Faces Of Digital Health

AI is the buzzword startups are very keen on using when describing their products. For decades, movies are full of ideas on what artificial intelligence could do in a positive and negative way. What is AI, deep learning or a simple algorithm? What is the dream and what current reality around AI? How does AI look in practice? In this episode, you will hear from Sally Daub - the CEO of Enlitic talk about the market potential of AI, the current state of the market and more. Enlitic is a San Francisco based startup using deep learning to distill actionable insights from billions of clinical cases and help doctors leverage the collective intelligence of the medical community. At the moment, the use of AI is highest in the field of medical imaging and diagnostics, drug discovery and therapy planning, but Accenture predicts that by 2026 150 billion US dollars could be saved annually due to applications to robot-assisted surgery, virtual nursing assistants, followed by administrative workflow assistance, fraud detect

In this episode, two Americans share their insight in the healthcare development of the land with 1,4 billion people. Bay McLaughlin, Forbes contributor on tech in China and the co-founder of Brinc.io, part incubator, part accelerator, part investment fund with headquarters located in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou and satellite offices in mainland China, also London, Berlin, Helsinki, Amsterdam & soon in the USA. Miranda Gottlieb, Master’s student from Beijing, pursuing a career in global health policy and health security in the Asia-Pacific region. 

According to dr. Walter Greenleaf, behavioral neuroscientist and a medical technology developer working at Stanford University, interactive virtual environments significantly reduce pain from as much as 44% during the most painful procedures (ex: burn wound treatment), diverts patient attention away from perceiving and feeling pain, decreases pain-related brain-activity, reduces need for anesthesia, opioid medication. With the decrease in price, VR is getting mainstream. The technology giants such as Facebook and Samsung are making huge investments, according to Statista, 12.4 million units will be shipped worldwide in 2018, more than 5 times as much in 4 years in 2022. Listen to a conversation with dr. Walter Greenleaf, Medical Director for AppliedVR at Stanford University. He is considered a leading authority in the medical VR field with over three decades of research and development experience in the field of digital medicine and medical virtual reality technology.

Virtual reality has a long history. Its applications precede pure fun, by today, many therapies for medical purposes have been designed. Virtual reality has many medical applications, which you can learn about from two experts featured in Facs of digital health podcast. In episode 10 listen to dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo, the Director of Medical Virtual Reality at the Institute for Creative Technologies at University of Southern California, and episode 12 features dr. Walter Greenleaf, the Medical Director for AppliedVR at Stanford University. Topics: addressed: How does VR differ from exposure therapy, is it more effective? What are the dangers of VR use on perception? How do you treat ADHD or PTSD with VR?  Will FDA regulate VR treatments? What danger do consumers currently face? 

The two largest determinants of health are the zip code and credit scores. What does that have to do with precision medicine and genetics? Big data combined with AI hold a lot of hope on prevention and more effective disease treatments. The current reality though is that large a lot of gathered data is not actionable yet. How far is precision medicine then, today? How does precision medicine based medical care look like? Tune in episode 9 of Faces of digital health with dr. Subha Madhavan. Dr. Madhavan is the Director of the Innovation Center for Biomedical Informatics (ICBI) at the Georgetown University Medical Center in the States. She is active in several national and international research projects, and one of her latest projects is a partnership with the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to develop evidence bases for pharmacogenomics and vaccine safety. 

A sex hunting anthropologist walks into a mortgage finance institution and out into the world to lead health initiatives globally; this is the fascinating tale of Samson Williams’ health career journey. Samson Williams is an entrepreneur and fintech guru. He has been an epidemiologist for the State of Florida, an Anthrax and WMD expert for DC Dept of Health and currently splits his time between serving on the DC Dept of Health’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), and as the Irish Ambassador for Crowdfunding to the EU and partner at Axes and Eggs, a blockchain and cryptocurrency consultancy based in Washington, DC.   Topics addresses:  How does one go from medical anthropology to a cryptocurrency mining company? How can digital health solutions help in disaster situations?  Potential of blockchain in healthcare?

This is a recording of a panel discussion on blockchain in healthcare, which took place at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, during the Future for health conference at SXSW. You will hear about some interesting ongoing blockchain projects such as the CDC attempts to use blockchain in epidemiology or the Austin program using blockchain to track medical records of chronically ill homeless people. Panelists:  Michael Dillhyon, Founder of Healthbank Samson Williams, Partner at Axes & Eggs, Board Member at DC Department of Health Eugene Borukhovich, Global Head of Digital Health Incubation & Innovation at Bayer

“Most startups are in a hurry, most of healthcare not so much. How do we deal with that?” was one of the first questions with which Rasu Shrestha, CIO at UPMC addressed his audience during the Future for health at SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. With the keynote titled “Everybody wants to innovate, nobody wants to change,” Rasu Shrestha offered his reflection on the barriers to innovation implementation. The organizer of the conference was Future for health (FTR4H), a global organization trying to bridge the robust established Medtech world with young startups. To understand FTR4H a little bit better, a short talk with the co-founder of Future for health Tom Mitchell, president of Messe Dusseldorf North America is included in the podcast. Tom talked on stage at the Future for health conference at SXSW, right before Rasu’s keynote.

In this episode, you will hear how Time Warner, a global leader in media and entertainment with businesses in television networks and film and TV entertainment, is approaching employee health. Time Warner has more than 25.000 employees around the globe, meaning that the company faces many different country-specific regulations when it comes to the health of employees, what programmes they can offer them and what kind of analysis they can do with the data of the employees. his year's big question in healthcare is - can big corporations be the disruptors of the rigid and risk-averse industry as healthcare is? Amazon partnered with JPMorgan Chase and Warren Buffett, Apple is designing medical clinics, and Uber wants to disrupt ambulances. The healthcare industry is worth close to 9 trillion dollars globally by 2020, and some say tech giants most of all wish to get a piece of this pie. However, the critical potential for the US is a decrease in cost with new solutions and the different approach companies can have

According to WHO mental health disorders are generally characterized by some combination of abnormal thoughts, emotions, behaviour and relationships with others. Examples are schizophrenia, depression, intellectual disabilities and disorders due to drug abuse. Most of these disorders can be successfully treated. This episode explores the characteristics of mental health disorders and why it is so hard to treat them. Hear from three speakers: Dean Ornish, Clinical Professor in Medicine, President and Director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute at University of California Sans Francisco talks about the critical aspect of depression, which is the changes in perception that prevent a depressed person to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Co-founder and CEO of Psyinnovations Ritvik Singh talks about the broadness of mental health challenges and to which extent digital solutions can help address them. Richard Lee, the CEO of a startup called Bravely, believes regular 5-minute power calls with p

Moka Lantum is an expert on the African healthcare market. We discussed healthcare IT and digital health adoption in Africa. He was nominated as 2016 Top 100 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy Magazine for his work as founder of the non-profit, 2020 MicroClinic Initiative, that recycles t-shirts into baby clothes and donates them to low-income mothers to promote safe delivery and quality post-natal care in rural Kenya. He obtained his Doctor of Medicine training at Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé, Cameroon; a Diploma in Nutrition and International Child Health, from Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; a Doctorate in Pharmacology, from the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. He is a graduate of the Masters in Health Care Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, among other things.

The legendary investor Esther Dyson is not a big fan of technology. She is a proponent of big ideas, demanding projects with a long-term positive influence on society. Founders of StartupHealth Unity Stoakes and Steven Krein are serial entrepreneurs, driving positive change with innovators working on technological and other innovations in healthcare and medicine. At its inception, the idea behind StartupHealth was simple and very, very, very optimistic: to improve health and well-being of every person in the world. If that seemed like a fantasy seven years ago, the organisation came a long way by now. StartupHealth connects 200 companies, so-called transformers, listed in 10 categories or as they call them - moonshots. In this episode, Esther Dyson explains why she invested in the company in its very early days. She shares her thoughts on how she sees problems society faces when it comes to health and wellbeing. Steven and Unity talk about the past, the future and the positive attitude one needs to keep tryin

Dr. Bertalan Mesko, PhD is The Medical Futurist and Director of The Medical Futurist Institute analyzing how science fiction technologies can become reality in medicine and healthcare. As a geek physician with a PhD in genomics, he is also an Amazon Top 100 author. He was featured by dozens of top publications, including CNN, the World Health Organization, National Geographic, Forbes, TIME magazine, BBC, and the New York Times.  He has more than 100 GB of data about his health and fitness and made different lifestyle changes based on the analysis of the data. Wondering how long he predicts he will live?  You can find, listen and subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or Podbean, or use the RSS feed.

Japan. The land of anime - hand-drawn or computer animations, a technological superpower with a staggering gross government debt. It accounted for 219% of GDP in 2016. The long-lasting trend of worsening fiscal situation in Japan continues alongside the increases in health and pension spending linked to population ageing which puts the upward pressure on government debt.   If this is not very inspiring a lot of others specifics in the Japanese society are admired by western countries. For example unbeatable longevity. Japan is no. 1 in the world when it comes to life expectancy at birth: the average life expectancy is 83.9 years, 87.1 for women, 80.8 for men. The ageing population requires new policies and political measurements to prevent economic collapse. According to the OECD Health Statistics 2016, Japan’s total health spending accounted for 11.2 percent of its GDP in 2015, ranking third out of 35 OECD members. Only the U.S. and Switzerland spend more. Two speakers share their views in this podcast - Ky

Blockchain is a new technology, still very complicated to understand, leaving a lot of space for misinterpretations and confusion in the public. This is one of the things the 23rd episode of Medicine Today on Digital Health addresses: what blockchain can solve and what the most common misconceptions are. Questions addressed in the podcast:What are the biggest misconceptions you’ve heard around blockchain so far?What are the best implications for blockchain use in healthcare?Why is blockchain not solving interoperability?Will the patient experience in a system with a blockchain solution be different from the experience in the current system? How much should patients know?How to look at ICO projects in healthcare and what to keep an eye on? Speakers:  Helen Disney, the CEO and Founder of Unblocked, a hub for Blockchain events, education and information and Dr. Navin Ramachandran, a blockchain expert from the medical world, who understands the technology, its capabilities and follows the development closely. He

If there is someone you want to ask for an opinion on diabetes management challenges it’s David Kliff, editor of Diabetic Investor — THE source of information when it comes to business aspects of diabetes. He’s been following the field closely ever since he was diagnosed with diabetes type 1 20 years ago. The problem in diabetes is not the know-how, it’s the “want to” desire that is hard to deliver to patients, he says.

Dubai is one of the seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the most populous city and Emirate in the country with a GDP of 82 billion USD. It is a global business hub that keeps transforming rapidly. In October 2016, Dubai launched a citywide blockchain strategy with the objective of becoming the first blockchain powered city, driving the future economy by 2020. In this episode, you can hear: What are the strong and the weak points of healthcare innovation here? How the use of social media became a quality indicator in healthcare? Why is Dubai striving to become the global center of digital health and how is the way forward being designed? How far is the blockchain strategy in practice? Speakers: Michael Stroud — International healthcare executive from the UK, who is currently Director at Dubai Healthcare City, Brian de Francesca — CEO of a telemedicine company Ver2, based in Dubai, Mazin A. Gadir — Senior Specialist at The Executive Office for Organisational Transformation at Du

IT in healthcare is at the moment usually an added layer to existing ways of working, consequently too often a source of frustration and anguish instead of aid for medical professionals. According to CB Insight, US represents 75% of the global digital health market. Hunger for better solutions is being addressed from many sides. How far are big medical institutions in the USA from being collaboration first, competition later relationship? In the 20th episode, you will get a glimpse into the attitude toward digital health solutions in three eminent US healthcare institutions - Stanford Healthcare, Mount Sinai Health System, and UPMC.   Speakers: Rasu Shrestha, the Chief Innovation Officer from UPMC, Mitesh Rao, Chief Patient Safety Officer and Director of the Center for Advancing Patient Safety at Stanford Healthcare, Ashish Atreja, Chief Innovation and Engagement Officer at Mount Sinai.

From todays perspective, when we already talk about practical uses of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robots in elderly care, Internet of Things, implantable, digestable and other sensor, the world 11 years ago seems unrecognisable. After all, the first iPhone and Kindle were released hardly in 2007, a year later. Then, three years later, the first iPad was on the market. But for the digital health world, 2006 was an important year. It marked the birth of Health 2.0, a global movement for use, promotion and research of digital technology for wellness, health, medicine and healthcare. Questions in the podcast: - How are new technologies changing medical practice and medical education? - How big are the differences in digital health across the globe? - How much savings can we expect in healthcare with new innovations, since the so called waste is someones revenue, consequenlty meaning that someone needs to be pushed out of the market? - What is the state of healthcare data interoperability in the USA

How are VCs looking at the changing landscape of investment opportunities? This was the topic at the Early Stage investments panel at mHealth Israel Conference, held in Jerusalem in September 2017. The included speakers were: Christian Seale, Partner, StartupBootcamp, USA Matt Storeygard, Investor, Connecticut Innovations, USA Kyoko Watanabe, Managing Partner, Defta Partners, USA Alexander Hoffman, Merck Ventures, Germany Clara Leonard, Partner, Digital Health Ventures, Germany.   The discussed topics in this podcast, are: - Is digital health really that much different from other industries when it comes to investment? - How long do investors stay with digital health companies?  - What are VCs looking at in early-stage companies, since investments in the riskiest?  - Which funding models are becoming obsolete? - According to Coinschedule 2,1 bn USD have been raised this year alone with ICOs by September, the biggest ones worth 265, 230, 185 million USD. What are new forms of funding such as crowdfunding and I