Therapies for cancer are being developed at light speed and upward of 60 gene and cell therapies are projected to reach regulatory approval in the U.S. by 2030, according to the MIT NEWDIGS collaborative. Due to the nature of cancer, readiness for risks in drug development is much higher here than it might be in other medical fields. In this episode you’re going to hear a bit more about what can digital health innovation learn from the mindset present in oncology development. Sean Khozin is the ...
Apr 07, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 7Ep. 203
In this episode, founders of four very different companies talk about their fundraising experiences. As critically mentioned by Fouad Al-Noor - Co-Founder & CEO - ThinkSono - we should stop talking about the myth that startups search for investors that can offer strategic benefits. It’s true, but fundraising is still primarily about getting money to be able to start a business. The key thing, in the end, is also to find an investor you like as a person. This will be crucial for the investor-...
Mar 31, 2022•44 min•Season 3Ep. 202
SPECIAL APPEAL: Dear listeners, as the war in Ukraine continues, the need for medical help is increasing. If you’re a clinician or a telehealth provider, please get in touch with Health Tech Without Borders. Health Tech Without Borders is organising a "Ukraine Telehealth Relief" initiative to provide free of charge telehealth and remote consultations to the people of Ukraine. So if you’re a clinician or telemedicine provider, please contact Health Tech Without Borders: https://www.healthtechwith...
Mar 24, 2022•51 min•Season 7Ep. 192
When one starts to wonder about why data-sharing is still more or less cumbersome in healthcare, you quickly get to the challenges with interoperability siloed data and of course, data standards. Sharing of data has improved with the introduction of the messaging standard called FHIR. But throughout the years, debates about open standards and open ecosystems have started to become louder. In this episode, you’re going to hear a little bit more about that and the openEHR standard specification. I...
Mar 17, 2022•43 min•Season 6Ep. 200
Many software solutions for healthcare could be described as lacking empathy. Too often, solutions are addressing products viability and feasibility, but put desirability in the second place of priorities, says Tim Peck is Executive Portfolio Director of Health at IDEO. He is an entrepreneur and a Harvard-trained Emergency Medicine physician, who has been practicing human-centered design for over a decade. He spent 3 months in a nursing home to grasp the reality and problems of this kind of envi...
Mar 10, 2022•45 min•Season 7Ep. 199
Voice tech is one of the tech areas with high potential to optimize healthcare processes for providers and ease chronic disease in management for patients. In reality: How far are we from futuristic ideas where everything would be operated with the help of voice? How do innovators reduce the risk of misunderstandings in designing voice technologies? What does the development of human-like bots look like? Tune in to the discussion with Julia Hoxha co-founder and CEO of Zana - a healthcare startup...
Mar 03, 2022•44 min•Season 8Ep. 198
This is the second episode about digital health transformation in the Middle East. I spoke with Michele Tarnow, a healthcare leader experienced in managing across multi-national geographies, organization boundaries, and matrix organizations. Michelle has been living in UAE since 2016 and shared her insights into how are countries in the Middle East approaching digitalization of healthcare, how does cultural diversity amplify innovation and how is Alliance Care Technologies, the company she is th...
Feb 24, 2022•47 min•Season 7Ep. 197
In the next two episodes, we’ll dive into healthcare development a digitalization in the Middle East. You’re going to hear from two speakers based in Dubai. The speaker of today’s episode is Ziad Tabet, Chief Customer Officer at Alliance Care Technologies. Ziad is a healthcare veteran with three decades of experience spanning many aspects of the healthcare space. He has extensive experience in operations and financial management of hospital systems, healthcare start-ups, sales and business devel...
Feb 17, 2022•28 min•Season 7Ep. 196
Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems across the world. Exactcure is a digital health startup from France addressing the challenge of preventing the negative effects of medications. The company is building a digital twin simulator, that shows the effects and interactions of drugs in the body of an individual. They take into account any data the patient can provide, from basic personal characteristics such as age,...
Feb 10, 2022•39 min•Season 8Ep. 195
If you took part in the Clubhouse frenzy last year, you probably came across the Digital Health Channel and MedNet club. Digital Health Channel which currently has 6400 members, was among the key digital health topics related hubs on Clubhouse with an active schedule of discussions each week. It was founded by MD Jhonatan Bringas and healthcare expert Amit Goldman. MD Diana van Stijn who was often a speaker in the channel too, founded MedNet, a club targeted at medical professionals. While the m...
Feb 03, 2022•34 min•Season 7Ep. 194
The positive potentials of AI in healthcare are breathtaking. From smoother processes to more accurate care with fewer medical errors. But if we learned anything from the last 15 years of living with social media, it is that the development of algorithms without proper regulation can have negative impacts on society. In healthcare, AI development is still in the early stages. Many regulation-related questions still need to be addressed. It is not easy to create regulation, because it needs to ta...
Jan 27, 2022•45 min•Season 7Ep. 193
Antimicrobial resistance is a global problem related to the overuse of antibiotics and the lack of development of new ones. Many solutions are entering the market to address the issue: software solutions to identify, track and predict antibiotic-resistant infections and help prescribers with more accurate prescribing of antibiotics. Antibiotics are not appealing to the pharmaceutical industry from a business perspective. The reason is that new antibiotics are intended for a fraction of all patie...
Jan 20, 2022•34 min•Season 8Ep. 192
Have you ever had the experience of not knowing how to decide about your medical condition? Or when you went to the doctor’s and haven’t asked half of the things you remembered might be useful to know when you returned home? Maybe you’re an app developer trying to figure out how to prevent churn and have a lasting user engagement with your health app? In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Talya Miron- Shatz, PhD, an expert in medical decision making, and author of a new book titled “Your Life Dep...
Jan 13, 2022•1 hr•Season 7Ep. 191
The field of healthcare digitalization is maturing and getting increasingly sophisticated, demanding healthcare and technology leaders to think more strategically than they were perhaps required a few years ago. Chief Innovation or Chief Digital Officers are moving more to the executive level, where they need to take into consideration not just which tech solutions are really good, but which make most business sense at a given time for a given institution. In today’s discussion you’ll hear about...
Jan 06, 2022•38 min•Season 7Ep. 190
This is the last episode of Faces of digital health in 2021. Instead of an interview or a string of predictions for 2022, you will hear a reflection about the past year or two which I had with two other podcasters - Joy Rios - the host of HIT like a girl podcast - a podcast and a community supporting women in healthcare IT, and Bianca Rose Phillips - the host of Voice of Law podcast. Bianca is a digital health lawyer, and the author of a recently published book Making The Digital Health Revoluti...
Dec 23, 2021•53 min•Season 6Ep. 189
A lot has been done in the VR for healthcare space today, especially in the US. The therapeutic potential is undeniable. Over 5000 studies have shown the efficacy of VR for pain management, PTSD, eating disorders, mental health, even helping manage pain during childbirth. In 2020 the FDA gave VR a special designation for virtual reality as a breakthrough device for managing pain. In November 2021 the FDA a prescription-use immersive virtual reality (VR) system that uses cognitive behavioral th...
Dec 16, 2021•55 min•Season 6Ep. 188
Claire Murigande is a Medical Affairs leader born in Burundi, lived in Kenya, and is now based in Switzerland. She is a biologist by background, passionate about empowering team members and bringing value through science. Among other things she recently completed an advance business degree in digital leadership and looked at the future development of digital health, where, as she says, being mindful of diversity. She’s also a TEDx speaker and the host of an award-winning podcast Narratives of pu...
Dec 09, 2021•25 min•Season 6Ep. 187
Marylyn Harris, RN, MSN, MBA is a Cybersecurity Consultant, Speaker, Writer and Social Entrepreneur. Harris is a decorated (former) U.S. Army Nurse and Gulf War Veteran. She was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1992 and pursued a Master’s degree in psychiatric mental health nursing. After working as a sales rep for pharmaceutical companies she dove into healthcare IT and has been immersed in the cybersecurity space for the last few years. In this episode, she talks about: how does it f...
Dec 02, 2021•39 min•Season 6Ep. 186
Marie is the CEO of the Centre for Digital Business. She is a writer, commentator and international speaker on artificial intelligence, digital transformation, cyber, technology, ethics and the human experience. Marie’s expertise is the human interface in complex servicing systems. She is the co-creator of Nadia, the first AI digital human for service delivery and the creator of the AI digital human cardiac coach. She has a rish career behind her - she led the collaborative development of Micros...
Nov 26, 2021•57 min•Season 6Ep. 185
This is the last episode in a short series about healthcare digitalization in the Nordics. The discussion resolves around healthcare in the Nordics more broadly, data standards and interoperability across Europe, a successful pilot project from the 2000’s called epSOS, in which 12 EU Member states worked on cross-border healthcare interoperability, and what that project tells us about ambitions in Europe to achieve the European Health Data Space by 2025. The speaker in the episode is Anna Adelöf...
Nov 18, 2021•31 min•Season 6Ep. 184
Finland has well-established regulations and processes for the use of data for secondary purposes. This is overseen by the Social and Health Data Permit Authority Findata, which facilitates data permit processing and improves data protection for individuals. The secondary use of health data refers to using health data, such as patient records, for purposes other than the primary reason for which they were originally collected. This can include research, decision-making, and innovation. European ...
Nov 12, 2021•57 min•Season 6Ep. 183
This is the second episode about digital health in the Nordics. In the previous episode, you could listen about Denmark, how elderly care is managed there and how EHRs have been in place for years so clinicians and patients can access data digitally. In this episode, Nard Schreurs, a journalist by background who’s been working with e-health since 2007, and has both started and built up Healthworld and the EHiN conference, talks about why do Norwegians have not only high life expectancy but more ...
Nov 05, 2021•44 min•Season 6Ep. 179
This is the first out of four episodes about digital health and healthcare in the Nordics. In the next few weeks, you will hear about Denmark, Norway, Finland, and a broader regional overview. Not all countries but there have already been speakers on the show who also talked about Sweden, so I will link those in the show notes as well. The first speaker you will hear from is Erik Jylling, the executive vice president of Danish Regions. In his professional career, Erik has been deeply involved in...
Oct 29, 2021•48 min•Season 6Ep. 179
A few years ago Stefan Buttigieg, a digital health evangelist from Malta said that Malta is a great testbed for digital health startups interested in entering Europe (https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/2019/01/03/f027-can-malta-be-a-gateway-to-the-european-market?rq=Malta). In this episode, we’ll re-visit the island in a discussion with Ryan Grench - Radiology Registrar from Malta who works in the UK. Ryan talked about the benefits of running a digital health startup in Malta, made a few ...
Oct 24, 2021•24 min•Season 3Ep. 180
End of August Days of eHealth were organised as part of the Slovenian Presidency to the Council of EU. In four days a lot of insight was offered about healthcare digitalization in Catalonia, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Israel and Finland. In the previous episodes, I published the panel discussions about Germany and Catalonia. This is the panel about Israel. Israel has had electronic healthcare records for two decades, in 2018. A country of 9 million people, attributes 7,5% of its GDP to healthc...
Oct 15, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Season 6Ep. 179
From the 26th and 29th of October, I will be co-hosting the EPF Congress 2021, brought to you by the European Patients’ Forum. This year’s topic is the digital transformation of healthcare. Speakers from across Europe and organisations such as WHO, German Federal Ministry of Health, European Medicine’s Agency, EIT Health, BMJ and more are going to discuss the state of digitalization in Europe, with a heavy focus on the patient perspective. The event will be moderated by me and Ivett Jakab, who i...
Oct 07, 2021•27 min•Season 6Ep. 183
Slovenia is currently presiding the council of EU until 2022. In the first week of September, the members of the Slovenian health tech ecosystem organized a conference about examples of good practices in healthcare digitalization across Europe. In one of the previous episodes, you were able to listen to the panel discussion on the healthcare strategy in Catalonia. Today’s episode is an adapted recording of the panel about Germany, and the upcoming two episodes will be the adapted discussions abo...
Oct 01, 2021•48 min•Season 6Ep. 177
Nina Capital, is a specialized venture capital firm investing in early stage startups at the intersection of healthcare and technology. Level 20 is a not for profit organisation founded in 2015 by 12 women working in senior roles in private equity, aligned around a common vision of improving gender diversity in the industry. Nina Capital and Level 20 recently published a report that showed y. In aggregate, women represent 30% of the workforce. Only 17% of senior roles positions are held by women...
Sep 23, 2021•23 min•Season 6Ep. 176
If we look at nationwide successful digitalization projects, we often hear about Estonia, Israel, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, or Israel. All these countries have less than 10 million people. It is therefore not surprising, that in bigger countries that are divided into regions, successful digitalization happens gradually. Spain is divided in regions and each one of them manages healthcare on its own. Catalonia, which has 7,6 million people, is driving a 43 million EUR worth regional digital heal...
Sep 16, 2021•47 min•Season 6Ep. 175
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 biomedical informatics. Professor Li is Editor-in-Chief for BMJ Health & Care Informatics journal, the elected president of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and has devoted hims...
Sep 09, 2021•53 min•Season 6Ep. 174
