Digital health funding has fallen significantly since 2020. However, funding for Femtech went from 7,6% inside the digital health investments in 2020 to 13,26% in 2022, according to TechCrunch. The awareness about female-specific health-related characteristic has been on the rise for the last several years, which is evident in the growing healthcare innovation space specifically targeting women. In this discussion, you will hear from Marija Butković - founder and CEO of Women of Wearables, a Ven...
Jan 01, 2024•42 min•Season 10Ep. 293
Technically, we've never been more connected or had relationships with as many people as we do today, thanks to social networks on the internet. Yet, while these platforms bring convenience, they are also increasing loneliness and reducing face-to-face interactions. However, technology isn't solely a problem; it can facilitate the easier pairing of individuals who wish to assist those lacking a real-world social network. Take Papa, for example, a company that provides social support by pairing o...
Dec 27, 2023•16 min•Season 10Ep. 292
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 core attraction of HLTH lies in its substantive content and guests. These include key stakeholders fr...
Dec 19, 2023•47 min•Season 10Ep. 291
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 improvements in specific areas like access and quality within their facilities. The data and insights gene...
Dec 10, 2023•30 min•Season 10Ep. 290
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 applications of AI and LLMs in healthcare, 🔎 How is AI regulated so far and what are the upcoming change...
Dec 01, 2023•57 min•Season 9Ep. 289
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 cycles, menopause symptoms, robotic surgery in gynecology, and more. This episode focuses on the fertilit...
Nov 19, 2023•33 min•Season 10Ep. 288
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 instantaneously create a fully automated draft medical note after each patient visit. I spoke with Manny Krakari...
Nov 06, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 287
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 specific networks of affiliated healthcare providers, a change in insurance necessitates a change in pro...
Nov 01, 2023•17 min•Season 10Ep. 286
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 this episode, Aaron Gani, CEO of BehaVR, a company providing virtual reality solutions to address pain...
Oct 24, 2023•22 min•Season 10Ep. 285
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 talks about: his observes from the investor’s perspective, what he thinks about the discussions on ...
Oct 16, 2023•17 min•Season 3Ep. 284
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, what trends is Alex observing in the health innovation space, key findings from the recent Fa...
Oct 10, 2023•23 min•Season 10Ep. 283
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 transplants in Nairobi, successfully run a large hemodialysis unit, grown a clinic for kidney disease ...
Oct 03, 2023•36 min•Season 10Ep. 282
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 lifesaving and essential diagnostic tools to improve the quality of medical care in Sub-Saharan Africa. In th...
Sep 27, 2023•32 min•Season 10Ep. 281
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 businesses to health practitioners to provide convenient, quality, and affordable, on-demand primary care fr...
Sep 23, 2023•41 min•Season 10Ep. 280
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 healthcare-related resources are scarce, the Internet is available and so is the fierce ambition of l...
Sep 19, 2023•18 min•Season 10Ep. 279
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 ultimate aim of designing and developing high-end multipurpose drones. Jedsy is present in Switzerla...
Sep 07, 2023•36 min•Season 10Ep. 278
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 experts, and medical and social workers in digital health. In today’s discussion you will hear from Lo...
Aug 30, 2023•37 min•Season 9Ep. 277
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 global provider of clinical decision support tools and resources for medication. FDB Vela sets itsel...
Aug 22, 2023•29 min•Season 4Ep. 276
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 ecosystems for the management of hypertension and diabetes. In this episode, Anne Stake explains: how does M...
Aug 15, 2023•43 min•Season 9Ep. 275
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 medications that never progress beyond clinical trials. Computational biology and AI have already ass...
Aug 08, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 274
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 feedback. Omada Health is a US digital behavioral medicine company that uses digital tools and persona...
Aug 01, 2023•32 min•Season 9Ep. 273
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 episode, Munjal Shah, CEO and Founder of Hippocratic AI talked about what exactly does the company me...
Jul 25, 2023•43 min•Season 9Ep. 273
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, patient care and in biotech? GSR Ventures and Maven Ventures are two health technology-focused VC firms th...
Jul 20, 2023•33 min•Season 9Ep. 272
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 the position the nurses are in today? You will hear from: Rebecca Love, Thought Leader on Nurse Inn...
Jul 13, 2023•51 min•Season 9Ep. 270
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 prescribed on a trial and error basis, with changes made if the initial regimen proves ineffective. But wha...
Jul 11, 2023•48 min•Season 6Ep. 269
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 infrastructure and improve patient outcomes by bringing clinical staff back into patients' homes, provided ...
Jul 04, 2023•32 min•Season 9Ep. 268
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 people in the US is 2.6, but Denmark or Sweden on the other hand, have 4.3 doctors per 1000 people. Diagn...
Jun 22, 2023•50 min•Season 9Ep. 267
In the last few episodes, you’ve been able to hear two episodes about digital health in South America. We talked about Peru with Jhonathan Bringas, MD and innovator, CEO of Lapsi Health, we dove into Argentina with Santiago Troncar, CEO and Founder or FutureDocs Latin America, and in this episode, we are looking into Chile and cancer Care in Latin America, with Luis Santiago, CEO of Pegasi. Luis was a guest on the podcast already 2 years ago, and I added the link to that episode in the show note...
Jun 15, 2023•55 min•Season 9Ep. 266
In this episode, we’re diving in the Finish ecosysyem. What makes Finland repeatedly achieve the rank of the happiest country globally? In this episode, you will hear from Päivi Sillanaukee, Special Envoy for Health and Wellbeing at the Ministry for Social Affairs and Health. Until recently, Paivi was Ambassador for Health at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Paivi has a strong presence in the international community, She is the co-chair of the Alliance for Health Security Cooperation (AHSC), a m...
Jun 07, 2023•29 min•Season 14Ep. 265
If it seems that the world is moving faster and faster with the rapid evolution of AI and other technologies, the digitalization of healthcare infrastructure is not changing with that speed. However, countries across Europe are ambitiously pursuing digitalization efforts. On top of that, under the European Health Data Space legal framework, countries in the European Union are building the MyHealth @EU infrastructure which aims to enable cross-border health information accessibility and services....
Jun 01, 2023•51 min•Season 9Ep. 264
