Faces Of Digital Health

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

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 20

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.face

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.  Mari

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-

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 immedia

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 o

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 re

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 ex

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

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

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!

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 doc