Faces Of Digital Health

Karan Raj is a "veteran" in online education. He founded TheOSCEstation - an online medical education website with videos explaining different medical topics. TheOSCEstation primarily targets medical students and has been around on Youtube for several years. Dr. Raj works at Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as a Surgical Registrar, but he is also a Honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London, where he teaches e-learning & undergraduate medicine; he is Honorary Senior Lecturer at Sunderland University. He started using TikTok as a consumer in November 2019 and hardly in February this year, during a discussion with a colleague, he came up with the idea of talking about and explaining weird medical facts on TikTok. Following him, you can learn about embarrassing things he did as a doctor, weird things patients have said, and even more unusual topics such as - Can cheese give you nightmares? Recap: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f086-tiktok-22-interested-in-weird-medical-facts-karannbspraj See also:

There are three “laws” for successful TikTok posts: make people laugh, tell a personal story people can empathize with, or teach people something. Doctors use the platform to talk about their career paths; nurses use TikTok to record dancing routines during the breaks in their shifts. There’s an MRI image explanatory channel, and specialists from a broad spectrum talk about their expertise or give insight into their working environment.  MD candidates from the US Amanda d’Almeida and Dan Villavecer are the faces behind Medicine Explained. Medicine Explained is a channel with over 1.1 million of followers, explaining everyday issues such a “What is a brain freeze? How do menstrual cups work? What is scoliosis? Can women exercise, bathe or swim during their period?” etc. Dan and Amanda started creating content as a way to fight medical misinformation on the internet. Medicine Explained was started to decentralize medical information by making it understandable to everyone, acting as preventative health educatio

This is the fourth and final episode of a short series of discussions with doctors that moved from full-time clinical practice to work in digital health. Guillem Serra is a serial entrepreneur coming from a family of doctors. His mother, father, grandfather, and great grandfather were doctors, which made it easy for Guillem to go study medicine given his familiarity with the profession. Besides medicine, he studied math and during his medical studies, discovered, that for him, medicine was actually boring. Today, he is a Physician and Mathematician with deep knowledge in the eHealth market, MedTech, and startups in the field of medicine. He founded several digital health startups and is an investor and board member to many startups. His first company MediQuo is a "Whatsapp for healthcare" - a platform enabling patients to chat with doctors and specialists 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a secure way, with all the tools and compliance needed for healthcare.   Summary of the episodes in the series: https://ww

This is the third discussion in a short series about doctors who left clinical practice to work as entrepreneurs in digital health. In the previous episodes, Daniel Kraft talked about a new idea for more precise dosing of medications chronic patients with comorbidities have to take daily, he also shared his thoughts about COVID-19 management in the US and innovation efforts to aid the pandemic, Michael Docktor, former full time pediatric gastroenterologist and Clinical Dir. of Innovation Boston Children's Hospital talked about better task management in hospital settings and healthcare suited app called Dock-Health which he co-founded. Today, we are moving from the US to UK. You will hear from Owain Rhys Hughes - NHS surgeon who left clinical practice to build an advice and guidance platform for clinicians. In this discussion, you will hear why are referrals from primary to secondary care suboptimal how can they be improved with one solution that can impact GPs efficacy in referring patients to specialists, it

This is a second episode from the short series about why doctors leave clinical practice to work in digital health. GI pediatric specialist Michael Docktor was, until recently, one of the driving forces of digital health innovation at Boston’s Children’s Hospital. In this episode, he shares his insight into how paperwork is complicating the coordination and management of patient care. To solve that, he helped design Dock.Health - a simple, HIPAA compliant task management and collaboration platform designed for healthcare. Michael still partially works in clinical practice but is spending most of his time as the CEO of Dock.Health. In this episode, Michael commented on the changes in healthcare due to COVID-19 and talked about the meaning of tech solutions for increased empowerment of patients. Summary of the series: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f081-084-doctors-and-digital-health Dock.Health: https://www.dock.health/  Other solutions presented in the series: Daniel Kraft: https://danielkraftmd.net/  Expo

This is the first part of a special 4 episode series about doctors who left full-time clinical practice to develop new solutions for healthcare improvement. As Faces of digital health is a podcast exploring global perspectives, you are going to hear from doctors from different countries: the US, UK, and Spain. Many doctors who go into entrepreneurship are trying to solve systemic issues plaguing healthcare. You will hear UK surgeon Owain Hughes explain, how he started building a company and platform that connects GPs to specialists, to enable GPs to refer patients more accurately. Consequently, patients can receive better care already on the primary care level, which makes the work of specialists much more efficient once patients reach them, making specialists and GPs much more satisfied with their work, because they don’t lose time with patients with poorly defined conditions or because patients have better outcomes since part of the urgent treatments have been begun by GPs based on specialist’s recommenda

On April 15th this year a panel of experts published a position paper online in the Lancet Psychiatry, where they outlined a proposed government response to curb the long-term "profound" and "pervasive" impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. Undoubtedly, the global lockdown caused a lot of anxiety in some individuals, depression in others, it is fair to assume some medical professionals will suffer from PTSD after the worst is over. The positive news is, that by today we have many validated digital tools and programs to help patients deal with mental health problems remotely. In this episode, Christopher Molaro, talks about why is access to mental health care still problematic, how can digital tools support providers and patients, and what trends are already visible because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chris is co-founder of NeuroFlow -  a health care technology company whose goal is to bridge the gap between mental and physical health in all care settings. Chris first started thinking about the need

Healthcare is anything but relaxing once you're a patient. But what if you could look forward to your appointments as you look forward to a wellness visit?  This was among the guidelines designers of Tia - the next generation women's healthcare platform - are operating under in their product development.  Tia was first a search-engine like support companion for women interested in anonymous search of reliable health information. By today, Tia is an ecosystem of services: a personalized women's health information provider, a brick and mortar clinic in New York City. Listen to co-founder and CEO of Tia Carolyn Witte explain what patient-centered care looks like and how can healthcare be made more affordable, as in the case of Tia.   Summary of the show: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/s079-womens-health-and-the-dream-but-real-healthcare-setting-carolyn-witte More about Tia: https://asktia.com/

Wellthy is one of Asia's leading digital therapeutics companies that inspires and enables patients to prevent, reverse and control chronic diseases. It works with pharmaceutical, medical devices companies, payors and healthcare providers to improve health outcomes. With active therapeutic areas in diabetes and cardiology, it has published real-world evidence across 20 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals and global conferences. In this episode, the last one of the 5-part series about digital therapeutics, Abhishek Shah, the CEO and Founder of Wellthy, on of the largest DTx companies in Asia, talks about the importance of understanding that healthcare is always local and shared some vivid examples of different rules of engagement with users in India compared to the West. Recap: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/s078-dtx-series-55-chronic-disease-management-in-india-abhishek-shah Wellthy: https://wellthytherapeutics.com/about

In any given year, 12% to 14% of the adult population in the US will visit their physician for back pain. In the UK muscosceletal conditions (MSK) affect 1 in 4 of the adult population. MSK are very expensive to treat, as patients require medical imagining, medications, sometimes surgery and physical therapy, explains Mark Liber, VP of Business Development at Kaia Health - a digital therapeutics company offering a solution for mitigating musculoskeletal diseases such as chronic back pain. Kaia Health works by offering the user an AI-supported motion sensor guided exercises, which means that an individual not only tries to follow the video instructions but can get feedback if he is executing the positions correctly or not. The app is additionally supported by an actual coach the user can connect with. Recap of the show: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/s077-dtx-series-45-want-to-get-rid-of-back-pain-mark-liber-kaia-health Kaia Health: https://www.kaiahealth.com/ 

According to WHO, 3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol. These deaths represent 5.3 % of all deaths. Australian organization Hello Sunday Morning has been tackling alcohol abuse for over a decade, with a digital approach, that has by today been developed to the level of a soon to be a digital therapeutic (DTx). Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and lock-down across the world, Hello Sunday Morning has been noticing an increase in alcohol consumption.In this episode,  Jamie Moore who is a  General Manager & Daybreak Co-Founder of Daybreak program at the Australian organisanition Hello Sunday Morning, talks about the early days of Hello Sunday Morning, the drinking culture in Australia and the meaning of community support in tacking alcohol addiction. When the organisation was founded over ten years ago, the emphasis was on binge drinking. By today, the user structure has changed and  Daybreak members are predominantly dependent drinkers, they are very much on the heavy end of

On April 9th, Slovenian health tech community and Faces of digital health organised a webinar about healthcare innovation funding in times of COVID-19. We asked four experts from Slovenia, Italy, Germany and Israel to join us in the discussion about the effect of the pandemic on health tech business. What you will be able to hear is the webinar adapted for radio. The event is divided into two podcast episodes - in the first one you can listen to the presentations of Levi Shapiro, founder of mHealth Israel talk about the current trends in digital health and future expectations. Nana Bit Avragim shared an overview of the innovative business models. In the second episode, you can listen to the recording panel discussion. The panellists agreed tough times are ahead and offered their advice as to where opportunities lie and how existing companies should adopt to survive the coming economic crisis.   Webinar agenda: 14:05 - 14:20 Overview of the global digital health scene up until now, COVID-19 related investments

On April 9th, Slovenian health tech community and Faces of digital health organised a webinar about healthcare innovation funding in times of COVID-19. We asked four experts from Slovenia, Italy, Germany and Israel to join us in the discussion about the effect of the pandemic on health tech business. What you will be able to hear is the webinar adapted for radio. The event is divided into two podcast episodes - in the first one you can listen to the presentations of Levi Shapiro, founder of mHealth Israel talk about the current trends in digital health and future expectations. Nana Bit Avragim shared an overview of the innovative business models. In the second episode, you can see the panel discussion. The panellists agreed tough times are ahead and offered their advice as to where opportunities lie and how existing companies should adopt to survive the coming economic crisis.   Webinar agenda: 14:05 - 14:20 Overview of the global digital health scene up until now, COVID-19 related investments (Levi Shapiro,

Paul is the CEO and Founder of Eyeforpharma  - international hub connecting senior-level pharma executives, patient groups and other health stakeholders to exchange ideas and observe shifting trends and practices at events, in reports and conferences. In this second episode of a short series about digital therapeutics, Paul talks about the relationship between Pharma and DTx and Pharma development as an industry in general. As an Advisor to Hu-manity.co Paul also discussed the concept of people owning their data and managing it as property.   Webinar about innovation financing in times of COVID-19: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/healthcare-innovation-financing-in-times-of-covid-19-tickets-101653044994  Recap of the show: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f073-dtx-series-24-whats-pharma-got-to-do-with-digital-therapeutics-paul-simms

Digital therapeutics (DTx) are clinically validated digital solutions with proven positive effects on disease management and outcomes. in this episode, Jessica Shull, European Lead for the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, shaping advocacy and organizational engagement for the DTx industry in European countries, explains what DTx are, why are they relevant clinical interventions, how do clinical trials for medications differ from clinical trials for digital therapeutics. Jessica also explains what digital therapeutics are and how they should be differentiated from digital diagnostics and more. As written by the Digital Health Alliance, DTx have immense potential in the coronavirus pandemic, because patient access to and utilization of digital therapeutics could improve health outcomes, consequently reducing chronic disease-related hospitalizations, mitigating additional pressures on healthcare providers during the COVID-19 outbreak. Their use could reduce vulnerable populations’ potential coronavirus exposure. A

When Europe became the new epicentre of the COVID-19 spread, and with the steady rise of infected in the US, tech companies offered their knowledge to curb the pandemic: COVID-19 triage and self-assessment apps are available, the US is seeing a rise of telemedicine use, in the US, in Italy 3D printing company aided a crisis cause by the need for new respirator valves, etc.  The British based Organisation for the Review of Care & Health Application ORCHA, which has in place a high-standard review process, warned on March 13, that app stores are unregulated, and 85% of apps do not meet ORCHA's quality threshold. This episodes names a few relevant digital health solutions and trends, coming from the US, Europe and China. The short report is followed by a discussion about the healthcare ecosystem in St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis is a regional health care powerhouse, home to the largest non-profit hospital system in the U.S - Ascension., Washington University/BJC Healthcare, the #1 pharmacy benefits manager in t

As of 2017 healthcare is the leading category of the 78,5 billion in consumer debt collected each year, which is more than 40 times the size of credit card debt. While the number of uninsured is reducing, it is being replaced with the issue of underinsurance. 3 in 10 people reported costs caused them not to take their medicines as prescribed in the past year, writes law professor Christopher T. Robertson in his last book Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done About It. This is especially critical in situations as the current Covidvirus crisis. New York Times and Financial Times warn that the US is at high risk for a fast spread of Covid-19, because many people don’t have the option to work at home + the uninsured, and there are 27 million of them, are reluctant to seek healthcare.In the following discussion with dr. Robertson, you will hear more about what kind of costs patients are exposed to in the US, what the role of technology could be in curbing those costs or at least make

"Each investor sees about 1200 pitch decks per year, meets 500 founders, and invests in 10 companies. So when preparing for your pitch, you need to be aware that investors are looking for reasons to say NO to you," says Beth Susanne. The key thing to consider when preparing presentations, says Beth, is what investors could say YES to. In healthcare, that is: traction, clearly identified payor and partners that show the scalability of your product. Beth Susanne is an international pitch coach from the US, based in Spain, who coached over 3000 teams so far, over 200 in digital health. No matter if you are a startup or a corporation, team communication is key to success - either for company growth or fundraising.   Summary of the show: www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f069-what-else-is-there-to-learn-about-pitching-digital-health-solutions-bethnbspsussane  Beth Susanne: https://bethsusanne.com/

Grace Cordovano is an expert healthcare navigating solutionist and award winning, board-certified patient advocate specializing in the oncology space. She is the founder of Enlightening Results and Unblock Health  - a suite of services that finally provides patients and carepartners with a way to level the playing field and demand access to the critical information needed to make informed, engaged, and empowered decisions about their care. In this episode, she talks about challenges patients faces because of the complexity of the healthcare system in the US, she shares her view about the need of patients getting access to their data and more.   Recap of the discussion: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f065-f068-the-power-of-patients-4-episodes-series Enlightening Results:https://www.enlighteningresults.com/ Unblock Health: https://www.unblock.health/

Clinical advocacy has many different shapes. In the US, says Dr. Bettina Ryll, patient advocates work as patient’s navigators in the healthcare system. In Europe, they have a more activist/policy influencing role. When a patient’s interest in his disease grows beyond his personal interest, he becomes a patient advocate, says Mr. Ryll, when asked about how she would define patient advocacy.  This episode presents the role of patients in improving care, the influence of patient advocacy and needs of patients with serious conditions.   Summary: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f065-f068-the-power-of-patients-4-episodes-series Melanoma Patient Network Europe: http://www.melanomapatientnetworkeu.org/