  What do doctors hope to see from IT in the near future, And how should organisations approach patient safety culture improvements? Enjoy the discussion, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth,com This discussion was part of a series of discussions recorded for the movie (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors?  Opportunity: HRSA Announces New Loan Repayment Program for Behavioral Health Providers. Learn more and apply here: https://bhw.hrsa.gov/funding/apply-loan-repayment/star-lrp

Bianca Rose Phillips is a Global Digital Health Law theorist from Australia, and the founder of a Digital Health Think Tank. In her legal work, she is focused mostly on Australia and the USA. Many people know her by her framework of the so-called 8 pillars of digital health law-making. Bianca also contributed to the recently published book, Voice Technology in Healthcare, she is a lecturer and she also runs two podcasts - Too nice for law and Digital Health Law series. In this discussion, she talks about the current state of digital health law in general, why she opted out of My Health Record, why patients need to be responsible about their data, the legal standpoints in data privacy and ownership, and more. Episode Summary More about Bianca:  Website: www.biancarosephillips.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/biancaphillips/ Join the Voice for equality event on 28 April Browse through other episodes as well at www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

One of the speakers at the Nextmed Health Conference 2023 said: “In the past, people didn’t age; they just died.” This is still a daily reality in many low-income countries, which face a lack of workforce, poor healthcare system structure, and lack of resources. In this episode, we will learn about Nigeria. Nigeria has 220 million people which is roughly ⅔ of the population of the US. While many healthcare-related resources are scarce, the Internet is available and so is the fierce ambition of local entrepreneurs. These use digital tools to bring healthcare information and care closer to patients or to upskill the workforce. So what does care in Nigeria look like? What challenges do startups face? Where do they get investments?  Hear from: Charles Umeh, Chief Medical Officer of CribMD, Ossai Ifeanyi CEO of CribMD, Jennie Nwokoye, CEO of Clafiya and Christian Chidoziem, Pharmacy Student and Entrepreneur. Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/

Because US healthcare is private and operates by the rules of the free market, prices for services and medications can differ substantially. Solutions such as GoodRx and Amazon Pharmacy are addressing price transparency for consumers. On the other side are the Real Time Prescription Benefit Providers which help physicians see drug prices for a specific patient even before that patient leaves their office. The challenge with knowing how much a drug will cost a patient lies in the fact that different insurance companies have different policies regarding how much they will pay for medication. Patients might have a plan with high deductibles. But it’s not just the provider and the insurance company: prices depend on the Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PMS) - intermediaries that manage prescription drug benefits on behalf of health insurers. PBMs negotiate prices with drug manufacturers and pharmacies.  In this episode, Carm Huntress, the CEO of RxRevu Real Time Prescription Benefit Provider company, talks about the upcoming challenges of prices related to precision medicine, how drug pricing affects prescribing and treatment, and how price transparency can change the medication prescribing process. Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Episode summary: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/rxrevu-drug-pricing

Africa is a huge continent with 1.2 billion people and a diverse set of countries. Healthcare systems are generally poor, with workforce and supply chain struggles, and infrastructure challenges such as power outages. In this episode you will hear about how drones are used in Malawi for healthcare delivery. Herbert Weirather is the CEO of Jedsy - a technology company based in Switzerland with the ultimate aim of designing and developing high-end multipurpose drones. Jedsy is present in Switzerland, Malawi, India and Brazil. In this discussion, Herbert explained: What challenges are present in the medical supply chain in Africa, Which stakeholders does the company work with, what’s their business model, and why there is no such thing as competition in the medical supply drone delivery space, because healthcare needs all the help it can get.  Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/ Jedsy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGaXHdjoQ-Q https://jedsy.com/

Antimicrobial resistance is a global problem related to the overuse of antibiotics and the lack of development of new ones. Many solutions are entering the market to address the issue: software solutions to identify, track and predict antibiotic-resistant infections and help prescribers with more accurate prescribing of antibiotics.  Antibiotics are not appealing to the pharmaceutical industry from a business perspective. The reason is that new antibiotics are intended for a fraction of all patients. So if you develop a drug that’s meant to be used as the last resort for clinicians after they've tried all other options, clinicians would more often than not try to avoid using these new antibiotics if not absolutely necessary.  Among the problems with antibiotics is the fact that many are very broad-spectrum, used to kill several different bacteria. So in this episode, we’re going to change the paradigm of antimicrobial treatments: what if you could target harmful bacteria more precisely? You’ll hear from Alexander Belcredi, co-founder and Co-CEO of the biotech startup PhagoMed, which was acquired by BioNTech and renamed BioNTech R&D Austria in October 2021. Phagomed has been researching the field of antimicrobials and also developed an innovative treatment for bacterial vaginosis. In today’s discussion, you’ll hear about the challenges with the development of antimicrobial therapies, and also learn more about Phagomed’s journey before the acquisition.   This episode is supported by EiT Health Germany, which is one of eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) currently funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). EiT Health Germany connects 150 renowned partners from industry, research and education from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The unique network helps initiate outstanding innovations in the health sector. If you're a startup working in the field of digital health or biotech and don't know EiT Health Germany yet, I would encourage you to visit eit-health.de, where you will find more about innovation, acceleration, and education programs. Learn more: EiT Catapult Program: https://eit-health.de/en/eit-health-catapult-2021/ EiT Health Germany: https://eit-health.de/en/   More about antimicrobial resistance:  How Can We Optimize the Use of Antibiotics? (Oliver Schacht, OpGen): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f130-how-can-we-optimize-the-use-of-antibiotics-oliver-schacht-opgen?rq=antibiotic   US Clinicians: Reflect on how this Podcast applies to your day-to-day and earn AMA PRA Category 1 CMEs here: https://earnc.me/UpR9lQ

This episode explores health literacy improvement and women empowerment in Malaysia, Kenya and Tanzania.    You are going to hear from two speakers: Shamala S. Hinrichsen, the CEO of Hanai, a company providing health information to the underserved populations in Malaysia and Kenya. The other speaker is Mariatheresa Samson Kaduschi, the CEO and CO-Founder of Mobile Afya, which provides healthcare information to people in Tanzania and slowly scaling to other countries in Africa as well. We talked about the specifics of these three markets, the technology used to serve as wide of a population as possible, and some of the challenges the female founders face when designing and implementing solutions that are critical for society, but less profitable from the investment point of view. Episode Summary To explore other episodes as well go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com.

In the last few years, we've witnessed a whirlwind of developments in the world of Digital Therapeutics (DTx) - from FDA approvals sparking optimism for the industry, to the establishment of regulatory frameworks in countries like Germany, France, and Belgium. However, in 2023, the industry faced a stark reality check, marked by the fall of some key players and healthcare systems' hesitancy towards embracing and financing these innovations. This turbulence has reshaped strategies and raised critical questions about the future of DTx. 🔍 In this episode learn more about: 📊 The current state of the DTx industry in 2024, 🗣️ Key debates of digital therapies industry players, 🌐 Advocacy efforts pushing the boundaries for global adoption, 🚀 Strategies to accelerate the integration of digital therapies worldwide. Newsletter: fodh.substack.com Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

The field of generative AI companies is evolving fast and many companies, that have been exploring the field for years, are gaining in visibility. However, new companies are popping up as well. One of them is Hippocratic AI, founded in 2023. Hippocratic AI building a safety-focused large language model (LLM) for the healthcare industry. The company raised 50 million US dollars this year. In this episode, Munjal Shah, CEO and Founder of Hippocratic AI talked about what exactly does the company mean by positioning itself as a safety-based LLM, what convinced investors, how are they building the team, and why there are a lot of inefficiencies to be solved before we use generative AI for diagnosis. This episode will give you a basic understanding of:  how are large language models built,  what’s the difference between horizontally and vertically build models,  where LLMs could replace (yes, “replace” as in cater to the staffing needs in healthcare) the healthcare workforce  https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/ Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ SPONSOR Looking for an alternative to coffee? Magic Mind Go to magicmind.com/digitalhealth use the code DIGITALHEALTH20 to get a discount on your purchase

Artur Olesch is Berlin-based journalist specializing in digital health, the founder of aboutDigitalHealth.com, and the editor-in-chief of ICT&Health International. In this discussion, he shares his thoughts on the European legislation of healthtech, his thoughts on most intriguing books in tech and AI, and more.  His 3 book picks:  Ray Kurzweil - Singularity is nearer  Ethan Mollick - Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner - Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Show notes: 03:00 About Ray Kurzweil - Singularity is nearer  10:00 Ethical use of healthcare data - how sharing is connected to democratic values  14:00 Data analytics and data use examples and inspiration 17:00 DiGA in the field: do doctors know it  18:45 Approach to behavioral health improvement and the role of digital 20:00 Book 2: Ethan Mollick - Intelligence  22:58 Predicting disease - yes or no?  26:00 Best insights from conference, top topic: ambient intelligence systems  35:00 Hopes and fears about the future of healthcare digitalization www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

Healthcare is facing challenges on all fronts. WHO estimates a projected shortfall of 10 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Countries at all levels of socioeconomic development face, to varying degrees, difficulties in the education, employment, deployment, retention, and performance of their workforce. Several other factors, such as the aging population and the rising demand for healthcare services, put healthcare systems under pressure to change and adapt. To a degree, with the help of technology. A big topic in many systems, especially in the US, is the move of retail providers such as Amazon and pharmacies, Walgreens, and CVS into primary care. Hospitals are looking at opportunities for virtual care and turning homes into hospital-like environments supported by virtual monitoring.  At this year’s NextMed Health Conference is San Diego, Rasu Shrestha - Chief Innovation & Commercialization Officer, Executive Vice President at Advocate Health - hospital system of 67 hospitals across six states – Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin, mentioned that the health system made a deal with Best Buy, the provider of consumer electronics.  In this episode, we will take this news as a starting point for a broader discussion: how is healthcare transforming globally, and what does the shift towards virtual care look like in 2023? You will hear from experts from the US, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, Kenya, China, and UAE who spoke or attended the NextMed Health conference.  Speakers: Rasu Shrestha - Chief Innovation & Commercialization Officer, Executive Vice President at Advocate Health (USA), Ali Hashemi, investor, CEO of meta[bolic] (UAE), Bianca Rowenhorst, CIO at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports in the Netherlands, Lucien Engelen, thought leader, who operates globally at the convergence of Innovation & Strategy for executive boards, governments, corporates (Netherlands), Michael Friebe, HealthTEC Inventor/Investor/Entrepreneur and professor (Germany), Alex Zhavorkonkov, CEO of InSilico Medicine (USA, China, Canada, UAE, Belgium, UK, and Taiwan),  Emilian Popa, CEO of Ilara Health (Kenya) Zayna Khayat, VP Client Success Teladoc Health in Canada, In house health futurist at Deloitte Canada's Life Sciences & Healthcare team and Adjunct faculty with the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management in the Health Sector Strategy stream (Canada).

Dr. Padmini (Mini) Murthy - Professor and Global Health Director at New York Medical College School of Health Sciences and Practice. Dr. Murthy is a physician and an activist who trained in Obstetrics and Gynecology. She has practiced medicine and public health for the past 28 years in various countries. She worked as a consultant for United Nations Population Fund, she is the Secretary-General of the Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA) and its NGO representative to the United Nations (UN). She is the global health lead for the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA). In 2020 she published a book titled Technology and Global Public Health, which is a great read if you wish to get a perspective about health and technology, women, and technology in countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Japan, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and more. This episode explores the book’s content, the emphasis on women’s health and the impact of COVID on women’s health, the power of mHealth for public health, especially in developing countries, using apps for gender empowerment.  Technology and Global Public Health  - https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030463540 Faces of digital health website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com  Leave a rating or review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth 

If you ever want to go to a healthcare innovation conference that doesn’t shy away from potentially controversive topics, HLTH is your place to go. In June 2024, the conference, which attracts 12,000 people in the US, came to Europe. At the center of the exhibition hall stood the Heart Stage focused on topics related to women’s health. Around it were the exhibitor booth and other stages, each designed with a different theme, each like a theatre setup that made speakers feel like stars. Why do people love going to HLTH? Because it’s focused on the experience of the attendees in “a little extra” way. The ticket includes meals, music, there were massage and hair salon in the middle of the exhibition floor, lots of evening networking events, from more formal but still unusual ones, such as the Phillips reception in a museum, to the closing evening with a concert by The Libertines. When the experience is good, and festival-live, it attracts people. When people come, you very quicky attract VIPs of the industry, who many hope to meet and do business with. Win win. In this episode, you will hear impressions and insights from speakers and attendees of the event. You will hear about: partnerships and investment in Europe, women’s health, the German market, what companies don’t understand about patient engagement, and AI.  Speakers: John Halamka, President of Mayo Clinic Platform, Sara Schmachtenberg, Digital Health Venture Expert / Head of Data and Analytics, Europe & USA at Galen Growth, Simon Phillip Rost, the Chief Marketing Officer at GE Healthcare, Jen Horonjeff, PhD, Founder and CEO of Savvy Cooperative, and Ronnie Sharpe, co-founder and COO at Savvy Cooperative, Christophe Jauquet, Author & Professional Keynote Speaker on how business & technology shape a healthier, happier, more sustainable future.  Dorothée Marie-Louise Doepfer, Deputy Head of Digital Labs / Program Management Digital Health Accelerator & Community Building & Co-organizer Berlin Institute of Health at Charité. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: fodh.substack.com

Marie is the CEO of the Centre for Digital Business. She is a writer, commentator and international speaker on artificial intelligence, digital transformation, cyber, technology, ethics and the human experience. Marie’s expertise is the human interface in complex servicing systems. She is the co-creator of Nadia, the first AI digital human for service delivery and the creator of the AI digital human cardiac coach. She has a rish career behind her - she led the collaborative development of Microsoft’s global e-government strategy, led business authentication, business digital identity and professional digital credential initiatives, was Chief Technology Architect (CTA) of the Australian Government Health and Human Services Access Card program. In this episode, Marie talks about healthcare in Australia, how can we make AI solutions such as coaches more human and her thoughts regarding the future development of AI for healthcare. More episodes: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

HLTH (https://hlth.com/) is an event where you will see a literal forest on one of the stages, be able to take a selfie with a unicorn mascot, and get perks like hlth branded pink nail polist on your entrance. In the last few years, HLTH has become the most flashy, visible and must-go digital health event in the US. In this episode, Richard Scarfo, president of HLTH, talks about HLTH's approach to making events memorable, why HLTH is taking experience economy as a guiding principle in the investment in the scene at HLTH. You will also hear networking tips, and why HLTH is coming to Europe in June 2024.  HLTH Europe (17-20 June 2024): https://europe.hlth.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

Medical progress is driven by research, and good research requires good data. The largest single-site cancer center in Europe and the biggest chemotherapy center in the UK - The Christie NHS Foundation Trust runs 650 clinical trials at any given time. They recently went live with a new electronic Patient Reported Outcome Measures (ePROMs) service helping to connect patients with the hospital trust through their cancer journey. As explained by Phil Bottomley, EHR Strategic Lead at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, the digitization of ePROMs is only the beginning of the digitalization process of over 600 clinical forms used in the hospital. The hospital’s digital transformation strategy is based on a data-first approach, ensuring that the used data models enable the creation of a longitudinal record. They chose openEHR specification - a product and vendor-independent specification, striving to make data independent of any software provider. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive a recap of the whole cancer series: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth The topic of this episode is supported by Better - a provider of an open data digital health platform, electronic prescribing and medication administration solution, and low code tools that help you rapidly build applications that suit your needs.

SPECIAL APPEAL: Dear listeners, as the war in Ukraine continues, the need for medical help is increasing.  If you’re a clinician or a telehealth provider, please get in touch with Health Tech Without Borders. Health Tech Without Borders is organising a "Ukraine Telehealth Relief" initiative to provide free of charge telehealth and remote consultations to the people of Ukraine. So if you’re a clinician or telemedicine provider, please contact Health Tech Without Borders: https://www.healthtechwithoutborders.org/ukraine-telehealth-relief If you’re a medical device manufacturer or have the ability to donate medical equipment, EIT Health is facilitating the supply of medical equipment to Ukraine. EIT Health has partnered with the Polish Medical Mission, a leading humanitarian organisation working with healthcare professionals on the border of Ukraine. If you are an organisation with the ability to donate and ship any of the medical equipment please complete the form on EIT Health’s website: https://eithealth.eu/ukraine-appeal/ In this episode, you’re going to hear about metaverse and healthcare, which conditions need to be fulfilled for health tech to succeed, you will also get a glimpse into how Canada’s Primary Care Chronic Disease Surveillance System was built. And much more. I spoke with Karim Karshavjee, Family Physician with over 25 years of experience designing, developing, and implementing Electronic Health Records/Electronic Medical Records and helping clinicians use them effectively. He is also the Program Director of the Masters of Health Informatics program at the University of Toronto. Enjoy the show and if you haven’t yet, subscribe to the show to be notified about new episodes automatically. 

Simone Lehwess Mozzilli and Liliane Dübois both had cancer in their past. Liliane as a child, Simone as an adult. They are both an integral part of the Brazilian non-profit Beaba. Beaba offers support to children with cancer and their families by demystifying cancer and informing in a clear, objective, and optimistic way about the disease and treatment. They do so through various means, for example, a printed book called Beabook which resembles a dictionary and explains more than one hundred and fifty terms about cancer. In this episode, Simone, who is the President of Beaba, and Liliane, who is the Strategy Officer, talked about how to approach children with cancer, what they’ve learned from the app and other products being used across the world and talked a little bit about cancer care in Brazil.  Join the premiere of (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors? More info: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/overdose-how-can-we-prevent-medication-errors  Go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com to browse through other episodes as well. Learn more about Beaba and how you can support it: www.beaba.org Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth  Thanks to our Sponsor: Health Resources and Services Administration: Receive up to $250,000 in student loan repayment in exchange for service in a community disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis. Learn more and apply to join STAR LRP - that stands for the Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program. Applications Close on July 22, 2021 Recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f133-how-can-you-explain-cancer-to-children-simone-mozzilli-liliane-dubois-beaba

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) brings together six Arab countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates  When one reads about the GCC countries, there’s nothing but the impression of prosperity: high investments, determination, and enthusiasm in tech-supported healthcare.  The spending on healthcare by the GCC governments is on an astronomical rise. From a regionwide US$2.4 billion in 2016, it rose to more than US$30 billion in 2021 and is projected to surpass US$104 billion this year, according to a report from the UAE Ministry of Economy.  In this episode, Pilar Fernandez Hermida International Go-to-Market expert with 20+ years of experience launching sales & partner ecosystem strategies, talks about the potential of the Middle East and MENA region for healthtech companies, the culture in the Middle East, how to interpret different style of communication here, what are the common entrepreneurial misconceptions, and where to find opportunities. Pilar says that the entrepreneurial spirit here is 10-times as strong as in the US, and that biotech and drug development are the next thing to watch for in the region. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Show notes: [00:02:00] Pilar Fernandez Hermida, an expert in healthcare market strategies, shares insights from Abu Dhabi. [00:04:00] Analysis of the healthcare infrastructure development in GCC post-pandemic. [00:08:00] The role of expats in the Middle East's healthcare transformation. [00:10:00] Public-private partnerships as key opportunities. [00:12:00] Cultural considerations for startups in the GCC. [00:14:00] Misconceptions about the Middle Eastern healthcare market. [00:18:00] Building long-term relationships in business. [00:20:00] Navigating diverse cultural communication in healthcare. [00:24:00] Comparing the entrepreneurial spirit in the Middle East with the U.S. and Europe. [00:28:00] Strategic advice for healthcare entrepreneurs targeting the GCC. [00:30:00] Importance of understanding regulations and digital maturity in MENA. [00:32:00] Future potential in biotech and digital health in the GCC. [00:36:00] The convergence of digital health and biotech.

Technically, we've never been more connected or had relationships with as many people as we do today, thanks to social networks on the internet. Yet, while these platforms bring convenience, they are also increasing loneliness and reducing face-to-face interactions. However, technology isn't solely a problem; it can facilitate the easier pairing of individuals who wish to assist those lacking a real-world social network. Take Papa, for example, a company that provides social support by pairing older adults and families with trained and vetted companions known as Papa Pals. In this brief episode, you will listen to a discussion with Ellen Rudy, the former Head of Research and Social Impact, whom I met at HLTH 2023. Ellen shares her insights on the causes of solitude and the potential of technology to mitigate loneliness. Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

When one starts to wonder about why data-sharing is still more or less cumbersome in healthcare, you quickly get to the challenges with interoperability siloed data and of course, data standards. Sharing of data has improved with the introduction of the messaging standard called FHIR. But throughout the years, debates about open standards and open ecosystems have started to become louder. In this episode, you’re going to hear a little bit more about that and the openEHR standard specification. I was joined by Hanna Pohjonen, eHealth management consultant and founder at Rosaldo Oy. Hanna has worked across the world, as a consultant in various regional and national eHealth projects in 31 different countries across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. She consults on healthcare information systems and IT architectures, vendor-neutral archiving, data sharing, and more. In her past, she also represented Finland in eHealth matters in the European Commission. In this discussion, you will hear a little bit more about healthcare digitalization in the Nordics, the complexity, and challenges with national and regional eHealth projects and openEHR, what exactly it is, and where it is used. Visit the website: www.facesofidigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth To read a bit more about the history of the show: A reflection after 100 episodes: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-did-i-get-100-digital-health-podcast-episodes-tjasa-zajc-1f/?trackingId=J%2BV0zLmqRSSEgTaklgTkUg%3D%3D ****Sponsor mentioned in the episode***** Master E-networking live course on Maven. In ten days, you’ll digitalize and build your network. You will learn how to maximize the value of any event you’re attending: Go to Masterenetworking.com Use the code: FACESOFDIGITALHEALTH10

The first efforts to establish ePrescribing in the US started in 2001. However, by 2014 only 4% of clinicians had adopted it. Electronic prescribing became legal in all 50 states by 2007. Eight years later, electronic prescribing of controlled substances and prior authorization were well established on the singular ePrescribing network. In 2022, a new player entered the market, founded by FDB - a global provider of clinical decision support tools and resources for medication. FDB Vela sets itself apart with newer technology and additional features. They are also working on building a veterinarian ePrescribing network. In today’s discussion with Lathe Bigler - Vice President of Clinical Network Services at FDB (First Databank) and General Manager of FDB Vela™, you will hear more about what ePrescribing entails under the new network. Additionally, you will learn about FDB's plans to enhance medication information for patients, improve accessibility to pharmacogenomics insights, and more. Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

In 2017, 57.7 million people were living with limb amputation due to traumatic causes worldwide. Apart from accidents, a person might need an amputation due to vascular diseases and diabetes. You might have come across increasingly sophisticated prosthetic limbs, which mimic human movements. The problem is, these are extremely expensive. Simple cosmetic prosthetic costs around $5,000, a functional prosthetic with a hook up to $10,000, and the latest myoelectric tech-enhanced ones cost up to $100,000. In this episode, Dima Gazda, CEO, and founder of Esper Bionics speaks about the development of the market, and how Esper Bionics operates, given that it has facilities in Ukraine. Subscribe to the newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com  

Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems across the world. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion USD annually. Errors can occur at different stages of the medication use process. This is the movie trailer, adopted for audio for a short documentary (OVER)DOSE, How can we prevent medication errors? which will air on 29 June 2021. More about the event: https://www.linkedin.com/events/over-dose-howcanwepreventmedica6800062280823263232/  Video trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPKvDYSm1mI&t=29s  Speakers in this episode:  David Kliff has been living with diabetes for over 20 years. He’s known as the Diabetic Investor, which is the name of the newsletter he’s been publishing for over two decades. Dr. David W. Bates, Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Lea Dias is the founder of a healthcare startup called Quaefacta. She is a Clinical Pharmacist by background and in the past worked as the CLinical Safety Pharmacist at the Perth Children’s Hospital. 

After a summer of discussions about medication safety, medication errors, the role of AI in prescribing decision support, precision medicine, and drug development, we’re moving to explore healthcare systems again. Today, we’ll dive into Canada, more specifically Quebec. You will hear from two speakers: Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg - President and CEO Integrated Health and Social Services University Network for West-Central Montreal (CIUSSS West-Central Montreal) and Danina Kapetanovic the Head of OROT - a Connected Health Innovation Hub inside the network. The network serves approximately 345,000 people, who are served by more than 30 member facilities. You will first hear dr. Rosenberg talks a little bit about the structure of the healthcare system in Canada and then Danina will explain a little bit more about how the innovation hub works, how CIUSS is encouraging innovation inside the network, and more. 

You may not have heard about Prenuvo, but you probably know Kim Kardashian. Or perhaps you know about Prenuvo because of Kim Kardashian. Prenuvo offers whole-body MRI scans for $2500. About 3-4% of people get something discovered, 10% have detected changes that require follow-ups. Opinions about the usefulness of these scans are diverse, with some hesitation on the clinical side. At HLTH Europe, the CEO Andrew Lacy explained: 🤔 How Prenuvo uses influencer marketing to attract new customers, 🤔 whole-body MRI scans in light of other preventive whole-body scans and the emerging field of liquid biopsies, 🤔 affordability/ scans as a status symbol, 🤔 the future of prevention, ... and more. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: fodh.substack.com

Dr. Keren Priyadashini is Regional Business Lead of Worldwide Health for Microsoft Asia. She leads the company’s healthcare business segment across 17 markets in Asia Pacific. Looking at digital health investments in the APAC region, according to Galen Growth Asia, last year China took the highest amount of funding (58.6%) for digital health, followed by India (22.3%), Australia (5.6%), Soth Korea (4.3%), and Singapore (3.8%). Healthcare expenditure differs a lot among countries: According to the World Bank, China attributed 5,3% of its GDP to healthcare, India 3%, Australia 9.91 %, Singapore 4%. How do these healthcare systems differ and does healthcare expenditure relate to investment in digitalization? More content at: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth.com

HLTH is recognized as the United States' number one health innovation event. Its unique and vibrant approach sets it apart from typical industry conferences. Each stage at HLTH is distinctively themed and designed, featuring motifs like the moon, sky, and earth, creating an awe-inspiring experience reminding of of a child's first visit to an amusement park. Beyond the captivating atmosphere, the core attraction of HLTH lies in its substantive content and guests. These include key stakeholders from top tech companies, including pop stars who entered healthcare, or public figures such as Arianna Huffington or Chelsea Clinton. In 2024, HLTH will also be organized in Europe. The event concept will be the same, but the content will be prepared by a European team to touch upon key topics in the European space. While they were enjoying their team building in Ljubljana, Tjasa Zajc sat down with Jody Tropeano, Head of Content at HLTH US and Henry Stoneley, Head of UK and Netherlands. They discussed Jody’s and Henry’s reflections on healthcare in the US, key trends, and challenges. Video interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blT9PIJGfuA Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

Voice could be called one of the exciting new avenues for medicine and healthcare: first, it is seen as a potential optimization tool, if we used voice tech instead of typing data into software. A few months ago, Julia Hoxha, the CEO of Zana explained how her European startup that provides healthcare organizations with the technology to design and to deploy their own chatbot and voice assistants. In the future, we might discover biomarkers in voice. After all, all the characteristics of voice - how loud or how quiet we speak, what tone do we use, how fast or slow we talk - all these characteristics probably have a correlation with something. But what about starting with something much simpler? Analysing voice recordings that already exist? US company Authenticx listens, analyzes, and activates customer voices. The AI-based software analyzes millions of conversations patients have with customer support agents through phone calls or emails. By analysing these conversations, it unveils recurring trends that healthcare organizations use to make informed, proactive decisions for improved workflows and care.  In this discussion you will hear from Amy Brown, executive with 20 years of public and private sector experience in health care public relations, startup management, policy development, quality improvement and insurance operations. Enjoy the show and browse through other episodes on: facesofdigitalhealth.com 

Finland has well-established regulations and processes for the use of data for secondary purposes. This is overseen by the Social and Health Data Permit Authority Findata, which facilitates data permit processing and improves data protection for individuals. The secondary use of health data refers to using health data, such as patient records, for purposes other than the primary reason for which they were originally collected. This can include research, decision-making, and innovation.  European Commission has made the creation of a European Health Data Space (open in new window) as a priority for 2019-2025. The proposal stems from the GDPR. There are currently no common practices for the secondary use of health data in Europe.  This episode is a recording of a panel discussion that took place during the eHealth Days, organized as part of the Slovenian presidency to the Council of EU, end of August. Speakers:  - Minna Hendolin, Leading Specialist – HealthData at the Finish innovation fund SITRA, Finland Jukka Lähesmaa, Senior Specialist, The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland Angel Martin (Brussels), chair of MedTech Europe’s Digital Health Committee and AI and Data WG Dipak Kalra (UK), President of The European Institute for Innovation through Health Data See the full series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digital-health-in-the-nordics

This is the first out of four episodes about digital health and healthcare in the Nordics. In the next few weeks, you will hear about Denmark, Norway, Finland, and a broader regional overview. Not all countries but there have already been speakers on the show who also talked about Sweden, so I will link those in the show notes as well.  The first speaker you will hear from is Erik Jylling, the executive vice president of Danish Regions.  In his professional career, Erik has been deeply involved in planning, organizing, and leading the Danish healthcare system with the view from different professional perspectives and positions, practical and political. He earned an M.D. with 25 years of practical experience in anesthesiology and intensive care medicine. He has worked as a consultant, head of the department, and in superior leading positions on hospital and organization levels. In this episode, we discussed the specifics of management in healthcare, how does one achieve organizational chance in a hospital setting, but also healthcare in Denmark: the admirably organized elderly care, the fact that patients have access to doctor’s notes since 1987, yes, 1987, so 34 years.  The Nordics Series will be available at: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digital-health-in-the-nordics Sweden: F068 The power of patients 3/4: How can patients influence policy? (Bettina Ryll) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f065-f068-the-power-of-patients-4-episodes-series?rq=Bettina Leave a rating or review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Phishing, Whaling, and exposure of patient data are a rising occurrence of the increasingly digitalized healthcare systems. 2020 saw more data breaches than previous years. What are the basics to know? Lee Kim is Director of Privacy and Security at HIMSS. In this episode, she talks about the basics of cybersecurity every individual should know, she presents the state of cybersecurity in healthcare and the outlook. Episode Summary: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f132-whats-the-state-of-cybersecurity-in-healthcare-lee-kim See the video interview on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv1SM38siyo&t=25s Thanks to our Sponsor: Health Resources and Services Administration: Receive up to $250,000 in student loan repayment in exchange for service in a community disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis. Learn more and apply to join STAR LRP - that stands for the Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program. Applications Close on July 22, 2021

Generative AI - a subset of AI technologies that employ advanced machine learning algorithms to generate content, solutions, or outcomes that weren't explicitly programmed into the algorithms has many potential applications in healthcare. But at the moment, the digital health space is filled with noise. This discussion was recorded at HLTH 2023 in Las Vegas. Justin Norden - Partner at GSR Ventures talks about: his observes from the investor’s perspective, what he thinks about the discussions on open-sourced vs. closed AI development, why everyone should incorporate generative AI in healthcare and more. Newsletter summary of generative AI in healthcare: https://fodh.substack.com/p/generative-ai-in-healthcare Interview with Justin Norded - July 2023: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/investors-bet-on-in-generative-ai-in-healthcare https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/

For new ideas and solutions to reach the market, startup founders need to find the right partners that are willing to listen to them and take their ideas one step further. Established in 2015, the Health Innovation Hub & Holding provides years of expert ​knowledge in innovation pathways, paving the way for better healthcare and a sustainable healthcare industry. The European organization better known under the name of Innovation in health has many programs in its portfolio. In this episode Hannes Toivanen, Lead, Global Digital Ecosystem Engagement at Takeda and Jesus Jeronimo Director of New Digital Services & Products at Sanitas + BUPA ELA. Jesus and Hannes talked about how pharma, insurance companies and healthcare providers work with startups, what makes a successful partnership, and why their organizations took part in the Innovation in health programs Start-ups Meet Pharma (Takeda) and start-ups Meet Healthcare Providers (Sanitas + BUPA ELA). More about Innovation in health: https://innovationinhealth.eu/ MONTHLY Newsletter which recaps episodes in the past month: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com **** This episode is supported by EIT Health Germany-Switzerland, which is one of eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) currently funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). EiT Health Germany connects 150 renowned partners from industry, research and education from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The unique network helps initiate outstanding innovations in the health sector. If you're a startup working in the field of digital health or biotech and don't know EiT Health Germany yet, I would encourage you to visit eit-health.de, where you will find more about innovation, acceleration, and education programs.

In the next two episodes, we’ll dive into healthcare development a digitalization in the Middle East. You’re going to hear from two speakers based in Dubai. The speaker of today’s episode is Ziad Tabet, Chief Customer Officer at Alliance Care Technologies. Ziad is a healthcare veteran with three decades of experience spanning many aspects of the healthcare space. He has extensive experience in operations and financial management of hospital systems, healthcare start-ups, sales and business development, account management, creating and bringing infrastructure and teams from idea to reality. Ziad has been living in UAE for over ten years, first in Abu Dhabi now in Dubai. In this discussion, he shared his experience in the region, commented on opportunities and mindset around digitalization. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

This is a short documentary about medication-related patient safety. The documentary explores and offers an overview of the current challenges and technical solutions related to medication safety to raise awareness about the need to further improve medication-related patient safety. Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems across the world. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion USD annually. Errors can occur at different stages of the medication use process. More than 237 million medication errors are made every year in England, the avoidable consequences of which cost the NHS upwards of £98 million and more than 1700 lives every year, indicate national estimates, published online in the journal BMJ Quality & Safety. The documentary premiered on 29 June 2021. Watch the documentary and full interviews with the speakers: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentary Learn more about Better Meds: https://meds.better.care/ Speakers in the movie and this episode: David W. Bates, Medical Director of Clinical and Quality Analysis, Information Systems, Patient Safety Expert and Harvard MD (Clinical & Research Perspective) Professor John Horn, PharmD, University of Washington School of Pharmacy, coauthor of “The Top 100 Drug Interactions”; A Guide to Patient Management” Martina Viduka, Practicing Nurse, Co-Founder of Advosense David Kliff, author and publisher of the Diabetic Investor eNewsletter, former investment advisor, and as a person living with diabetes (Patient Perspective) Duncan Cripps, Electronic Prescribing and Medication Management Lead at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (Pharmacist Perspective) Roni Shiloh, CEO of Seegnal, MD degree, specialized in Psychiatry (CDS provider and doctor perspective) Hicham Naim, Global Head Integrated & Personalized Patient Care Program, Digital Advisory Board at Takeda (Pharma Perspective) Marinka Žitnik, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School (Research perspective Lea Dias, Clinical Pharmacist, Founder and CEO of Quaefacta Abdulelah Alhawsawi, Ex - founding Director-General of the Saudi Patient Safety Center (SPSC) Roi Shternin, Founder of the patient-led Israeli society for Dysautonomia (Patient perspective).

Telemedicine is becoming an archaic term in 2023. It is also too broad. We now have at-home hospitals, virtual wards, remote monitoring, and more. Video consultations and online patient portals saw a spike during the pandemic. While many encounters have returned to the in-person setting, a lot of development is happening in workforce optimization. This aims to reduce the burden on hospital infrastructure and improve patient outcomes by bringing clinical staff back into patients' homes, provided they have the necessary conditions, equipment, and support for at-home care. In this episode, you will hear from Svein Willassen, Co-Founder and CEO of Confrere, the leading telehealth company in Scandinavia (acquired by Daily.co in 2022). Svein and I discussed the changing landscape of telemedicine provision, expectations from generative AI, how software providers can sell to hospitals in Nordic countries, and more. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

This is the second episode in a special series about cancer, cancer care, accessibility and technologies related to cancer care. The first episode focused on the current state of cancer care with a speaker from Canada - David J. Stewart, MD, FRCPC, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Ottawa and The Ottawa Hospital. David explained the current state of cancer care, IT in oncology and financial toxicity of a cancer diagnosis for patients.  This, second episode, dives into genomics, the role of AI, and data science in oncology. Speaker: Xose M. Fernandez, genomicist and up until recently the Chief Data Officer at Institut Curie in France, one of the leading medical, biological, and biophysical research centers in the world.   SUBSCRIBE TO THE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Thank you! :)

Brazil had over 200 million people; how many of them sleep well? I hope you’re enjoying summer and resting enough. Many people have issues with sleeping: either not sleeping enough or sleeping poorly. Oftentimes, due to poor sleep hygiene, such as drinking coffee too late in the day, being exposed to blue light from phones, tablets, or computers right before getting to bed, etc. As listed by the Cleveland clinic, poor sleep results in a lack of alertness during the day, excessive daytime sleepiness, impaired memory, poor quality of life, and relationship stress. And more serious problems ​​associated with chronic sleep deprivation are high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure or stroke. Other potential problems include obesity, depression, reduced immune system function, and lower sex drive. The Brazilian startup Sleepup is trying to help people with sleep issues with an over-the-counter digital therapeutic. The DTx works on a behavioral change approach determined for each user. The first step is an individual assessment of the causes of poor sleep.  You will hear from Renata Redondo Bonaldi, Co-Founder and CEO of Sleepup. We talked about various aspects of sleep issues and the role of wearables and digital health in improving sleep. If Renata had one piece of advice for sleep improvement, this is what she’d say to you: More at: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

In the previous episode we explored healthcare and the position of doctors in Malaysia. Today and in the next few episodes, we will stay in the Asia Pacific region, by peeking into Australia, Pakistan Singapore, and more. My guest today is Peter Birch, creator, and host of Talking HealthTech; an Australian podcast and membership community about technology in healthcare. In the past, Pete has been running clinics, and software companies, he is still company Director at MetaOptima, creating intelligent technology to help doctors detect and treat skin cancer. He is also the company Director of the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA), representing the software vendors of the healthcare industry in Australia. Clearly, Pete has a good understanding of tech challenges in healthcare which he shared in this discussion. We talked about the current state of My Health Record, why is Australia not a leader in exemplary telehealth solutions, what it means that the government plans to dedicate 107 million Australian dollars to invest in digital healthcare infrastructure, and more. Other episodes about Australia: Australia, AI and co-design of digital health solutions (Marie Johnson): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/australia-ai-and-co-creation-of-digital-health-solutions-marie-johnson?rq=australia F105 The state of healthcare digitalization in Australia (Louise Schaper, AIDH): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f105-the-state-of-healthcare-digitalization-in-australia-louise-schaper-aidh?rq=australia F115 Primary healthcare digitalisation in New Zealand, Australia, UK and US (Dimitri Varsamis): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/us-new-zealand-australia-uk-primary-care-digitisation?rq=australia REFLECTIONS: A transocean podcast session (Joy Rios, Bianca Rose Phillips, Tjasa Zajc): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/reflections-a-transocean-podcast-session-joy-rios-bianca-rose-phillips-tjasa-zajc?rq=australia

In healthcare, consultants are present more often than we might realise: they work with healthcare providers to improve clinical efficiency, manage costs, implement new technologies, or streamline administrative processes. They can help with regulatory compliance, help insurance companies design new poducts, governments hire them to help with policy development, program evaluation, and implementation of new regulations.  In this episode we take a look under the hood of consultancy work, where governments make biggest mistakes and how consultants approach problem-solving. Mehdi Khaled is Internal Medicine Doctor and Fortune 50 Health Tech Executive, with over 25 years of international experience. He has helped shaping many large-scale, transformative digital health projects across four continents and within 40 health systems. As a Managing Partner at Seha, he specializes in developing and executing cutting-edge health and digital health strategies, with a strong emphasis on the meaningful use of data to drive health system improvements. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Topics covered: 00:04 - The Role of Consultants in Healthcare 00:06 - Challenges of Accountability 00:08 - Core Principles for Healthcare 00:10 - Singapore’s Healthcare Success 00:12 - Implementing Technology in Healthcare 00:14 - The Balance Between Technology and Clinical Needs 00:16 - The Importance of Clinical Engagement 00:18 - Managing Technology in Healthcare Exploration of the concept of "management debt," where poor decision-making leads to the accumulation of ineffective technologies. 00:20 - Cultural Differences in Healthcare 00:22 - Bridging the Knowledge Gap in Digital Health 00:24 - Case Studies and Real-World Examples 00:26 - The Need for Long-Term Vision 00:28 - Lessons from Singapore and Catalonia 00:30 - Technology-Driven Change in Healthcare 00:32 - Overcoming Barriers to Innovation 00:34 - The Future of Digital Health 00:36 - Building Local Capacity 00:38 - Avoiding Dependency on Consultants 00:40 - Final Thoughts on Healthcare Consulting

The positive potentials of AI in healthcare are breathtaking. From smoother processes to more accurate care with fewer medical errors. But if we learned anything from the last 15 years of living with social media, it is that the development of algorithms without proper regulation can have negative impacts on society. In healthcare, AI development is still in the early stages. Many regulation-related questions still need to be addressed. It is not easy to create regulation, because it needs to take into account all sorts of aspects: safety, trust, values of the environment it is designed for. In today’s episode, you’ll hear a discussion with Bart de Witte - Founder of Hippo AI foundation - a non-profit organization that fights for making medical knowledge openly available and AI-based healthcare a common good. This is a diametrically opposing approach to the direction of current medical AI developments — the majority of which focus on the privatization of medical knowledge. Bart and I discussed what exactly does it mean to have open AI models, how can we create an environment to support that, the state of AI regulation in Europe, and more.  Learn more about the Hippo AI Foundation: https://www.hippoai.org/ The European artificial intelligence strategy: implications and challenges for digital health: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(20)30112-6/fulltext www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

If you’re still trying to wrap your head around the use of AI in healthcare, this episode will give you an idea about the use of generative AI to create clinical notes during an interaction between a doctor and a patient. Augmedix, a healthcare technology company that delivers ambient medical documentation and data solutions. Their clinician-controlled mobile app uses generative AI to instantaneously create a fully automated draft medical note after each patient visit. I spoke with Manny Krakaris - CEO of Augmedix, about the HOW. How is their data model built, what and what kind of technology do they use in their product? Manny also explains why they’re not covering revenue cycle management or RCM-related codes in their data structuring processes, and what are the biggest challenges in the industry at the moment.  The second part of this episode is unrelated to generative AI, and illustrates how existing medical data can be used to create risk prediction tools for medical care. You will hear from Nassib Chamoun, Founder and CEO of the Health Data Analytics Institute, an analytics company that is developing risk modeling methodology to ease clinical decision-making by assigning patients different risk scores based on their medical history. This enables clinicians to design follow-up protocols based on an individual's potential health deterioration. Both discussions were recorded at HLTH. Read a longer article about insights related to generative AI from HLTH, which includes an overview of the key player in medical notes generation space: https://fodh.substack.com/p/generative-ai-in-healthcare. Episode summary: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/ai-for-medical-note-taking-and-risk-scoring-augmedix-hdai Augmedix: https://augmedix.com/ HDAI: https://www.hda-institute.com/ Discussion summary: More about healthcare data in the US: Healthcare data in the US series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/healthcare-data-series-in-the-us-foundy-epic-komodo?rq=epic%20 Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or review in iTunes: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/subscribe

This is the last episode of Faces of digital health in 2021. Instead of an interview or a string of predictions for 2022, you will hear a reflection about the past year or two which I had with two other podcasters - Joy Rios - the host of HIT like a girl podcast - a podcast and a community supporting women in healthcare IT, and Bianca Rose Phillips - the host of Voice of Law podcast. Bianca is a digital health lawyer, and the author of a recently published book Making The Digital Health Revolution.  This was a cross-continental discussion, with Joy based in Mexico, Bianca in Australia, and Tjasa Zajc in Slovenia, Europe. We exchanged experiences with the pandemic in our environments. We also talked about our learning through our shows in the last year. Faces of digital health: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. HIT Like a Girl Podcast: https://www.hitlikeagirlpod.com/ Digital Health Think Tank: https://www.biancarosephillips.com/ (OVER)DOSE - Documentary about medication errors: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentary

The field of healthcare digitalization is maturing and getting increasingly sophisticated, demanding healthcare and technology leaders to think more strategically than they were perhaps required a few years ago. Chief Innovation or Chief Digital Officers are moving more to the executive level, where they need to take into consideration not just which tech solutions are really good, but which make most business sense at a given time for a given institution. In today’s discussion you’ll hear about current top challenges for healthcare leaders, how can healthcare providers do more with less and other findings by McKinsey. Speakers: Karl Kellner, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, New York Venkat Inumella, Partner at McKinsey & Company www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

This is the fifth and last episode of the Healthcare Data in the US series. In the first one, Arif Nathoo - CEO and co-founder of Komodo Health, described how the company is planning to capture and de-identify every encounter patients have with the US healthcare system. The second episode featured Phil Lindemann, VP of Business Intelligence at Epic, and Epic’s Clinical Informaticist Dave Little, who talked about Epic Cosmos - a database of EHR data from 178 million patients. In the third episode, Samir Unni, Business Development Lead for Healthcare at Palantir Foundry, explained the principles of Palantir in healthcare, why they support an open-data approach, how knowledge from other industries is transferred to healthcare and more.  In the fourth episode, representatives of four companies working on automating care tasks, providing clinicians with clinical decision support, and creating synthetic data records, four industry experts shared their experience with building solutions on top of EHRs, challenges related to connecting to electronic health records, and the need for better interoperability APIs to really enable data to be used for health outcomes improvement. In this final episode,  Ardy Arianpour, CEO of Seqster, explains for Seqster provides its clients with an operating system for researching of clinical and tracking patient data to create new solutions. Enjoy the discussion and tune into other episodes as well. This series will be summarized in our newsletter - find it and subscribe at fodh.substack.com www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Seqster: https://www.seqster.com/

In this episode Anne Forsyth, Director of Clinical Applications and Support at Women’s College Hospital in Canada, discusses the challenges and opportunities in optimizing healthcare IT systems, particularly in data management and digital literacy. She shares her experiences transitioning from a policy role to a hospital setting and emphasizes the importance of data governance, workflow design, and continuous improvement in digital health projects. Key Takeaways: Community and Collaboration: Canada’s digital health community is a significant asset in advancing healthcare IT. AI and Data Standards: The adoption of AI in healthcare is promising but requires robust data governance and standards. Importance of Fundamentals: Good governance, workflow optimization, and training are crucial in creating sustainable healthcare IT systems. Digital Health Literacy: Clinicians need focused training on using digital tools correctly rather than deep technical knowledge. Cybersecurity Preparedness: Hospitals must prioritize business continuity planning to prepare for potential cyber attacks. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Show notes: [00:04:00] Optimism in Canadian Digital Health [00:06:00] The Role of AI and Data Standards [00:08:00] Transition from Policy to Practice [00:10:00] The Fundamentals of IT in Healthcare [00:16:00] Tackling Unstructured Data [00:22:00] Continuous Improvement in Healthcare IT [00:26:00] Digital Health Literacy for Clinicians [00:34:00] Cybersecurity and Business Continuity [00:38:00] Closing Remarks and Advice The importance of strong relationships with vendors and clinicians in solving technical challenges in healthcare IT. Final thoughts on the continuous nature of digital health optimization and the need for sustainable, well-communicated strategies.

Drug development is undeniably expensive. For years, the pharmaceutical industry cited an estimate of 3 billion US dollars. However, a recent study published in 2020 discovered that the median cost actually falls between 985 million and 1.3 billion US dollars. Even within this range, it remains a substantial amount. The high cost primarily stems from the significant failure rate of new potential medications that never progress beyond clinical trials. Computational biology and AI have already assumed significant roles in drug development. The aspiration is for them to expedite the creation of new, more precise, and tailored medications. Today, we will delve into biotech and explore how technology aids in predicting a specific patient's response to a particular drug. In a conversation with Rafael Rosengarten, the CEO of Genialis - a company using machine learning and high-throughput omics data to capture underlying disease biology and predict how patients will likely respond to targeted therapies, we explored the impact of computational biology on drug development and pricing, the application of generative AI in discovering novel molecules, and the challenges companies encounter in acquiring patient data to advance their work. Sponsor: Magic Mind Learn more at: magicmind.com/digitalhealth Use the code: digitalhealth20 Find more at: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

This episode is the last on in the series of three discussions about natural language processing in healthcare. In the first episode, I discussed the state of symptom checkers with Jeff Cutler, CCO of Ada Health - the leading symptom-checking provider. In the second episode, CEO of Suki, Punit Singh Soni, explained where voice technology is today in helping doctors better manage their medical records and notes taking. And today’s discussion will give you a comment and critical perspective on using ChatGPT in healthcare and other large language models such as Google’s MedPalm.  OBJECTIVES OF THE DISCUSSION:  To clarify the state of natural language processing in healthcare - to which extent is this moving from research to practical use,  To create a clear, realistic picture of ChatGPT and MedPaLM implications Speakers: Alexandre Lebrun - CEO of Nabla - a french company that has created an AI-based medical assistant that makes healthcare professionals more efficient. For instance, it automates clinical documentation and patient engagement.  Israel Krush, CEO of Hyro - mostly present in the US market - the world's first headache-free conversational AI, especially focused on healthcare. It’s used for automation across call centers, mobile apps, websites and SMS include physician search, scheduling, prescription refills, FAQs and more. You're doing this mostly in the US, supporting patient communications for health systems like Mercy Health, Baptist Health and Novant Health.  Video recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKTcjPX-qg&t=3s Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

Nurses play a key role in patient care, but their contribution to patient outcomes is often undervalued and underappreciated. It took a pandemic to create a major shift in their job opportunities and power to negotiate. Many nurses left the profession entirely, others switched to better-paid travel or agency jobs. The pandemic is settling down so the question debated in today’s episode, is what is the position the nurses are in today? You will hear from: Rebecca Love, Thought Leader on Nurse Innovation & Entrepreneurship, experienced nurse executive and entrepreneur, and Chief Clinical Officer of IntelyCare, Alice Benjamin, nurse, author, and health advocate is affectionately known as America's favorite nurse. Rebecca and Alice talked about the position of nurses, healthcare technologies that are not designed to make the work of nurses easier, recent criminal cases against nurses in the US, and what needs to change so that being a nurse will be an attractive job opportunity. Let’s dive in, and if you will enjoy the discussion, do leave a rating or a review wherever you get your podcast and subscribe to receive the next episode straight to your podcast inbox. Also, do check our newsletter! It’s published on a monthly basis. Now to Rebecca and Alice. Monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Official website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

If we look at nationwide successful digitalization projects, we often hear about Estonia, Israel, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, or Israel. All these countries have less than 10 million people. It is therefore not surprising, that in bigger countries that are divided into regions, successful digitalization happens gradually. Spain is divided in regions and each one of them manages healthcare on its own. Catalonia, which has 7,6 million people, is driving a 43 million EUR worth regional digital health strategy, in preparation since 2018. The strength of the new model of information systems is to build the electronic health history with the openEHR standard. This will enable semantic interoperability and enable a person center model for information.   This episode is a recording of a conference panel during the eHealth Week, a week of events about good healthcare digitalization practices across Europe, organized during the Slovenian presidency to the Council of EU. Speakers: Pol Perez Sust, director of Information System Area of Catalunya, Spain Bojana Beović, President, Medical Chamber of Slovenia Blaž Suhač, Assistant to GD for informatics,  University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Slovenia Moderator: Maja Dragović, Former journalist for digitalhealth.net, Business Development Specialist at Better EPF congress: https://epfcongress.eu/ Send me a message for a complimentary pass on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjasazajc/ Visit the website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

In the previous episode, you could listen to Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones - Founder & CEO - of Medic Footprints. Medic Footprints is a UK-based company, with a mission to bring various career opportunities to doctors. The projections of clinical workforce shortages are grim. WHO estimates a projected shortfall of 18 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. The previous and this episode explore the doctor’s perspective on career development and opportunities in and outside of healthcare. In the UK in the previous episode and in Malaysia in this one. You will hear from Selina Chew - the founder of Medic Footprints Malaysia, which is a franchise of the UK organization. Its mission is the same: to empower doctors to look value their skills and look for new career opportunities if they feel stranded in their current situation. Selina talked about her own experience as a doctor, and the rigidity of hierarchy in healthcare which makes it very difficult for doctors to have autonomy in their work, and have a say in how healthcare should be run. We also briefly discussed the state of healthcare in Malaysia. With this episode, we are diving into conversations about healthcare and digital health in the APAC region. We will start with Malaysia, and continue with Australia and a few other countries as well. Recap of the two episodes: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/what-do-doctors-want-abeyna-bubbers-jones-medic-footprints https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/ Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

In South Korea, life expectancy at birth was 82.7 years in 2017, higher than the OECD average of 80.8. At the moment, Korea has one of the youngest populations among OECD countries, with only 13.8% aged 65 or over. This is expected to increase considerably in the next decades. At HIMSS 2023 in Chicago Mira Kang Vice Chief Medical Information Officer at the Samsung Medical Center in South Korea explained why a country that is an IT powerhouse and has fast-speed internet is widely available, isn't embracing telemedicine. Koreans access a lot of services through their mobile phones, and hospitals are introducing AI, robots and data-driven precision medicine.  The health security system in Korea has two components: mandatory social health insurance, which provides healthcare coverage to all citizens, and is funded through contributions from those who are insured and government subsidies. The second part is the medical aid program, which is a form of public assistance that uses government subsidies to provide low-income groups with healthcare services. While the rest of the world is increasingly looking at virtual care and telemedicine for healthcare sustainability and ease of access to healthcare services, telemedicine will likely be forbidden again soon since the pandemic has ended. 

In 2023, Insilico Medicine—a biotech company developing medications with a heavy reliance on AI—used AI to develop an experimental drug for the incurable lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The treatment is in mid-stage trials in the US and China, with some results expected in early 2025. Biotech is one of the fields that has been using generative AI for years, even before ChatGPT brought the technology to public view. Latest technology is essential in drug development. However, the convergence of digital health and pharma seems less clear. Digital health apps started gaining popularity around 2015, and at that time, it seemed all pharma companies were trying to figure out what they could gain from apps, so they financed accelerators and incubators one after the other. We've seen many ideas about how Pharma should or could use digital health. In the last few years, there have been many notorious cases when partnerships failed—a seemingly unicorn, Proteus, which designed digital sensors-equipped pills, went bankrupt in 2019 after Otsuka Pharmaceuticals pulled out of a funding round. Pear Therapeutics, the guiding star in the DTx space and the leader in FDA-cleared prescription digital therapeutics, partnered with Novartis, but in the end, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2023. So where is Pharma in relation to digital health and digital therapeutics? In this episode, Amir Lahav shares his thoughts about the impact of AI on biotech, the state of decentralized clinical trials, and the potential of technology for improved drug development, clinical trials, and patient responses. Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Show notes: [00:02:00] The Convergence of Digital Health and Pharma Discussion on the role of digital health apps in pharmaceuticals. The rise and fall of pharma and tech company partnerships, with examples like Proteus and Peer Therapeutics. [00:06:00] AI Trends in Biotech and Pharma [00:08:00] Enhancing Clinical Trials with AI and continuous patient monitoring [00:10:00] The Importance of Data in Clinical Trials [00:12:00] The Reality of Oncology Trials and Endpoints [00:14:00] Quality of Life in Medicine as the Endpoint [00:16:00] The Rise of Decentralized Clinical Trials [00:18:00] Pharma's Evolving Digital Health Strategies [00:22:00] Impact on Digital Health Industry [00:24:00] Collaboration and Sharing Knowledge in the Pharma Industry [00:26:00] The need for long-term investment and strategic piloting of digital health solutions [00:28:00] What Inspires in Pharma and Biotech in Personalized Treatments [00:30:00] The State of Precision Medicine and Targeted Therapies [00:34:00] The Role of Pharmacogenomics [00:36:00] Anticipations for 2024 and Beyond

Laboratory tests provide doctors with crucial information for diagnosis, monitoring disease progression, evaluating organ function, assessing risk factors for diseases and more. Laboratory testing can be reassuring, however, it is often deemed unnecessary. In this short episode recorded at HLTH, we’re going to talk about laboratory test optimization. How can it be done without undermining clinical autonomy, what kind of real-time insights can be offered to doctors with tech and more. You will hear from Pam Stahl, President of of Avalon Healthcare Solutions - American Lab Insights Company, that help payers and providers optimize treatments, improve outcomes, and drive down overall cost. Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Show notes: [00:02:04] - Introduction to Avalon Health Solutions and their role in generating actionable insights from lab results. [00:02:21] - Discussion on the big picture problem in healthcare: the overuse and underuse of lab tests and the drive towards improving clinical decision-making. [00:03:25] - Clarification on Avalon's approach to managing unnecessary tests and their non-involvement in claims adjudication. [00:03:49] - Explanation of how Avalon provides guidance on appropriate test ordering and interpretation based on evidence-based medicine. [00:04:20] - The learning curve for providers in test ordering and the issue of test misuse. [00:05:16] - Areas where lab tests are often underutilized, particularly in cancer diagnosis. [00:05:45] - The potential of using lab data predictively, with a focus on chronic kidney disease. [00:06:20] - How Avalon creates patient profiles and uses predictive analytics to improve healthcare management. [00:06:53] - Avalon's ongoing development of predictive models and their impact on healthcare. [00:07:36] - The challenge of changing the status quo in lab test utilization and the cost savings involved. [00:07:47] - Avalon's growth and the scale of their operations, with a client base of 33 million members. [00:08:00] - The role of patient engagement and communication strategies in healthcare management. [00:08:41] - The importance of accurate and clear communication channels with patients to avoid confusion. [00:09:08] - The rapidly evolving field of genetic testing and Avalon's role in managing the abundance of available tests. [00:10:07] - Addressing concerns about over-systemizing lab test ordering and the potential for provider friction. [00:11:13] - Feedback from clinicians and Avalon's clinical advisory board on the impact of their services. [00:11:55] - The broader implications of cost savings and sustainability in healthcare through better lab test management. [00:12:11] - In-depth look at predictive analytics and its application in healthcare outcome improvements. [00:13:18] - Strategies for Avalon's customer expansion and managing growth.

Two-thirds of people who file for bankruptcy in the US cite medical issues as a key contributor to their financial downfall. It’s understandable since if you get sick, you might lose a job and your health insurance. Even if you have health insurance, you might have high deductibles and face the threat of high costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, The number of uninsured nonelderly Americans is increasing. It went from 26.7 million in 2016 to 28.9 million in 2019. Billing claims can get denied by health insurance companies and patients are faces with surprise billing costs. This leads to stressful disputes. Sometimes patients get creative. When Stacey Richter's husband landed in a New Jersey emergency room, she took an unusual step. Instead of simply signing the hospital’s financial and treatment consent form, she first crossed out sections calling for her to pay whatever amount the hospital charged. Instead, she wrote that she would only pay a rate of a “maximum of two times” what the federal government would pay under Medicare. Stacey is the author of the Relentless health value podcast and she explained this situation thoroughly in one of the shows. New York Times also reported the story.  The guest of this show is Ric Sinclair, the Chief Strategy and Product Officer of Waystar. Waystar is a health tech platform helping streamline payments for over half a million healthcare providers across the US. Ric discussed how does billing looks like and what problems are present and addressed in US healthcare.  Episode Summary

Debates around equity and equality, especially concerning men and women and female representation, can become heated and divisive quickly. For a long time, female bodies have been perceived merely as male bodies with different reproductive organs. However, the differences go beyond that: 80% of people with autoimmune conditions are women, 66% of Alzheimer's disease patients are women, and symptoms of cardiovascular diseases present differently in women and men, among other disparities. These health issues significantly impact women's productivity. In today's episode, you will hear a recording from the Healthcare Business Women Ljubljana meetup focused on women's health. Joy Rios, founder of HIT Like a Girl Media joined the discussion on women's health and how the unique aspects of women's health are impacting digital health companies and businesses. While less than a quarter of CEOs in digital health companies are women, in femtech companies, 76% of founders, co-founders, and CEOs are women. Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Show notes: [00:02:00] Guest Speaker: Joy Rios [00:03:00] Current State of Women's Health Common associations with women's health: menstrual health apps (Clue), pelvic floor training (Elvie), sexual health (Rosy). Innovations in women’s health: apps for sexual assault victims, and addressing menopause and ovarian health. [00:04:00] Research and Development Only 4% of R&D budgets historically went into women's health topics. Inclusion of women in clinical trials has improved, but gaps remain in medical device trials. [00:05:00] Challenges and Biases [00:06:00] Policy and Investment White House initiative and Melinda French Gates’ $2 billion investment in removing barriers for women. [00:16:00] Impact of Abortion Rights on Women's Health Roe v. Wade overturned, affecting access to abortion and impacting startups in the field. Differences in state laws create challenges in providing consistent healthcare. [00:22:00] Inspiring Developments Policy changes in Mexico leading to increased female representation in politics. Mexico’s progressive stance on women in leadership positions. [00:26:00] Advice for Women in Healthcare Business Identify unique opportunities and unmet needs in healthcare. Understand regulations and compliance. Build a supportive community and collaborate.

There are “five rights” of medication use: the right patient, the right drug, the right time, the right dose, and the right route. It might seem obvious, but in practice, an error can occur at the level of each of these “right”s.  Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems worldwide. According to WHO, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion annually globally. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare estimates that between 2% and 3% of all Australian hospital admissions are medication-related. In the UK, it is estimated that adverse drug reactions account for 10-20% of hospital in-patient admissions, according to the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s National Overprescribing Review, which was published in September 2021. This episode is a recording of a panel discussion at the Talking Healthtech Winter Summit in Australia in August. The panel session you’re about to hear is focused on medication management in the hospital setting. It will give you an overview of:  the current problems with medications in the hospital setting,  why are decision support systems suboptimal,  what it takes to implement healthcare IT in the hospital setting.  Speakers:  Melissa Fodera, Chief Pharmacy Informatics Officer (CPIO) Western Health Australia, Božidarka Radović, Better Meds Product Lead at the health IT company Better,  Gidi Stein, CEO of MedAware.  RESOURCES: Talking Healthtech Winter Summit: https://www.talkinghealthtech.com/summit  www.facesofdigitalhealth.com  Subscribe to the Faces of digital health MONTHLY! newsletter: fodh.substack.com Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth   

Slovenia is currently presiding the council of EU until 2022. In the first week of September, the members of the Slovenian health tech ecosystem organized a conference about examples of good practices in healthcare digitalization across Europe. In one of the previous episodes, you were able to listen to the panel discussion on the healthcare strategy in Catalonia. Today’s episode is an adapted recording of the panel about Germany, and the upcoming two episodes will be the adapted discussions about healthcare digitalization in Israel and Finland.  In the past two years, a lot of efforts have been put in place to accelerate the progress on the digitalization of the healthcare digital infrastructure in Germany. Many laws were passed, the country received a lot of international attention about the DIGA process, which enables startups to make their apps reimbursable. The bigger national projects which saw the day of life this year, however, were the introduction of electronic patient records, telemedicine, and e-prescriptions.  On the funding side, the federal ministry of health and the federal states are investing EUR 4,3 billion for concrete projects that work towards the digitalization of hospitals.  In this discussion, we’re going to scratch the surface of the design of the national strategy and digital health infrastructure in Germany. and look at the practical example of the Medical informatics Initiative. Medical Informatics Initiative is a separate project to improve medical research and patient care.   You will hear more from five speakers. The panel discussion was moderated by Maja Dragović, a former journalist for digitalhealth.net, now a Business Developer at Better. She will also present the speakers.    Speakers:  Dr. Michael Marschollek  - professor for Medical Informatics at Hannover Medical School (Germany) and executive director of the Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics of TU-Braunschweig and Hannover Medical School.  Johannes Starlinger, an MD, working as an Interdisciplinary Digital Health Consultant, Howto Health GmbH, Germany Mark Langguth, eHealth Consultant, Former Senior Product Manager at Gematik Fabien Prasser, Professor of Medical Informatics at the Berlin Institute of Health at the Charite University Hospital Berlin We were also supposed to be joined by Anka Bolka, Head of Director of Field for Development and Analysis, Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia, but since she couldn’t make it, Tomaž Mračun, who manages the application development department at Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia (HIIS).   Recap of the Days of eHealth: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/days-of-ehealth-healthcare-digitalization-in-catalonia-germany-finland-and-israel  Join the EPF Congress: https://epfcongress.eu/  Podcast Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com 

While discussions about the end of life are not easy, the pandemic opened up space for us to talk more openly about dying and the best possible care in the last days of our lives. This is the third discussion about AgeTech: In the first episode of this series, you can listen to what can we learn about the aging society from Japan. In the second episode, you can hear how an Austrian startup is matching caregivers and the elderly based on their personality profiles. The 4th episode, focuses on advanced care planning. This episode puts the light on innovation in the field of geriatric care. Martina Viduka, a registered nurse by background is Co-Founder of Advosense. Advosense is a Berlin-based startup with the mission to empower clinicians to know when, where, and how best to respond to their patients’ needs. So far, the company developed disposable briefs with smart inlay technology that monitors the patient’s dryness. This makes caring for patients with incontinence a lot more effective and respectful.  In this discussion Martina talks about:  Innovation in geriatric care, The future of public perception of aging, Her experience of working as a nurse during the COVID pandemic.  Episode Summary Enjoy the discussion and to learn more, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com.

Digital health funding has fallen significantly since 2020. However, funding for Femtech went from 7,6% inside the digital health investments in 2020 to 13,26% in 2022, according to TechCrunch. The awareness about female-specific health-related characteristic has been on the rise for the last several years, which is evident in the growing healthcare innovation space specifically targeting women. In this discussion, you will hear from Marija Butković - founder and CEO of Women of Wearables, a Venture Partner at Simsan Ventures, and an advisor for multiple global organizations in the women's health space. Marija talked about: The challenge of providing appropriate care and support to women (for issues like menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis) without creating a sense of inequality or sidelining men, data-driven approaches in addressing women's health issues,  trends in women's health for the year 2023, including a broader understanding of fertility issues. Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

Casey Ross is an investigative reporter for STAT News, where he covers AI development in healthcare and medicine. Last year he analyzed over 160 AI product market approval submissions cleared by the FDA between 2012 and 2020. As it turns out criteria for assessment and the dataset submitted differed a lot. Only 7 of 161 AI products cleared by the FDA in recent years, included any information about the racial composition of their datasets. Those devices were cleared to use AI for the diagnosis of a wide array of serious conditions, including heart disease, strokes, and respiratory illnesses. In this discussion, Casey talks about the state of trust in AI solutions in healthcare, what have we learned from the development of IBM Watson, and more. Enjoy the discussion, which you can also listen to wherever you get your podcasts. And if you’d like to see other topics and episodes as well, do go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. Episode Summary

WHO estimates a projected shortfall of 18 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. However, countries at all levels of socioeconomic development face, to varying degrees, difficulties in the education, employment, deployment, retention, and performance of their workforce.  In a recent survey of 20.000 doctors from 124 institutions in the US 1 in 5 said they plan to exit healthcare in the next 5 years. The pandemic hasn’t only brought different strains to healthcare workers, It has also radically redefined ways in which work can be done. Generations today have different expectations of their working conditions and career development. In this episode, you’re going to hear a bit more about what do doctors want? Speaker: Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones - Founder & CEO - of Medic Footprints. Medic Footprints is a UK-based company, with a mission to bring various career opportunities to doctors. May it be inside or outside healthcare. In the episode, she talks about what options doctors have and also how to find the right medical professional for your company if you’re hiring someone with a medical background. Visit the website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

John Halamka is the President of the Mayo Clinic Platform and a leading expert in digital health and AI. He has traveled to 21 countries, helping to scale digital health solutions and address regulatory and ethical challenges in the reuse of healthcare data. Addressed topics in this discussion: 1. Differences in regulatory frameworks and cultural expectations across countries. 2. Comparison of the U.S. and European approaches to AI and data exchange. 3. Risks associated with generative AI and the need for a credibility scores. 4. Observations from various countries on AI adoption. Importance of local tuning for algorithm validation. 5. Data Standards and Future Trends. 6. Advice for Governments and Healthcare Institutions: Encouraging a proactive approach to AI adoption -Starting with low-risk projects and building trust and reliability. Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH9qYpFW-W8

There were an estimated 18.1 million cancer cases around the world in 2020, according to the World Cancer Research Fund International. According to the Comparator Report on Cancer in Europe 2020, the absolute number of people diagnosed with cancer rose around 50% in Europe over the past 20 years. However, the number of deaths only increased by 20%. The numbers show we’re making great strides in survival and treatments and early screenings. But because of the aging population, cancer care and prevention are rising global public health concerns.  In the next few episodes, we’ll talk about cancer, cancer care, and technology, the role of data and IT for improved care and research, AI in the search for new therapies, but also about cancer survivorship: what happens to patients after they are cancer free, but unfortunately far from back to the life they had before cancer.  Speaker in this episode is David J. Stewart, MD, FRCPC, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Ottawa and The Ottawa Hospital. David recently wrote a book titled: A short primer on Why Cancer Still Sucks. Find the book: https://www.amazon.com/Short-Primer-Cancer-Still-Sucks/dp/0228871999  David talked about the comparison of financial toxicity of cancer for patients in Canada and the US, and the challenges with drug development and access in the two countries; David also talked about his experience with healthcare digitalization and IT systems.    SUBSCRIBE TO THE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Thank you! :)

Hassan Chaudhury is a global healthcare expert, he worked in several countries across the world. He currently works at Healthcare UK; a joint initiative of the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Department for International Trade (DIT). His global role includes advising commercial teams in over 100 UK embassies. In this discussion, we chatted about the digital transformation of healthcare and social care in the UK and Hassan’s experience with countries across the world. Which innovations are reasonable to implement in healthcare today? And which technologies are currently not ready for prime time just yet. You might be surprised by Hassan’s opinion.  Read an excerpt:

Many cancer survivors in long-term remission are faced with restricted access to financial services because of their medical history. Some EU countries have already implemented the right to be forgotten - a right for patients to not disclose their medical history. In most countries, the requirement is for the patient to be cancer-free for 10 years, France has changed this time limit to 5 years. Changes across Europe are happening very slowly. The understanding of the problem is poor and needs a lot more awareness. The incidence of cancer is increasing, however, at the same time, treatments are becoming more successful, returning long-lasting health to patients. Due to this scientific advancement, social care and policies should be changed as well.  Dr. Françoise Meunier is Member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, she was Director General of European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer for 24 years from 1991 to 2015. She is also a Scientific Member of the European Cancer Patient Coalition. She has been advocating for the right to be forgotten for almost 10 years. This is just an excerpt of a broader episode published in autumn 2022.

Access to mental health services wasn’t great before the pandemic. Then two things happened: the need for mental health services increased. But so has access to telemedicine providers of mental health support. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) enabled flexibilities regarding the prescription of controlled medications. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration announced a pandemic enforcement policy allowing mental health app developers to release certain treatment products without seeking authorization from the agency. Cerebral is a US online therapy provider, founded in 2019. In 2021, the company raised close to half a billion dollars and was valued at 4.8 billions USD. Even Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, who withdraw from the Olympic games in Tokyo in 2020 due to personal mental health struggles, and became a public advocate for a new attitude and public perception of how we approach mental health, struck a partnership with Cerebral, joining as an investor and its chief impact officer. But then in 2022, things started to shift in the opposite direction, due to allegations of unsafe prescribing practices. The Wall Street Journal, Insider, and other media publications investigated and reported about these through the accounts of patients and former employees, and the Department of Justice launched an investigation about "possible violations" of the Controlled Substances Act. Eventually, in 2022, the company dropped prescribing of Controlled Substance Prescriptions entirely. Today Cerebral is moving forward and is betting on quality mental health provision, with high hopes around enhancements that could be achieved with the help of AI. In today’s discussion, you will hear from Cerebral’s CEO David Mou, talk about: The current state of telemedicine, and the changing legislation about required in-person visits for prescriptions, Speed and quality of mental health diagnosis and treatment through telemedicine, The role of AI in mental health Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Read more on mental health: https://fodh.substack.com/p/mentalhealth

A few years ago Stefan Buttigieg, a digital health evangelist from Malta said that Malta is a great testbed for digital health startups interested in entering Europe (https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/2019/01/03/f027-can-malta-be-a-gateway-to-the-european-market?rq=Malta). In this episode, we’ll re-visit the island in a discussion with Ryan Grench - Radiology Registrar from Malta who works in the UK. Ryan talked about the benefits of running a digital health startup in Malta, made a few comparisons between healthcare in the UK and Malta, and also shared his views on telemedicine and digital health. Ryan is among other things an advisor to the MedTech World Conference, which we’ll take place between 17-20 November. To visit the conference, listen to the end of the discussion where Ryan shared how you can get a nice discount on your ticket.   Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth MedTech World Conference: https://med-tech.world/ Discount code: DigitalHealth50ST50

David Kliff is the author and publisher of the Diabetic Investor eNewsletter, former investment advisor and as a person living with diabetes. As the author and publisher of the Diabetic Investor eNewsletter, David Kliff has spent the last 20 years analyzing the ups and downs of the diabetes industry. He closely monitors the diabetes biomed, biotech and device market and shares intel on breaking developments in existing and emerging pharmaceutical and tech companies that operate in that space.  In this episode, David talks about improvements in diabetes care and the psychological impacts and challenges contributing to low adherence to medication adherence and other diabetes treatment-related challenges. This discussion was recorded as part of the research for the documentary (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors?  Join the premiere on 29 June: https://www.linkedin.com/events/over-dose-howcanwepreventmedica6800062280823263232/ More details about the event: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/overdose-how-can-we-prevent-medication-errors Thanks to our Sponsor: Health Resources and Services Administration: Receive up to $250,000 in student loan repayment in exchange for service in a community disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis. Learn more and apply to join STAR LRP - that stands for the Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program. Applications Close on July 22, 2021

This is the first episode about AgeTech and rethinking the last years of our lives. Over 2.3 million people died due to COVID by February 2021. These were mostly older people. Many of them died alone in the hospital, without the option to say goodbye to their families. Without even someone from the medical staff at their bedside. COVID opened up space for us to start reconsidering on a broader level how we wish to die, lead quality last years of life, and fear death less.  This episode looks at a few innovations in Japan. Japan is the nation with the largest elderly population in the world. Over 28% of people in Japan are older than 65. The episode explores: Why do the Japanese live so long? What effect does a longer lifespan have on individuals and caregiving? How can healthy life be encouraged already at younger ages? We will take a closer look into a solution addressing visual impairment and a solution for Aspiration Pneumonia, which is a common issue with the elderly. It refers to food going into the lungs causing an infection that can lead to death from pneumonia.  Speakers:  Adrian Sossna, VP of global sales at Hacarus Kenji Suzuki, CEO of Plimes  Mr. Yasuro Koizumi, CEO of Finc Technologies   Kazuo Kaneko, CEO of Digital Attendant Episode Summary More at: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review

One of the biggest challenges for healthcare startups in Nigeria is access to market. “In Nigeria, healthcare is fragmented, making it difficult to find distribution channels. We have to be creative and may need to look outside healthcare for distribution channels.” , says Jennie Nwokoye is the founder and CEO of Clafiya - a digital primary healthcare service that connects individuals and businesses to health practitioners to provide convenient, quality, and affordable, on-demand primary care from their mobile phones. In this discussion, Jennie explains:  What are the healthcare challenges in Nigeria, How do startups do business in Nigeria and why is it difficult to scale, How do startups work with local and international investors and more Transcript: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/primary-care-nigeria-clafiya Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

According to WHO the occurrence of adverse events due to unsafe care is likely one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability in the world.  Patient harm is caused by several healthcare issues.  Healthcare-associated infections occur in 7 and 10 out of every 100 hospitalized patients in high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries respectively (11). Unsafe surgical care procedures cause complications in up to 25% of patients. Patient harm is caused by unsafe injections practices in health care settings, unsafe transfusion practices, diagnostic errors, radiation errors, sepsis is frequently not diagnosed early enough, Venous thromboembolism (blood clots) is one of the most common and preventable causes of patient harm. On top of the list are medication errors. Medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems: globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at US$ 42 billion annually. Abdulelah Alhawsawi is the Ex - founding Director-General of the Saudi Patient Safety Center (SPSC), and MOH Advisor on Patient Safety. He is a consultant to several national and international quality and safety organizations. has helped introduce Patient Safety as a G20 priority in the 2020 G20 of Saudi Arabia. Currently, Dr. Alhawsawi is part of the WHO’s Global Patient Safety Action Plan Taskforce. He has been trying to help improve patient safety throughout his career. As he says if patient safety becomes a priority as is safety in other industries, we can improve healthcare. At the moment, however, we still lack leadership and advocacy in this field.  In this discussion you will hear an overview of factors obstructing patient safety improvement efforts and why, the secret to improve patient safety according to dr. Alhawsawi is better involved and empowered of patients in care planning and treatment execution.   This discussion was part of the discussion of the movie (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors. See the movie and interviews with all the speakers: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentary Browse through other episodes as well: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com.  US clinicians - earn CME credits: https://earnc.me/xfet5F All the future episodes of Faces of digital health will have links for earning CME credits. Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Finn Partners and Galen growth Asia partnered for a global overview of the digital health investment landscape. More than 200M data points from more than 12,000 digital health ventures worldwide were taken into account when assessing the state of the industry.   In this short discussion, the CEO of Galen Growth Asia Julien de Salaberry, explained the key findings from the report, the state of digital health in China and expectations from next year. Investment trends globally: - In the first 9 months of 2022, venture funding across the globe declined by 35% YOY ($25 B compared to $39.23B over the same quarters in 2021) - 60% of the total volume comes from North America, the Middle East came in second in Q2, and Europe did NOT see a quarter-on-quarter decrease in venture funding seen in North America. - Top investment categories: oncology (though the funding shrinked by 30%) and mental health Predictions for 2023:  - Investors are moving from Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to Fear of Looking Foolish (FOLF) - Ventures are finding that funding terms & conditions are far less favorable and valuations are continuing to return to reality. ***** MONTHLY Newsletter which recaps episodes in the past month: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

If someone told you to get an eye exam, would you associate that with a virtual reality headset? It might be where ophthalmology diagnostics will end up in the near future. Compared to the existing diagnostics tools, a VR approach is much more portable and hence accessible. The Swiss company PeriVision is using AI and VR to enable more efficient workflows and deeper clinical insights to manage eye diseases better. I spoke with the co-founder and CEO of Perivision, Patrick Kessel. Prior to joining PeriVision, Patrick advised Medtech, biopharma, and insurance clients on business development, go-to-market strategy, digitization, and operations optimization at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). We discussed how VR and AI help in eye care, what the competition is in the field, and how did the company evolve. Perivison won EIT Health’s Wild Card program in 2021 and received 1.5 million euros for its further development. Patrick shared his reflection on the wild card program and which startups the program is most suitable for.    www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Subscribe to the monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Browse the full EIT Health Germany-Switzerland series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/eit-health-germany ***** This episode is supported by EIT held in Germany, Switzerland, which is one of the eight knowledge and innovation communities currently funded by the European Institute of Innovation and technology. EIT Health Germany-Switzerland is currently serving 26 leading companies and public health care institutions in Germany and Switzerland, as well as renowned universities and research institutions, to realize EIT Health’s mission of a public-private partnership. To learn more, visit https://eit-health.de/, where you will find more about innovation, acceleration, and education programs. 

Alex Merwin is Head of Growth, Healthcare & Life Sciences Startups at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this episode, he presents the AWS Health Innovation Podcast, which showcases startups that are advancing healthcare & life science by leveraging cloud computing technology. In this episode, Alex Merwin and Tjasa Zajc, Host of Faces of Digital Health, discuss: podcasting, how AWS supports startups, what trends is Alex observing in the health innovation space, key findings from the recent Faces of Digital Health series about entrepreneurship and healthcare in Africa. ... and more.  More about AWS Health Innovation Podcast: https://healthpodcastnetwork.com/show/aws-health-innovation-podcast/  Get in touch with AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/contact-us/?trk=d7b08691-7f65-4c28-8b4e-13f1db4e310c&sc_channel=el Connect with Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmerwin/ Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

 We tend to be very good at overestimating what can happen in a year and underestimating what can happen in a decade. At the last mHealth Israel Conference in Tel Aviv,  Mark Coticchia, who is the Innovation, Technology Commercialization, and Venture Development Leader at Baptist Health Innovations, shared his prediction about healthcare systems and healthcare delivery in the US in 2033. Transcript: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/mark-coticchia-baptist-health Leave a rating or review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

This is the third episode in a series of discussions about digital health and healthcare in the APAC region. In this episode, Beth Ann Lopez, a Co-founder and CEO at Docosan, a healthcare marketplace that aims to make it effortless to access healthcare and help find a doctor who is available in Vietnam, talks about the state of healthcare in Vietnam, how did she identify the need for easier search and access to healthcare providers, how is Docosan vetting clinicians on the platform, how to start a business in Vietnam, and more. Episode 1: What is Roche Keeping an Eye on in Thailand? (Farid Bidgoli) Episode 2: China From A to Z: Healthcare Policy and AI Development (Ruby Wang) Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

We are in the middle of a series of discussions related to cancer care, treatment improvements, data management in oncology, and the promise of AI to find the right treatment for the right patient in the fastest possible manner. As mentioned by Xose M. Fernandez, a genomicist and former chief data officer at Institute Curie, a faster diagnosis could lead to less aggressive treatment and better patient outcomes.  We covered many perspectives so far: accessibility and cost of cancer treatments in the US and Canada in the first episode, genetics, data management, and the science of cancer; we talked about AI treatments and challenges in designing clinical trials in personalized medicine. This episode focuses on the consequences cancer diagnosis has after patients are cured. Many cancer survivors in long-term remission face restricted access to financial services because of their medical history. Some EU countries have already implemented the right to be forgotten - a right for patients not to disclose their medical history. Changes across Europe are happening slowly and given the rising incidence of cancer on the one hand, and scientific advances on the other, we need improvement in the quality of life of patients after they are cured. In this episode, you will hear from dr. Françoise Meunier, member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, former Director General of European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer, and a Scientific Member of the European Cancer Patient Coalition. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive a recap of the whole cancer series: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

This is a panel discussion that happened after the premiere of the documentary (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors? which aired on 29 June. You can listen to the adapted audio-only version of the documentary in episode 137. The documentary explores and offers an overview of the current challenges and technical solutions related to medication safety to raise awareness about the need to further improve medication-related patient safety.  Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems across the world. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion USD annually. Errors can occur at different stages of the medication use process. More than 237 million medication errors are made every year in England, the avoidable consequences of which cost the NHS upwards of £98 million and more than 1700 lives every year, indicate national estimates, published online in the journal BMJ Quality & Safety.  This panel further highlights issues related to medication safety. Watch the documentary and the panel on Youtube: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/overdose-how-can-we-prevent-medication-errors Speakers on the panel: Tjaša Zajc, Author of (OVER)DOSE, Host of Faces of Digital Health Stefan Siekierski, Nurse, Electronic prescribing Project Manager, Better Delivery Manager UK & IE Katrina Azer, Pharmacist, Patient Advocate, Board Member of the Pharmacy Council of New Zealand Robert Johnstone, Board Member of the European Forum for Good Clinical Practice (EFGCP) and International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC) Alexander Jankuloski, CEO at Kuwait Hospital Hicham Naim, Global Head Integrated & Personalized Patient Care Program, Digital Advisory Board at Takeda Prof. Yu-Chuan Jack-Li - a researcher of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine and medical informatics, and a practicing dermatologist, the Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Health & Care Informatics

ePrescribing has become a norm in the US healthcare system. Now, the expanded role of pharmacists and the integration of non-physician prescribers into the healthcare system signifies a move towards a more accessible healthcare model, potentially alleviating some of the clinicians' burdens. Surescripts is the national provider of the ePrescribing infrastructure in the US. In this short discussion, I spoke with Dr. Lynne Nowak, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, and Melanie Marcus, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at Surescripts, about the importance of ePrescribing on a national level, the changing role of pharmacists, and how it facilitates the redistribution of healthcare provision burdens.  Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

Is it time to stop talking about digital health and just focus on health? Where, in which department, do digital health innovations fit within Pharma? Do we expect too much in terms of the speed of digital health innovation in Pharma? These were just some of the questions discussed at SPELLED OUT: Digital Health and Pharma event. SPELLED OUT is a group name of a series of events organised by Curated Health and Faces of digital health, with which we wish to bring clarity to specific digital health-related topics. The debate was moderated by Tjaša Zajc, host of Faces of digital health and Hicham Naim, the founder of Curated Health, also working at Takeda as Head of Strategy, Transformation & Innovation, Data Digitam & Technology. Speakers: Paul Simms, CEO of Impatient Health, Jennifer Butler, Chief Marketing Officer at Medisafe  Jessica Shull, Director of Digital Therapeutics at Vicore Pharma AB Christophe Jauquet, International keynote Speaker on making customers healthy & happy. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth.com

Dr. Marinka Žitnik is a computer scientist from Harvard, studying applied machine learning with a focus on challenges brought forward by data in science, medicine, and health. A large aspect of her work concerns the use of AI for better use of medications - either by analyzing and predicting side effects in polypharmacy or by potentially discovering new indications of combinations of drugs that are already on the market. Dr. Zitnik joined Harvard as an Assistant Professor in December 2019. Before that, she was a postdoctoral scholar in Computer Science at Stanford University. She was also a member of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub at Stanford. Some of her methods are used by major biomedical institutions, including Baylor College of Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stanford Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital. In this discussion, she talks about the role of AI in the development of COVID vaccines, the role of AI in drug development, realistic expectations of AI tools we can expect in the next 5 to 10 years, and more.  *** This discussion was part of the discussions recorded for the movie OVERDOSE - How can we prevent medication errors, featuring 10 speakers from 6 countries across the world. Find all the details about the movie along with full interviews with speakers in the movie here: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentary !!! If you are a clinician in the US, you can actually earn CME credits by listening to this show. Find the link to more details in the show notes. The CMEfy process is powered by Adaptrack - a simple platform to unlock precious time & money, while avoiding malpractice, burnout & administrative risks.  CMEfy this topic:  https://earnc.me/SneirH Leave a rating or review for the show: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth 

In June 2021, France announced a €7.5 billion Health Innovation Plan, as part of a broader financial investment to boost the French industry.  This funding goes beyond digital health, it’s aimed at supporting biotech development, startups, medtech, and more. In 2021, The eHealth Acceleration Strategy was launched, a large part of which includes upskilling and training new and existing healthcare experts, and medical and social workers in digital health. In today’s discussion you will hear from Louisa Stüwe is the project director of the Ministerial eHealth delegation at the French Ministry of Health. We discussed how the French strategy was designed, who was involved, and what has been realized to date. She also explains the process for reimbursement of digital therapeutics software medical devices and telemonitoring, how France supports the secondary use of medical data, and more.  Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/ Additional resources: French core information platfom for digital health information: https://gnius.esante.gouv.fr/en  TEHDAS state of digital health in 12 countries in Europe report: https://tehdas.eu/results/member-states-readiness-to-benefit-from-the-ehds-regulation-varies/  Health data hub: https://www.health-data-hub.fr/

In the previous episode, you had a chance to listen to  Dr Phil Koczan, GP in North East London and the Chief Clinical Safety Officer for London, Dr Katherine Buxton, Consultant in Palliative Care Medicine for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Clinical Director, Palliative and End of Life Care Strategic Clinical Network for London talk about the recently introduced digitized urgent care planning across London.  OneLondon is a project that supports a vision of joined-up health and care. It is a pan-London collaboration between leaders from the 5 Integrated Care Systems in the capital.  London’s healthcare system is complex. It covers a population of 10 million people and is connecting 35 NHS Trusts and 1385 GP practices.  In this episode, Gary McAllister, Chief Technology Officer of OneLondon explains how is London approaching the digital transformation of healthcare in London, how complex is the IT infrastructure at the moment, and how the core team of OneLondon works with vendors to try to connect different systems as efficiently as possible. More about OneLondon: https://www.onelondon.online/ More about Urgent Care Planning: https://ucp.onelondon.online/ MONTHLY Newsletter which recaps episodes in the past month: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com ***** The topic of this episode is supported by Better - a provider of an open data digital health platform, electronic prescribing and medication administration solution, and low code tools that help you rapidly build applications that suit your needs. The company focuses on simplifying the work of health and care teams, advocates for data for life, and strives for all health data to be vendor-neutral and easily accessible. More about the company: better.care

In this episode, founders of four very different companies talk about their fundraising experiences. As critically mentioned by Fouad Al-Noor - Co-Founder & CEO - ThinkSono - we should stop talking about the myth that startups search for investors that can offer strategic benefits. It’s true, but fundraising is still primarily about getting money to be able to start a business. The key thing, in the end, is also to find an investor you like as a person. This will be crucial for the investor-startup relationship to survive once things get tough,” he says.  And it does get tough. As mentioned by Kei W. Mueller, he talked to over 90 investors with very limited success because the solution Ebenbuild is creating is so forward-thinking. In this episode you will hear:  About a mental health app that world with hospitals to give patients timely support after discharge and prevent to early readmissions,  A startup improving mechanical ventilation with the help of digital twins,  How can immunotherapy production be optimized according to a swiss based startup Limula,  Revolution in ultrasound: handheld ThinkSono is shortening the diagnostics time of deep venous thrombosis.  We briefly discussed each of these solutions and also the fundraising side of startups. EIT Health Catapult Program has plenty to offer, but as a startup you should consider which stage you’re in when applying, to get the most value.  Speakers:  Luc Henry – CEO and co-founder – Limula https://limula.ch/ Kei Wieland Müller - Co-Founder & CEO at Ebenbuild https://www.ebenbuild.com/ Fouad Al-Noor - Co-Founder & CEO of ThinkSono https://thinksono.com/ Hans Juergen Stein - Managing Director of mentalis https://mentalis-health.com/ HELP UKRAINE: If you’re a medical device manufacturer or have the ability to donate medical equipment, EIT Health is facilitating the supply of medical equipment to Ukraine. EIT Health has partnered with the Polish Medical Mission, a leading humanitarian organisation working with healthcare professionals on the border of Ukraine. If you are an organisation with the ability to donate and ship any of the medical equipment please complete the form on Eit Health’s website for Ukraine: https://eithealth.eu/ukraine-appeal/ This episode is supported by EiT Health Germany, which is one of eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) currently funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). EiT Health Germany connects 150 renowned partners from industry, research and education from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The unique network helps initiate outstanding innovations in the health sector. If you're a startup working in the field of digital health or biotech and don't know EiT Health Germany yet, I would encourage you to visit eit-health.de, where you will find more about innovation, acceleration, and education programs. 

This episode explores Amazon’s efforts in healthcare, the challenges of increasing transparency in AI development in healthcare, and a little bit about the state of turning microbiome research into business.  There were many doubts that Amazon could succeed because healthcare and drug management are complex etc. It’s 2021 and Amazon is offering a competitive online Pharmacy and expanding its Amazon Care and telehealth offer.  Microbiome space is a hot investment area but a shadow was cast upon it because of the downfall of the startup call uBiome. uBiome first offered a direct-to-consumer gut analysis for wellness. Later they turned it into a clinical test reimbursable by health insurance, which ended in problematic billing practices. In March this year, the Co-Founders were charged with multiple federal crimes including conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, money laundering, and related offenses. Erin Brodwin is a health tech reporter at STAT News. In her career so far, Erin covered the promise and peril of AI in health care, broken news about health tech companies, and written comprehensively about wearables and their impact on digital health. Before joining STAT Erin was a senior health and tech reporter at Business Insider.   Episode Summary Enjoy the discussion and to browse through more content, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com.  Leave a rating or a review at www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) have become increasingly integral in healthcare for assessing the effectiveness of treatments from the patient's perspective. It sounds like a reasonable step in improving clinical research and care provision, but gathering data can be more difficult then you may think. It isn't easy to get to marginalized communities. There are language barriers in collecting data. There are cultural aspects that impact responses. So, how can you design useful electronic solutions for patient-reported outcomes? Hear from Mustafa Ali Syed, Researcher at the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, The University of Manchester, and Ben James, Co-founder/Chief Design Officer at uMotif - ePRO, an engagement platform designed to power clinical and real-world research. Both are co-authors of a recently published paper titled Exploring the Cross-cultural Acceptability of Digital Tools for Pain Self-reporting. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Show notes: 00:00:00 Why Do PROs Matter? 00:04:00 Evolution of Data Collection 00:06:00 Importance of Diversity in Clinical Trials 00:08:00 Ethnicity, Culture, and Pain Perception 00:12:00 The Role of Technology in PROs 00:14:00 Designing Inclusive Digital Solutions 00:20:00 Challenges in Engaging Targeted Populations 00:22:00 Language and Communication Barriers 00:26:00 The Future of PRO Research

Investments in digital health have been steadily rising for the last seven years. 6.2 billion dollars were invested in digital health startups in 2015, 44 billion in 2022, according to Startup Health. Startup Health is a US-based organisation supporting digital health innovators across the world and globally spreading optimism about the potential of technology in healthcare. The vision that drives that optimism is the hope that we can bring access to healthcare to everyone in the world, that we can beat cancer and cure diseases such as diabetes or Alzheimer’s. That vision is important because healthcare innovation is not for the faint-hearted and as health indicators show, currently, life expectancy and health are worsening across the world, says co-founder and president of Startup Health Unity Stoakes. The market is maturing, he says, which is also seen in the number of companies that attract investments. The total amount of investments has been increasing for several years, but th number of companies that are invested in, is staying roughly the same - it’s just that some companies are maturing and raising higher amounts of funding. In this discussion you will hear Unity Stoakes talk about his reflection of Startup Health which is already 11 years old, he talked about the global expansion of Startup Health, why we need to think about healthcare innovation less locally, more globally, and also why we still need much more investments in the future. If you want to go down the memory lane of digital health, you can also tune in to the interview with Unity in 2017: https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/faces-of-digital-health/id1194284040?i=1000380325225

With mental health being at the forefront of our attention in 2020, next to COVID, have you ever wondered, how the work of a psychiatrist looks like? Many clinicians fear psychiatric drugs, but Roni Shiloh firmly believes the fear is unnecessary.  Roni Shiloh is an MD, specialized in psychiatry. He headed a closed Psychiatric Department, was Chief Psychiatric Officer at a large Israeli HMO as well a senior lecturer in Tel-Aviv University, Israel. He then worked in the Pharmaceutical industry before starting his own startup Seegnal, which offers clinicians decision support in medication prescribing. The system takes into account many of a patient’s variables to be as accurate as possible, and more importantly, for the decision support to not overwhelm the doctor with alerts. Electronic prescribing and medication management are very complex and plagued with errors, which I tried to outline in the documentary OVERDOSE - How can we prevent medication errors. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, find the link in the show notes, or find the version adapted for radio in one of the previous episodes of this podcast. A few of Roni’s statements from this interview are also in the movie.  This discussion covers:   How the work of a psychiatrist looks like,  what are the challenges related to medications in psychiatry, why are decision support systems for medication prescribing currently still mostly frustrating for the users? Various research papers show that 90-96% of alerts get ignored. You’ll be able to hear a little bit more about that in one of the upcoming episodes with the pioneering researcher in the field of the impact of IT on medical professionals - Dr. David W. Bates from Harvard. Watch the documentary (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors and the panel discussion on Youtube: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentary

In January 2021 a jury in Montana delivered what is believed to be the first verdict in a wrongful life case, awarding over $400,000 compensation for medical and emotional costs due to the unwanted treatment of Rodney Knoepfle. In theory, patients have the right and option to draft an advanced care plan, a written document with their preferences about advanced medical treatment, life support and resuscitation in case of a serious health event.  In this episode, Ryan Van Wert, MD, an intensive care physician, Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University and CEO and co-founder of Vynca talks about the current challenges surrounding advanced care planning in the US. Vynca provides comprehensive advance care planning technology solutions that enable health care organizations to deliver high-quality end-of-life care consistent with an individual’s preferences. This episode is a part of the AgeTech series. This is a series of discussions about end-of-life care, geriatric care, caregiving, and the aging society. Episode Summary More on the website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: http://www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Kenya has a lot of talent and opportunities for innovation. Access to care is not a problem because plenty of community nurses are present nationwide. However, they have a limited problem and mostly focus on main infectious diseases, leaving serious conditions undiagnosed, says Emilian Popa, Founder and CEO of Ilara Health. Ilara health equips a network of small healthcare providers with lifesaving and essential diagnostic tools to improve the quality of medical care in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this episode, Emilian Popa talks about:  why health insurance is hard to scale in Africa, where people are concerned with daily costs and survival,  investments and how local VCs mostly invest in sectors like real estate and investments for health tech are supported by foreign investors,  why Ilara Health is expanding on the Kenyan market but not in Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria or Egypt.  Transcript: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/kenya-ilara-health-diagnostics-africa Website: facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Ilara Health: https://www.ilarahealth.com/about-us/ Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

This episode was first published in summer 2021, and is one of the most listened-to episodes from 2021. Taiwan spends only 6.4% of it’s GDP for healthcare, but has high satisfaction rates with healthcare, and is also very digitalized. In this episode, a closer look into healthcare in Taiwan is provided by Prof. Yu-Chuan Jack Li - a pioneer of artificial intelligence in medicine and translational biomedical informatics. Professor Li is Editor-in-Chief for BMJ Health & Care Informatics journal, the elected president of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and has devoted himself to evolving the next generation of Al in patient safety and prevention ("Earlier Medicine"). He has been deeply involved in biomedical informatics development in Taiwan and international cooperation on various continents, including Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. We spoke about the state of healthcare digitalization and AI in Taiwan. Subscribe to the newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

This is the last episode in a short series about healthcare digitalization in the Nordics. The discussion resolves around healthcare in the Nordics more broadly, data standards and interoperability across Europe, a successful pilot project from the 2000’s called epSOS, in which 12 EU Member states worked on cross-border healthcare interoperability, and what that project tells us about ambitions in Europe to achieve the European Health Data Space by 2025. The speaker in the episode is Anna Adelöf Kragh, Partner at VENZO_Public and Healthcare - an innovative consultancy firm specializing in human-centric digital transformation. Anna has more than 10 years experience working with  governance, strategy and project management within the public and healthcare sector. For example she worked on various projects related to healthcare interoperability and digitalization for the European Commission,  Nordic Ministerial Coucil in the project for Nordic e-health cooperation group.     www.facesofdigitalhealth.com  Nordics series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digital-health-in-the-nordics   Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

If you work in healthcare IT, you must have heard the name Epic. Epic is a renowned EHR provider, that covers around a third of the US healthcare market. In 2019, Epic launched Cosmos, a special program for data mining of patient records data gathered in Epic systems. Today, Epic Cosmos, which was built to enable easier clinical research for contributing Epic customers, contains over 178 million patient records from over 6.5 billion encounters, representing patients in all 50 states. In this episode’s discussion with Phil Lindemann, VP of Business Intelligence at Epic and Epic’s Clinical Informaticist Dave Little, MD you will hear more about the growth of data in Epic Cosmos, collaboration with external healthcare IT and app providers that can join Epic’s App Orchard ecosystem. Dave and Phil also talked about needed improvements for easier collaboration with healthcare IT vendors and innovators outside Epic, how they hope EHRs will evolve with novel technologies and AI, and more.  This discussion is part of a broader series of talks about healthcare data management in the US. An in-depth summary will be published in the monthly newsletter: fodh.substack.com The January edition offers an overview into natural language processing development in healthcare and the potential of ChatGPT in healthcare: https://fodh.substack.com/p/natural-language-processing-is-the www.facesofdigitalhealth.com More on Epic and Epic Cosmos: epicresearch.org  cosmos.epic.com 

How would you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10? Pain is a very subjective matter and there’s plenty of research done and in progress to understand it better. In this episode Sara E. Berger, a researcher at IBM with over a decade of experience in the pain field talks about how science defines pain in the first place, how can pain be quantified given the variety of factors that impact it, and how does the research so far translate into clinical practice.  Thanks for our Sponsor: Health Resources and Services Administration: Receive up to $250,000 in student loan repayment in exchange for service in a community disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis. Learn more and apply to join STAR LRP - that stands for the Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program. Applications Close on July 22, 2021 To read more about other topics as well go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. Faces of digital health is now also live on the Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOzIOl_wIKtmoDmgfePhAQ Leave a rating or a review on www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

If it seems that the world is moving faster and faster with the rapid evolution of AI and other technologies, the digitalization of healthcare infrastructure is not changing with that speed. However, countries across Europe are ambitiously pursuing digitalization efforts.  On top of that, under the European Health Data Space legal framework, countries in the European Union are building the MyHealth @EU infrastructure which aims to enable cross-border health information accessibility and services. In this episode, you will get an insight in the state of healthcare and digitalization in Germany, the Netherlands, and Slovenia. All three countries have published their new digitalization strategies in the last 6 months. Slovenia plans to gradually expand the annual budget for eHealth from 6 million EUR to 80 million. Hospitals in Germany received 4,3 billion EUR for digitalization projects and need to demonstrate by 2024, that funded projects have been implemented and are making an impact. The Netherlands passed a new electronic Data exchange in healthcare law in April and plans on spending 1,4 billion for healthcare digitalization by 2026.  The challenge with healthcare digitalization and reforms are complex, due to various data privacy concerns, the digital divide, integration issues among different healthcare information systems, different complexities of healthcare systems’ design, and legal constraints from the past, that now need to be changed.  You will hear more in this discussion with the representatives of healthcare ministries in Slovenia, Germany, and the Netherlands.  Speakers:  Alenka Kolar, Acting Director-General Directorate for Digitalisation in Healthcare at the Ministry of Health Slovenia  Sebastian Zilch, Head of e-Health, Gematik & Telematics Infrastructure at the German Federal Ministry of Health Bianca Rowenhorst, CIO Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sports in the Netherlands Read the summary: https://fodh.substack.com/p/how-are-germany-slovenia-and-the Website: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/

Catalonia published a new digitalization strategy in 2017. It set a new path of the healthcare IT infrastructure, based on open-platform approach, focusing on data persistence with the use of openEHR data specification. In this discussion, you will hear from Jordi Piera Jiménez, Director of the Digital Health Strategy Office at the Catalan Health Service and Director at openEHR International, representing organisational members. He discussed specifics of the Spanish healthcare market, how far Catalonia came since 2017, how is Catalonia building, using and updating a multi-morbidity scoring system for patients which enables easier clinical decision making, cybersecurity attacks and ultimate improvement in information security measures, and more. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

Nurses are the backbone of healthcare. They’re the closest to the patient, they offer support to them and the doctors. Their mission is to make patients feel better and recover as fast as possible. There is a global shortage of nurses and more often than not, nurses are stretched thin. The same as with doctors, mistakes can happen in nursing. You are going to hear from Martina Viduka A practicing nurse and the CEO of Advosense. In this discussion, she presented the nursing perspective on medication management in the hospital setting. This interview was part of the discussions recorded for the movie (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors?. Find the link to the movie in the show notes, and see or hear the interviews with other speakers as well. I spoke with 10 experts from six countries across the world to understand why is medication-related patient safety a global problem in which everyone plays a role - the patient and his family, the doctors, the nurses, and the pharmacists. Watch the documentary (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors and the panel discussion on Youtube: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentary