Faces of Digital Health

HLTH is recognized as the United States' number one health innovation event. Its unique and vibrant approach sets it apart from typical industry conferences. Each stage at HLTH is distinctively themed and designed, featuring motifs like the moon, sky, and earth, creating an awe-inspiring experience reminding of of a child's first visit to an amusement park. Beyond the captivating atmosphere, the c...

In patient included or patient centred healthcare approach, patient feedback is key for improved care, and healthcare experience. Pep Health uses a digital platform to collect and analyze patient feedback from various online sources, moving away from traditional, less effective survey methods. The platform provides detailed scores and insights, allowing healthcare providers to make targeted improv...

Generative AI is making waves in healthcare, with an already visible impact in documentation and potential in drug development, medicine, care, and more. With 2023 nearing its end, it's time to reflect on the impact of AI in 2023. This episode offers: 🔍 A recap of AI innovation in healthcare in the past year, 🔎 What has realistically changed in clinical practice, 🔍 Where are the practical appli...

Women's health refers to a broad range of medical and wellness services specifically tailored to address the unique health concerns of women. Particular focus is on reproductive health, fertility, and menopause. Technology supporting women’s health can go from EHR records, telemedicine services, medical imaging, diagnostic and IVF technology, wearable devices for monitoring health, menstrual cycle...

If you’re still trying to wrap your head around the use of AI in healthcare, this episode will give you an idea about the use of generative AI to create clinical notes during an interaction between a doctor and a patient. Augmedix, a healthcare technology company that delivers ambient medical documentation and data solutions. Their clinician-controlled mobile app uses generative AI to instantaneou...

In the United States, individuals' healthcare information is dispersed among various healthcare providers. But many companies have been working on creating consolidated patient views, Reveleer being one of them.  Data fragmentation often occurs because people tend to switch healthcare providers when they change jobs and, as a result, their health insurance plans. Since insurance companies have spe...

VR is becoming a well-established tool in healthcare and medicine to help treat pain management, anxiety, mental wellness, and more. Thousands of studies have shown the efficacy of VR approaches for health because of the impact of the immersive experience offered by this technology. We covered VR in medicine in several episodes in the past, and I’m adding the link to those in the show notes. In th...

Generative AI - a subset of AI technologies that employ advanced machine learning algorithms to generate content, solutions, or outcomes that weren't explicitly programmed into the algorithms has many potential applications in healthcare. But at the moment, the digital health space is filled with noise. This discussion was recorded at HLTH 2023 in Las Vegas. Justin Norden - Partner at GSR Ventures...

Alex Merwin is Head of Growth, Healthcare & Life Sciences Startups at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this episode, he presents the AWS Health Innovation Podcast, which showcases startups that are advancing healthcare & life science by leveraging cloud computing technology. In this episode, Alex Merwin and Tjasa Zajc, Host of Faces of Digital Health, discuss: podcasting, how AWS supports startups, w...

Scarsity of resources can be difficult to image: it encompasses the adaptation of clinical guidelines, palliative care instead of treatment, and clinicians accepting that they can’t help everyone, but need to choose who to save and who to palliate. Khalida Soki is a consultant physician and kidney specialist working in Nairobi. She moved back to Kenya in 2018. She participated in over 20 kidney tr...

Kenya has a lot of talent and opportunities for innovation. Access to care is not a problem because plenty of community nurses are present nationwide. However, they have a limited problem and mostly focus on main infectious diseases, leaving serious conditions undiagnosed, says Emilian Popa, Founder and CEO of Ilara Health. Ilara health equips a network of small healthcare providers with lifesavin...

One of the biggest challenges for healthcare startups in Nigeria is access to market. “In Nigeria, healthcare is fragmented, making it difficult to find distribution channels. We have to be creative and may need to look outside healthcare for distribution channels.” , says Jennie Nwokoye is the founder and CEO of Clafiya - a digital primary healthcare service that connects individuals and business...

One of the speakers at the Nextmed Health Conference 2023 said: “In the past, people didn’t age; they just died.” This is still a daily reality in many low-income countries, which face a lack of workforce, poor healthcare system structure, and lack of resources. In this episode, we will learn about Nigeria. Nigeria has 220 million people which is roughly ⅔ of the population of the US. While many h...

Africa is a huge continent with 1.2 billion people and a diverse set of countries. Healthcare systems are generally poor, with workforce and supply chain struggles, and infrastructure challenges such as power outages. In this episode you will hear about how drones are used in Malawi for healthcare delivery. Herbert Weirather is the CEO of Jedsy - a technology company based in Switzerland with the...

In June 2021, France announced a €7.5 billion Health Innovation Plan, as part of a broader financial investment to boost the French industry.  This funding goes beyond digital health, it’s aimed at supporting biotech development, startups, medtech, and more. In 2021, The eHealth Acceleration Strategy was launched, a large part of which includes upskilling and training new and existing healthcare e...

The first efforts to establish ePrescribing in the US started in 2001. However, by 2014 only 4% of clinicians had adopted it. Electronic prescribing became legal in all 50 states by 2007. Eight years later, electronic prescribing of controlled substances and prior authorization were well established on the singular ePrescribing network. In 2022, a new player entered the market, founded by FDB - a...

A systemic approach to care for non-communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes is Africa is in its early stages, with the biggest challenge for patients being the price of medications, says Anne Stake, Chief Strategy and Product Officer at Medtronic Labs.  Medtronic Labs is a nonprofit organization that works with governments and local communities in across Africa to create local ecosyst...

Drug development is undeniably expensive. For years, the pharmaceutical industry cited an estimate of 3 billion US dollars. However, a recent study published in 2020 discovered that the median cost actually falls between 985 million and 1.3 billion US dollars. Even within this range, it remains a substantial amount. The high cost primarily stems from the significant failure rate of new potential m...

Chronic diseases are the result of a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioral factors. They require long-term management and often behavioral changes. Achieving long-lasting effects can be extremely difficult, and digital health solutions have since the beginning been seen as an important factor in assuring success, by providing patients with continuous monitoring and fe...

The field of generative AI companies is evolving fast and many companies, that have been exploring the field for years, are gaining in visibility. However, new companies are popping up as well. One of them is Hippocratic AI, founded in 2023. Hippocratic AI building a safety-focused large language model (LLM) for the healthcare industry. The company raised 50 million US dollars this year. In this e...

Generative AI is definitely the word we will remember 2023 by. Knowing that administrative burden is among the key reason for physician burnout, the idea that AI could tackle this challenge, became a little bit more tangible with the raised awareness and public understanding of generative AI. But where are we exactly, and how is generative AI utilized for clinical use cases, administration, patien...

Nurses play a key role in patient care, but their contribution to patient outcomes is often undervalued and underappreciated. It took a pandemic to create a major shift in their job opportunities and power to negotiate. Many nurses left the profession entirely, others switched to better-paid travel or agency jobs. The pandemic is settling down so the question debated in today’s episode, is what is...

Healthcare is one of the rare industries, in which often times, by requesting a service, the work hardly begins for the patient. Especially in complex cases, care is rarely seamless: test are done, drugs are presribed and if all goes well the problem is resolved. But oftentimes months can pass before the right drug and dose is found. Antidepressants are a good example. They are still often prescri...

Telemedicine is becoming an archaic term in 2023. It is also too broad. We now have at-home hospitals, virtual wards, remote monitoring, and more. Video consultations and online patient portals saw a spike during the pandemic. While many encounters have returned to the in-person setting, a lot of development is happening in workforce optimization. This aims to reduce the burden on hospital infrast...

Mexico has 126 million people which is a bit more than half as much as Brazil in South America, or three times as much as Argentina, which we discussed in one of our previous episodes as well.  Mexico has a predominantly public healthcare system, with workforce shortages - only 2.4 doctors per 1000 people, which is heavily below the OECD average. For comparison, the number of doctors per 1000 peop...