Faces of Digital Health

In 2014, Shafi Ahmed removed a tumor from the liver and bowel of a patient in what was the first operation streamed live online using Google Glass. The procedure to remove was watched live via computer or mobile phone by 13,000 surgical students, healthcare professionals and members of the public in more than 100 countries. Two years later Shafi performed an operation on a British cancer patient u...

Shawna Butler in an entrepreNURSE. She had a wide range of experiences in emergency medicine, cardiac, critical care, international medical flight transport, and workplace wellness. She is part of the Exponential Medicine where the focus is on the opportunities presented by robotics, AI, VR, machine learning, supercomputing, genetic sequencing, blockchain, 3D printing, drones. With her curiosity a...

Nurses and midwives account for nearly 50% of the health workforce. While being an important group of healthcare stakeholders, they are often overlooked, especially when talking about innovation. However, they are very innovative and creative. According to Rebecca Love, an experienced Nurse Entrepreneur, nurses do around 27 workarounds per shift. This means 27 times per day they use technology or...

Esther Wojcicki is an accomplished journalist and a teacher with a very successful family. Her husband Stanley is Stanford University professor of physics and together three daughters: Susan (CEO of YouTube), Janet, a Fulbright-winning anthropologist, epidemiologist and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and researcher, and Anne (co-founder of 23andMe). In the short discussion during the Webit f...

  John Nosta has been holding a strong position as the number one influencer in the digital health space for quite a few years. His career started in a research lab at Harvard Medical School, until he redirected his creative energy into marketing. About six years ago John founder of NostaLab — a think tank helping life sciences companies navigate change by addressing their problems through unconve...

AI is the buzzword startups are very keen on using when describing their products. For decades, movies are full of ideas on what artificial intelligence could do in a positive and negative way. What is AI, deep learning or a simple algorithm? What is the dream and what current reality around AI? How does AI look in practice? In this episode, you will hear from Sally Daub - the CEO of Enlitic talk...

In this episode, two Americans share their insight in the healthcare development of the land with 1,4 billion people. Bay McLaughlin, Forbes contributor on tech in China and the co-founder of Brinc.io, part incubator, part accelerator, part investment fund with headquarters located in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou and satellite offices in mainland China, also London, Berlin, Helsinki, Amsterd...

According to dr. Walter Greenleaf, behavioral neuroscientist and a medical technology developer working at Stanford University, interactive virtual environments significantly reduce pain from as much as 44% during the most painful procedures (ex: burn wound treatment), diverts patient attention away from perceiving and feeling pain, decreases pain-related brain-activity, reduces need for anesthesi...

Virtual reality has a long history. Its applications precede pure fun, by today, many therapies for medical purposes have been designed. Virtual reality has many medical applications, which you can learn about from two experts featured in Facs of digital health podcast. In episode 10 listen to dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo, the Director of Medical Virtual Reality at the Institute for Creative Technologi...

The two largest determinants of health are the zip code and credit scores. What does that have to do with precision medicine and genetics? Big data combined with AI hold a lot of hope on prevention and more effective disease treatments. The current reality though is that large a lot of gathered data is not actionable yet. How far is precision medicine then, today? How does precision medicine based...

A sex hunting anthropologist walks into a mortgage finance institution and out into the world to lead health initiatives globally; this is the fascinating tale of Samson Williams’ health career journey. Samson Williams is an entrepreneur and fintech guru. He has been an epidemiologist for the State of Florida, an Anthrax and WMD expert for DC Dept of Health and currently splits his time between se...

This is a recording of a panel discussion on blockchain in healthcare, which took place at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, during the Future for health conference at SXSW. You will hear about some interesting ongoing blockchain projects such as the CDC attempts to use blockchain in epidemiology or the Austin program using blockchain to track medical records of chronically ill homeless people....

“Most startups are in a hurry, most of healthcare not so much. How do we deal with that?” was one of the first questions with which Rasu Shrestha, CIO at UPMC addressed his audience during the Future for health at SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. With the keynote titled “Everybody wants to innovate, nobody wants to change,” Rasu Shrestha offered his reflection on the barriers to innovation implem...

In this episode, you will hear how Time Warner, a global leader in media and entertainment with businesses in television networks and film and TV entertainment, is approaching employee health. Time Warner has more than 25.000 employees around the globe, meaning that the company faces many different country-specific regulations when it comes to the health of employees, what programmes they can offe...

According to WHO mental health disorders are generally characterized by some combination of abnormal thoughts, emotions, behaviour and relationships with others. Examples are schizophrenia, depression, intellectual disabilities and disorders due to drug abuse. Most of these disorders can be successfully treated. This episode explores the characteristics of mental health disorders and why it is so...

Moka Lantum is an expert on the African healthcare market. We discussed healthcare IT and digital health adoption in Africa. He was nominated as 2016 Top 100 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy Magazine for his work as founder of the non-profit, 2020 MicroClinic Initiative, that recycles t-shirts into baby clothes and donates them to low-income mothers to promote safe delivery and quality post-natal...

The legendary investor Esther Dyson is not a big fan of technology. She is a proponent of big ideas, demanding projects with a long-term positive influence on society. Founders of StartupHealth Unity Stoakes and Steven Krein are serial entrepreneurs, driving positive change with innovators working on technological and other innovations in healthcare and medicine. At its inception, the idea behind...

Dr. Bertalan Mesko, PhD is The Medical Futurist and Director of The Medical Futurist Institute analyzing how science fiction technologies can become reality in medicine and healthcare. As a geek physician with a PhD in genomics, he is also an Amazon Top 100 author. He was featured by dozens of top publications, including CNN, the World Health Organization, National Geographic, Forbes, TIME magazin...

Japan. The land of anime - hand-drawn or computer animations, a technological superpower with a staggering gross government debt. It accounted for 219% of GDP in 2016. The long-lasting trend of worsening fiscal situation in Japan continues alongside the increases in health and pension spending linked to population ageing which puts the upward pressure on government debt.   If this is not very insp...

Blockchain is a new technology, still very complicated to understand, leaving a lot of space for misinterpretations and confusion in the public. This is one of the things the 23rd episode of Medicine Today on Digital Health addresses: what blockchain can solve and what the most common misconceptions are. Questions addressed in the podcast:What are the biggest misconceptions you’ve heard around blo...

If there is someone you want to ask for an opinion on diabetes management challenges it’s David Kliff, editor of Diabetic Investor — THE source of information when it comes to business aspects of diabetes. He’s been following the field closely ever since he was diagnosed with diabetes type 1 20 years ago. The problem in diabetes is not the know-how, it’s the “want to” desire that is hard to delive...

Dubai is one of the seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the most populous city and Emirate in the country with a GDP of 82 billion USD. It is a global business hub that keeps transforming rapidly. In October 2016, Dubai launched a citywide blockchain strategy with the objective of becoming the first blockchain powered city, driving the future economy by 2020. In th...

IT in healthcare is at the moment usually an added layer to existing ways of working, consequently too often a source of frustration and anguish instead of aid for medical professionals. According to CB Insight, US represents 75% of the global digital health market. Hunger for better solutions is being addressed from many sides. How far are big medical institutions in the USA from being collaborat...

From todays perspective, when we already talk about practical uses of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robots in elderly care, Internet of Things, implantable, digestable and other sensor, the world 11 years ago seems unrecognisable. After all, the first iPhone and Kindle were released hardly in 2007, a year later. Then, three years later, the first iPad was on the market. But for the di...

How are VCs looking at the changing landscape of investment opportunities? This was the topic at the Early Stage investments panel at mHealth Israel Conference, held in Jerusalem in September 2017. The included speakers were: Christian Seale, Partner, StartupBootcamp, USA Matt Storeygard, Investor, Connecticut Innovations, USA Kyoko Watanabe, Managing Partner, Defta Partners, USA Alexander Hoffman...