F044 Digital Health in Asia 4/5: Singapore and lucid dreaming (Tony Estrella)

Singapore, also known as Asia for beginners, is a 5.6 million people country, offering an encouraging environment to tech companies and expats. The government in Singapore is promoting IT adoption and innovation in healthcare. National Electronic Health Record system was rolled out in 2011. Combine that with countrywide connectivity, mobile-first population, and a lot of openness for collaboration with the private sector, and you get a healthtech epicenter in Asia.
Excluding China and India, Singapore took the lead by deal volume share in Asia in 2018 with 30%, followed by Japan with 27% and South Korea with 13%, according to Galen Growth.
Tony Estrella is a startup founder, investor, corporate innovation leader, and strategic advisor, with work experiences in the US, Europe and Asia. He is partnering with Asia-focused companies who are developing solutions to change the face of cancer and human longevity with core IP stemming from AI, Genomics, Blockchain, and smart devices. He recently published a fiction novel Comatose, which opens many ethical dilemmas regarding the future of healthcare technology development.
Some questions addressed:

Given that you lived all around the world, what are your observations of Asia?
Singapore offers universal healthcare coverage through a mixed financing system. How does the government support digital health development?
What drives innovation in Singapore?
The Accenture digital health in Singapore 2016 survey found that two-thirds (66%) of consumers who believe they should have EHR access want to see exactly what the doctor sees — not a summary. Opinion?
Your novel Comatose book opens up several ethical questions concerning patient data privacy, clinical trials and involuntary inclusion in medical research, hacking, medical ethics etc. How do you see the future of these issues and the actual fear from unintended consequences?
What has the process of writing a book taught you about business? (perseverance, dedicated time, did you ever get stuck. How did you design the outline of the story etc.)
 
**Annual End of Childhood report published by non-governmental organisation Save The Children, ranking Singapore and Slovenia as top countries for children: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-ranked-best-country-for-children-to-grow-up-in 
 

F043 Digital Health in Asia 3/5: India & reinvention of medical education with Project ECHO (Sunil Anand, Kartik Dhar)

If anyone, India is in dire need to increase access to quality care. According to WHO, the density of doctors of all types (allopathic, ayurvedic, unani and homeopathic) in 2001 was 8 doctors per 10,000 people, and the density of nurses was 6 nurses per 10.000 people.
Project ECHO® is one of the players with an important role in bringing patients quality care with the help of a revolutionary medical education project. The ambition of Project ECHO is to touch the lives of 1 billion people by 2025. The project works by connecting doctors on the local level, allowing them to share and discuss their clinical cases through the lens of the latest clinical guidelines.
In this podcast episode, the executive director of Project ECHO India — Sunil Anand and Kartik Dhar, Leading the ECHO Digital technical solutions development and India based product teams, talk about 
the current state of healthcare in India, 
government’s plans for “Modicare” – insurance coverage  of ₹500,000 (7200$) per year per family, for 500 million people,
Digitization progress and governmental plans for an integrated approach to electronic health records. 
 
Observations regarding mobile health: many startups are trying, penetration is not visible yet. More and more startups are shifting towards solutions in local language and there is a visible focus on mental health. 

F042 Digital health in Asia 2/5: What drives the incredible pace of development in China? (Julie Wang)

China’s population is larger than the population of the US and Europe combined. The country is becoming the leader in AI development. The enabling factor for China’s rapid advancement in AI is that Chinese Tech giants and government agencies are investing heavily the most important fuel for AI development – data infrastructures. In healthcare, for example, the company Yitu has a team of about 400 doctors, most of whom work part-time for about 10 hours a week to help label data. One-fifth of the healthcare team’s full-time employees have a medical background. 
Asian countries were lagging behind in digitization in the past, which enabled them to leapfrog development with mobile phones. The consumers here use Tencent’s WeChat for shopping, paying bills and more. Understandably, Tencent’s new strides into healthcare are highly anticipated. According to Technode, Tencent is testing real-time clinic services in its WeChat wallet, and as reported by mobihealthnews, Tencent Trusted Doctor is among a number of technology-driven firms looking to shake up China’s overburdened public healthcare market.
According to Phillips Future Health Index 2019 China is an outlier in terms of healthcare professionals encouraging their patients to track healthcare data. 
Julie Wang talks about Chinese culture, entrepreneurship, and values driving digital health in China.
Also listen to: How advanced is China in digital health? 

F041 Digital health in Asia 1/5: An overview (Julien de Salaberry)

Asia is the second-largest digital health ecosystem in the world. 2018 ended with a record-breaking 6.8 billion US dollars invested. According to IBC Asia, the digital health market is expected to reach $379 billion by 2024. Asian countries are leapfrogging the west in tech adoption. Many countries are turning into cashless societies where all transactions are done through mobile phones. At the same time, the culture in Asia is very different compared to the West. For a light start, this first episode will give you a broad overview of the region, with Julien de Salaberry, CEO and Founder of Galen Growth Asia. But before that, a few interesting thoughts about China, India, Singapore, and South Korea, from speakers in the upcoming episodes.
The latest Gale Growth report about H1 of 2019 in Asia: https://bit.ly/2ZbgeKf

F040 Slovenia (Part 1): What to learn from Slovenia about drug regulation?

This episode is the first part of a two-part series about healthcare in Slovenia. Given that drug prices are a consistently controversial topic in the US healthcare system, the first part of the series explains European regulation. Why are drug prices in Europe more affordable? How does drug pricing and medication management work in Europe and Slovenia? Why is it hard to imagine that an opioid crisis or widespread use of ADHD drugs would happen in this part of Europe? The speaker explaining the topics is the Head of the medication management department at the Healthcare Insurance Institute of Slovenia Jurij Fürst.

F040 Slovenia (Part 2): How strong is the digital health community?

This is the second part of a two-part series about healthcare in Slovenia. Slovenia is a country of 2 million people, with a universal healthcare system, where electronic medical cards have been in place since the nineties. The interoperable backbone for main patient documents such as discharge letters has been in place since 2012. On the index of the digital economy and society 2018 prepared by the European Commission, Slovenia was ranked 6th according to the use of eHealth solutions. Tina Vavpotič, healthcare business strategist and consultant, with rich experience in healthcare policy design, healthcare IT product design and implementation, shares her thoughts about eHealth and digital health.