EIT Health Germany Series 5/12: How Can We Help With Medical Aid in Ukraine?

When the war in Ukraine began, Marta Kaczmarek welcomed one of the refugee families to her home. She then thought about how more could be done to help Ukrainians and started an incentive called  EIT Health Ukraine. EIT Health, which is a European organsation connecting stakeholders in healthcare, partnered with the Polish Medical Mission. PMM is a 22 years old Polish humanitarian organization that provides medical aid to the countries most in need in the world. Since 1999, the Polish Medical Mission Association has been helping victims of wars, catastrophes and natural disasters. Their volunteers include doctors, paramedics, nurses, rehabilitators, as well as psychologists and medical analysts.

 In this episode, speakers: Ewa Piekarska, President of the Board, Head of the Development Aid Program, Polish Medical Mission andMarta Kaczmarek, Coordinator of the EIT Health Ukraine Appeal explain the current needs for medical support, what supplies are in demand and more. 

EIT Health Ukraine appeal is ongoing, so if you’re a medical device manufacturer or have the ability to donate medical equipment, please go to the link in the show notes and coordinate with EIT Health to provide help to Ukraine.

Please complete the form on EIT Health’s website:  https://eithealth.eu/ukraine-appeal/   

This episode is supported by EiT Health Germany, which is one of eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) currently funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). If you’re a startup working in the field of digital health or biotech and don’t know EiT Health Germany yet, I would encourage you to visit eit-health.de, where you will find more about innovation, acceleration, and education programs. And as you will hear from Marta, it doesn’t matter if you’re a startup, a small or a large business. If you would like to contribute to support Ukraine, anything you can do to help, will help.

Rethinking Access to Healthcare in Rural America (Jennifer Schneider, Homeward)

Jennifer Schneider used to be the Chief Medical Officer and President of Livongo. In 2022 she started a company focused on improving access to healthcare in rural America. More than 46 million Americans, or 15 percent of the U.S. population, live in rural areas. Now the company called Homeward is on the mission to deliver care to those who don’t have it, starting in rural America. In this discussion, you’ll hear more about the challenges related to rural health, how could care be brought to the community instead of patients needing to travel two to five hours for a 15 minutes visit, and more.

www.facesofdigitalhealth.com

Voice Tech: How Well Are You Listening To Your Customers? (Amy Brown, Authenticx)

Voice could be called one of the exciting new avenues for medicine and healthcare: first, it is seen as a potential optimization tool, if we used voice tech instead of typing data into software. A few months ago, Julia Hoxha, the CEO of Zana explained how her European startup that provides healthcare organizations with the technology to design and to deploy their own chatbot and voice assistants. In the future, we might discover biomarkers in voice. After all, all the characteristics of voice – how loud or how quiet we speak, what tone do we use, how fast or slow we talk – all these characteristics probably have a correlation with something. But what about starting with something much simpler? Analysing voice recordings that already exist? US company Authenticx listens, analyzes, and activates customer voices. The AI-based software analyzes millions of conversations patients have with customer support agents through phone calls or emails. By analysing these conversations, it unveils recurring trends that healthcare organizations use to make informed, proactive decisions for improved workflows and care. 

In this discussion you will hear from Amy Brown, executive with 20 years of public and private sector experience in health care public relations, startup management, policy development, quality improvement and insurance operations.

Enjoy the show and browse through other episodes on: facesofdigitalhealth.com 

Startup Health: “We Need To Think About Healthcare Globally, Not Locally” (Unity Stoakes)

Investments in digital health have been steadily rising for the last seven years. 6.2 billion dollars were invested in digital health startups in 2015, 44 billion in 2022, according to Startup Health. Startup Health is a US-based organisation supporting digital health innovators across the world and globally spreading optimism about the potential of technology in healthcare. The vision that drives that optimism is the hope that we can bring access to healthcare to everyone in the world, that we can beat cancer and cure diseases such as diabetes or Alzheimer’s. That vision is important because healthcare innovation is not for the faint-hearted and as health indicators show, currently, life expectancy and health are worsening across the world, says co-founder and president of Startup Health Unity Stoakes. The market is maturing, he says, which is also seen in the number of companies that attract investments. The total amount of investments has been increasing for several years, but th number of companies that are invested in, is staying roughly the same – it’s just that some companies are maturing and raising higher amounts of funding. In this discussion you will hear Unity Stoakes talk about his reflection of Startup Health which is already 11 years old, he talked about the global expansion of Startup Health, why we need to think about healthcare innovation less locally, more globally, and also why we still need much more investments in the future.

If you want to go down the memory lane of digital health, you can also tune in to the interview with Unity in 2017: https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/faces-of-digital-health/id1194284040?i=1000380325225

Global Health Innovation and the Paradox of Choice in Healthcare (Hassan Chaudhury)

Hassan Chaudhury is a global healthcare expert, he worked in several countries across the world. He currently works at Healthcare UK; a joint initiative of the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Department for International Trade (DIT). His global role includes advising commercial teams in over 100 UK embassies. In this discussion, we chatted about the digital transformation of healthcare and social care in the UK and Hassan’s experience with countries across the world. Which innovations are reasonable to implement in healthcare today? And which technologies are currently not ready for prime time just yet. You might be surprised by Hassan’s opinion. 

Read an excerpt:

What Can Digital Health Innovators Learn from Oncology? (Sean Khozin)

Therapies for cancer are being developed at light speed and upward of 60 gene and cell therapies are projected to reach regulatory approval in the U.S. by 2030, according to the MIT NEWDIGS collaborative. Due to the nature of cancer, readiness for risks in drug development is much higher here than it might be in other medical fields. In this episode you’re going to hear a bit more about what can digital health innovation learn from the mindset present in oncology development.  

Sean Khozin is the CEO of CancerLinQ, a non-profit health technology company focused on improving quality of care and health outcomes for all patients with cancer. He was the Global Head of Data Strategy and Data Science Innovation at Johnson & Johnson, before that he co-founded Hello Health, a technology company focused on developing integrated telemedicine, point-of-care data visualization, and advanced analytical systems for optimizing patient care and clinical research.  He was also the Founding director of a digital health incubator inside the FDA. 

You will hear a little bit about processes in oncology, innovation in oncology, the promise of decentralized clinical trials and more.