Faces of Digital Health

In the United States, individuals' healthcare information is dispersed among various healthcare providers. But many companies have been working on creating consolidated patient views, Reveleer being one of them. Data fragmentation often occurs because people tend to switch healthcare providers when they change jobs and, as a result, their health insurance plans. Since insurance companies have specific networks of affiliated healthcare providers, a change in insurance necessitates a change in providers. Because providers use different information technology systems, individual healthcare data becomes compartmentalized and difficult to consolidate. In this episode, Jay Ackerman, CEO and president of Reveleer, a healthcare technology workflow, data, and analytics company, supporting payers and risk-bearing providers in their value-based care programs, explained: how Reveleer consolidates patient data to give clinicians a single overview of the patient, what are the biggest pain points in healthcare data management in the US, how is generative AI affecting Reveleer’s product development? Discussion transcription: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/healthcare-data-consolidation-reveleer 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 Generative AI in Healthcare: "The biggest challenge is in PR": https://fodh.substack.com/p/generative-ai-in-healthcare Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or review in iTunes: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/subscribe

VR is becoming a well-established tool in healthcare and medicine to help treat pain management, anxiety, mental wellness, and more. Thousands of studies have shown the efficacy of VR approaches for health because of the impact of the immersive experience offered by this technology. We covered VR in medicine in several episodes in the past, and I’m adding the link to those in the show notes. In this episode, Aaron Gani, CEO of BehaVR, a company providing virtual reality solutions to address pain management, anxiety, mental wellness, and social engagement, shares: the latest on reimbursement, shifts in digital therapeutics companies' business models, which might make VR solutions more widely accessible with direct-to-consumer approaches, the impact of VR on decreasing opioid use in pain management, thoughts about VR and psychedelics since both approaches leverage altered states of consciousness. Enjoy the discussion. You can also read the summary of this chat on our website; the link is in the show notes. And if you haven’t yet, do check out our newsletter at fodh.substack.com. The latest edition focuses on the state of generative AI in healthcare, and the past editions have info on how France is approaching the reimbursement of digital therapeutics. You can find an overview of healthcare and digitalization in Africa, insight into the APAC and LATAM regions, and much more. Do check it out! Discussion summary: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/vr-healthcare-behavr-aaron-gani BehaVR: https://www.behavr.com/how-it-works/ https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/ Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Past episodes on VR: F106 VRx: What has over 5000 studies taught us about the healing effect of VR? (Dr. Brennan Spiegel) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f106-vrx-what-has-over-5000-studies-taught-us-about-the-healing-effect-of-vr-dr-brennan-spiegel VR: Promises and Challenges in 2021 (Rafael Grossman, Jennifer Esposito, Aaron Gani): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/vr-rafael-grossmann-behavr-magic-leap

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/

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/

Scarsity of resources can be difficult to image: it encompasses the adaptation of clinical guidelines, palliative care instead of treatment, and clinicians accepting that they can’t help everyone, but need to choose who to save and who to palliate. Khalida Soki is a consultant physician and kidney specialist working in Nairobi. She moved back to Kenya in 2018. She participated in over 20 kidney transplants in Nairobi, successfully run a large hemodialysis unit, grown a clinic for kidney disease and helped write the COVID19 guidelines for the Ministry of Health in Kenya. She is also the organizing secretary for the young nephrologists committee at the African association of Nephrology and an honorary lecturer for the East African Kidney Institute. In this discussion, she explains: how did her transition from NHS to Kenya look like, how do clinicians operate on a daily basis with lack of resources, how they innovate because they have to, how is technology helping educate patients and improve access through telemedicine. Read the report and health tech innovation in Africa: https://fodh.substack.com/p/jedsy-ilara-nigeria-digital-health 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

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

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/

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/

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/

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/

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

A systemic approach to care for non-communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes is Africa is in its early stages, with the biggest challenge for patients being the price of medications, says Anne Stake, Chief Strategy and Product Officer at Medtronic Labs. Medtronic Labs is a nonprofit organization that works with governments and local communities in across Africa to create local ecosystems for the management of hypertension and diabetes. In this episode, Anne Stake explains: how does Medtronic Labs work, why are they present in Africa, how to run successful non-communicable diseases programs in Africa, why regulation isn't as loose in less developed markets than the West might think, ...and more! This is a rerun of an episode first published in July 2022. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Excerpt and full episode with Anne Stake: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/medtronic-labs-africa?rq=medtronic Herve Mwamba - South Africa & Africa More Broady: What’s The State of Medical Device Regulation? : https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/medical-device-regulation-mdr-africa?rq=herve%20 Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

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/

Chronic diseases are the result of a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioral factors. They require long-term management and often behavioral changes. Achieving long-lasting effects can be extremely difficult, and digital health solutions have since the beginning been seen as an important factor in assuring success, by providing patients with continuous monitoring and feedback. Omada Health is a US digital behavioral medicine company that uses digital tools and personalized support to help individuals living with prediabetes, diabetes, hypertension, and musculoskeletal issues. It’s been present on the market for over a decade, so in this discussion, you will hear the CEO Sean Duffy talk about what exactly does Omada do differently compared to traditional chronic care management providers, we discussed approaches to providing sustainable long-term chronic care management, and touched the topic of the sharp rise in popularity of GLP-1 drugs, we’ve seen in the last year. GLP-1 agonists are drugs that are used for treating diabetes but have become a popular weight loss tool for many people. SPONSOR https://magicmind.com/digitalhealth For discount, use the code: digitalhealth20

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

Generative AI is definitely the word we will remember 2023 by. Knowing that administrative burden is among the key reason for physician burnout, the idea that AI could tackle this challenge, became a little bit more tangible with the raised awareness and public understanding of generative AI. But where are we exactly, and how is generative AI utilized for clinical use cases, administration, patient care and in biotech? GSR Ventures and Maven Ventures are two health technology-focused VC firms that analyzed 145 startups across healthcare delivery and life sciences with generative AI solutions. They highlighted their innovations, challenges, and market potential. Collectively, the startups have earned more than $20 billion in funding and have 47,000 employees. I had the pleasure to chat with Partner at GSR Ventures Justin Norden about the report and details such as: why has biotech raised the most so far, why not are startups working on the administrative issues, how do investors look at liability issues with generative AI, and what exactly are they looking for in startups, apart from a great team? Full generative AI companies in healthcare report: https://aicheckup.substack.com/p/where-generative-ai-meets-healthcare www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: fodh.substack.com SPONSOR: Magic Mind Go to magicmind.com/digitalhealth use the code DIGITALHEALTH20 to get a discount on your purchase

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

Healthcare is one of the rare industries, in which often times, by requesting a service, the work hardly begins for the patient. Especially in complex cases, care is rarely seamless: test are done, drugs are presribed and if all goes well the problem is resolved. But oftentimes months can pass before the right drug and dose is found. Antidepressants are a good example. They are still often prescribed on a trial and error basis, with changes made if the initial regimen proves ineffective. But what if there was a better way for prescribing? This is where pharmacogenomic testing comes into play. By analyzing genetic variations that influence drug metabolism, efficacy, and potential adverse reactions, pharmacogenomics tests provide valuable insights for personalized treatment decisions. However, despite its potential, implementing pharmacogenomics testing is more complex than it may seem. In this discussion, you will hear from Adrijana Kekic, Pharmacogenomics Clinical Specialist at the Mayo Clinic. We discussed the current state of pharmacogenomics, the optimal timing for individuals to undergo a pharmacogenomics test, to get the right drug and the right dose based on your metabolism, Why is pharmacogenomics not used more frequently, Further development of the field. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

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/

Mexico has 126 million people which is a bit more than half as much as Brazil in South America, or three times as much as Argentina, which we discussed in one of our previous episodes as well. Mexico has a predominantly public healthcare system, with workforce shortages - only 2.4 doctors per 1000 people, which is heavily below the OECD average. For comparison, the number of doctors per 1000 people in the US is 2.6, but Denmark or Sweden on the other hand, have 4.3 doctors per 1000 people. Diagnostikare is a healthcare provider which works with employers to provide primary care, preventative care, and mental health services through a digital platform. It is currently used by over 200.000 people in Mexico. In this episode, Rafael Lopez, CEO of Diagnostikare shared his insights in the digital patient experience in Mexico, what is the infrastructure like on the national level, how much room for digital innovation the country has, and more. Other episodes about LATAM: Healthcare Digitalization in South America Ep. 1: How digital is Peru? (Jhonatan Bringas) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/jhonatan-bringas-digital-health-peru-lapsi Argentina: Great Medical Education System and Turbulent Political Instability (Santiago Troncar) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/latam-ep-2-argentina-santiago-troncar-digital-health LATAM Ep. 3: Improving Cancer Care in South America (Pegasi) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/latam-ep-3-improving-cancer-care-in-south-america-pegasi/id1194284040?i=1000617174703 Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

In the last few episodes, you’ve been able to hear two episodes about digital health in South America. We talked about Peru with Jhonathan Bringas, MD and innovator, CEO of Lapsi Health, we dove into Argentina with Santiago Troncar, CEO and Founder or FutureDocs Latin America, and in this episode, we are looking into Chile and cancer Care in Latin America, with Luis Santiago, CEO of Pegasi. Luis was a guest on the podcast already 2 years ago, and I added the link to that episode in the show notes. PEGASI is a healthcare IT company that pivoted from EMR provision to cancer care with their oncology information system that aims to improve the time it takes to diagnose and treat cancer patients in developing countries. Luis talked about oncology management in South America, changes in healthcare digitalization in South America after the pandemic. Other episodes: Healthcare Digitalization in South America Ep. 1: How digital is Peru? (Jhonatan Bringas) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/jhonatan-bringas-digital-health-peru-lapsi Argentina: Great Medical Education System and Turbulent Political Instability (Santiago Troncar) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/latam-ep-2-argentina-santiago-troncar-digital-health Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

In this episode, we’re diving in the Finish ecosysyem. What makes Finland repeatedly achieve the rank of the happiest country globally? In this episode, you will hear from Päivi Sillanaukee, Special Envoy for Health and Wellbeing at the Ministry for Social Affairs and Health. Until recently, Paivi was Ambassador for Health at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Paivi has a strong presence in the international community, She is the co-chair of the Alliance for Health Security Cooperation (AHSC), a member of the Steering Group of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), and a member of Health Advisory Board of the UN Technology Innovation Lab (UNTIL) Finland. We discussed the ecosystem in Finland, why should Ministries for foreign affairs care about healthcare, and where does Finland have room for improvement in healthcare digitalization. Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

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/

South America is a large market, with great potential from the language perspective, since Spanish is the official language in most countries, except for Brazil. But what are the specifics of the region? In this episode Santiago Troncar, the founder of Future Docs Latin America, shares his insights on healthcare digitalization in Argentina. He discusses the strengths and challenges of the healthcare system, including the high level of human and software resources, but also the economic crisis and disparities across the country. Santiago highlights the importance of electronic health records and patient empowerment and shares an example of innovative AI-powered breast cancer screening technology. Past episode in LATAM Series: Healthcare digitalization in South America Ep. 1: How digital is Peru? (Jhonatan Bringas) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/jhonatan-bringas-digital-health-peru-lapsi Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

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

After a series about digital health in the APAC region, this is the first episode about healthcare and digital health in South America. Speaker: Peruvian clinician and innovator Jhonatan Bringas Dimitriades, MD. Jhonatan is based in the Netherlands, and worked across continents as an MD and executive at various tech companies. Discussed topics: The state of healthcare digitalization in Peru and other countries in Latin America. Opportunities and challenges for startups working with public hospitals in Peru. The need for more education and training in artificial intelligence for healthcare professionals in Latin America. The potential for technology to address issues of access, high mortality rates, and other epidemiological issues in Peru and other countries in the region. The importance of validated data in understanding ethnicities and epidemiological components in Latin America. Past episodes on South America: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digitalheath-south-america https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/sleep-and-digital-health-in-brazil Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

Women's Health has increasingly garnered attention, with growing research, investments, and discussions surrounding the topic. Although overall digital health investments experienced a decline last year compared to previous years, the proportion of funds allocated to femtech within the digital health budget has seen an upward trend. However, there is still significant progress to be made. Women's health encompasses more than just pregnancy care, breast and ovarian cancer, or fertility. It also includes addressing gender-based violence and promoting pleasure. In today's episode, we will be hearing from Shamala Hinrichsen - Founder and CEO - Hanai, an application providing reliable health information to the underserved communities in Malaysia and Africa and Mariatheresa Samson Kadushi - Founder and CEO of Mobile Afya - the first USSD application in Africa using internet-free mobile technology to provide basic health information in local and native languages starting with Swahili in Tanzania, East Africa. Mariatheresa and Shamala were already on Faces of digital health in 2021: Tune in: F126 How is Tradition Hindering Health Literacy in Kenya, Tanzania and Malaysia? (Shamala Hinrichsen, Mariatheresa Samson Kadushi): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/women-health-africa-malaysia-mobile-afya-hanai The reason this is important is, that, based on the meeting on this show, Shamala and Mariatheresa are now building a new app together. Sheher app aims to address the gap in knowledge about female health, which goes beyond pregnancy-related issues. They bring medical education and access while also bringing women into the conversation through personal stories validated by medical info. Their team brings cultural diversity as well as generational differences to tackle this broad aspect of women's health globally. More about She Her App: www.sheher.app Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Show notes: Introducing the speakers (00:08-02:49) Topics covered under Mobile Afia and Hanai (03:33-06:35) The importance of sharing personal stories backed up by medical information (09:01-14:57) Differences between the new app and previous projects (15:11-17:48) Adapting technology to cultural contexts (27:03-31:19) The impact of the app, investments in research and solutions for femtech (33:05-42:48)

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.

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/

This is the second episode in the Digital health in APAC Series. The first episode featured Farid Bidgoli, GM for Roche in Thailand, who discussed what is Roche looking into in Thailand when it comes to digital health. In this episode, the focus is on China. Ruby Wang, former Head of Health for the UK Government in China at the British Embassy Beijing; Adviser on Health Policy for the United Nations Resident Coordinator’s Office in China, who today works as a doctor in the NHS and a consultant to companies interested in entering the Chinese market, talks about: How is Chinese healthcare system changing, How to succeed in the Chinese market, How do the Chinese data privacy laws impact AI development in China.

This is the first episode in the series of discussions about healthcare and digital health in the APAC Region. In this episode Farid Bidgoli, General Manager for Roche in Thailand and neighboring countries. Farid talked about the healthcare system situation in Thailand, the state of digital health technologies, what kind of solutions Roche is keeping an eye on and more. The upcoming episodes feature: Ruby Wang, health and life science consultant, former Head of Health for the UK Government in China at the British Embassy in Beijing about the Chinese market. We will be diving into Vietnam with 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. Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

After an intense race in AI development lighted by the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, two important things happened in the last week of March 2023: Over 1000 tech workers, such as Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX, Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple, Yoshua Bengio, Founder and Scientific Director at Mila, Turing Prize winner and professor at University of Montreal, Stuart Russell, Berkeley, Professor of Computer Science, director of the Center for Intelligent Systems, and co-author of the standard textbook “Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach", signed a public letter that urges a pause on AI development before humanity as a society decides how humans can control the development. The first subscribers include: As the letter states, “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.” A day after this letter was published, UNESCO published a press release that calls on all governments to immediately implement the global ethical framework, which 193 Member States of Unesco has unanimously adopted. As warned by Unesco, we need to address many concerning ethical issues raised by AI innovations, in particular discrimination and stereotyping, including the issue of gender inequality, but also the fight against disinformation, the right to privacy, the protection of personal data, and human and environmental rights. And the industry cannot self-regulate, states the press release. Healthcare is moving from the era of gathering data through digitalized systems, EHRs, sensors, and wearables to the era of mining that data for better patient outcomes and operational efficiency. However, in order for AI and algorithms to help improve the health of many, we should strive for algorithms to be open and transparent, says Bart De Witte, founder of HIPPO AI Foundation, a renowned expert on digital transformation in healthcare in Europe, who regularly speakers and posts about technology and innovation strategy, with a particular focus on the socioeconomic impact on healthcare. In this short discussion, recorded at the Vision Health Pioneers Demo Day on 28 March in Berlin, Bart explains: why is open and transparent AI important for the greater good in healthcare, where global medical development is going with different values and regulations about AI and data, and comments on the upcoming European Health Data Space. Enjoy the show, and if you like what you will hear, subscribe to the podcast to be notified about new episodes automatically. Also, go to fodh.substack.com to read our newsletter, which is published roughly on a monthly basis. Newsletter: fodh.substack.com Transcript: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/open-ai-bart-de-witte-gpt4 Open Letter to pause all AI development: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/ Unesco Press release: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/artificial-intelligence-unesco-calls-all-governments-implement-global-ethical-framework-without

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).

One of the biggest global challenges in healthcare at the moment is the workforce crisis. Workforce shortages are not related to the number of people that get trained for healthcare professionals but the working conditions that they need to operate under. In today’s episode, we will look at a good practice related to nursing organizations in the community of the Netherlands. I spoke with Thijs de Blok, CEO of Buurtzorg International - an organization of 15.000 nurses that work in self-managing teams and provide holistic care to patients. I asked Thijs, more about the early beginnings of the organization, how it fits in the dutch healthcare system context, and what he observed in terms of care providers globally. Tune in to the episode about nurses in the US: Has The Risk of Becoming a Nurse Become Too Great in the US? https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/nurse-rebecca-love-nurse-alice www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

After a series of discussions about healthcare data in the US, we’re now moving to insights and good practices in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has roughly 17 million people. As you will hear, its healthcare is highly digitalized with high digital literacy. You will hear a short panel discussion that was recorded at mHealth Israel in Tel Aviv. Corne Mulders – CIO University Medical Center Utrecht Simon Vermeer – CIO Erasmus University Medical Center (Erasmus MC Rotterdam) Paul Hillman – CIO Maastricht University Medical Center Shared their views about digital health development in the Netherlands, how their institutions approach innovation, and where they see room for improvements regarding healthcare digitalization on the national level. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

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/

Electronic health records and digital data gathering have now been around long enough that the focus has shifted from gathering to using the data for research, AI development, and clinical decision support systems. Various companies are trying to build solutions to help clinicians navigate care, and workflows, and have the right information in front of them to make decisions fast without losing time searching through the whole patient’s record. This is the fourth episode in the series about healthcare data management in the US. In the first episode, we heard how Komodo health collects data about various encounters people have with healthcare. In the second episode, we learn about Epic Cosmos - a research environment consisting of clinical data from the electronic medical records of 178 million patients. In the third episode, we heard how Palantir Foundry helps healthcare enterprises, regulatory agencies, and governments optimize their workforce planning and crisis response through an open-data approach and experience from other industries. Today, you’ll hear a panel discussion recorded at HLTH, in which industry experts shared their experience with building solutions on top of EHRs, challenges related to connecting to electronic health record and needs for better interoperability APIs to really enable data to be used for health outcomes improvement. Today, you will hear from: (Kathy Dalton Ford Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Project Ronin, Josh Rubel, Chief Commercial Officer for MDClone, David Lareau, CEO of Medicomp Systems, Inc. , Greg Miller, CGO of Lumeon). www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

This is the third episode in a series of discussions about healthcare data challenges and data management practices in the US. One thing is clear to everybody: regardless of the efforts, patient data is still scattered around in different organizations. In the first episode, you can listen to a discussion with the CEO and co-founder of Komodo Health, Arif Nathoo. Komodo Health currently has some part of the healthcare data of 330 million people in the US. One of the leading providers of electronic healthcare records systems in the US is EPIC. EPIC holds around a third of the US EHR market share and has some part of the medical data of 250 million patients. In the second episode, Phil Lindemann, VP of Business Intelligence at Epic, and Epic’s Clinical Informaticist Dave Little, MD explained a bit more about EPic Cosmos - a database built to enable easier clinical research. Epic Cosmos currently combines 178 million de-identified patient records from over 6.5 billion encounters, representing patients in all 50 US states. In this episode, you’ll hear from Samir Unni, Healthcare Business Development Lead at Palantir Foundry. Palantir Foundry connects the back-office software systems and analytics teams directly with caregivers. Foundry is used across the healthcare and life sciences value chain, from drug discovery and development, through to manufacturing, marketing, and sales. At the Federal level in the US Palantir is partnering with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and more. In this short discussion recorded at HLTH 2022, Samir Unni, Healthcare Business Development Lead at Palantir Foundy explained the principles of Palantir in healthcare, why they support the open-data approach, how do they choose their customers and more. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com 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

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

The words healthcare data carry many associations: from frustrations around data interoperability, outrage about the value and monetization of healthcare data, anger due to poor access to medical records by patients, and we could go on. In the next few episodes, you will hear a little bit more about healthcare data management in the US healthcare system. We’re starting with a discussion recorded at HLTH 2022, where Arif Nathoo - CEO and Co-founder of Komodo Health describes how the company plans to capture and de-identify every encounter patients have with the US healthcare system. Komodo Health is currently tracking individual encounters with the healthcare system for over 330 million patients. Companies such as Pfizer, AppliedVR, Turquoise Health, Janssen, and others, use Komnodo's de-identified patient-level data and insights to inform drug development, discovery, clinical trials, clinical research, and innovation. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast to be notified about new episodes automatically! In the next episode, you will hear why Palantir Foundy is betting on open data standards in healthcare, what a few healthcare data management vendors think about the current state of interoperability and data governance, and more. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Newsletter: fodh.substack.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

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

The promise of voice is great: doctors speak to their patients, while their words get correctly transcribed, interpreted and recorded in a structured way in a clinical system. No more long hours spent on typing clinical notes on the computer. While this may seem futuristic, it’s actually already in use in some places. At HLTH in November, I spoke with Punit Singh Sonu, CEO of Suki, which provides doctors with an AI-powered voice assistant for healthcare designed to save doctors time and energy. We discussed how Suki works, how it translates text to structured data, and how clinically risky is to rely on AI to interpret medication names which can very quickly sound alike correctly. The biggest issue, says Punit Singh Sonu, is not specialty phrases, it’s regular English. “The problem typically happens not in medical terminology. It happens in regular English. I'll give you a very funny example. The doctor would just say “bilateral knee,” and it would actually understand it as “beyonce knowles”. Regular English is where speech recognition trips and falls in, in specific medical terminology,” he explained. Recap: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/nlp-in-healthcare-suki-voicetech Suki: suki.ai Monthly. newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

ChatGPT has been entertaining and amazing the world in the last month, and there’s no shortage of ideas and new inspiration about what AI could do for healthcare. In a short series of three episodes, we will touch upon this topic from three angles: will first take a look at the state of symptom checkers and their accuracy today, the development and state of voice tech and natural language processing for structuring data, and end with a comment on ChatGPT, chatbots and Google’s recently released paper on MultiMedQA, a benchmark combining six existing open question answering datasets spanning professional medical exams, research, and consumer queries; and HealthSearchQA, a new free-response dataset of medical questions searched online. Today you’ll hear from a discussion with Jeff Cutler - Chief Commercial Officer of Ada Health, whom I spoke with at HLTH. Ada is the world's most popular symptom assessment app, with 10 million users and 25 million completed assessments. Every three seconds, someone turns to Ada for personal health guidance. Discussion topics: the development of accuracy and business models of symptom checkers, how is Ada improving the accuracy of its algorithms, their partnership with the likes of Sutter Health to enhance the care patients receive even before entering the doctor’s office. *** BTW: Did you check our newsletter yet? It only comes out every few weeks with a summary of a specific topic and an overview of past episodes. Go to fodh.substack.com. Recap: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/nlp-in-healthcare-1-the-state-of-symptom-checkers-jeff-cuttler-ada-health Leave a rating or review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ www.facesofdigitalhealth.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 episode is the second about the evolution of mental health companies. In the previous episode, you could listen to Katie Di Perna Cook - SVP of Partnerships at Headspace Health, and today, we’re continuing the topic with Luke Hejl, CEO of TimelyMD, the leading virtual health and well-being solution for college students, CCO of Iris Telehealth, a leading provider of telepsychiatry services for health systems and community health centers across the U.S.. Luke and Michael talked about the state of mental health in the younger population and how the two companies look at digital innovation and digital therapeutics in the mental health space. 9 out of 10 students said they’re dealing with anxiety, said Luke Hejl, and as mentioned by Michael Maus, 1 out of 4 people that need mental health services actually look for them. So three out of four people needing them do not get help. Iris Telehealth: https://iristelehealth.com/ TimelyMD: https://timely.md/ Subscribe to the newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

The pandemic has significantly increased the need for mental healthcare and destigmatized discussing well-being and mental health issues in everyday conversation. Unfortunately, the number of quality providers of mental health services is still much lower than the demand, and the number of people that are seeking help is rising. At HLTH or Health conference, which took place in November in Las Vegas, I spoke with representatives of 3 mental health-focused companies based in the US. TimelyMD is the ninth-fastest growing health services company in the US, according to Inc., and focuses on the mental health of students,, Iris Telehealth is a leading provider of telepsychiatry services for health systems and community health centers across the U.S. and Headspace Health -the largest digital mental health provider in the world - it is reaching 100 million people in 190 countries across the world. In this episode, we’ll dive into a discussion with Katie DiPerna Cook - SVP of Partnerships - Headspace Health. The company offers a broad range of services. If was established after a 2021 merger between Headspace - world-class meditation and mindfulness company, and Ginger - the on-demand mental health service provider in the US. In 2022, Headspace Health also acquired The Shine App, a mental health and well-being platform dedicated to providing an inclusive mental health experience for the black, indigenous, and other people of color. Katie talked about the state of mental health in 2022, how Headspace Health is evolving, and how to build resilience to cope with the broad uncertainty of the current political, economic and environmental stress. Partial transcript: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/katie-diperna-cook-headspace-health Subscribe to the newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

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.

Last year, one of the key buzzwords in healthcare was virtual care; in 2020 it was probably telemedicine. In 2019 it was AI, in 2017 and 2018, it was blockchain in interoperability. There are many others of course, and many of these terms are still popular today. It seems, though, that the one term that got pushed most in the background, is blockchain. And that’s a good thing, says John Bass, Founder & CEO of Hashed Industries (dba Hashed Health), a healthcare-focused venture studio. John is an internationally recognized author and speaker on value-based care, blockchain, and decentralized healthcare technology. He is the co-author of the HIMSS-published book “Blockchain in Healthcare: Innovations that Empower Patients, Connect Professionals and Improve Care." This short discussion was recorded at HLTH 2022 conference in Las Vegas. John talks about: where is blockchain in 2022, what can we expect in the future, how it relate to web3, and what could NFT - nonfungible tokens do for healthcare. Transcript: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/blockchain-and-web3-in-healthcare-hashed-health www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Subscribe to the newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

The European Health Data Space is supposed to be implemented in a bit more than two years, by 2025. Two goals are at the forefront: to create the infrastructure for a European health data pool for researchers and innovators, and secondly, to enable patients to pick up their medications outside their home country and give doctors across Europe access to their patient information, if in need of medical care while abroad in Europe. On 18 November, EIT Health Germany-Switzerland and EIT Health Spain organized a joint symposium titled Right to privacy vs. duty to protect lives: Health Data Management in Focus. Speakers discussed patients’ perspectives on Health Data use and the EHDS, balancing health data privacy and AI development, ongoing approaches for data solutions, and more. I managed to speak with Nick Schneider, Head of division 511 on new technologies and data use at the Germany Federal Ministry of Health to discuss: Where is EHDS at the moment Will it be implemented by 2025 What are still the biggest open questions And how Germany is advancing with its digital transformation. Resources: EIT Health Statement on the European Health Data Space: https://eithealth.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/EIT-Health-Statement-on-the-EHDS-proposal_final-05052022.pdf Joint Symposium with EIT Health Spain - EIT Health Germany (eit-health.de): https://eit-health.de/en/joint-symposium-2022/ eHealth Services across Europe: https://health.ec.europa.eu/ehealth-digital-health-and-care/electronic-cross-border-health-services_en 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. Find out more: eit-health.de www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.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