The Digital Health Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Digital Health Podcast
We're here to get you the scoop on everything that's currently happening in digital health. During each episode, your hosts Stef and Arsi talk trends and innovation with a real expert in the field. From mobile health apps to MedTech and beyond, it's all here.
There's still so much untapped potential for digital technology in healthcare, it's kind of ridiculous. Think medication adherence, data collection, proximity to professional care... Digital healthcare can tackle them all.
Subscribe if you're digging the podcast, and enjoy the show!
On this latest episode, we were joined by Joep De Groot, chair of the board at health insurer CZ in the Netherlands.
Joep is very much aware of the limitations of traditional healthcare, especially from a patient perspective. He discerns two major issues:
- Healthcare can be woefully inefficient at times. A common root cause in this case, is the immobility of data. Joep recalls speaking to a diabetes patient, who had to stand in line at the hospital for bloodwork a few times a year as a result of that, when a local clinic could have done the job just as well.
- Healthcare in its current state often fails to properly support patients throughout their journey, both from an educational as well as a psychological standpoint. As soon as people leave the hospital or GP practice, it feels like they're on their own again. Accessibility remains to be an issue for people as well. Joep believes digitalization is the way to go.
Joep has been working on pushing the envelope himself, with the release of multiple applications for the Just ecosystem, a digital-first health insurer by CZ. With several dedicated apps for coaching, physiotherapy and primary care, Just aims to bridge healthcare and insurance altogether.
On this episode we were joined by Isabelle Kenyon and Kim Boyd, two women leading by example to transform the way people receive healthcare.
Isabelle and Kim are at the helm of Calibrate, a virtual care platform designed to help people with weight loss, and take the willpower factor out of the equation.
Calibrate considers obesity an illness and it should be treated as such. But in the analog world, many patients receive generic advice and are then left to their own devices to lose weight. Thus, reducing the weight loss process to a matter of calorie deficits and willpower.
In other words, it's apparent that there isn't really an issue with the quality of care itself, but rather with the way it's delivered to patients. Impersonal, irregular, impractical.
Isabelle witnessed this discrepancy first-hand when she suffered a spinal fracture back in 2015.
Calibrate challenges this status quo by taking the virtual route to increase the accessibility of care and coaching.
Subscribers receive:
- Doctor-presrcibed GLP-1 medication
- Bi-weekly video coaching
- A personalized, holistic curriculum
- Guaranteed medical coverage
This approach allows patient to apply much more gradual changes to their diet thanks to the consistent follow-ups. It also helps them take accountability through coaching sessions and the online community. Small wins add up to big wins over time!
Huge thanks to Isabelle and Kim for joining us this episode. And hats off to them for leveraging technology to empower patients at scale; that's just the thing we love to see.
Western medicine as we know it can successfully treat an abundance of medical conditions, especially in emergency situations. When the root cause is very specific like a broken arm, the treatment is straightforward.
But when the condition is less black and white, especially in the case of chronic illnesses, you might feel left to your own devices sometimes.
Because when the answer comes down to making dietary or lifestyle changes, who’s gonna be there for you every step of the way?
The healthcare professionals themselves are not to blame, they simply lack the bandwidth or resources to provide holistic care over long periods of time.
This episode of our Digital Health Podcast features André Sommer, co-founder of Cara Care. They strive to empower patients suffering from chronic digestive illnesses, and support them on their journey.
To achieve that, they’ve built a mobile companion app that creates a care plan for you, supported by real, in-the-loop experts. In a nutshell, Cara Care creates a tailor-made experience for people with IBS, IBD, GERD, and dyspepsia.
Listen to the full episode to hear André’s story of how Cara Care came to be!
Implementing digital solutions is starting to make a lot of sense in many areas in healthcare. How about ophthalmology though, specifically when treating cataracts?
On this episode, we've got the incredibly well-spoken Mark Vizard, digital health manager over at Rayner. Rayner has always been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to intraocular lenses or IOLs; a lens implant for treating cataracts or myopia.
While cataract surgery generally has a high success rate, there's still a ways to go in terms of patient outcomes and experience. And that starts with gathering and aggregating the right data.
Clinicians are already logging a ton of data through various systems, but not so much in terms of how patients themselves feel about lens replacements in general, nor their reported outcomes after the surgery.
Rayner noticed these patient-reported outcomes could be the missing link in providing optimal patient care.
Hence, they've created two mobile applications to deal with this challenge:
- RayPRO, a system to easily record and analyze patient-reported outcome data following surgery.
- Raytrace, a calculator used by surgeons to find the appropriate lens based on biometric data.
Learn all about why Rayner opted to go for this digital route in this episode of The Digital Health Podcast. Huge thanks to Mark Vizard for joining us and giving us an excellent rundown!
Our guest this week is Tess Cosad, Co-founder and CEO of Béa Fertility, a fertility care startup that's developing safe, affordable treatments that can be carried out at home.
Now in this episode there are a lot of acronyms so let's break it down:
ICI - Intracervical Insemination: Intracervical insemination is a form of artificial insemination that involves keeping semen held against the cervix for an extended amount of time (usually 4-12 hours).
IUI - Intrauterine Insemination: ICI involves waiting in the clinic for upwards of 4 hours until a physician can remove the cervical cap for you. With IUI, you can get up and go. It’s a lot more time-efficient, which is good. It’s also a lot more invasive and expensive, which is not so good
So how does this impact fertility life in practice?
We learn how using technology, fertility treatment can be done in the comfort at your own home!
How? Listen to this episode to learn more.
In the steps towards digitalising healthcare, we have seen major movements in the last couple of years, especially compared to the previous several years. The digitalisation of women's health.
We have recently seen femtech improve and innovate like never before, and these strides are generally focussed around maternity, which is the focus of this week's episode!
Arsi had a great chat with Rosanne Longmore, CEO at Coroflo, the world's first remote breastfeeding monitor. This technology allows mothers to know exactly how much breastmilk mothers are getting.
She taught about the gap in the tech world around monitoring breastmilk and the importance of solving it.
For example, until Coroflo was founded, we never knew how a mother's medication impacts how much breastmilk she produces, and in turn how the baby's diet is affected. Crazy right?
This technology is so ground-breaking that EU Commission has provided funding for it. This allows them to conduct a global study on breastfeeding which provides potential for further studies on this topic.
Listen if you want to learn more about how such global studies are conducted and how two parents who had a challenge, were able to found a company which is among the most important in digital health today.
Communication in hospitals is key, it can impact how much medication a patient gets and what their next stage in treatment is.
So why do we still see so many handwritten scribbles and notes around hospitals? Relying on easy-to-read handwriting and hoping no one accidentally throws the note away!
Then if there is proper digital communication via email or IM, data protection is not taken seriously.
This begs a separate question. The healthcare industry is quite old and somewhat set in its ways. If we do create a new solution, how can we encourage adoption from the healthcare professionals who are the end users?
That is the discussion this week with Dr Phillipp Kurtz, co-founder of Famedyl, a decentralized application that is transforming the way healthcare professionals collaborate and share data.
He discussed how, with the power of push notifications and nudging, they encourage clinicians to take the right actions.
We learned how to get buy-in from the different stakeholders who adopt this technology, and how they created a solution which improved communication in hospitals which makes a real impact.
To learn more about how communication is changing in healthcare and how this new technology is being implemented, check this episode out!
It's a common consensus that breastfeeding has great benefits to children and studies show over 80% of mothers want to breastfeed. Therefore you'd think there isn't many barriers to breastfeeding, right?
But like everything, there is a difference between wanting to do something and being supported to do it.
Unfortunately, there has been a lack of education around this topic. Not around the benefits of breastfeeding, but on the pains a mother will face, misinformation which medication you can and cannot take when breastfeeding and that general p2p support where new mothers can share their thoughts in a safe space...
This week we discussed this topic with Christiane Gross, the international business development lead of LactApp, the first mobile app that provides personalised suggestions to new mothers around breastfeeding and maternity questions.
They have found great success in this solution, and have accumulated over half a million active users globally and have set their sites on being the number 1 player in the femtech space.
We learned that breastfeeding is a space where there is a real lack of public awareness of when it comes to details beyond the benefits, from education in the universities and knowledge made available to GPs.
This episode discusses how a mobile app, created out of a genuine need in the population has had a great impact on increasing confidence in mothers who want to breastfeed, but previously was unsure about how to approach it due to the lack of concrete information available.
Infection prevention is a huge aspect of improving wellbeing, and one of the best ways to do this is through steralisation of equipment.
While this is obvious and something we all know, it comes with challenges. Being able to overcome the challenges is a crucial aspect of this, and with digital means we can overcome these challenges, however, it's important you truly understand those challenges first!
This week we spoke with Darci Mckittrick, Marketing Director of Advanced Sterilization products (ASP), a global leader in infections prevention solutions about this exact topic!
She spoke about how through digital means, they can look to become a leader in the field by being customer centric and help them with "job to be done" their customers have.
What's interesting is, the focus on ensuring innovation helps their customers and how ASP wants to be a problem solver. Question being, how can prototypes showcase to customers how the innovation is helpful, without having to create a full solution and spending huge resources, before validating if the customer would use it. In other words, a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
If you are interested in how to maintain focus on customer challenges and ensure innovation is actually going to make an impact, this episode is for you!
Listeners to our podcast will appreciate that we are always looking to differentiate "cool" innovation vs meaningful innovations.
The fact is, an innovative product should be a safe product. They should be designed to improve patient wellbeing and help clinicians with efficiencies.
So how do we do that? This topic is what we discussed in this week.
Our guest for this episode is Alina Kubiak, Marketing Director at Alvo Medica, who provide innovative solutions and products for operating theatres and other hospital areas and their objective is to have a complete integration of devices and medical image management to enhance workflows efficiencies, and improve patient care.
Alina spoke about her experience with regards to introducing innovations in her industry. One of the biggest aspects of this was the inclusivity of stakeholders.
The challenge at Alvo they are solving is making sure different teams and stakeholders are not working in silos, and that the innovation has meaningful impact for everyone.
A great example is, if a particular innovation has great benefits for the patient, but is inefficient and adds more work to the clinician, you'll struggle to have the clinicians onboard.
Using the concept of an MVP (minimal viable product), Alvo are able to showcase their innovation at it's earliest stages, so any change can be quickly executed to ensure following the feedback.
To learn more about how Alvo and other companies are creating meaningful innovations through strong stakeholder management, check out this week's episode!
Digital health has many different aspects. But none of which would bring much value without being able to make the most out of the data we gather.
But how can we use patient data? There is so much potential, and complications for data that many organisations seem to miss. How can data improve patient care? How can we market solutions the patient needs? But on top of this, how can we make sure this asset is being protected.
Our guest for this episode is Lukas Zurmuehle, Head of Digital & Growth Marketing Sub Region North West & South East and Roche, global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics.
He has been at Roche for over 13 years and has seen over the years big changes, but believes now we are at the right time to make those big leaps to improve patient-care.
In this episode, we look at how such an established company such as Roche has taken on the challenge of digital transformation. Having a "customer-first" approach and aligning this in other internal stakeholders to get the best outcome.
We take an in-look depth about how companies can have that "customer-first" approach by analysing the data provided. Looking at the customer journey and it can be optimised and being agile with new regulations that come in place such as GDPR.
When we discuss digital health, we rarely consider the aspect which impacts the majority of us the most, dentistry. Considering how much patients invest in their teeth, shouldn't we learn about how we can improve the digital experience in dentistry?
While it isn't something we speak about too much, digital dentistry has moved leaps and bounds in recent years.
Our guest for episode 6 is Marilia Lima, Global Marketing Manager at Dentsply Sirona, the world's largest manufacturer of professional dental technologies. She specialises in the A-Z needs for dentists to provide the best care possible.
She joined the digital dentistry space following an MBA in marketing and she fell in love with the exciting solutions available in the industry and how she was able to be at the forefront of the change.
Traditionally, no one enjoys the trips to the dentist. In this episode, look at the innovations available in industry, focussing on the patient experience and ultimately trying to make the whole experience more comfortable (it will never be enjoyable!).
Marilia describes the digital journey they have created for patients to speed up the entire diagnosis process and therefore the treatment. We are no longer talking about treatments taking weeks and multiple trips to the dentist, but merely hours and just one trip for the patient.
A huge part of digital health, which is often overlooked in our conversations is IP. It's importance is often overlooked, but as we are entering the digital health revolution, it's important to be forward thinking and protect ourselves accordingly.
Our guest for episode 8 is Jamie Soon, the technical innovation manager at Essilor, the world's leading ophthalmic optics company.
She has a PHD in chemistry with a specialisation in nano-technology and has recently achieved a masters in IP Law and Management and has a particular interest in how IP effects digital health. Giving her the full insight into the topic and how it can be applied in different segments on digital health.
As technology is growing in health, the "copycat" trend follows. Jamie talks through her learnings in her thesis. Describing how while patient journeys and medical device tech is improving, the competitive advantage can disappear if you aren't protecting yourself.
Jamie discusses her academic work on Ping-An, a huge player in the Chinese market, and how some of their technology is truly ground-breaking, and the cultural dynamics about bringing some of those solutions to the west.
One of the principle challenges around is the ageing population. Of course while it's great that we're living that bit longer, it also means how we engage with the "Gen Z" is going to be quite different than our grandparents.
The UK Office of National Statistics in 2019 claimed that 50% of the population over the age of 75 had never used the internet. So how do we make sure they don't get left behind?
That's why we spoke in this week's episode with Andy Stonehouse, the sales and marketing director of Fittleworth, one of the UK's leading home medicine delivery companies.
That's not where Andy's experience ends however, he's been in the industry for 20 years, having a proud career at 3M.
This episode, Arsi and Andy discussed how we can keep the context of the patient whenever they are engaged with.
As well as the security and data aspects of delivering medicine, it's important to make patients feel comfortable and not force them to repeat their condition and issues every time they speak with someone knew from the company.
Andy also spoke about the careful implementation of digitalisation. While speeding up too quickly may alienate long-standing existing patients. The industry cannot stand still.
Using technology, Fittleworth are able to really elevate patient wellbeing by creating online communities as well as automating patient services. But as mentioned, it's about options so everyone can be reached out to through the channels of their choice.
We have already explored so many aspects of digital health, but it's easy to overlook some of the parts which don't quite have that patient-facing side, such as pathology.
Our guest for episode 6 is Dominik Sievert, CEO of Inveox. He has a background in molecular biotechnology and economics. So he certainly has the grasp of both the scientific world and economic side of the industry.
In episode 6 we look at the consequence of the fact that when as patients we get diagnosed by pathologists, we don't have any interaction with them, but only our clinician. But how would that impact the diagnosis if the pathologist doesn't get all the context?
Consider a patient who is taking aspirin twice a day to reduce their blood pressure. They then have some pain and need to visit a gastroenterologist to check out the issue.
The gastroenterologist will send a sample to the pathologist who sees a small mark or inflammation. If they don't know the patient takes aspirin, the patient can easily get misdiagnosed with early stages of cancer, when in fact, it's just a common side-effect of aspirin!
In this episode we learn how Inveox is trying to revolutionise the industry and use digitalisation to ensure every stakeholder has a holistic view of the patient.
How can we streamline and automate data-sharing to ensure patient diagnostics is as accurate as possible? You'll learn in this episode.
As companies are joining the digital health revolution, there is a question we often hear. Should companies buy or build their digital health solution?
The wrong choice leads many companies down the wrong path, and by the time they realise it, they're too far down the path.
That's why for this episode, we spoke with our very own Jasper Verplanken, who is the product lead with us at Healthblocks.
Jasper will break down the reasons why companies choose either decision, analysing from several different aspects: The costs, the timeframe and the regulations companies must consider.
He then drills down into the types of partners companies can choose when looking to buy a solution, and how the modular approach gives companies full flexibility, without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-invent the wheel.
Medical devices are a huge part of the digital health revolution. They empower accurate diagnosis and the services patients can receive, and growingly through channels they prefer, such as mobile and tablet applications.
Our guest for episode 4 is Zoltan Takacs, Global Marketing Manager for foot and ankle at Orthofix, a global medical device company focused on musculoskeletal products and therapies. He moved from business development, to product and now leading the marketing efforts, giving him a true 360 degree view of the industry!
Orthopaedics has always been a step ahead in terms of technology, but not necessarily from a digital point of view. That's why Orthofix's vision is so exciting and really a disrupter in the field.
This episode we will learn why Orthofix has a modern strategy to patient engagement. Typically, patients don't even know the name of the medical device being used to monitor their health.
Zoltan talk us through why there is a change in in their strategy and the benefits medical devices organisations see from building direct relationships with patients.
There is nothing more complex than the human body. Different medication and treatments can have very different reactions to different people. The answer? Personalised care. Treating each patient's individual needs is the only way to get the best health outcomes.
But who is responsible for personalising care? The pharmaceutical companies? Medical devices? Only the HCPs? No. It's bringing the entire ecosystem together, including the patient, to provide the most personalised health care.
Our guest for episode 3 is Chris Easton, Global Commercial Lead of Personalised Health & Innovation at Takeda.
Personalised health is something close to Chris' heart. He understands it's one of the building blocks for the future of healthcare, being able to analyse the data and provide the best, most personalised healthcare
In this episode, look at personalised healthcare and best practices we've seen already, while looking ahead at what the future brings. The ultimate goal is empowering HCPs and patients to make the best decisions to bring better healthcare outcomes.
We drill down on how technology, such as the power of AI working together with HCPs. We look at how to get buy-in from different stakeholders, how to maintain strong engagement from patients and how it all comes together to inform patients.
Remote care is something that is very very often spoken about especially with the rise of telehealth private companies providing video consultations during COVID-19.
But surely remote care isn't just video calls with your GP? How else can remote care help healthcare professionals provide the best care possible? How can we support caregivers and patients adopt these new technologies in the long run?
Our guest for episode 2 is Teri Challier, head of marketing at Novo Nordisk.
Teri entered the space of digital health while working for Philips' Health System (yes, the company that makes those cool Hue lightbulbs also have a big healthcare section!). Her core focus was working on solving the problems caused by sleep apnea using medical devices, and how remote monitoring with digital health meant patients and clinicians could optimize the treatment without the patient having to make regular trips to the clinic!
In this episode, we dive deep into how healthcare needs to adapt. While remote care is growing, and technology is growing, this creates new challenges. How can we ensure patients are adhering to the medication provided to them? We hear from Teri on her experiences at Novo Nordisk and Philips on how they overcame this challenge. By aligning the patient and healthcare professional together, they saw a great increase in engagement of the technology and overall retention.
Listen to find out more about Teri's experience in the remote care space and how she was able to use digital health to improve health outcomes and improve resource allocation, an ever-growing concern in healthcare.
Have you ever wondered why we don't have the same great customer experience in healthcare as we receive in other industries?
Healthcare has often lacked the term "digital" from it, and we are excited that in episode 1, we will tackle this problem.
Our first guest is Ross O'Brien, Associate Director of Technology and Innovation at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.
Ross has been in the public health game for years and has a passion for bringing digital delivery of health services, improving the digital experience of patients, and ultimately improve patient outcomes. He talks about loving the digital comfort other industries provide their users, and how healthcare needs to shape-up in order to provide the same level of service.
In this episode, we will tackle the challenges a public health organization faces when trying to innovate. We look at onboarding vendors, not disrupting services, and how sensible innovation and strong alignment throughout can have a huge impact on patient care.