Faces of Digital Health

We are in the middle of an unprecedented time of anxiety, depression and worries because of the global coronavirus pandemic. It’s affecting people’s jobs, a sense of security, and relative predictability, consequently our relationships and health, especially mental health. I think it’s safe to assume we wish for this to be over as soon as possible and that we could be in a different reality. To a certain extent, that’s actually possible, if you have virtual reality equipment. Virtual reality can have a literally healing effect. Over 5000 studies by today have shown the efficacy of VR for pain management, PTSD, eating disorders, mental health and more. In this episode, you will hear from dr. Brennan Spiegel a gastroenterologist who directs the Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education. He recently published a book titled VRx in which he explains the applicability of VR and looks at this digital therapy from a philosophical and critical point of view. In this discussion, you will hear him explain what makes VR so healing, what are its potential side-effects and why different patients respond differently to it.   Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Australia was in the global digital health-related news in 2018 of the national EHR project called My Health Record. The idea behind the project was to digitize the medical records of all the people from Australia. Today, 9 out of 10 Australians have My Health Record.  In the discussion you are about to listen to, dr. Louise Shaper, the CEO of Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH), renowned speaker and a dedicated digital health evangelist, shared her deep insight into the state of digitalization of healthcare in Australia, the organizations driving technological progress in healthcare, and also her PhD about technology acceptance amongst healthcare professionals. Australasian Institute of Digital Health: https://digitalhealth.org.au/ Leave a rating or a review: http://www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth 

Spain has a universal healthcare system, where anyone that pays social security contributions is eligible for healthcare. From the digitalization perspective, Spain does not have a national institution to coordinate digital health projects. Instead, each of the Spanish regions has authorities with their own budgets. One of the most advanced regions is Catalonia. Cesar Morcillo Serra is an Internal Medicine specialist from Barcelona, who has a strong interest in eHealth. He had lead several Digital Health transformation projects inside the Cima hospital where he works in. In this discussion, he talks about what it takes for a hospital to be digitally advanced, what is a concept of a liquid hospital and how does the Spanish healthcare system works.    Cesar is the speaker at the Barcelona Health Hub Summit (29 October): https://bhhsummit.com/ Join free!  Episode recap: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f-104-digital-health-in-spain-and-what-is-a-liquid-hospital-cesar-morcillo-serra  To learn more about the digital health ecosystem in Barcelona, listen to episode 63 with Aline Noizet: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f063-how-to-build-a-community-in-healthcare-aline-noizet?rq=aline    Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Chronolife is a French company innovating in the space of smart garments for remote patient monitoring. Clothes are not the main innovation of the company, their secret sauce is a patented neuromorphic (bio-mimetic) algorithm, HOTS (Hierarchy Of event-based Time-Surfaces). The algorithm detects and predicts deterioration in patients’ state of health and alerts caregivers to allow earlier intervention and avoid costly hospitalizations. The company’s mission is  to enable healthcare professionals to have timely information for earlier intervention and to ensure a continuum of care that fills the existing gaps from hospital to home. In this episode, the CEO Laurent Vandebrouck shares his thoughts about the French healthcare system in terms of digitalization, comments the position of smart garments on the market crowded with other kinds of wearables, and also answered questions like - can you destroy a smart shirt by not washing it currently?    Episode recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f103-how-are-smart-garments-making-remote-patient-monitoring-comfortable-laurent-vanderbrouck-chronolife Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Do you remember the first connected scale? It came to the market in 2009 by a French company called Withings. By today the company created a number of connected health devices and is increasing its efforts to expand its presence in the clinical space. Withings offers a range of products: a connected scale, a digital thermometer, a wireless blood pressure cuff, a mat to detect sleep apnea, a smartwatch with ECG, and sleep apnea monitoring was released in 2020.  In this episode, the CEO of Withings Mathieu Letombe talks about:  the landscape of connected health devices, quantification of health how companies can attract doctors to work with them given the busy schedules clinicians have.   Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

This episode is a collection of thoughts giving you a glimpse into the global digital health market. Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Speakers: Dr. Daniel Kraft, one of the top opinion leaders in digital health, nicely summarized the current state of digital health in Episode 81.  Julien de Salaberry, the CEO of Galen Growth Asia emphasized in Episode 41 that is important to keep in mind when thinking about expanding in this area of the world.Guillem Serra, the CEO of the Spanish based company Mediquo, guest in Episode 84, says that in internationalization and looking at new potential markets, language is the most important factor to consider.  Different countries differ in their culture and how technologies are used. I’d say that different parts of the world “run” on different platforms. In China, society runs on WeChat. In India, the key communication platform in Whatsapp. Abhishek Shah, CEO of Wellthy digital therapeutics company from India, who was the guest of Episode 78, explained how the use of Whatsapp in India differs from the West. It is gaining a similar significance as WeChat has in China. This is why Wellthy conducted some of their clinical studies through Whatsapp. Have you ever wondered, what is the digital health scene like in Africa? You know, the continent that many people around the world talk about as a country, but actually consists of 54 countries? Among the speakers on the show coming from Africa, was the founder of Mobile Afya - Mariatheresa Samson Kadushi. She is a Tanzanian innovator passionate about disrupting the public health sector, which is in Africa marked by traditional beliefs. In Episode 056 she among other things explained how in Africa, worries about privacy in the digital age are not worries about how are global corporations are exploiting our data. Moving from Asia to Africa, European healthcare systems are often praised for universal access to care. However, as mentioned by the patient advocate Bettina Ryll in Episode 68, in Europe where you live significantly impacts your access to healthcare. Especially in rare diseases chances of survival of a patient can depend on where the patient resides and are there any clinical trials near her. People move, to get a chance at survival. This very much reminds me of the often-mentioned fact by US experts, that the ZIP code the biggest determinant of health is. From a business perspective, Europe is a complicated market. You need to tackle language barriers, the diversity of healthcare systems and policies. Kaia Health is a digital therapeutics startup that was founded in Germany and is now operating in the US market as well. In Episode 77 Mark Liber, the VP of business development at Kaia Health, talked about the differences they are noticing between the German and the US.  While we mostly perceive the future of healthcare digitization as a one-way progression street, Luis Santigo, the CEO of a Venezuelan healthcare IT company PEGASI explained how progress can get crushed when the economic situation of a country changes. In the last few years, in Venezuela, many hospitals had to switch from IT back to paper, because IT companies went bankrupt and ceased existing.

This is the 4th part of a short series about healthcare and digital health in South America. After presenting Brazil, Colombian and Argentina, Luis Santiago talks about Venezuela and Chile.

This is the third episode of the short series about digital health in South America. In the previous episodes you could listen to Adrian Turjanski from an Argentinian genomics company there called Bitgenia, another speaker came from Colombia - Javier Cardona, CEO of 1Doc3 talked about how to bring affordable access to healthcare to people in seconds, without the need for an appointment. See the recap of the shows here: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digitalheath-south-america This episode will take you to Brazil to hear from the CEO of OTAWA Health - a 13 years old startup officially founded last year, by an IT team at CCC (Centro de Combate ao Câncer), one of the most respected oncology clinics in Brazil. The biggest differentiator of Brazil compared to other countries in South America is language. The official language is Portuguese. The country with over 200 million people has had universal healthcare access since the eighties. That sounds great, but as explained by Paulo Fernando Buarque de Gusmão the problem is that the system lacks investments and therefore a lot of people still opt for private healthcare. The healthcare system is not immune to political pressure - Brazil has prioritized the training of family doctors over specialists. In 2013 a great initiative was designed called More Doctors, with its aim to hire physicians to work in underserved and remote areas. With many Brazilian doctors unwilling to relocate, thousands of Cuban doctors were hired instead. However, in November 2018, Cuba announced their withdrawal after a row over their status with the incoming president Jair Bolsonaro. Leaving politics aside in the discussion with Paulo, you will listen about how an oncology EHR looks like when it’s in development for over a decade in close collaboration with oncology specialists and why that has good potential to scale. OTAWA Health’s mission is to bring the oncology health record to underserved areas of the world, especially other parts of South America and Africa as universal healthcare cannot be universal while the huge gap between health technology assessment in use by high-income and low-income areas remains.

When Googling the Colombian healthcare system, there’s mostly praise about how good it is! The World Health Organization ranked Colombia’s healthcare system as number 22 in a review of 191 countries. Javier Cardona is the CEO of 1DOC3 - a Colombian company that offers affordable telemedical consultations in seconds; no appointment is needed.  In this episode, Javier talked about the Columbian healthcare system structure, which ranks high according to WHO ranking. He also explained the needs and specifics of telemedicine in Latin America.  This is the second part of a short series about digital health in South America.  Find out more at: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/e0d0c43vvl3kfalkfzu3uribb3d6bp  1Doc3: https://www.1doc3.com/

After a special series about digital health in Asia and Africa covered in 2019, the upcoming four episodes will present speakers from South America. A shoutout goes to Unity Stoakes and Jennifer Hankin from Startup Health, which connected me to the speakers in the upcoming episodes. All the companies are StartupHealth Transformers.  In this discussion, you will hear Adrian Turjanski, Chief Science Officer at Bitgenia - an Argentinian startup bringing genomics closer to society, explains the current state of genomics research in South America; he talked about the difference between the whole genome and exosome sequencing, and the use of AI in genetic sequencing.  In the upcoming episodes, you will hear from  Luis Santiago - CEO of the Venezuelan healthcare IT company PEGASI,  Javier Cardona, the CEO of the Colombian telemedicine company 1Doc3, Paulo Fernando Buarque de Gusmão, CEO of Brazilian company OTAWA health.   Digital Health in Asia Series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f041045-digital-health-in-asia-china-india-south-korea-and-singapore Digital Health in Africa Series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f056-f060-digital-health-in-africa-series-tanzania-nigeria-south-africa-rwanda