Faces of Digital Health

This is the first out of four episodes about digital health and healthcare in the Nordics. In the next few weeks, you will hear about Denmark, Norway, Finland, and a broader regional overview. Not all countries but there have already been speakers on the show who also talked about Sweden, so I will link those in the show notes as well.  The first speaker you will hear from is Erik Jylling, the executive vice president of Danish Regions.  In his professional career, Erik has been deeply involved in planning, organizing, and leading the Danish healthcare system with the view from different professional perspectives and positions, practical and political. He earned an M.D. with 25 years of practical experience in anesthesiology and intensive care medicine. He has worked as a consultant, head of the department, and in superior leading positions on hospital and organization levels. In this episode, we discussed the specifics of management in healthcare, how does one achieve organizational chance in a hospital setting, but also healthcare in Denmark: the admirably organized elderly care, the fact that patients have access to doctor’s notes since 1987, yes, 1987, so 34 years. The Nordics Series will be available at: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digital-health-in-the-nordics Sweden: F068 The power of patients 3/4: How can patients influence policy? (Bettina Ryll) https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f065-f068-the-power-of-patients-4-episodes-series?rq=BettinaLeave a rating or review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

A few years ago Stefan Buttigieg, a digital health evangelist from Malta said that Malta is a great testbed for digital health startups interested in entering Europe (https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/2019/01/03/f027-can-malta-be-a-gateway-to-the-european-market?rq=Malta).In this episode, we’ll re-visit the island in a discussion with Ryan Grench - Radiology Registrar from Malta who works in the UK. Ryan talked about the benefits of running a digital health startup in Malta, made a few comparisons between healthcare in the UK and Malta, and also shared his views on telemedicine and digital health. Ryan is among other things an advisor to the MedTech World Conference, which we’ll take place between 17-20 November. To visit the conference, listen to the end of the discussion where Ryan shared how you can get a nice discount on your ticket.  Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.comLeave a rating or review: lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealthMedTech World Conference: https://med-tech.world/ Discount code: DigitalHealth50ST50

End of August Days of eHealth were organised as part of the Slovenian Presidency to the Council of EU. In four days a lot of insight was offered about healthcare digitalization in Catalonia, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Israel and Finland. In the previous episodes, I published the panel discussions about Germany and Catalonia. This is the panel about Israel.  Israel has had electronic healthcare records for two decades, in 2018. A country of 9 million people, attributes 7,5% of its GDP to healthcare and is home to roughly 1,500 companies operating in the healthcare and life sciences. In the panel discussion you will learn about the national digital health strategy in Israel, how to Health Maintainance Organisations, Government, and Hospitals collaborating to advance healthcare. You will also learn a little bit more about Slovenia with two representatives of the Slovenian healthcare ecosystem. The speakers:  Esti Shelly, Director, Digital Health at Ministry of Health Israel Michael Halberthal, General Director of Rambam Health Care Campus Noa Kedem, Deputy Director, Digital health unit (Medical Informatics) at Maccabi Health Services   Jurij Šorli, CEO of the Hospital Topolšica (Slovenia) Bogdan Tušar, Acting Director General, Directorate for the Development of the Health System, Ministry of Health, Slovenia Recap of roundtables at Days of eHealth: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/days-of-ehealth-healthcare-digitalization-in-catalonia-germany-finland-and-israelWebsite: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. The European Patient Forum’s Congress happening during 26-29 October: https://epfcongress.eu/

From the 26th and 29th of October, I will be co-hosting the EPF Congress 2021, brought to you by the European Patients’ Forum. This year’s topic is the digital transformation of healthcare. Speakers from across Europe and organisations such as WHO, German Federal Ministry of Health, European Medicine’s Agency, EIT Health, BMJ and more are going to discuss the state of digitalization in Europe, with a heavy focus on the patient perspective.The event will be moderated by me and Ivett Jakab, who is the president of the European Patients’ Forum’s Youth group. In this short special episode, you will get to know Ivett, who was diagnosed with a rare disease called Wilson’s disease at the age of 16 and underwent a liver transplant as a consequence.In this episode, Ivett shared her story, the meaning and power of the EPF Youth group and why patients between 15 and 29 are such an underserved group, what are the specifics of this age group and more. If you’re working in pharma or digital health and would like to work with the EPF Youth Group, learn more about EPF by visiting www.eu-patient.eu.To learn more about the EPF YG: https://www.eu-patient.eu/about-epf/about-us/Youth-Strategy/Young patient employment project (WAYS) results: https://www.eu-patient.eu/about-epf/about-us/Youth-Strategy/ways/Contact the EPF YG via youthgroup@eu-patient.eu Registration and Programme details for the EPF Congress 2021 at www.epfcongress.euFollow the Congress on Twitter by following #EPFCongress2021

Slovenia is currently presiding the council of EU until 2022. In the first week of September, the members of the Slovenian health tech ecosystem organized a conference about examples of good practices in healthcare digitalization across Europe. In one of the previous episodes, you were able to listen to the panel discussion on the healthcare strategy in Catalonia. Today’s episode is an adapted recording of the panel about Germany, and the upcoming two episodes will be the adapted discussions about healthcare digitalization in Israel and Finland. In the past two years, a lot of efforts have been put in place to accelerate the progress on the digitalization of the healthcare digital infrastructure in Germany. Many laws were passed, the country received a lot of international attention about the DIGA process, which enables startups to make their apps reimbursable. The bigger national projects which saw the day of life this year, however, were the introduction of electronic patient records, telemedicine, and e-prescriptions. On the funding side, the federal ministry of health and the federal states are investing EUR 4,3 billion for concrete projects that work towards the digitalization of hospitals. In this discussion, we’re going to scratch the surface of the design of the national strategy and digital health infrastructure in Germany. and look at the practical example of the Medical informatics Initiative. Medical Informatics Initiative is a separate project to improve medical research and patient care. You will hear more from five speakers. The panel discussion was moderated by Maja Dragović, a former journalist for digitalhealth.net, now a Business Developer at Better. She will also present the speakers.  Speakers:  Dr. Michael Marschollek  - professor for Medical Informatics at Hannover Medical School (Germany) and executive director of the Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics of TU-Braunschweig and Hannover Medical School.  Johannes Starlinger, an MD, working as an Interdisciplinary Digital Health Consultant, Howto Health GmbH, Germany Mark Langguth, eHealth Consultant, Former Senior Product Manager at Gematik Fabien Prasser, Professor of Medical Informatics at the Berlin Institute of Health at the Charite University Hospital Berlin We were also supposed to be joined by Anka Bolka, Head of Director of Field for Development and Analysis, Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia, but since she couldn’t make it, Tomaž Mračun, who manages the application development department at Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia (HIIS).  Recap of the Days of eHealth: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/days-of-ehealth-healthcare-digitalization-in-catalonia-germany-finland-and-israel Join the EPF Congress: https://epfcongress.eu/ Podcast Website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com 

Nina Capital, is a specialized venture capital firm investing in early stage startups at the intersection of healthcare and technology. Level 20 is a not for profit organisation founded in 2015 by 12 women working in senior roles in private equity, aligned around a common vision of improving gender diversity in the industry. Nina Capital and Level 20 recently published a report that showed y. In aggregate, women represent 30% of the workforce. Only 17% of senior roles positions are held by women. I spoke with Yahel Halamish, Nina’s Head of Investor Relations and Diversity & Inclusion Officer and she shared her views of the results, why diversity matters and how can we encourage and improve it. Gender Diversity in the Priate Equity and Venture Capital in Spain Report: https://www.level20.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ninacapital_Whitepaper-LEVEL20-NINACAPITAL_final_20210830.pdf Read an opinion piece about the report: https://medium.com/ninacapital/gender-diversity-in-private-equity-and-venture-capital-in-spain-c5d7c80a03d1 Join the European Patient Forum Congress: https://epfcongress.eu/ 

If we look at nationwide successful digitalization projects, we often hear about Estonia, Israel, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, or Israel. All these countries have less than 10 million people. It is therefore not surprising, that in bigger countries that are divided into regions, successful digitalization happens gradually. Spain is divided in regions and each one of them manages healthcare on its own. Catalonia, which has 7,6 million people, is driving a 43 million EUR worth regional digital health strategy, in preparation since 2018. The strength of the new model of information systems is to build the electronic health history with the openEHR standard. This will enable semantic interoperability and enable a person center model for information.  This episode is a recording of a conference panel during the eHealth Week, a week of events about good healthcare digitalization practices across Europe, organized during the Slovenian presidency to the Council of EU. Speakers: Pol Perez Sust, director of Information System Area of Catalunya, Spain Bojana Beović, President, Medical Chamber of Slovenia Blaž Suhač, Assistant to GD for informatics,  University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Slovenia Moderator: Maja Dragović, Former journalist for digitalhealth.net, Business Development Specialist at Better EPF congress: https://epfcongress.eu/Send me a message for a complimentary pass on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjasazajc/ Visit the website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.comLeave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

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.CLINICIANS FROM THE US: Based on the conversations happening here & how it applies to your day-to-day, please capture your reflections here to unlock AMA PRA Category 1 CMEs: https://earnc.me/cG1EdOLeave a rating or a review: http://www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealthFaces of digital health website: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

After a summer of discussions about medication safety, medication errors, the role of AI in prescribing decision support, precision medicine, and drug development, we’re moving to explore healthcare systems again. Today, we’ll dive into Canada, more specifically Quebec. You will hear from two speakers: Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg - President and CEO Integrated Health and Social Services University Network for West-Central Montreal (CIUSSS West-Central Montreal) and Danina Kapetanovic the Head of OROT - a Connected Health Innovation Hub inside the network.The network serves approximately 345,000 people, who are served by more than 30 member facilities. You will first hear dr. Rosenberg talks a little bit about the structure of the healthcare system in Canada and then Danina will explain a little bit more about how the innovation hub works, how CIUSS is encouraging innovation inside the network, and more. 

Dr. Marinka Žitnik is a computer scientist from Harvard, studying applied machine learning with a focus on challenges brought forward by data in science, medicine, and health. A large aspect of her work concerns the use of AI for better use of medications - either by analyzing and predicting side effects in polypharmacy or by potentially discovering new indications of combinations of drugs that are already on the market. Dr. Zitnik joined Harvard as an Assistant Professor in December 2019. Before that, she was a postdoctoral scholar in Computer Science at Stanford University. She was also a member of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub at Stanford. Some of her methods are used by major biomedical institutions, including Baylor College of Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stanford Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital.In this discussion, she talks about the role of AI in the development of COVID vaccines, the role of AI in drug development, realistic expectations of AI tools we can expect in the next 5 to 10 years, and more. ***This discussion was part of the discussions recorded for the movie OVERDOSE - How can we prevent medication errors, featuring 10 speakers from 6 countries across the world. Find all the details about the movie along with full interviews with speakers in the movie here: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/overdose-documentary !!! If you are a clinician in the US, you can actually earn CME credits by listening to this show. Find the link to more details in the show notes. The CMEfy process is powered by Adaptrack - a simple platform to unlock precious time & money, while avoiding malpractice, burnout & administrative risks.  CMEfy this topic:  https://earnc.me/SneirHLeave a rating or review for the show: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth