After a summer of discussions about medication safety, medication errors, the role of AI in prescribing decision support, precision medicine, and drug development, we’re moving to explore healthcare systems again. Today, we’ll dive into Canada, more specifically Quebec. You will hear from two speakers: Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg - President and CEO Integrated Health and Social Services University Network for West-Central Montreal (CIUSSS West-Central Montreal) and Danina Kapetanovic the Head of OROT...
Sep 03, 2021•49 min•Season 6Ep. 173
Dr. Marinka Žitnik is a computer scientist from Harvard, studying applied machine learning with a focus on challenges brought forward by data in science, medicine, and health. A large aspect of her work concerns the use of AI for better use of medications - either by analyzing and predicting side effects in polypharmacy or by potentially discovering new indications of combinations of drugs that are already on the market. Dr. Zitnik joined Harvard as an Assistant Professor in December 2019. Befor...
Aug 28, 2021•49 min•Season 5Ep. 173
According to WHO the occurrence of adverse events due to unsafe care is likely one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability in the world. Patient harm is caused by several healthcare issues. Healthcare-associated infections occur in 7 and 10 out of every 100 hospitalized patients in high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries respectively (11). Unsafe surgical care procedures cause complications in up to 25% of patients. Patient harm is caused by unsafe injections practice...
Aug 22, 2021•49 min•Season 5Ep. 172
Lea Dias is a former Medication Safety Pharmacist at Perth Children’s Hospital, now the Founder and CEO of Quaefacta. In 2013, the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust enabled her to go on a six-week tour around the world, to visit several hospitals in the US, UK, and Israel, and assess how various institutions used technologies for patient safety improvement. Three years later, she went on another tour to get additional insights from hospitals in Bulgaria, France, Spain, UK, Singapore and Thailand....
Aug 12, 2021•26 min•Season 5Ep. 171
Some say fax machines still exist because of healthcare. Across the world, paper is still heavily used in healthcare. The NHS is on course to eliminate paper prescribing in hospitals and introduce digital prescribing across the entire NHS by 2024. From 2018 until the end of 2020, 216 NHS trusts have received funding to implement systems electronic prescriptions and medicines administration (ePMA). IT implementations in healthcare take several months. Clinicians need to use several systems, learn...
Aug 08, 2021•34 min•Season 5Ep. 170
Do you know what clinical pharmacists do? For one thing, clinical pharmacists optimize patient’s medications. This can have a big impact on improving patient outcomes and patient quality of life. In today’s discussion, you’re going to hear from Dr. John Horn, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacy and Associate Director of the UW Medicine Pharmacy Services. He is co-author of the reference texts Drug Interactions Analysis and Management and The Top 100 Drug Interactions: A Guide to Patient Management. I...
Jul 30, 2021•49 min•Season 5Ep. 169
Being a doctor can be very gratifying when a life is saved or a patient is cured. However, the number of jobs and skills physicians need to master is increasing with the advancement of technology and science. This makes the medical environment increasingly stressful, also because at the moment, many IT solutions are burdensome and add the bureaucratic workload to the schedules of doctors. Today’s topic is how to doctors approach and manage medication prescribing. I spoke with David W. Bates, Pat...
Jul 20, 2021•42 min•Season 5Ep. 168
Nurses are the backbone of healthcare. They’re the closest to the patient, they offer support to them and the doctors. Their mission is to make patients feel better and recover as fast as possible. There is a global shortage of nurses and more often than not, nurses are stretched thin. The same as with doctors, mistakes can happen in nursing. You are going to hear from Martina Viduka A practicing nurse and the CEO of Advosense. In this discussion, she presented the nursing perspective on medicat...
Jul 15, 2021•26 min•Season 5Ep. 167
With mental health being at the forefront of our attention in 2020, next to COVID, have you ever wondered, how the work of a psychiatrist looks like? Many clinicians fear psychiatric drugs, but Roni Shiloh firmly believes the fear is unnecessary. Roni Shiloh is an MD, specialized in psychiatry. He headed a closed Psychiatric Department, was Chief Psychiatric Officer at a large Israeli HMO as well a senior lecturer in Tel-Aviv University, Israel. He then worked in the Pharmaceutical industry befo...
Jul 09, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Season 5Ep. 166
This is a panel discussion that happened after the premiere of the documentary (OVER)DOSE - How can we prevent medication errors? which aired on 29 June. You can listen to the adapted audio-only version of the documentary in episode 137. 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 erro...
Jul 05, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 5Ep. 165
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 systems across the world. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $...
Jul 02, 2021•59 min•Season 5Ep. 164
David Kliff is the author and publisher of the Diabetic Investor eNewsletter, former investment advisor and as a person living with diabetes. As the author and publisher of the Diabetic Investor eNewsletter, David Kliff has spent the last 20 years analyzing the ups and downs of the diabetes industry. He closely monitors the diabetes biomed, biotech and device market and shares intel on breaking developments in existing and emerging pharmaceutical and tech companies that operate in that space. In...
Jun 17, 2021•36 min•Season 5Ep. 163
Because US healthcare is private and operates by the rules of the free market, prices for services and medications can differ substantially. Solutions such as GoodRx and Amazon Pharmacy are addressing price transparency for consumers. On the other side are the Real Time Prescription Benefit Providers which help physicians see drug prices for a specific patient even before that patient leaves their office. The challenge with knowing how much a drug will cost a patient lies in the fact that differ...
Jun 10, 2021•33 min•Season 4Ep. 162
Funding in technologies, especially software in healthcare, has been booming in the last few years. Recently, SPACs - special purpose acquisition companies have gained in popularity. SPACs are not a new vehicle that makes it much easier for companies to go public. But it seems like their use has been reborn in the last year. This episode is prepared in partnership with mHealth Israel. mHealth Israel, led by Levi Shapiro, recently organized a webinar about SPACs. That webinar is adapted for audio...
Jun 04, 2021•56 min•Season 4Ep. 161
Simone Lehwess Mozzilli and Liliane Dübois both had cancer in their past. Liliane as a child, Simone as an adult. They are both an integral part of the Brazilian non-profit Beaba. Beaba offers support to children with cancer and their families by demystifying cancer and informing in a clear, objective, and optimistic way about the disease and treatment. They do so through various means, for example, a printed book called Beabook which resembles a dictionary and explains more than one hundred and...
May 28, 2021•28 min•Season 4Ep. 160
Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems across the world. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion USD annually. Errors can occur at different stages of the medication use process. This is the movie trailer, adopted for audio for a short documentary (OVER)DOSE, How can we prevent medication errors? which will air on 29 June 2021. More about the event: https://www.linked...
May 21, 2021•7 min
Phishing, Whaling, and exposure of patient data are a rising occurrence of the increasingly digitalized healthcare systems. 2020 saw more data breaches than previous years. What are the basics to know? Lee Kim is Director of Privacy and Security at HIMSS. In this episode, she talks about the basics of cybersecurity every individual should know, she presents the state of cybersecurity in healthcare and the outlook. Episode Summary: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f132-whats-the-state-of-cyberse...
May 15, 2021•45 min•Season 4Ep. 159
How would you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10? Pain is a very subjective matter and there’s plenty of research done and in progress to understand it better. In this episode Sara E. Berger, a researcher at IBM with over a decade of experience in the pain field talks about how science defines pain in the first place, how can pain be quantified given the variety of factors that impact it, and how does the research so far translate into clinical practice. Thanks for our Sponsor: Health Resource...
May 06, 2021•41 min•Season 4Ep. 158
It is absolutely scary to get an infection and run out of options to treat it. Broadly speaking, existing antibiotics are and are going to keep losing their effectiveness, if antibiotics and antimicrobials are not used effectively. In this episode, you will hear a discussion with Mr. Oliver Schacht, a corporate finance professional and expert in the molecular diagnostics industry. He is the CEO of OpGen which developed cloud-based software to identify, track and predict antibiotic-resistant infe...
Apr 29, 2021•33 min•Season 4Ep. 157
Bianca Rose Phillips is a Global Digital Health Law theorist from Australia, and the founder of a Digital Health Think Tank. In her legal work, she is focused mostly on Australia and the USA. Many people know her by her framework of the so-called 8 pillars of digital health law-making. Bianca also contributed to the recently published book, Voice Technology in Healthcare, she is a lecturer and she also runs two podcasts - Too nice for law and Digital Health Law series. In this discussion, she ta...
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 156
Casey Ross is an investigative reporter for STAT News, where he covers AI development in healthcare and medicine. Last year he analyzed over 160 AI product market approval submissions cleared by the FDA between 2012 and 2020. As it turns out criteria for assessment and the dataset submitted differed a lot. Only 7 of 161 AI products cleared by the FDA in recent years, included any information about the racial composition of their datasets. Those devices were cleared to use AI for the diagnosis of...
Apr 15, 2021•36 min•Season 4Ep. 155
Two-thirds of people who file for bankruptcy in the US cite medical issues as a key contributor to their financial downfall. It’s understandable since if you get sick, you might lose a job and your health insurance. Even if you have health insurance, you might have high deductibles and face the threat of high costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, The number of uninsured nonelderly Americans is increasing. It went from 26.7 million in 2016 to 28.9 million in 2019. Billing claims can g...
Apr 08, 2021•38 min•Season 4Ep. 154
This episode explores health literacy improvement and women empowerment in Malaysia, Kenya and Tanzania. You are going to hear from two speakers: Shamala S. Hinrichsen, the CEO of Hanai, a company providing health information to the underserved populations in Malaysia and Kenya. The other speaker is Mariatheresa Samson Kaduschi, the CEO and CO-Founder of Mobile Afya, which provides healthcare information to people in Tanzania and slowly scaling to other countries in Africa as well. We talked abo...
Apr 01, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 4Ep. 126
This episode explores Amazon’s efforts in healthcare, the challenges of increasing transparency in AI development in healthcare, and a little bit about the state of turning microbiome research into business. There were many doubts that Amazon could succeed because healthcare and drug management are complex etc. It’s 2021 and Amazon is offering a competitive online Pharmacy and expanding its Amazon Care and telehealth offer. Microbiome space is a hot investment area but a shadow was cast upon it ...
Mar 25, 2021•45 min•Season 4Ep. 125
In January 2021 a jury in Montana delivered what is believed to be the first verdict in a wrongful life case, awarding over $400,000 compensation for medical and emotional costs due to the unwanted treatment of Rodney Knoepfle. In theory, patients have the right and option to draft an advanced care plan, a written document with their preferences about advanced medical treatment, life support and resuscitation in case of a serious health event. In this episode, Ryan Van Wert, MD, an intensive car...
Mar 18, 2021•45 min•Season 4Ep. 124
While discussions about the end of life are not easy, the pandemic opened up space for us to talk more openly about dying and the best possible care in the last days of our lives. This is the third discussion about AgeTech: In the first episode of this series, you can listen to what can we learn about the aging society from Japan. In the second episode, you can hear how an Austrian startup is matching caregivers and the elderly based on their personality profiles. The 4th episode, focuses on adv...
Mar 11, 2021•33 min•Season 4Ep. 123
As a part of the currently running series about AgeTech, today’s episode is focused on elderly care and how to best match caregivers and the elderly. You are going to hear from an Austrian entrepreneur, Anja Silbauer. According to OECD, health care coverage is near-universal, and accessibility of services is generally good. Austria is among the countries with the lowest self-reported unmet medical needs in the EU. While life expectancy has increased in recent years, behavioral risk factors remai...
Mar 05, 2021•38 min•Season 4Ep. 122
This is the first episode about AgeTech and rethinking the last years of our lives. Over 2.3 million people died due to COVID by February 2021. These were mostly older people. Many of them died alone in the hospital, without the option to say goodbye to their families. Without even someone from the medical staff at their bedside. COVID opened up space for us to start reconsidering on a broader level how we wish to die, lead quality last years of life, and fear death less. This episode looks at a...
Feb 26, 2021•30 min•Season 4Ep. 121
Hacarus is a Japanese company developing AI Solutions for Manufacturing and Medical Industries. Their Salus platform for medical and life sciences uses Medical imaging data such as CT & MRI scans, time-series data, such as ECG data, and medical record to create precise, complex tools, that aid caregivers and researchers to provide better, faster and safer treatment, based on data-driven insights. In this episode, Adrian Sossna, who is originally from Sweden but has been living in Japan for s...
Feb 20, 2021•34 min•Season 4Ep. 120
Dr. Padmini (Mini) Murthy - Professor and Global Health Director at New York Medical College School of Health Sciences and Practice. Dr. Murthy is a physician and an activist who trained in Obstetrics and Gynecology. She has practiced medicine and public health for the past 28 years in various countries. She worked as a consultant for United Nations Population Fund, she is the Secretary-General of the Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA) and its NGO representative to the United Natio...
Feb 11, 2021•38 min•Season 4Ep. 119
