Faces of Digital Health
F099 Digital health in South America 3/4: Brazil: “Our goal is to bring specialised cancer management EHR to underserved areas of the world” (Paulo F. B. de Gusmão, OTAWA Health)
This is the third episode of the short series about digital health in South America.
In the previous episodes you could listen to Adrian Turjanski from an Argentinian genomics company there called Bitgenia, another speaker came from Colombia – Javier Cardona, CEO of 1Doc3 talked about how to bring affordable access to healthcare to people in seconds, without the need for an appointment.
See the recap of the shows here: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/digitalheath-south-america
This episode will take you to Brazil to hear from the CEO of OTAWA Health – a 13 years old startup officially founded last year, by an IT team at CCC (Centro de Combate ao Câncer), one of the most respected oncology clinics in Brazil.
The biggest differentiator of Brazil compared to other countries in South America is language. The official language is Portuguese. The country with over 200 million people has had universal healthcare access since the eighties. That sounds great, but as explained by Paulo Fernando Buarque de Gusmão the problem is that the system lacks investments and therefore a lot of people still opt for private healthcare.
The healthcare system is not immune to political pressure – Brazil has prioritized the training of family doctors over specialists. In 2013 a great initiative was designed called More Doctors, with its aim to hire physicians to work in underserved and remote areas. With many Brazilian doctors unwilling to relocate, thousands of Cuban doctors were hired instead. However, in November 2018, Cuba announced their withdrawal after a row over their status with the incoming president Jair Bolsonaro. Leaving politics aside in the discussion with Paulo, you will listen about how an oncology EHR looks like when it’s in development for over a decade in close collaboration with oncology specialists and why that has good potential to scale. OTAWA Health’s mission is to bring the oncology health record to underserved areas of the world, especially other parts of South America and Africa as universal healthcare cannot be universal while the huge gap between health technology assessment in use by high-income and low-income areas remains.
F098 Digital Health in South America 2/4: Colombia: “Doctors normally have two or three jobs” (Javier Cardona, 1Doc3)
When Googling the Colombian healthcare system, there’s mostly praise about how good it is! The World Health Organization ranked Colombia’s healthcare system as number 22 in a review of 191 countries. Javier Cardona is the CEO of 1DOC3 – a Colombian company that offers affordable telemedical consultations in seconds; no appointment is needed.
In this episode, Javier talked about the Columbian healthcare system structure, which ranks high according to WHO ranking. He also explained the needs and specifics of telemedicine in Latin America.
This is the second part of a short series about digital health in South America.
Find out more at: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/e0d0c43vvl3kfalkfzu3uribb3d6bp
1Doc3: https://www.1doc3.com/
F097 Digital health in South America 1/4: “Only 0.1% of the population has been sequenced so far” (Adrian Turjanski, Bitgenia, Argentina)
After a special series about digital health in Asia and Africa covered in 2019, the upcoming four episodes will present speakers from South America. A shoutout goes to Unity Stoakes and Jennifer Hankin from Startup Health, which connected me to the speakers in the upcoming episodes. All the companies are StartupHealth Transformers.
In this discussion, you will hear Adrian Turjanski, Chief Science Officer at Bitgenia – an Argentinian startup bringing genomics closer to society, explains the current state of genomics research in South America; he talked about the difference between the whole genome and exosome sequencing, and the use of AI in genetic sequencing.
In the upcoming episodes, you will hear from
Luis Santiago – CEO of the Venezuelan healthcare IT company PEGASI,
Javier Cardona, the CEO of the Colombian telemedicine company 1Doc3,
Paulo Fernando Buarque de Gusmão, CEO of Brazilian company OTAWA health.
Digital Health in Asia Series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f041045-digital-health-in-asia-china-india-south-korea-and-singapore
Digital Health in Africa Series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f056-f060-digital-health-in-africa-series-tanzania-nigeria-south-africa-rwanda
F096 Why can we be optimistic about the vaccine development for COVID-19? (Glen de Vries, Medidata)
Why are clinical trials complicated and how is technology from platforms to AI helping accelerate trial development and data analysis.
How did Germany accelerate the speed of the digitization of healthcare? (Henrik Matthies, Maike Henningsen, Maren Lesche)
Germany is one of the European countries with higher healthcare expenditures. 11% of GDP goes to healthcare compared to the 9.6% European average. Patients can be covered under public health insurance, or if they earn more than 5000 euros monthly, they choose from private health insurance providers. Health insurance is mandatory but competitive as there are around 100 health insurance companies on the market.
When Jens Spahn became the health minister In March 2018 Germany quickly became the European northern star of accelerated healthcare digitization. How did they do it?
You will hear from three speakers –
Henrik Matthies, managing director of the health innovation hub of the German Ministry of Health,
Maren Lesche – Head of Incubation at Vision Health Pioneers a pre-seed incubator ‘Vision Health Pioneers’ based in Berlin and
dr. Maike Henningsen – medical doctor, who specialized in OBGYN, oncology, endocrinology and reproductive medicine and who partially still works in the clinical practice but is also involved in Vision Health Pioneers as Head of Medical Business Strategy and involved in several other innovation projects.
F094 How can we simplify regulation of digital health apps? (Liz Ashall Payne, ORCHA)
There are well over 300.000 digital health apps on the market. However, only a third of them have been updated in the last 18 months, says Liz Ashal Payne – CEO and Founder of ORCHA – a UK based organization with a mission to distribute validated apps to patients who need them. Liz Ashal Payne – a digital health veteran, who started her career as a speech ad language therapist, worked as Assistant Director of Allied Health Professions (AHPs), she was a Clinical Programme Manager of Academic Health Science Network for the North West Coast, International Outreach Coordinator for ECHAlliance and more. After years of being in the digital health space, she founded ORCHA – an organisation with the mission to distribute digital health apps to people who need them.
See also F062 GDPR, MDR, and what you can do about you medical data (Jovan Stevovic): https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/blog/f062-gdpr-mdr-and-what-you-can-do-about-you-medical-data-jovan-stevovi
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