Faces Of Digital Health

Hacarus is a Japanese company developing AI Solutions for Manufacturing and Medical Industries. Their Salus platform for medical and life sciences uses Medical imaging data such as CT & MRI scans, time-series data, such as ECG data, and medical record to create precise, complex tools, that aid caregivers and researchers to provide better, faster and safer treatment, based on data-driven insights. In this episode, Adrian Sossna, who is originally from Sweden but has been living in Japan for several years now, shared his insights into life in Japan, the tech ecosystem, and the challenges in developing AI for healthcare and medicine. Episode Summary Leave a rating or a review Browse through other episodes

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

Diversity is an increasingly debated topic in startup investments, since founders of under-represented backgrounds may it be gender, race, age, and more too often experience inequality in opportunities. US VC funding for female-founded or co-founded companies has been trending up in recent years. However, last year women were impacted by the pandemic also on the funding level. According to Pitchbook, during the first quarter of 2020, 4.3% of VC deals went to companies founded by women, compared to 7.1% during the first quarter of 2019. Crista Galli Ventures Fund is especially attentive to giving an opportunity to founder with under-represented backgrounds. The fund was founded by Dr Fiona Pathiraja who is a radiologist by training. She left medical practice to become a management consultant. After doing that for a year, she became a clinical advisor position at the British Department of Health. After realizing that change comes to healthcare because of technological advancements slowly entering the sector, sh

Music can change our mood, energize ur, make us feel invincible. It goes beyond that: it can heal. MedRythms is a digital therapeutics company building direct stimulation solutions that use clinical-grade sensors, AI-driven software and music to help restore function lost to neurologic disease or injury. Last year, the company received a Breakthrough Device designation from the FDA for its patented digital therapeutic that treats chronic stroke walking deficits. They are also doing Randomized Control Trials in multiple indications, including stroke, MS, Cerebral Palsy, and Parkinson’s Disease. In this interview, Brian Harris, the CEO of MedRhythms talks about the current findings regarding the power of music as a therapeutic intervention.  

Medication management is a complicated, expensive, and complex healthcare problem. Because taking medications is only a small part of patient’s lives, taking them correctly can be complicated and burdensome. Patients might not take medications because that gives them the sense of having their lives under control and not dictated by medicine. They will get fatigued by pill reminders because getting constantly told that you have a condition, can get emotionally draining. This causes non-adherence and can lead to complications. But some companies are proving that the mission to help patients is not an impossible task.  Jennifer Butler - Chief Marketing Officer at Medisafe,  the world’s leading consumer medication management platform, approaching 7 million users in almost 200 countries, says patients want transparency about their treatments. It’s been clear for years that for medication management solutions to work, they need to go beyond pill reminders. Visit the website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com  Medisafe:

Dr. Dimitri Varsamis is Senior Policy Lead for digital primary care at NHS England. End of 2020 he published a report titled Incentives and levers for digitizing and integrating primary care in New Zealand, Australia, and the USA - lessons for the UK’s NHS. Dr. Varsamis researched primary care digitalisation prior to the global coronavirus pandemic. In Australia, people are not required to register with a GP or a practice. Consequently, they see multiple GP which impacts the continuity/integrity of their medical record. Compared to the USA, the public healthcare systems of Australia, New Zealand and the UK lack the expertise in change management and purchasing support. These are just two findings by Senior Policy Lead for digital primary care at NHS England Dr. Dimitri Varsamis about primary care digitalisation in the mentioned countries. See the full report Incentives and levers for digitising and integrating primary care in New Zealand, Australia and the USA (Dimitri Varsamis) - https://www.wcmt.org.uk/site

2021 is finally here, and as with any new year, we wish this one to be better than the previous one. 2020 sure changed the perspective of what that actually means. I am your host Tjaša Zajc and for the first episode of this year, I wanted to prepare an easy-going introduction to the year. You will hear a discussion with John Nosta. John is consistently ranked among the top names in digital health. He is an advisor to many digital health companies and the founder of the NOSTALAB—a digital health think tank. I invited him to the show for a relaxed but deep discussion about where we are at the moment in digital health and healthcare broadly and what we can be optimistic about in the upcoming year. Enjoy the show and to learn more go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. To be notified about new episodes automatically, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. May 2021 be your year. Now to the discussion with John. Enjoy the discussion. Let’s dive in. Recap of the episode: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog

Recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digital-health-2021-predictions  In this last episode of 2020, we will reflect on the year and look into the future with some of the experts and opinion leaders from the digital health industry across the world. You can hear from experts from the US, Israel, Mexico, Chile, UK, and South Korea. They shared their thoughts about the state and future of digital health globally.    Speakers:  Levi Shapiro, Investor, Digital Health instructor and founder of the mHealth Israel community (Israel), Gil Bashe, managing partner of FINN Partners Global Health (USA), Gabriel Alejandro Garza Caro, Co-founder and Managing Director of DocTour (Mexico),  Luis Santiago, the CEO of Pegasi, a healthcare IT company based in Venezuela (Venezuela), Ogan Gurel, Though leader, MD, Professor, Entrepreneur (South Korea), João Bocas, The Wearable Expert (UK), Dr. Brennan Spiegel, gastroenterologist, director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education and who recently published

Someday in the future, we will hopefully see 3D printed tissues and organs. To see where we are today, I spoke with prof. Frank Berry - Senior Scientist at the UHN Arthritis Programme at the Krembil Research Institute and Professor of Cellular Therapy at the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI), National University of Ireland Galway.

The U.S. prescription drug market is worth $400 billion. Companies such as GoodRx, RxSaver and now Amazon Pharmacy are starting to bring pricing transparency. Online pharmacy services are projected to hit revenues of $131 billion by 2025 worldwide. The Amazon Prime prescription savings benefit can save members up to 80% off generic and 40% off brand name medications when paying without insurance. The pharmacy market is evolving and getting disrupted in the US. One of the players revolutionizing the customer experience in the space is Truepill. Truepill helps traditional healthcare companies, plan groups and pharmaceutical manufacturers create customized, digital experiences at scale with their Truepill’s digital platform. In this episode, the Co-Founder and President of Truepill - Sid Viswanathan talks about  - how is digitalization changing the pharmacy industry,  - the rise of modern digital healthcare,  - what healthcare companies need to know about building digital experience for their customers and more.

In the last two years, the hype around blockchain settled down, and now projects can focus more on development rather than managing attention. Many projects have gone from an idea to a pilot program or an actual implementation. However, we probably won't see patient medical records on the blockchain soon, says Robert Miller - Director of Product Management and Strategy at Consensys Health. ConsenSys Health builds Ethereum-based solutions for cybersecurity, compliance, privacy, bioethics and identity, applying the deep technical capabilities of ConsenSys to advance the healthcare industry. The blockchain community knows Robert because of his regular newsletters about blockchain in healthcare. He is diligently following and reflecting on the development of the industry. We discussed why are patient health records on blockchain currently still a dream and which projects are slowly moving beyond the project phase. An interesting research initiative is MELLODY - (acronym for Machine learning ledger orchestration f

When this discussion was recorded on 20th November, New Zealand, which has 4.9 million people, only had 50 reported cases of COVID in the whole country. The reason the country is successful in containing the virus better than most countries in the world, is the discipline of the people, says Scott Arrol, the former CEO of NZ Healtchare IT - an organization connecting insurers, healthcare providers and the healthcare industry. Scott is soon leaving the organization after running if for over 6 years. He talked about the character of New Zealanders, the complexity of the healthcare system, the hurdles related to the digitalization of healthcare, and explained how New Zealand approached the COVID-19 pandemic, so today, unlike most of the rest of the world, people can attend live events. Enjoy the show, and to read the recap of the discussion or browse through other episodes as well, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. Among the discussions about the healthcare system, you can listen to a recently published talk

In this episode, you will hear a discussion with Julian Flannery - the CEO of. Summus Global. Summus global provides access to specialists and physicians from across the world. The company has a network of over 4,000 specialists and physicians from 48 hospitals and dozens of fields, from oncology to cardiology, psychology, and pediatrics. Their customers come from the US, China, Canada, Philippines, Spain, England, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Turkey, and Ireland. The CEO Julian Flannery and I talked about how the platform works, how do customers differ based on the country of their residence and more. Enjoy the discussion and to browse through other episodes as well, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the show to be notified about new episodes automatically. Coming up next are a discussion about the latest development in blockchain in healthcare and an introduction to the digital health landscape in New Zealand.   Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepo

Rajeev Ronanki is Chief Digital Officer at Anthem, which is striving to become a digital AI-first enterprise. In September Anthem launched a digital incubator where companies can test their solutions on Anthem’s anonymized data. Among other things Rajeev spoke about what kind of mindset shift happened in insurance companies due to COVID, how does an AI-driven insurance policy mindset look like and how will AI shape the future of healthcare.   Anthem's incubator: https://www.anthem.ai/  Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth 

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

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

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-

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