Faces of Digital Health

The pandemic has significantly increased the need for mental healthcare and destigmatized discussing well-being and mental health issues in everyday conversation. Unfortunately, the number of quality providers of mental health services is still much lower than the demand, and the number of people that are seeking help is rising.  At HLTH or Health conference, which took place in November in Las Ve...

If someone told you to get an eye exam, would you associate that with a virtual reality headset? It might be where ophthalmology diagnostics will end up in the near future. Compared to the existing diagnostics tools, a VR approach is much more portable and hence accessible. The Swiss company PeriVision is using AI and VR to enable more efficient workflows and deeper clinical insights to manage eye...

Last year, one of the key buzzwords in healthcare was virtual care; in 2020 it was probably telemedicine. In 2019 it was AI, in 2017 and 2018, it was blockchain in interoperability. There are many others of course, and many of these terms are still popular today. It seems, though, that the one term that got pushed most in the background, is blockchain. And that’s a good thing, says John Bass, Foun...

The European Health Data Space is supposed to be implemented in a bit more than two years, by 2025. Two goals are at the forefront: to create the infrastructure for a European health data pool for researchers and innovators, and secondly, to enable patients to pick up their medications outside their home country and give doctors across Europe access to their patient information, if in need of medi...

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...

Between 13 and 16 November, HLTH, the largest digital health conference with over 9000 attendees, took place in Las Vegas. Over 400 speakers discussed the current trends and challenges in the industry. This short episode recaps some of the discussed topics - investment trends, holistic healthcare: food as medicine, digital therapeutics, mental health trends, telemedicine decline, patient experienc...

Finn Partners and Galen growth Asia partnered for a global overview of the digital health investment landscape. More than 200M data points from more than 12,000 digital health ventures worldwide were taken into account when assessing the state of the industry.   In this short discussion, the CEO of Galen Growth Asia Julien de Salaberry, explained the key findings from the report, the state of digi...

For new ideas and solutions to reach the market, startup founders need to find the right partners that are willing to listen to them and take their ideas one step further. Established in 2015, the Health Innovation Hub & Holding provides years of expert ​knowledge in innovation pathways, paving the way for better healthcare and a sustainable healthcare industry. The European organization better kn...

In the previous episode, you had a chance to listen to  Dr Phil Koczan, GP in North East London and the Chief Clinical Safety Officer for London, Dr Katherine Buxton, Consultant in Palliative Care Medicine for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Clinical Director, Palliative and End of Life Care Strategic Clinical Network for London talk about the recently introduced digitized urgent care pl...

Too often, patients need to repeat their medical history when in contact with different healthcare providers. Consequently, clinicians need more time to make decisions than necessary because they can’t access patient data. London managed to digitize urgent care plans and make them available across 40 NHS Trusts and 1400 GP offices.  This episode presents the Urgent Care Plan Programme, aiming at g...

Medical progress is driven by research, and good research requires good data. The largest single-site cancer center in Europe and the biggest chemotherapy center in the UK - The Christie NHS Foundation Trust runs 650 clinical trials at any given time. They recently went live with a new electronic Patient Reported Outcome Measures (ePROMs) service helping to connect patients with the hospital trust...

We are in the middle of a series of discussions related to cancer care, treatment improvements, data management in oncology, and the promise of AI to find the right treatment for the right patient in the fastest possible manner. As mentioned by Xose M. Fernandez, a genomicist and former chief data officer at Institute Curie, a faster diagnosis could lead to less aggressive treatment and better pat...

This is the 3rd episode in the Cancer Series. In this episode, you’ll hear a bit about precision medicine in oncology, drug repurposing and the increasing challenges precision medicine poses for clinical trials. I spoke with Tuvik Beker, CEO of Pangea Biomed, an Israeli-based company tackling oncology drug development and treatment recommendation by not only looking at the single mutations in tumo...

This is the second episode in a special series about cancer, cancer care, accessibility and technologies related to cancer care. The first episode focused on the current state of cancer care with a speaker from Canada - David J. Stewart, MD, FRCPC, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Ottawa and The Ottawa Hospital. David explained the current state of can...

There were an estimated 18.1 million cancer cases around the world in 2020, according to the World Cancer Research Fund International. According to the Comparator Report on Cancer in Europe 2020, the absolute number of people diagnosed with cancer rose around 50% in Europe over the past 20 years. However, the number of deaths only increased by 20%. The numbers show we’re making great strides in su...

This episode explores the role of at-home diagnostic testing in managing and preventing sexually transmitted diseases. More than 1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which include syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, HIV hepatitis, and other infections, are acquired every day worldwide. The majority of STIs are asymptomatic early detection that much more important to prevent the spread of...

This is the second episode where we will discuss healthcare delivery in Africa. In the previous episode, the entrepreneur and regulatory advisor Herve Mwamba from South Africa talked about stereotypes and medical device regulation in Africa (Full transcript: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/medical-device-regulation-mdr-africa). In this episode, you’re going to hear about an effort to man...

It’s September, it’s time for school and a new season of Faces of digital health podcast episodes. Faces of digital health strives to bring you an insight into digital health development across the world. We’re going to start this season in Africa. In this episode, South African entrepreneur, regulatory, and quality assurance consultant Herve Mwamba discusses the state of medical device regulation...

There are “five rights” of medication use: the right patient, the right drug, the right time, the right dose, and the right route. It might seem obvious, but in practice, an error can occur at the level of each of these “right”s.  Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems worldwide. According to WHO, the cost associated...

Patients dream about reliable and clinically meaningful digital innovations that would help improve their health in a smooth way. With the digital health market maturing, startups increasingly need to not only offer a good user experience but also comply with rigorous regulatory requirements and test their solutions in clinical trials. They need to go through long certification processes. For a fe...

In 2017, 57.7 million people were living with limb amputation due to traumatic causes worldwide. Apart from accidents, a person might need an amputation due to vascular diseases and diabetes. You might have come across increasingly sophisticated prosthetic limbs, which mimic human movements. The problem is, these are extremely expensive. Simple cosmetic prosthetic costs around $5,000, a functional...

This episode was first published in summer 2021, and is one of the most listened-to episodes from 2021. 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 b...

One of the more prominent news in July was that according to Sifted, healthcare seed investments in Europe surpassed Fintech investments in June, making the health tech industry the industry that’s attracting the most investments. At the same time, in the US, Rock Health reported that digital health startups in the US raised 10.3 billion USD in the first half year of 2022, and StartupHealth report...

This is a short documentary about medication-related patient safety. The documentary explores and offers an overview of the current challenges and technical solutions related to medication safety to raise awareness about the need to further improve medication-related patient safety. Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care sy...

Brazil had over 200 million people; how many of them sleep well? I hope you’re enjoying summer and resting enough. Many people have issues with sleeping: either not sleeping enough or sleeping poorly. Oftentimes, due to poor sleep hygiene, such as drinking coffee too late in the day, being exposed to blue light from phones, tablets, or computers right before getting to bed, etc. As listed by the C...