Faces of Digital Health

Investments in digital health have been steadily rising for the last seven years. 6.2 billion dollars were invested in digital health startups in 2015, 44 billion in 2022, according to Startup Health. Startup Health is a US-based organisation supporting digital health innovators across the world and globally spreading optimism about the potential of technology in healthcare. The vision that drives that optimism is the hope that we can bring access to healthcare to everyone in the world, that we can beat cancer and cure diseases such as diabetes or Alzheimer’s. That vision is important because healthcare innovation is not for the faint-hearted and as health indicators show, currently, life expectancy and health are worsening across the world, says co-founder and president of Startup Health Unity Stoakes. The market is maturing, he says, which is also seen in the number of companies that attract investments. The total amount of investments has been increasing for several years, but th number of companies that are invested in, is staying roughly the same - it’s just that some companies are maturing and raising higher amounts of funding. In this discussion you will hear Unity Stoakes talk about his reflection of Startup Health which is already 11 years old, he talked about the global expansion of Startup Health, why we need to think about healthcare innovation less locally, more globally, and also why we still need much more investments in the future.If you want to go down the memory lane of digital health, you can also tune in to the interview with Unity in 2017: https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/faces-of-digital-health/id1194284040?i=1000380325225

Hassan Chaudhury is a global healthcare expert, he worked in several countries across the world. He currently works at Healthcare UK; a joint initiative of the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Department for International Trade (DIT). His global role includes advising commercial teams in over 100 UK embassies. In this discussion, we chatted about the digital transformation of healthcare and social care in the UK and Hassan’s experience with countries across the world. Which innovations are reasonable to implement in healthcare today? And which technologies are currently not ready for prime time just yet. You might be surprised by Hassan’s opinion. Read an excerpt:

Therapies for cancer are being developed at light speed and upward of 60 gene and cell therapies are projected to reach regulatory approval in the U.S. by 2030, according to the MIT NEWDIGS collaborative. Due to the nature of cancer, readiness for risks in drug development is much higher here than it might be in other medical fields. In this episode you’re going to hear a bit more about what can digital health innovation learn from the mindset present in oncology development. Sean Khozin is the CEO of CancerLinQ, a non-profit health technology company focused on improving quality of care and health outcomes for all patients with cancer. He was the Global Head of Data Strategy and Data Science Innovation at Johnson & Johnson, before that he co-founded Hello Health, a technology company focused on developing integrated telemedicine, point-of-care data visualization, and advanced analytical systems for optimizing patient care and clinical research. He was also the Founding director of a digital health incubator inside the FDA. You will hear a little bit about processes in oncology, innovation in oncology, the promise of decentralized clinical trials and more.Leave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

In this episode, founders of four very different companies talk about their fundraising experiences. As critically mentioned by Fouad Al-Noor - Co-Founder & CEO - ThinkSono - we should stop talking about the myth that startups search for investors that can offer strategic benefits. It’s true, but fundraising is still primarily about getting money to be able to start a business. The key thing, in the end, is also to find an investor you like as a person. This will be crucial for the investor-startup relationship to survive once things get tough,” he says. And it does get tough. As mentioned by Kei W. Mueller, he talked to over 90 investors with very limited success because the solution Ebenbuild is creating is so forward-thinking.In this episode you will hear:  About a mental health app that world with hospitals to give patients timely support after discharge and prevent to early readmissions,  A startup improving mechanical ventilation with the help of digital twins,  How can immunotherapy production be optimized according to a swiss based startup Limula,  Revolution in ultrasound: handheld ThinkSono is shortening the diagnostics time of deep venous thrombosis.  We briefly discussed each of these solutions and also the fundraising side of startups. EIT Health Catapult Program has plenty to offer, but as a startup you should consider which stage you’re in when applying, to get the most value. Speakers:  Luc Henry – CEO and co-founder – Limula https://limula.ch/ Kei Wieland Müller - Co-Founder & CEO at Ebenbuild https://www.ebenbuild.com/ Fouad Al-Noor - Co-Founder & CEO of ThinkSono https://thinksono.com/ Hans Juergen Stein - Managing Director of mentalis https://mentalis-health.com/ HELP UKRAINE:If you’re a medical device manufacturer or have the ability to donate medical equipment, EIT Health is facilitating the supply of medical equipment to Ukraine. EIT Health has partnered with the Polish Medical Mission, a leading humanitarian organisation working with healthcare professionals on the border of Ukraine. If you are an organisation with the ability to donate and ship any of the medical equipment please complete the form on Eit Health’s website for Ukraine: https://eithealth.eu/ukraine-appeal/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). EiT Health Germany connects 150 renowned partners from industry, research and education from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The unique network helps initiate outstanding innovations in the health sector. If you're a startup working in the field of digital health or biotech and don't know EiT Health Germany yet, I would encourage you to visit eit-health.de, where you will find more about innovation, acceleration, and education programs. 

SPECIAL APPEAL:Dear listeners, as the war in Ukraine continues, the need for medical help is increasing. If you’re a clinician or a telehealth provider, please get in touch with Health Tech Without Borders. Health Tech Without Borders is organising a "Ukraine Telehealth Relief" initiative to provide free of charge telehealth and remote consultations to the people of Ukraine. So if you’re a clinician or telemedicine provider, please contact Health Tech Without Borders: https://www.healthtechwithoutborders.org/ukraine-telehealth-relief If you’re a medical device manufacturer or have the ability to donate medical equipment, EIT Health is facilitating the supply of medical equipment to Ukraine. EIT Health has partnered with the Polish Medical Mission, a leading humanitarian organisation working with healthcare professionals on the border of Ukraine. If you are an organisation with the ability to donate and ship any of the medical equipment please complete the form on EIT Health’s website: https://eithealth.eu/ukraine-appeal/In this episode, you’re going to hear about metaverse and healthcare, which conditions need to be fulfilled for health tech to succeed, you will also get a glimpse into how Canada’s Primary Care Chronic Disease Surveillance System was built. And much more. I spoke with Karim Karshavjee, Family Physician with over 25 years of experience designing, developing, and implementing Electronic Health Records/Electronic Medical Records and helping clinicians use them effectively. He is also the Program Director of the Masters of Health Informatics program at the University of Toronto. Enjoy the show and if you haven’t yet, subscribe to the show to be notified about new episodes automatically. 

When one starts to wonder about why data-sharing is still more or less cumbersome in healthcare, you quickly get to the challenges with interoperability siloed data and of course, data standards. Sharing of data has improved with the introduction of the messaging standard called FHIR. But throughout the years, debates about open standards and open ecosystems have started to become louder. In this episode, you’re going to hear a little bit more about that and the openEHR standard specification. I was joined by Hanna Pohjonen, eHealth management consultant and founder at Rosaldo Oy. Hanna has worked across the world, as a consultant in various regional and national eHealth projects in 31 different countries across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. She consults on healthcare information systems and IT architectures, vendor-neutral archiving, data sharing, and more. In her past, she also represented Finland in eHealth matters in the European Commission. In this discussion, you will hear a little bit more about healthcare digitalization in the Nordics, the complexity, and challenges with national and regional eHealth projects and openEHR, what exactly it is, and where it is used.Visit the website: www.facesofidigitalhealth.com Leave a rating or a review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealthTo read a bit more about the history of the show: A reflection after 100 episodes: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-did-i-get-100-digital-health-podcast-episodes-tjasa-zajc-1f/?trackingId=J%2BV0zLmqRSSEgTaklgTkUg%3D%3D ****Sponsor mentioned in the episode*****Master E-networking live course on Maven. In ten days, you’ll digitalize and build your network. You will learn how to maximize the value of any event you’re attending: Go to Masterenetworking.com Use the code: FACESOFDIGITALHEALTH10

Many software solutions for healthcare could be described as lacking empathy. Too often, solutions are addressing products viability and feasibility, but put desirability in the second place of priorities, says Tim Peck is Executive Portfolio Director of Health at IDEO. He is an entrepreneur and a Harvard-trained Emergency Medicine physician, who has been practicing human-centered design for over a decade. He spent 3 months in a nursing home to grasp the reality and problems of this kind of environment before he built Call9 - a health technology company that provided telemedicine for nursing home residents. In this discussion, we talked about design in healthcare. What is human.centered design? How to ask questions in your user research? What are the main mistakes innovators make?   More episodes and recaps: www.facesofdigitalhealth.comLeave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth ****Sponsor mentioned in the episode***Master E-networking live course on Maven. In ten days, you’ll digitalize and build your network. You will learn how to maximize the value of any event you’re attending: Go to Masterenetworking.com Use the code: FACESOFDIGITALHEALTH10

Voice tech is one of the tech areas with high potential to optimize healthcare processes for providers and ease chronic disease in management for patients. In reality: How far are we from futuristic ideas where everything would be operated with the help of voice? How do innovators reduce the risk of misunderstandings in designing voice technologies? What does the development of human-like bots look like?Tune in to the discussion with Julia Hoxha co-founder and CEO of Zana - a healthcare startup that helps organisations to build artificially intelligent voice and chatbot solutions. Julia’s background is in computer science with a heavy focus in machine learning and particularly in conversational AI, which is also the core technology of Zana. We discussed the latest trends in the use of voice in healthcare and how far beyond scheduling appointments with the help of Alexa have we come by 2022. 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). EiT Health Germany connects 150 renowned partners from industry, research and education from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The unique network helps initiate outstanding innovations in the health sector. If you're a startup working in the field of digital health or biotech and don't know EiT Health Germany yet, I would encourage you to visit eit-health.de, where you will find more about innovation, acceleration, and education programs. The application deadline for many of these programs is 14th March, so do check them:  Startups meet healthcare providers: https://eithealth.eu/programmes/start-ups-meet-healthcare-providers/  All 2022 opportunities: https://eit-health.de/en/accelerator-2/ Learn more about Zana:https://zana.com/ Past EIT Health Germany series episodes: EIT Health Germany Series 2/12: Improving Medication Prescribing With Digital Twins (ExactCure): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/eit-health-germany-medication-prescribing-digital-twins-exactcure EiT Health Germany Series 1/12: Changing The Paradigm in the Fight Against Antimicrobial Resistance (Alexander Belcredi): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/phagomed-biontech-antimicrobial-resistance Also visit: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

This is the second episode about digital health transformation in the Middle East. I spoke with Michele Tarnow, a healthcare leader experienced in managing across multi-national geographies, organization boundaries, and matrix organizations. Michelle has been living in UAE since 2016 and shared her insights into how are countries in the Middle East approaching digitalization of healthcare, how does cultural diversity amplify innovation and how is Alliance Care Technologies, the company she is the CEO of, using best available technologies to optimize care and offer clinicians tools for better care, without turning them into data clerks.Enjoy the show and also tune in to the previous episode with a perspective of Zaid Tabet - healthcare executive who has been living in the Middle East for a decade and worked with government and private organizations to advance healthcare operations, processes, policies and regulations to promote digital healthcare adoption and use.Enjoy the show and go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com to browse through other episodes as well. 

In the next two episodes, we’ll dive into healthcare development a digitalization in the Middle East. You’re going to hear from two speakers based in Dubai. The speaker of today’s episode is Ziad Tabet, Chief Customer Officer at Alliance Care Technologies. Ziad is a healthcare veteran with three decades of experience spanning many aspects of the healthcare space. He has extensive experience in operations and financial management of hospital systems, healthcare start-ups, sales and business development, account management, creating and bringing infrastructure and teams from idea to reality. Ziad has been living in UAE for over ten years, first in Abu Dhabi now in Dubai. In this discussion, he shared his experience in the region, commented on opportunities and mindset around digitalization.www.facesofdigitalhealth.comwww.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth