Faces of Digital Health

Recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digital-health-2021-predictions  In this last episode of 2020, we will reflect on the year and look into the future with some of the experts and opinion leaders from the digital health industry across the world. You can hear from experts from the US, Israel, Mexico, Chile, UK, and South Korea. They shared their thoughts about the state and future of digital health globally.    Speakers:  Levi Shapiro, Investor, Digital Health instructor and founder of the mHealth Israel community (Israel), Gil Bashe, managing partner of FINN Partners Global Health (USA), Gabriel Alejandro Garza Caro, Co-founder and Managing Director of DocTour (Mexico),  Luis Santiago, the CEO of Pegasi, a healthcare IT company based in Venezuela (Venezuela), Ogan Gurel, Though leader, MD, Professor, Entrepreneur (South Korea), João Bocas, The Wearable Expert (UK), Dr. Brennan Spiegel, gastroenterologist, director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education and who recently published a book titled VRx (USA),  Robert Miller, Director of Product Management and Strategy at Consensys Health (USA). Additional resources:    Interview with Ogan Gurel as part of the Digital Health in Asia series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f041045-digital-health-in-asia-china-india-south-korea-and-singapore?rq=ogan%20gurel Email for interested in the digital health wallet development: ogangurel@gmail.com Interview with Robert Miller about blockchain trends in 2020: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f110-patient-records-on-the-blockchain-are-still-a-dream-robert-miller  Interview with dr. Brennan Spiegel about the potential of VR: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f106-vrx-what-has-over-5000-studies-taught-us-about-the-healing-effect-of-vr-dr-brennan-spiegel   Interview with Luis Santiago about digital health in Venezuela and Chile https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digitalheath-south-america    Visit www.facesofdigitalhealth.com for further info on the show Leave a rating or a review at www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Someday in the future, we will hopefully see 3D printed tissues and organs. To see where we are today, I spoke with prof. Frank Berry - Senior Scientist at the UHN Arthritis Programme at the Krembil Research Institute and Professor of Cellular Therapy at the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI), National University of Ireland Galway.

The U.S. prescription drug market is worth $400 billion. Companies such as GoodRx, RxSaver and now Amazon Pharmacy are starting to bring pricing transparency. Online pharmacy services are projected to hit revenues of $131 billion by 2025 worldwide. The Amazon Prime prescription savings benefit can save members up to 80% off generic and 40% off brand name medications when paying without insurance. The pharmacy market is evolving and getting disrupted in the US. One of the players revolutionizing the customer experience in the space is Truepill. Truepill helps traditional healthcare companies, plan groups and pharmaceutical manufacturers create customized, digital experiences at scale with their Truepill’s digital platform. In this episode, the Co-Founder and President of Truepill - Sid Viswanathan talks about  - how is digitalization changing the pharmacy industry,  - the rise of modern digital healthcare,  - what healthcare companies need to know about building digital experience for their customers and more.   For more content go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com  Truepill: https://www.truepill.com/

In the last two years, the hype around blockchain settled down, and now projects can focus more on development rather than managing attention. Many projects have gone from an idea to a pilot program or an actual implementation. However, we probably won't see patient medical records on the blockchain soon, says Robert Miller - Director of Product Management and Strategy at Consensys Health. ConsenSys Health builds Ethereum-based solutions for cybersecurity, compliance, privacy, bioethics and identity, applying the deep technical capabilities of ConsenSys to advance the healthcare industry. The blockchain community knows Robert because of his regular newsletters about blockchain in healthcare. He is diligently following and reflecting on the development of the industry. We discussed why are patient health records on blockchain currently still a dream and which projects are slowly moving beyond the project phase. An interesting research initiative is MELLODY - (acronym for Machine learning ledger orchestration for drug discovery). MELLODY is a collaboration among 10 major pharma companies that are using a blockchain-based infrastructure and federated learning to speed up drug development. Robert also shared his view on MELLODY - and I also added the link to his analysis in the show notes. We also talked about the potential use of blockchain for vaccination certification and more. Further reading: Robert’s analysis of the data and privacy-related challenges in the MELLODY project. Recap of the show: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f110-patient-records-on-the-blockchain-are-still-a-dream-robert-miller 

When this discussion was recorded on 20th November, New Zealand, which has 4.9 million people, only had 50 reported cases of COVID in the whole country. The reason the country is successful in containing the virus better than most countries in the world, is the discipline of the people, says Scott Arrol, the former CEO of NZ Healtchare IT - an organization connecting insurers, healthcare providers and the healthcare industry. Scott is soon leaving the organization after running if for over 6 years. He talked about the character of New Zealanders, the complexity of the healthcare system, the hurdles related to the digitalization of healthcare, and explained how New Zealand approached the COVID-19 pandemic, so today, unlike most of the rest of the world, people can attend live events. Enjoy the show, and to read the recap of the discussion or browse through other episodes as well, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. Among the discussions about the healthcare system, you can listen to a recently published talk with dr. Louise Schaper about healthcare and digitalization in Australia, before that you can find discussions about Spain and France, episodes 97-100 focused on South America, and there’s been series about Asia and Africa published last year.    Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

In this episode, you will hear a discussion with Julian Flannery - the CEO of. Summus Global. Summus global provides access to specialists and physicians from across the world. The company has a network of over 4,000 specialists and physicians from 48 hospitals and dozens of fields, from oncology to cardiology, psychology, and pediatrics. Their customers come from the US, China, Canada, Philippines, Spain, England, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Turkey, and Ireland. The CEO Julian Flannery and I talked about how the platform works, how do customers differ based on the country of their residence and more. Enjoy the discussion and to browse through other episodes as well, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth.com. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the show to be notified about new episodes automatically. Coming up next are a discussion about the latest development in blockchain in healthcare and an introduction to the digital health landscape in New Zealand.   Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth  Summus Global: https://www.summusglobal.com/

Rajeev Ronanki is Chief Digital Officer at Anthem, which is striving to become a digital AI-first enterprise. In September Anthem launched a digital incubator where companies can test their solutions on Anthem’s anonymized data. Among other things Rajeev spoke about what kind of mindset shift happened in insurance companies due to COVID, how does an AI-driven insurance policy mindset look like and how will AI shape the future of healthcare.   Anthem's incubator: https://www.anthem.ai/  Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

We are in the middle of an unprecedented time of anxiety, depression and worries because of the global coronavirus pandemic. It’s affecting people’s jobs, a sense of security, and relative predictability, consequently our relationships and health, especially mental health. I think it’s safe to assume we wish for this to be over as soon as possible and that we could be in a different reality. To a certain extent, that’s actually possible, if you have virtual reality equipment. Virtual reality can have a literally healing effect. Over 5000 studies by today have shown the efficacy of VR for pain management, PTSD, eating disorders, mental health and more. In this episode, you will hear from dr. Brennan Spiegel a gastroenterologist who directs the Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education. He recently published a book titled VRx in which he explains the applicability of VR and looks at this digital therapy from a philosophical and critical point of view. In this discussion, you will hear him explain what makes VR so healing, what are its potential side-effects and why different patients respond differently to it.   Leave a rating or a review: www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth

Australia was in the global digital health-related news in 2018 of the national EHR project called My Health Record. The idea behind the project was to digitize the medical records of all the people from Australia. Today, 9 out of 10 Australians have My Health Record.  In the discussion you are about to listen to, dr. Louise Shaper, the CEO of Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH), renowned speaker and a dedicated digital health evangelist, shared her deep insight into the state of digitalization of healthcare in Australia, the organizations driving technological progress in healthcare, and also her PhD about technology acceptance amongst healthcare professionals. Australasian Institute of Digital Health: https://digitalhealth.org.au/ Leave a rating or a review: http://www.lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth 

Spain has a universal healthcare system, where anyone that pays social security contributions is eligible for healthcare. From the digitalization perspective, Spain does not have a national institution to coordinate digital health projects. Instead, each of the Spanish regions has authorities with their own budgets. One of the most advanced regions is Catalonia. Cesar Morcillo Serra is an Internal Medicine specialist from Barcelona, who has a strong interest in eHealth. He had lead several Digital Health transformation projects inside the Cima hospital where he works in. In this discussion, he talks about what it takes for a hospital to be digitally advanced, what is a concept of a liquid hospital and how does the Spanish healthcare system works.    Cesar is the speaker at the Barcelona Health Hub Summit (29 October): https://bhhsummit.com/ Join free!  Episode recap: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f-104-digital-health-in-spain-and-what-is-a-liquid-hospital-cesar-morcillo-serra  To learn more about the digital health ecosystem in Barcelona, listen to episode 63 with Aline Noizet: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f063-how-to-build-a-community-in-healthcare-aline-noizet?rq=aline    Leave a rating or a review: https://lovethepodcast.com/facesofdigitalhealth