Faces of Digital Health

This is the second episode where we will discuss healthcare delivery in Africa. In the previous episode, the entrepreneur and regulatory advisor Herve Mwamba from South Africa talked about stereotypes and medical device regulation in Africa (Full transcript: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/medical-device-regulation-mdr-africa). In this episode, you’re going to hear about an effort to manage non-communicable diseases in Africa better. Medtronic Labs is a nonprofit organization that works with governments and local communities in across Africa to create local ecosystems for the management of hypertension and diabetes. I spoke with Anne Stake, Chief Strategy and Product Officer at Medtronic Labs, who explained, how Medtronic Labs approached the African market, gaining of trust in the local communities and what challenges and innovations they observed on the ground in Kenya, Rwanda and Ghana. Did you read our newsletter yet? We finally have one! It only comes out monthly, filled with information about insights in the last month. Do check it out here:Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/TRANSCRIPT: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/medtronic-labs-africa Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.comLeave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth Thank you!

It’s September, it’s time for school and a new season of Faces of digital health podcast episodes. Faces of digital health strives to bring you an insight into digital health development across the world. We’re going to start this season in Africa. In this episode, South African entrepreneur, regulatory, and quality assurance consultant Herve Mwamba discusses the state of medical device regulation in South Africa and Africa more broadly, his observations about the consequences and problems related to the European Medical Device Regulation, his observation regarding innovation in Africa. This is the first of a few episodes where speakers talked about the African market, so do make sure to subscribe to the show to be notified about other episodes automatically. In the next episode you’ll hear about chronic disease management in Kenya and Ghana, provided by Medtronic Labs, and after that, a discussion about the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and how that can be improved with the rise of at-home testing.TRANSCRIPT: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/medical-device-regulation-mdr-africa BTW - did you read our newsletter yet? We finally have one! It only comes out monthly, filled with information about insights in the last month. Do check it out here:Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/www.facesofdigitalhealth.comwww.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth 

There are “five rights” of medication use: the right patient, the right drug, the right time, the right dose, and the right route. It might seem obvious, but in practice, an error can occur at the level of each of these “right”s. Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems worldwide. According to WHO, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion annually globally. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare estimates that between 2% and 3% of all Australian hospital admissions are medication-related. In the UK, it is estimated that adverse drug reactions account for 10-20% of hospital in-patient admissions, according to the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s National Overprescribing Review, which was published in September 2021.This episode is a recording of a panel discussion at the Talking Healthtech Winter Summit in Australia in August. The panel session you’re about to hear is focused on medication management in the hospital setting. It will give you an overview of:  the current problems with medications in the hospital setting,  why are decision support systems suboptimal,  what it takes to implement healthcare IT in the hospital setting.  Speakers:  Melissa Fodera, Chief Pharmacy Informatics Officer (CPIO) Western Health Australia, Božidarka Radović, Better Meds Product Lead at the health IT company Better,  Gidi Stein, CEO of MedAware.  RESOURCES:Talking Healthtech Winter Summit: https://www.talkinghealthtech.com/summit www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Subscribe to the Faces of digital health MONTHLY! newsletter: fodh.substack.comLeave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth   

Patients dream about reliable and clinically meaningful digital innovations that would help improve their health in a smooth way. With the digital health market maturing, startups increasingly need to not only offer a good user experience but also comply with rigorous regulatory requirements and test their solutions in clinical trials. They need to go through long certification processes. For a few years now, Germany has in place a clear workflow for making digital health apps reimbursable. France is on its way to adopting a similar framework. In today’s episode, you will hear more about what companies need to do to get certified and reimbursed in Germany. I spoke with Jörg Trinkwalter, the Managing Director at ProCarement, a young startup that developed a telemedicine digital care solution for patients with heart failure.ProCarement is participating in the current cohort of the EIT Health Diginovation program. The Diginovation program links start-ups with an international consortium to accelerate the reimbursement of digital health apps in Europe. Jorg explained how ProCarement is preparing to have their application included in the DiGA repository, and how they’re working with the regulatory body Bfarm to achieve that goal. There are currently 35 DiGA applications in the repository. I added the link to the DiGA repository in the show notes, so you can browse through what’s approved and can be prescribed by doctors.In this episode, Jörg talks about ProCarement, telemedicine reimbursement in Germany, the benefits of the Diginovation program and plans for the French market, and how ProCarement is working towards also having a DiGA app.www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.comDiga repository: https://diga.bfarm.de/de/verzeichnis This is the 7th out of 12 episodes prepared in collaboration with EIT Health.This episode is supported by EIT Health Germany, which is one of eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) currently funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Find out more about startup opportunities in 2022.

In 2017, 57.7 million people were living with limb amputation due to traumatic causes worldwide.Apart from accidents, a person might need an amputation due to vascular diseases and diabetes. You might have come across increasingly sophisticated prosthetic limbs, which mimic human movements. The problem is, these are extremely expensive. Simple cosmetic prosthetic costs around $5,000, a functional prosthetic with a hook up to $10,000, and the latest myoelectric tech-enhanced ones cost up to $100,000.In this episode, Dima Gazda, CEO, and founder of Esper Bionics speaks about the development of the market, and how Esper Bionics operates, given that it has facilities in Ukraine.Subscribe to the newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/ Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com  

This episode was first published in summer 2021, and is one of the most listened-to episodes from 2021. Taiwan spends only 6.4% of it’s GDP for healthcare, but has high satisfaction rates with healthcare, and is also very digitalized. In this episode, a closer look into healthcare in Taiwan is provided by Prof. Yu-Chuan Jack Li - a pioneer of artificial intelligence in medicine and translational biomedical informatics. Professor Li is Editor-in-Chief for BMJ Health & Care Informatics journal, the elected president of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and has devoted himself to evolving the next generation of Al in patient safety and prevention ("Earlier Medicine"). He has been deeply involved in biomedical informatics development in Taiwan and international cooperation on various continents, including Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. We spoke about the state of healthcare digitalization and AI in Taiwan.Subscribe to the newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/www.facesofdigitalhealth.comLeave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

One of the more prominent news in July was that according to Sifted, healthcare seed investments in Europe surpassed Fintech investments in June, making the health tech industry the industry that’s attracting the most investments. At the same time, in the US, Rock Health reported that digital health startups in the US raised 10.3 billion USD in the first half year of 2022, and StartupHealth reported a lower amount of investments compared to 2021. As StartupHealth noted, the 16B raised globally in Q1 and Q2, is still much more than in the first half of the year 2020. You can tune into a reflection on the current state of digital health globally by listening to the interview with the Startup Health president Unity Stoakes in April: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/startup-health-unity-stoakes This episode takes a look at the European market and how aescuvest invests in digital health startups. We also talk about the rising problem of digital visual stress. Speakers:  Simon Molitor, Associate Project Manager at Aescuvest,  Michael Mrochern, Member of Investment Committee aescuvest and the CEO of Vivior which offers a novel wearable device – the Vivior Monitor – to objectively measure visual behavior prior to vision correction interventions. www.facesofdigitalhealth.com Monthly newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/p/a-glimpse-in-digital-health-and-healthcare https://www.aescuvest.eu/ https://vivior.com/ https://eithealth.eu/in-your-region/germany/ This episode is supported by EIT Health Germany, which is one of eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) currently funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Find out more about startup opportunities in 2022.

This is a short documentary about medication-related patient safety. The documentary explores and offers an overview of the current challenges and technical solutions related to medication safety to raise awareness about the need to further improve medication-related patient safety.Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems across the world. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion USD annually. Errors can occur at different stages of the medication use process.More than 237 million medication errors are made every year in England, the avoidable consequences of which cost the NHS upwards of £98 million and more than 1700 lives every year, indicate national estimates, published online in the journal BMJ Quality & Safety.The documentary premiered on 29 June 2021.Watch the documentary and full interviews with the speakers: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentaryLearn more about Better Meds: https://meds.better.care/Speakers in the movie and this episode: David W. Bates, Medical Director of Clinical and Quality Analysis, Information Systems, Patient Safety Expert and Harvard MD (Clinical & Research Perspective) Professor John Horn, PharmD, University of Washington School of Pharmacy, coauthor of “The Top 100 Drug Interactions”; A Guide to Patient Management” Martina Viduka, Practicing Nurse, Co-Founder of Advosense David Kliff, author and publisher of the Diabetic Investor eNewsletter, former investment advisor, and as a person living with diabetes (Patient Perspective) Duncan Cripps, Electronic Prescribing and Medication Management Lead at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (Pharmacist Perspective) Roni Shiloh, CEO of Seegnal, MD degree, specialized in Psychiatry (CDS provider and doctor perspective) Hicham Naim, Global Head Integrated & Personalized Patient Care Program, Digital Advisory Board at Takeda (Pharma Perspective) Marinka Žitnik, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School (Research perspective Lea Dias, Clinical Pharmacist, Founder and CEO of Quaefacta Abdulelah Alhawsawi, Ex - founding Director-General of the Saudi Patient Safety Center (SPSC) Roi Shternin, Founder of the patient-led Israeli society for Dysautonomia (Patient perspective).

Brazil had over 200 million people; how many of them sleep well? I hope you’re enjoying summer and resting enough. Many people have issues with sleeping: either not sleeping enough or sleeping poorly. Oftentimes, due to poor sleep hygiene, such as drinking coffee too late in the day, being exposed to blue light from phones, tablets, or computers right before getting to bed, etc. As listed by the Cleveland clinic, poor sleep results in a lack of alertness during the day, excessive daytime sleepiness, impaired memory, poor quality of life, and relationship stress. And more serious problems ​​associated with chronic sleep deprivation are high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure or stroke. Other potential problems include obesity, depression, reduced immune system function, and lower sex drive. The Brazilian startup Sleepup is trying to help people with sleep issues with an over-the-counter digital therapeutic. The DTx works on a behavioral change approach determined for each user. The first step is an individual assessment of the causes of poor sleep. You will hear from Renata Redondo Bonaldi, Co-Founder and CEO of Sleepup. We talked about various aspects of sleep issues and the role of wearables and digital health in improving sleep. If Renata had one piece of advice for sleep improvement, this is what she’d say to you:More at: www.facesofdigitalhealth.comLeave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

How many times in the last year or two have you heard that patients should own their data or have control over their data? These statements sound simple but are much more complex once you start to look at the implications they might have in practice. In June,  the European Patients’ Forum Congress took place in Brussels. The topic was the digital transformation of healthcare, data sharing, and the role of patient organizations in this story.  This episode recaps some of the patient opinions at the EPF Congress. Watch the panel sessions: epfcongress.euRead the recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/what-do-patients-really-think-about-data-recap-of-the-epf-congress