With the goal of delivering exceptional care, the benefits of improved efficiency and outcomes were observed by early adopters with others taking notice subsequently. This digital transformation within the health segment is helping Asian countries address the gap in the availability of specialist doctors while reducing the burden on tertiary-care hospitals, particularly in rural areas.

The Asia-Pacific region is home to about 60% of the world’s population (4.3 billion people), which includes the world’s most populous countries, China and India. There has been a remarkable economic transformation in the region over the past few decades, which has resulted in better living standards and closer integration with the world economy.

This region has four of the world’s 12 largest economies – Japan, China, India, and South Korea, whose transition from a developing to a developed country has happened at an exceptional pace.  However, this transition has led to increasing healthcare costs as a result of population growth, demographic shifts, and technological developments and has also posed policy challenges, including the need to protect and promote public health.

Re-imagining health with digital solutions

The re-invention, re-imagination, and transformation of the health sector across the world were enabled by expanding technological capabilities and innovation, most notably digital and mobile technologies. This fostered tremendous innovation and modernization resulting in digital solutions such as telemedicine, real-time tracking and monitoring, and artificial intelligence (AI). They helped governments, health organisations, and other stakeholders in combating the pandemic and strengthening public health while staying prepared for the future. The new discipline of digital medicine, which applies software and hardware to the field of evidence-based tools that measure, diagnose, and/or intervene to support the practice of medicine, holds promise for improved patient care, cost-effectiveness, and transparency.

Digital health technologies have also made healthcare accessible to last-mile beneficiaries and have empowered patients to make more informed choices about their care delivery. Now, wearable devices and mobile applications are helping patients keep track of their own condition while allowing doctors to monitor patients remotely, with a keen eye on compliance. It is also assisting health workers with case-based surveillance, remote consultations, and information dissemination and has opened up new avenues for the medtech sector as well.

Asia-Pacific powers digital health

The digital health market in Asia is expected to rise from $37 billion in 2020 to $100 billion by 2025. Consumer-centric digital health value pools are expected to increase by 22% yearly through 2025. Moreover, over 70% of the value will be driven by the digitization of care delivery.

This is because of the rapidly aging population, rising living standards, increasing consumer expectations, limited health infrastructure, and a need for more skilled medical professionals. This has brought Asia to the cusp of a health revolution. Moreover, substantial growth in disease burden, especially chronic conditions, will require additional focus on transforming the care delivery system. Chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, respiratory distress, and cancers are responsible for 75% of deaths in the Asia-Pacific region.

Digital solutions have also helped governments put in place track-and-trace systems, often via mobile applications. For example, in South Korea, information on contact tracing was shared with the public through apps. In India, mass vaccination drives were conducted with the help of information collected from a mobile app.

Addressing emerging challenges

The adoption of digital health presents a mixed bag of opportunities and challenges. Many Asian countries are struggling with a relatively underdeveloped health infrastructure. This has created a significant gap in demand and supply. Further, the absence of clear regulatory guidelines may lead to fraudulent practices.

The need for more skilled healthcare professionals to cater to the population is also a challenge. Therefore, upskilling professionals is a huge requirement, as demand for digital skills across industries is expected to surge by around 20 times by 2024. The lack of proper skilling infrastructure, which is expensive and hardly available in rural areas, further creates a roadblock.

Moreover, an estimated 1.6 billion people in the Asia-Pacific region lack adequate access to social health protection. This often puts a huge financial burden on families making healthcare further inaccessible to most of the population.

How policymakers can drive change

Public and private payers have begun leveraging digital technologies to encourage consumers to monitor their health, eventually lowering the long-term cost of care. More and more hospitals are looking to establish digital ‘front doors’ to engage with patients before and after their visit. For instance, China had established 1,000 internet hospitals by 2021 that provided detailed guidelines and various medical information to patients and doctors. Further, Singapore, South Korea, and Australia are generally considered the region’s top three role models for digital health due to their respective governments’ progressive approaches.

In India, the government’s introduction of the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) and National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB) has been instrumental in strengthening the accessibility and equity of health services. Increased health start-up funding is also helping entrepreneurs work on innovative solutions. By 2023, the health sector is expected to reach $5 billion at a CAGR of 39%.

In the Asia-Pacific region, ensuring consistency and predictability in regulatory review processes will encourage innovation throughout clinical research and development. Policymakers are under extreme pressure to implement changes as there are simple solutions to the problems. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it clear that there is a need to re-imagine and restructure traditional health systems, which must involve digital solutions. Therefore, policymakers need to come together and encourage the adoption of innovative technology to meet the region’s growing demands.

The post Why Policymakers in Asia-Pacific Should Facilitate Digital Health Innovation appeared first on Medika Life.

The post Digital Health Interviews: Bianca Rose Phillips. Making the Digital Health Revolution appeared first on Medika Life.

If you’re the patriotic type, and I suspect many of the American-based innovation hubs are, then that may motivate your company to try and negotiate the minefield. Expect most of your development capital to be spent on agencies and consultants. Experts who know how to negotiate the hurdles your business will face. Go it alone, and I can almost guarantee failure. In fact, even success is sometimes failure, as a colleague points out in this telling article on the stifling influence of payer power.

While I appreciate that particular applications, software platforms, and patient solutions are developed specifically to address homegrown problems, many aren’t. Medical devices and wearables are an excellent example in point. We share the same physiology globally and experience disease in exactly the same way, allowing new medical devices to cherry-pick their markets.

Wearables are moving us closer to global industry standards for health care, driven by devices from companies like Apple and Samsung, worn around the globe and utilizing the same core software, no matter the market. Developers addressing and interfacing with these devices benefit from this uniformity.

Healthcare truly is one of the few “transplantable industries” and we live in a world where geographic borders no longer pose obstacles to development and deployment. Perhaps the first question innovators should be asking themselves is not “what” but “where”.

The lure of foreign markets

We’ve recently written up an article on a technology-based healthcare development hub in Asia, in Singapore to be specific. Here is the list of benefits their market offers to digital health and tech innovators in the healthcare sector. Humor me, and cast an eye over them.

Strong regulatory guidelines for health tech
Singapore’s National Telemedicine Guidelines and other similar frameworks have set clear principles around areas such as AI and data governance, medical devices, and telemedicine. This fosters high levels of consumer and practitioner trust and enables the smooth test-bedding and commercialization of new products and services.

Seamless access to health information
Singapore’s health information infrastructure is digitized and centralized. From as early as 2011, the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) system has consolidated patient records on a shared database to enable holistic assessments and interventions across service providers.

Assurance of data security
Patient data security is taken seriously, with the Personal Data Protection Act introduced in 2012 and advisory guidelines for healthcare were issued to address the sector’s unique circumstances.

Public-private collaboration on patient-centered digital innovation
Public health agencies are partnering with the private sector on solutions that place the patient at its heart.

As a simple example, Singapore’s Health Promotion Board and Apple’s first-of-its-kind LumiHealth program employs behavioral insights from the Apple Watch to encourage user adoption of healthier lifestyles over a longer period of time. With such a conducive environment, 

Singapore has been unofficially dubbed “ASEAN’s sandbox for digital innovation,” producing a growing range of solutions.

Why the disparity?

Asian economies long ago realized the benefit of an effective and functional healthcare system, regulated by one central agency, the government. Witness Covid-19 and the differences in response. Strict controls, sensible regulation, effective funded services, and personnel and exceptional management of cohesive data streams. For America’s part, they could only observe in envy from afar, as the country fell to pieces in the face of the pandemic. Only the caliber of their provers saved them. The government and healthcare systems failed and failed spectacularly.

It will be no different under Biden’s watch as he contemplates a political appointment for the top post in the country. Only healthcare can effectively manage healthcare and Asia gets it. It’s what makes their systems so functional and patient-centered. It is also what positions them as a real threat to America’s tech talent in the coming years.

I’m not about to develop the next big thing in catheters, but if I was, I have a pretty good idea where I’d be headed. If American healthcare does not start cleaning house, it will pay the price, and inevitably, the patient will, as always, be the real victim.

The post American Healthcare is in Danger of a Self-Inflicted Digital Drought appeared first on Medika Life.

Hesham is a practicing Intensivist with 17+ years of clinical practice. He is board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, critical care medicine, and sleep medicine. Hesham is a Regional Medical Director for Sound Physicians’ critical care practice in the Midwest. He leads and oversees ICU clinical operations in Illinois and Missouri, and he is Medical Director of Respiratory Therapy and Pulmonary Rehabilitation at Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora, IL.

He’s an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Course Director for Rush University Medical Center, and he serves as a peer reviewer for multiple medical journals. He has presented research a number of times at national meetings and has also published numerous articles in peer-reviewed medical journals. In addition, Hesham is a prolific writer, with articles appearing in newspapers and websites globally, and has published a medical thriller, “Code Blue.”

Hesham has a dedicated column on Medika Life for his articles, you can follow his work here

Hesham’s experience with Digital

I am a Pulmonary and Critical Care specialist practicing in Illinois. I am Medical Director of the Critical Care program in my hospital and an Associate Regional Medical Director, implementing critical care programs in multiple states in the Midwestern United States. When I first began practice in the ICU, it was the most technologically advanced part of the hospital. But that was not saying much. 

Our documentation was still on paper and pen. Physician orders had to frequently be deciphered by multiple people to ensure the correct drug or test was ordered. I clearly remember a major error being committed because a nurse misread a physician’s illegible handwriting. Invasive procedures were done by feel, and complications were commonplace and sometimes deadly. 

The first major sea change with respect to technological advances was the electronic health record, beginning with computerized physician order entry. No longer is a major error just a physician’s illegible chicken scratch away. It was a game-changer. Orders were transcribed and sent to the appropriate department in a much more timely manner. Patient care was greatly improved. 

Then came electronic documentation, which was another game-changer. It always amazed me that a physician colleague would take the time to write a note in the chart and have that note be completely illegible, so no one could understand what he or she was thinking or doing with a mutual patient. With the EHR, this was also no more, and gone were the days of straining my eyes and turning the chart on its side to try to interpret what a physician had written. 

With respect to direct patient care, the technological advances have exploded. Ultrasound guided invasive procedures revolutionized the field, and made those procedures much safer for patients. Much of the hemodynamic monitoring we did was also invasive, and now I can get detailed and sophisticated measurements completely noninvasively  

The revolution in technology continued with the advent of the smartphone. All the most up-to-date medical information and literature is available in an easy-to-use app. Prescribing medications can be done electronically in the palm of my hand. My patients absolutely loved the fact that, before I left the exam room, their prescription was already sent to the pharmacy. Today, I have the entire EHR on my smartphone as well, and documentation and information gathering has never been easier. 

Point of care ultrasound is also now an app, and I can do a bedside echo with a probe that plugs into my phone and fits in my pocket, with the image being uploaded to the cloud and integrated automatically into the EHR. Of all the technological advances, these two things – the pocket EHR and pocket ultrasound – are the things I use and benefit from the most today. 

That said, all of these technological advances are not without their pitfalls. Yes, with the EHR, notes are legible. But, you can generate a 15 page note that says absolutely nothing with an EHR. Yes, it’s nice to have an ultrasound in my hand. It is still not as clear and beautiful looking as the image that is generated by the big behemoth machine that needs to be rolled into the room from the department. 

Furthermore, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was hesitant to bring in my own smartphone and ultrasound probe into the room and potentially contaminate myself. Sure, I can get multiple hemodynamic measurements noninvasively, but are those measurements clinically meaningful? And, the more technologically advanced we become, the more likely we risk becoming further detached from the patients themselves, and that can’t be good for the physician-patient relationship. 

Just in my lifetime, the technological advances in my field have been breathtaking. The question remains, how do we harness this incredible advancement and still keep the healing touch for which many of us answered the call of healthcare in the first place? 

Connect with Hesham

The post Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa on the Digital Healthcare Equation appeared first on Medika Life.

Dr. Jeff Livingston is an Obgyn practicing in Irving, Texas, in the US. He is the CEO of MacArthur Medical Center, a founder of Medika Life, and EIC of BeingWell. He is an eager adopter of new technology and holds interests in various medical startups.

The More Things Change in Digital Health, the More They Stay the Same

Sharing my 20-year experience in private practice

Will 2021 be a remarkable year for health innovation? Healthcare needed a shove to throw out our fax machines and use new tools to improve our lives and the care we provide.Covid-19 converted digital health into a necessary survival tool. It’s no longer a luxury.

The pandemic forced many technology companies to tap the brakes, but digital health innovators and entrepreneurs are finding opportunities to make meaningful change and impact healthcare.

Will digital health pioneers launch us into the next generation of innovation, or will developers fall into the same old traps of nonintegrated data silos and apps filled with features but devoid of purpose?

I am a full-time practicing Obgyn in Irving, Texas, and also serve as the MacArthur Medical Center CEO. Innovation is one of our companies core values and helped expand our home base in Irving, Texas office from three providers in 2003 to our now 32 providers spread across five locations in Dallas/Fort Worth. We were also able to develop a pediatric service line to continue caring for our brand new little Texans.

No medical practice can be successful without some basic integration of health technology. That being said, the digital health landscape is complex and expensive, making it almost impossible for independent practice to compete with large medical conglomerates and integrated health systems.

While technology is an essential aspect of providing care, the reality is practicing physicians are often emotionally disconnected from the technology touching their fingertips.

Doctors do not want to become technologists. We want to see patients and provide care. But to even open the office doors, a complex mix of disparate technology must be in place and maintained.

Physicians must learn these systems or pay the high price of outsourcing the management to third-party companies.

Basic technology needs for a medical practice

1. Communication platform and phone system
2. Practice management system
3. Electronic Health Record
4. Cloud storage
5. Revenue cycle management system
6. Internet Security system

Without these baseline systems, a medical practice can not function. Also, most medical practices need a:

1. Patient portal
2. Local laboratory interface for direct physician order
3. Electronic prescription system
4. Online scheduling system
5. State vaccine authorities interface like ImmTrac.
6. State narcotic monitoring systems interface
7. Telehealth system

These baseline office technologies lay the foundation for a functional practice. While essential, most of these systems operate in the background. Physicians generally only think about them when something is not working.

A forgotten password or an overnight software update makes physicians’ heads spin.

Electronic Health Records (EHR) needed a major reboot.

In 2005, we made the jump from mountains of paper charts to an electronic health record. EHRs are an essential tool for any private medical practice, but the costs of upkeep, cloud storage, and data security add frustrating overhead expenses.

Most major EHR systems have added minor upgrades over the last decade, but none have upended the entire paradigm to create a patient and provider-friendly user-interface. Instead, health providers spend most of their days as glorified data-entry clerks.

Upcoming requirements by the CURES act may make EHR documentation even worse. The current published guidelines will force health providers to spend even more time entering information instead of providing direct patient care. The CURES act acknowledges the time requirement by incorporating documentation time into the CPT coding level of service. A better approach would have been to improve the EHR experience allowing doctors to spend more face to face with patients.

A few companies offer services to trim around the edges and make marginal improvements for doctors and patients. M-modal offers front-end AI-driven voice recognition to assist in EHR documentation. Vital Interactions helps improve the patient experience by facilitating a HIPPA compliant messaging system that interacts with an office practice management system. Updox helps with automated document sorting of the endless flow of incoming forms, imaging results, and outside medical records.

We use all of these technology add-ons in our practice. While they improve our efficiency and experience, no technology company has changed the game. EHRs are clunky, poorly designed databases more equipped to facilitate billing and coding than to provide an enjoyable user interface for health providers.

Our phone is our most important piece of technology.

Despite all of the health technology innovations, our cell phone is still the most important technological tool we own. We log in to our various hospitals through interface apps like Haiku. We monitor patient progress in labor and delivery through Airstrip Ob. We send electronic prescriptions using dual authenticators. We perform HIPPA compliant virtual visits through Telehealth platforms like Healthtap or Doximity Dialer.

We cross-reference medications on Epocrates and study the latest research on Uptodate.com. We complete most hospital credentialing and peer review processes through Docusign, and hospital department meetings now take place virtually on Zoom.

While these apps are beneficial for practicing physicians, many patient-facing apps still have a long way to go.

Most health apps are not useful.

The explosion of health apps forced doctors into the health technology equation. Patients use apps for weight loss, calorie counting, exercise, ovulation calculation, meditation, and glucose monitoring.

The crazy thing is, in 2021, app developers have still not found a way to make this data available to physicians in a simple and actionable way. Disparate, closed data legacy systems prohibit the seamless integration of patient data. As a result, physicians can not utilize most of the health data collected by patients. Patients collect enormous amounts of data, and their doctors have no practical way of putting it to use.

Physician life was much simpler when all we had was a pager and a stethoscope.

Most health technology developers and companies fail to understand the physician workflow and mindset. Instead, developers focus on an app’s features saying, “Look what this app can do.” None of the features matter if the core purpose is unclear and the usability is not inherently intuitive. Health apps would be best served by focusing on the “Why” and “How.”

Every developer should answer the fundamental question of who the product helps and what problem it solves. Most companies forget this fundamental idea, and as a result, most health apps and health technology fail to gain traction.

Feature-filled products devoid of purpose lead to physicians’ resistance to new technology and health innovations. We love fancy new toys, but we have learned from years of experience to be skeptically cautious with sparkly and shiny objects.

We are exposed to new medications, therapeutics, surgical devices, and novel lab tests. Each “pitch” forces us to decide whether or not to integrate it into our practice. Decisions making involves analyzing safety, efficacy, cost, and utility.

My two rules for technology adoption are simple.

1. The product needs to make physicians’ lives easier.
2. The product needs to make the care we provide our patients better.

Any technology that does not meet these basic ideas gets tossed into the wastebasket.

Technology extends physicians’ care doctors beyond the four walls of the office.

Free tools on the internet house excellent tools physicians can harness to expand their reach. Instead of helping one person at a time, health providers can share knowledge, combat misinformation, and help others at scale.

Most private practices still fail to mobilize the internet’s power and take control of their digital footprint. Instead, their online reputation is created by others through third-party review sites.

Online reputation management is one of the most critical aspects of private practice success. If patients can not find you, you can not help them.

Integrating the creative use of social media as a patient outreach tool is a central element of our 20 years of practice growth. We started in the pre-HIPAA days, navigating our way through the Wild West of the internet. First, there was Myspace. Then, Facebook and Twitter joined the party. Few medical practices were using these platforms, but we found ways to leverage them into patient outreach, education, and new patient acquisition tools.

Now, the options for patient education and outreach have expanded beyond the old school social media platforms. Physicians are finding creating ways to use video through YouTube, Instagram, and Tik Tok. Blogging platforms like Medika Life, Medium, Vocal Media, and Newsbreak expand physician’s reach beyond their practice website.

2021 can be a digital health breakthrough year

The pandemic created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for health innovation. Everyone is looking for ways to improve care, cut costs and create a safe workplace. Private practice physicians and large health systems are ready and willing to invest the time and energy to integrate new technology to reach these goals.

I caution all to remember healthcare is about human connection.

When we strip away all the technology bells and whistles, we are left with a patient in need and a doctor to help.

Technology is only a tool to help us get to the powerful moment when a provider looks into a patient’s eyes and says, “How can I help you today?”

Connect with Jeff

The post Jeff Livingston, MD, on the Digital Healthcare Equation appeared first on Medika Life.

Allyson is a medical oncologist and attending physician in gastrointestinal oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center; Associate Professor of Medicine at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University; and medical oncologist at The Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health.

She graduated cum laude from Tufts University and with honors from the Tufts University School of Medicine and completed residency in internal medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Allyson was chief fellow during her fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and abstracts and is an active member of several professional societies, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Hematology, and American Association for Cancer Research. Medika recently selected Allyson as one of the Voices of Healthcare in 2021

Allyson explores her experiences with Digital Health and Technology

In the 1980s I was a young teenager who enjoyed my Walkman, John Hughes movies and Punky Brewster. Although I was good at math and science, I had absolutely zero desire to build a computer out of spare parts. In college in the early ‘90s I had an Apple II computer and a Panasonic word processor. I thought I was really cool, and these workhorses did their jobs. I still wasn’t interested in what made these machines tick. They were simply tools to help me get my work done.

Those early years shaped my current relationship with technology: If it works, that’s great; If it didn’t work, why bother? However, I have become dependent on the current crop of tech. I don’t know how I ever managed to survive without Twitter or my smartphone, which someone will have to pry out of my cold, dead hands.

Technologies like Zoom and my smartphone were vital in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic was ravaging New York City. I’m a GI oncologist at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center specializing in the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies, with a special interest in pancreatic cancer. I also am involved as an investigator in numerous clinical trials focused on exploring potentially better treatment options. 

On March 1, 2020 New York Presbyterian diagnosed its first case of COVID-19, and the city quickly became the epicenter of the outbreak. My professional life was very problematic initially since oncologists were all trying to figure out how best to treat and maintain communications with our immunocompromised cancer patients while simultaneously trying to keep them safe from this novel virus. I was in constant communication via email, phone calls or social media with patients and colleagues both near and far to see how chemotherapeutic regimens could potentially be changed to minimize the frequency someone would have to come into the hospital. And there were follow-up visits to contend with as well as new patients. 

It’s no secret that technologies based on the platforms of telehealth helped mitigate some of our patient care issues. But at the start of the pandemic, telehealth was a disaster. Both patients and physicians were thrown into the telehealth landscape and there was a deep and steep learning curve. There were also regulatory, privacy and reimbursement issues that needed to be worked out, but were remedied very quickly since HHS relaxed rules.  The biggest issue was that we were asking patients to become tech-savvy on platforms for videoconferencing that can be intimidating at first for anyone, let alone vulnerable patients dealing with a cancer diagnosis. 

Many of my patients are older and some, not all, are hesitant about embracing technology. Many were also separated from adult children or grandchildren who helped them navigate the brave new world of technology during the best of times when they could visit their elder’s homes. These were not the best of times. If something wasn’t working right in EPIC, our electronic medical record system, there was no tech-proficient family member who could come over to fix a problem, even if it was something as simple as resetting the Wi-Fi . 

As a physician, I was more prepared, but I soon discovered that even the best videoconference platforms accompanied by the best monitor won’t give you a real feel for your patients. There is no technology currently that can mimic the one-on-one in-person assessment a physician can provide a patient, even in a 15-minute visit. Those subtle clues that a patient might be struggling emotionally or physically can be lost if you aren’t in the same room with them, talking to them and touching them.

To be fair, there was an incredible upside too, the most important of which is that I could keep up with my patients for routine matters while reducing their exposure to Covid-19. That’s priceless, and as we’ve navigated through the past year, more and more of my patients have become comfortable with remote visits. That’s only going to increase.

In my practice Doximity has become my go-to platform, Doximity has been available for a little more than a decade to doctors providing everything from news to messaging to case collaborative capabilities. In May 2020 the company got into telehealth, and pushed out its Dialer Video, a telehealth videoconferencing app that connects me to my patients through a no-reply text message. It’s HIPAA-compliant, works on any cell phone, and my cell number is kept private.

It is so simple and, most importantly, patients find it a lot easier than Zoom, which can be tough for patients to navigate. Plus, it connects seamlessly to EPIC. It’s also very easy to add another participant, which is often very helpful to patients. It saves me time, too, because it alerts me when a patient has joined the call, which is important if you’re trying to check on labs or make notes.

When I’m not with patients on video visits, I’m with colleagues and staff on Zoom. We do Zoom tumor boards, Zoom meetings, Zoom-just-about-everything. It is very reliable, but the so-called “Zoom fatigue” is real. It can be very draining physically staring at a computer screen for hours.

Social media apps like Twitter have played a very important role in my practice over the past five years. An extraordinary woman by the name of Anne Glauber, a former patient of mine who died of pancreatic cancer, was determined to bring news of pancreatic cancer care and research into the homes of others who are facing the disease.

Anne lived longer than many patients with her stage of the disease due, in no small part, to her resourcefulness in seeking out physician-scientists who were willing to push the proverbial envelope in terms of patient care based on ongoing science. Anne thought everyone should know about the work being done.

We teamed up and in 2016 formed a Twitter-platform called #PancChat, based on a survey we commissioned showing that participants felt the best way to disseminate medical information was through Twitter. The monthly chat with physicians who answer patient questions has covered topics including the genetics of pancreatic cancer, nutrition, exercise, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy, to name just a few. 

Shortly thereafter we opened our WordPress-based website Let’s Win! Pancreatic Cancer (letswinpc.org). Our content manager pushes out new, original copy every three days in designated areas including innovative science, managing pancreatic cancer, clinical trials, and first-person patient stories, for example. 

Both #PancChat and Let’s Win! are extraordinarily well-received by the pancreas cancer community and those physician-scientists globally who work on this disease. The simple technologies of Twitter and WordPress have done more to ease anxiety and change the sense of nihilism that often surrounds this disease, much more so than any in-person conference we may have undertaken.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically machine learning or deep learning, is going to be an application that will make a significant difference in the future. We are in an era of data-driven medicine, and there is so much data available that only a computer can parse through it and make sense of it. There is no doubt that AI is going to make a tremendous difference in pancreatic cancer by potentially providing ways to detect the disease earlier when surgery is still an option, identifying pancreatic cysts that are at the highest risk of becoming malignant, and helping with image analysis for more precise diagnoses.

Because we also are gaining a much deeper understanding of the basic biology of the disease, we are steeped in molecular data. AI will help us make sense of that data.

I also believe AI will better help shape the future of telehealth, which is clearly not going anywhere. Patients may be using more medical technologies in the comfort of their homes. That data can be collected, sorted, and analyzed through AI applications. As a physician, I have to say I’m looking forward to seeing what AI brings to the table. I’m pretty sure it’s going to make what we’re doing now in telehealth look as primitive as my old Apple II.

Connect with Allyson

The post Allyson Ocean, MD, on the Digital Healthcare Equation appeared first on Medika Life.

Junaid is the Chief Medical Scientist at Microsoft Research and a practising physician in the NHS (the UK’s National Health Service). He was previously the Global Lead for Strategic Alliances and Solutions for the Global Digital Centre of Excellence at Merck Sharp & Dohme, where he led a range of strategic initiatives to improve patient care, including establishment of internal partnerships across the enterprise and external partnerships across the health care ecosystem. He cofounded “VelocityHealth” as Europe’s first prevention focused digital-health accelerator, in partnership with Telefonica, and led his team to deliver the “NHS Testbed” in partnership with Verily Life Sciences (part of Alphabet), which the Health Service Journal recognized as the “Best Pharmaceutical Partnership with the NHS” in 2018.

Previously, Junaid has worked across primary care, secondary care, and public health settings in addition to acting as a payer, and policy maker within the UK, where he specialized in informatics, digital transformation, and leadership. He has consulted for health care systems across the US, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Europe, in addition to being seconded by the NHS to work with IBM. Junaid completed his MBA at the Imperial College Business School in London and has studied health strategy and quality improvement at both Harvard and the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in Boston. Academically, he is a Clinical Associate Professor at UCL (University College London), and Visiting Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.

.

Place Content here

Connect with Junaid

The post Dr. Junaid Bajwa, on the Digital Healthcare Equation appeared first on Medika Life.

 Sam Shah is Founder and Director of the Faculty of Future Health with Ulster University, where his interests span digital health, clinical leadership, and public health. Sam is a digital health technology advisor to a number of healthcare and technology companies, spanning a range of industries including telecommunications, assessment of apps, scaling new technology into the NHS, and workforce solutions. Sam was previously Director of Digital Development for NHS England and NHSX, where he was responsible for digital development of the ecosystem and leading on a number of national transformation programs.

Sam has worked on a number of initiatives including the flagship project to digitize urgent care in the NHS. Sam headed up the national learning and development program for NHS England, which considered different channels to access healthcare using technology. He has also been involved in the assessment of healthcare technology through a number of grant schemes and accelerator programs. Sam continues to work in the NHS within primary care and champions a range of agendas including improving diversity within the workforce; and reducing health inequalities.

Content Here

Connect with Sam

The post Dr. Sam Shah on the Digital Healthcare Equation appeared first on Medika Life.