Faces Of Digital Health

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 Gus

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-heal

Why are clinical trials complicated and how is technology from platforms to AI helping accelerate trial development and data analysis.

Germany is one of the European countries with higher healthcare expenditures. 11% of GDP goes to healthcare compared to the 9.6% European average. Patients can be covered under public health insurance, or if they earn more than 5000 euros monthly, they choose from private health insurance providers. Health insurance is mandatory but competitive as there are around 100 health insurance companies on the market.  When Jens Spahn became the health minister In March 2018 Germany quickly became the European northern star of accelerated healthcare digitization. How did they do it? You will hear from three speakers - Henrik Matthies, managing director of the health innovation hub of the German Ministry of Health, Maren Lesche - Head of Incubation at Vision Health Pioneers a pre-seed incubator ‘Vision Health Pioneers’ based in Berlin and dr. Maike Henningsen - medical doctor, who specialized in OBGYN, oncology, endocrinology and reproductive medicine and who partially still works in the clinical practice but is also

There are well over 300.000 digital health apps on the market. However, only a third of them have been updated in the last 18 months, says Liz Ashal Payne - CEO and Founder of ORCHA - a UK based organization with a mission to distribute validated apps to patients who need them. Liz Ashal Payne - a digital health veteran, who started her career as a speech ad language therapist, worked as Assistant Director of Allied Health Professions (AHPs), she was a Clinical Programme Manager of Academic Health Science Network for the North West Coast, International Outreach Coordinator for ECHAlliance and more. After years of being in the digital health space, she founded ORCHA - an organisation with the mission to distribute digital health apps to people who need them.    See also F062 GDPR, MDR, and what you can do about you medical data (Jovan Stevovic): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f062-gdpr-mdr-and-what-you-can-do-about-you-medical-data-jovan-stevovi

Despite enjoying clinical practice, Benedict Evans still came to a point where he felt he is not passionate enough about what he does, and as a surgeon, he realized he enjoys talking to patients more than treating them when they are under anesthesia. He went to a consulting position at McKinsey, then back to an NHS Trust to drive digital innovation and now to a VC position.  Resources: InHealth Ventures: https://www.inhealth.vc/ Episode recap: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f093-how-does-a-doctor-become-a-vc-benedict-evans

Leah Houston is an Emergency Physician who has been following blockchain development since 2012 and now designed a solution that would empower doctors, make their credentialing easier which would simplify transitions from one hospital to the next one if one wished to switch jobs.    HPEC is restoring agency and autonomy to the physician-patient relationship with self-sovereign (physician-owned and controlled) digital identities and verifiable credentials. The key thing is that the solution is returning autonomy to physicians and eliminates third party interference from the doctor-patient relationship.    In this discussion, you will be able to hear how credentialing works in the US, what are the powerful forces that are hurting healthcare, and why doctors and patients should regain control over their communication and treatment choices.   Episode recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f092-how-can-blockchain-bring-back-autonomy-to-the-physician-patient-relationship-leah-houston-hpec

This is the fourth episode in the short series about nurses who moved to entrepreneurship.   Mary Lou Ackerman is Vice President of Innovation and Digital Health with SE Health. Mary Lou is a founding member of SONSIEL (Society of Nursing Scientist, Innovator, and Entrepreneur Leaders) and an active member of CHIEF (Canada’s Health Informatics Executive Forum) with Digital Health Canada. Her background is extensive — she has led the development and implementation of many business transformation projects, innovations and partnerships. Mary Lou joined Saint Elizabeth in 1987 as a visiting nurse, and she has augmented her clinical background with a graduate business degree and significant experience with health informatics and technologies. Mary Lou has a passion for community health care, combined with a desire to advance care, creating innovative service models supported by digital health technologies, to create a future that will provide a personalized, accessible, meaningful health experience for individual

This is a third discussion in the short series about nurses going into entrepreneurship. Karmi Soder started working as a pediatric clinical care nurse in 1992. Today she is a skilled communicator with over 25 years of healthcare experience in clinical, administrative and tech, which she gained by serving as Chief Administrative Officer at Sutter Health, leading pediatric department for Kaiser Permanente, worked at Google and co-founded NewboRN Solutions — a registered nursing corporation, which aimed at helping new parents get the best care and shared community after the birth of their newborn. Based in Israel Karmi now works as a consultant for program development and strategy, analyzes, designs and executes improved operations and workflows.    More about the series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f087f091-series-nurses-the Apply for the Reactor accelerating program: https://hvlab.eu/program/1/reactor-2020

Sherezade Ruano is an Arrhythmia Specialist Nurse at Imperial College NHS Trust, Founder of RhythmiaBreath Medical Well-being programme and Co-Founder, CEO of RB Hub Digital Therapeutics. Passionate about the importance of mental wellbeing, stress and trauma in cardiac patients, Sherezade works closely with a team of world-renowned Mental Health specialists and Cardiologists offering outstanding services. In the interview she spoke about neurocardiology, struggles she came across as a nurse entrepreneur when looking for validators of her solution, she also commented the faster adoption of digital health in the UK because of COVID-19 and more.

2020 is the year of the nurse and the midwife. What do nurses actually do and why are they still a hidden innovation treasure in healthcare?   In this series consisting of discussions with nurse innovators, you will hear about: What nurses actually do, The changing role of nurses in healthcare, Relationship nurses have with technology — IT systems, new innovations, Why they should be at the policy making table.   The first episode features Shawna Butler, Nurse Economist and EntrepreNURSE from the US, currently the Host of SEE YOU NOW podcast, focused on sharing perspectives of nurses on healthcare. She is a member of the core team of the Exponential Medicine team at Singularity University. In this discussion, Shawna Buttler, speaks about the current situation healthcare workers have found themselves in due to COVID-19, what she’s learning about nurses through hosting the See you now podcast, we also touched very human aspects of nursing we don’t hear about often, that is the needs and support in end of life c

Karan Raj is a "veteran" in online education. He founded TheOSCEstation - an online medical education website with videos explaining different medical topics. TheOSCEstation primarily targets medical students and has been around on Youtube for several years. Dr. Raj works at Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as a Surgical Registrar, but he is also a Honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London, where he teaches e-learning & undergraduate medicine; he is Honorary Senior Lecturer at Sunderland University. He started using TikTok as a consumer in November 2019 and hardly in February this year, during a discussion with a colleague, he came up with the idea of talking about and explaining weird medical facts on TikTok. Following him, you can learn about embarrassing things he did as a doctor, weird things patients have said, and even more unusual topics such as - Can cheese give you nightmares? Recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f086-tiktok-22-interested-in-weird-medical-facts-karannbspraj See also:

There are three “laws” for successful TikTok posts: make people laugh, tell a personal story people can empathize with, or teach people something. Doctors use the platform to talk about their career paths; nurses use TikTok to record dancing routines during the breaks in their shifts. There’s an MRI image explanatory channel, and specialists from a broad spectrum talk about their expertise or give insight into their working environment.  MD candidates from the US Amanda d’Almeida and Dan Villavecer are the faces behind Medicine Explained. Medicine Explained is a channel with over 1.1 million of followers, explaining everyday issues such a “What is a brain freeze? How do menstrual cups work? What is scoliosis? Can women exercise, bathe or swim during their period?” etc. Dan and Amanda started creating content as a way to fight medical misinformation on the internet. Medicine Explained was started to decentralize medical information by making it understandable to everyone, acting as preventative health educatio

This is the fourth and final episode of a short series of discussions with doctors that moved from full-time clinical practice to work in digital health. Guillem Serra is a serial entrepreneur coming from a family of doctors. His mother, father, grandfather, and great grandfather were doctors, which made it easy for Guillem to go study medicine given his familiarity with the profession. Besides medicine, he studied math and during his medical studies, discovered, that for him, medicine was actually boring. Today, he is a Physician and Mathematician with deep knowledge in the eHealth market, MedTech, and startups in the field of medicine. He founded several digital health startups and is an investor and board member to many startups. His first company MediQuo is a "Whatsapp for healthcare" - a platform enabling patients to chat with doctors and specialists 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a secure way, with all the tools and compliance needed for healthcare.   Summary of the episodes in the series: https://ww

This is the third discussion in a short series about doctors who left clinical practice to work as entrepreneurs in digital health. In the previous episodes, Daniel Kraft talked about a new idea for more precise dosing of medications chronic patients with comorbidities have to take daily, he also shared his thoughts about COVID-19 management in the US and innovation efforts to aid the pandemic, Michael Docktor, former full time pediatric gastroenterologist and Clinical Dir. of Innovation Boston Children's Hospital talked about better task management in hospital settings and healthcare suited app called Dock-Health which he co-founded. Today, we are moving from the US to UK. You will hear from Owain Rhys Hughes - NHS surgeon who left clinical practice to build an advice and guidance platform for clinicians. In this discussion, you will hear why are referrals from primary to secondary care suboptimal how can they be improved with one solution that can impact GPs efficacy in referring patients to specialists, it

This is a second episode from the short series about why doctors leave clinical practice to work in digital health. GI pediatric specialist Michael Docktor was, until recently, one of the driving forces of digital health innovation at Boston’s Children’s Hospital. In this episode, he shares his insight into how paperwork is complicating the coordination and management of patient care. To solve that, he helped design Dock.Health - a simple, HIPAA compliant task management and collaboration platform designed for healthcare. Michael still partially works in clinical practice but is spending most of his time as the CEO of Dock.Health. In this episode, Michael commented on the changes in healthcare due to COVID-19 and talked about the meaning of tech solutions for increased empowerment of patients. Summary of the series: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f081-084-doctors-and-digital-health Dock.Health: https://www.dock.health/  Other solutions presented in the series: Daniel Kraft: https://danielkraftmd.net/  Expo

This is the first part of a special 4 episode series about doctors who left full-time clinical practice to develop new solutions for healthcare improvement. As Faces of digital health is a podcast exploring global perspectives, you are going to hear from doctors from different countries: the US, UK, and Spain. Many doctors who go into entrepreneurship are trying to solve systemic issues plaguing healthcare. You will hear UK surgeon Owain Hughes explain, how he started building a company and platform that connects GPs to specialists, to enable GPs to refer patients more accurately. Consequently, patients can receive better care already on the primary care level, which makes the work of specialists much more efficient once patients reach them, making specialists and GPs much more satisfied with their work, because they don’t lose time with patients with poorly defined conditions or because patients have better outcomes since part of the urgent treatments have been begun by GPs based on specialist’s recommenda

On April 15th this year a panel of experts published a position paper online in the Lancet Psychiatry, where they outlined a proposed government response to curb the long-term "profound" and "pervasive" impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. Undoubtedly, the global lockdown caused a lot of anxiety in some individuals, depression in others, it is fair to assume some medical professionals will suffer from PTSD after the worst is over. The positive news is, that by today we have many validated digital tools and programs to help patients deal with mental health problems remotely. In this episode, Christopher Molaro, talks about why is access to mental health care still problematic, how can digital tools support providers and patients, and what trends are already visible because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chris is co-founder of NeuroFlow -  a health care technology company whose goal is to bridge the gap between mental and physical health in all care settings. Chris first started thinking about the need