Faces of Digital Health

This episode is the first part of a two-part series about healthcare in Slovenia. Given that drug prices are a consistently controversial topic in the US healthcare system, the first part of the series explains European regulation. Why are drug prices in Europe more affordable? How does drug pricing and medication management work in Europe and Slovenia? Why is it hard to imagine that an opioid crisis or widespread use of ADHD drugs would happen in this part of Europe? The speaker explaining the topics is the Head of the medication management department at the Healthcare Insurance Institute of Slovenia Jurij Fürst.

This is the second part of a two-part series about healthcare in Slovenia. Slovenia is a country of 2 million people, with a universal healthcare system, where electronic medical cards have been in place since the nineties. The interoperable backbone for main patient documents such as discharge letters has been in place since 2012. On the index of the digital economy and society 2018 prepared by the European Commission, Slovenia was ranked 6th according to the use of eHealth solutions. Tina Vavpotič, healthcare business strategist and consultant, with rich experience in healthcare policy design, healthcare IT product design and implementation, shares her thoughts about eHealth and digital health.

Patients are getting increasingly engaged in their treatments, becoming the decisionmakers not just recipients of care. But to design a successful solution for patient support with high user retention is, to put it mildly, an art. Every patient lives in a different home environment, has different personal goal and challenges, therefore a good disease management solution for patients needs to be highly personalized. The discussion you will hear today is focused on exactly that: what aspects to take into account when we’re addressing patient behavior and patient empowerment, to which extent can technology decrease the need for real-life human coaches, since last years have shown that apps work best in combination with coaches. I spoke to Claire Kamoun - executive director of patient innovation at the French company MedClinik. Claire also shared her thoughts on technology adoption in France.

Asia is the 2nd largest digital health ecosystem in the world. Investments in the sector totaled 6.3 billion in 2018. 5 Faces of digital health episodes are going to be published in July, offering an overview of the region, and some insights provided by speakers from China, Singapore, South Korea and India.

Developing countries are often seen as ideal test hubs for innovation: there's no existing infrastructure to disrupt, the regulation permits a faster speed of adoption. However, like any market, African countries have their own specifics. How can you scale in Africa? Can you reduce the price of your consumer solution to the affordability of African consumers? Moka Lantum, based in Kenya, is an expert on the African healthcare market. He obtained his Doctor of Medicine training at Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé, Cameroon; a Diploma in Nutrition and International Child Health, from Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; a Doctorate in Pharmacology, from the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. He is a graduate of the Masters in Health Care Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has rich entrepreneurship history of developing solutions for the African market.

G4A, formerly known as Grants4Apps is probably the most famous digital health accelerator inside a Pharma conglomerate. For a few years, the program was designed to support a handful of startups by offering them office space, various entrepreneurship skills training and network expansion. As the digital health market evolved, so has the program, with Eugene Barukhovich taking over the global head of G4A digital health development at Bayer in 2016. At the moment, G4A is present in some form or another in 35 countries. 8 accelerators/incubators run around the globe. This discussion explains how a global pharmaceutical corporation with almost 120.000 employees launched a digital health accelerator, what are the specifics of this year's application process, how are business scandals of digital health and biotech startups from the Silicon Valley affecting the ecosystem, Eugene briefly comments the Dutch and German digital health system.   To learn more about this year's G4A program and application, see this link: http://bit.ly/2JL1gWo You have until May 31st to apply!

Longevity, eternal youth or even immortality have been an aspiration in religion and culture throughout history. Today, people adopt all sorts of approaches to increase their wellbeing, delay aging and avoid diseases. Efforts are increasingly quantified with sensors, wearables, or even biohacking - interventions to influence body biology. The new hope for advancements in longevity is seen in artificial intelligence, which is becoming increasingly powerful. Alex Zhavoronkov has been researching the use of AI in aging for years. He is the CEO of Insilico Medicine, a Baltimore-based leader in the next-generation artificial intelligence technologies for drug discovery and aging biomarkers discovery. He truly is a well of knowledge - since 2012 he published over 130 peer-reviewed research papers and 2 books including "The Ageless Generation: How Biomedical Advances Will Transform the Global Economy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). In this episode, he talks about the complexity of aging as a biological process, types of artificial intelligence and the role of AI in research advancements.   Some of his latest research articles include:  Blood Biochemistry Analysis to Detect Smoking Status and Quantify Accelerated Aging in Smokers - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35704-w#author-information Artificial intelligence for aging and longevity research: Recent advances and perspectives - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S156816371830240X?via%3Dihub Artificial Intelligence for Drug Discovery, Biomarker Development, and Generation of Novel Chemistry - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.8b00930 Listen also:  F013 What to expect from artificial intelligence in healthcare in the next 10 years? (Sally Daub, Enlitic) https://medium.com/faces-of-digital-health/f013-what-to-expect-from-artificial-intelligence-in-healthcare-in-the-next-10-years-fdaf2edf32f8

Estonia has only 1,3 million people but is famous worldwide for its digital governance. If you want, you can even become an Estonian electronic resident and run your business from Estonia, regardless of your country of residence. Healthcare wise, 95% of healthcare data is in digital form, some of it supported with blockchain technology. What does all this mean - is data structured or is information stored in pdf? How supportive is the system for digital health startups? And how did the country, where only 6.5% of the GDP is spent on healthcare, achieve the level of digitization many countries are only dreaming of? Hannalore Taal - digital health specialist and the Chief e-Health Specialist at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs explains.

This short recording offers a snippet of thoughts about healthcare China, Japan, Germany, Dubai, Israel, Japan, and Bolivia.

ClinicalTrials.gov currently lists 302,091 clinical studies in the US. It is impossible for patients and their doctors to be aware of all clinical trials an individual might be eligible for. While one would expect the trials to be run and supported by sophisticated software, the reality is often far from that expectation. Patients often come to doctors inquiring about trials doctors might not even have been aware of. Trials data is managed manually, in old fashion way — clinical trials are written in a word format, transmitted to sites in pdf files, later on along the process, the data are often manually abstracted from clinical trials to homegrown solutions for analysis in each institution. Data is collected in tailor-made 3rd party systems for different pharma companies and then re-converted to another format for FDA submissions.  There is no doubt: there are plenty of opportunities to improve clinical trials with new technologies. Samuel L. Volchenboum, MD, PhD, MS, is an expert in pediatric cancers and blood disorders, and studies ways to harness computers to enable research and foster innovation using large data sets. He talks about potentials of digital health in clinical trials improvement.