How many times in the last year or two have you heard that patients should own their data or have control over their data? These statements sound simple but are much more complex once you start to look at the implications they might have in practice. In June, the European Patients’ Forum Congress took place in Brussels. The topic was the digital transformation of healthcare, data sharing, and the role of patient organizations in this story.
Read MorePakistan is the 5th largest population but 50% of the population doesn’t have access to primary healthcare. People have access to mobile phones, but not necessarily smartphones. What is the state of healthcare digitalization in the country?
Read MoreKarim Karshavjee is the Program Director of the Masters of Health Informatics program at the University of Toronto. He is the co-author of the chapter on Designing Disease-Specific mHealth Apps for Clinical Value in the book Smart and Pervasive Healthcare. The chapter offers an overview of the current usability and use of mHealth apps and what to take into account if you are developing one. To quote one of the findings - “While investments in mHealth is continues to grow, usage of mHealth apps continues to be low. Based on the data in 2017, the use of apps was especially low amongst patients with chronic disease who are most likely to benefit from their use [4]. While 38% of respondents with no health condition had downloaded 1–5 mHealth apps in a survey in 2017, only 6.6% with hypertension had done the same. “
Read MoreDr. Dimitri Varsamis is Senior Policy Lead for digital primary care at NHS England. End of 2020 he published a report titled Incentives and levers for digitising and integrating primary care in New Zealand, Australia, and the USA - lessons for the UK’s NHS. Dr. Varsamis researched primary care digitalisation prior to the global coronavirus pandemic.
Read MoreAmong the projects he sees as most promising at the moment are blockchain project used for credentialing (for example read/listen more about HPEC here) of medical professionals, projects using blockchain to adjudicate business contracts between different parties, where adjudication normally happens in silos. There’s also project MELLODY (Machine learning ledger orchestration for drug discovery). This is a collaboration among 10 major pharma companies that are using a blockchain-based infrastructure and federated learning to speed drug development.
Read MoreMany doctors leave full-time medical practice to become entrepreneurs. Many of them do that to solve systemic issues plaguing healthcare. This series includes four doctors from the US, UK and Spain, Daniel Kraft, Michael Docktor, Owain Rhys Hughes and Guillem Serra explain their experiences with healthcare IT during their clinical practice, and their motivation to develop technological solutions for healthcare.
Read MoreSlovenia is a country of 2 million people, with a universal healthcare system, and quite a few success stories about digitization to share. One digitally unrelated thing patients in Slovenia can be grateful for is access to drugs.
Read MoreEstonia has only 1,3 million people, but is famous worldwide for its digital governance. If you want, you can become an Estonian electronic resident and run your business from Estonia, regardless of your actual country of residence. Healthcare wise, 95% of healthcare data is in digital form, some of it supported with blockchain technology.
Read MoreClinicalTrials.gov currently lists 302,091 clinical studies in the US. It is impossible for patients and their doctors to be aware of all clinical trials an individual might be eligible for. The data issues surrounding clinical trials don’t end there: how can we rely on results of trials when studies with negative results often go unpublished? Various companies are creating platforms and solutions to address these issues.
Read MoreAnyone who wishes to learn about blockchain in general or specifically in healthcare can get overwhelmed by the number of results offered by a Google search. Awareness of the difficulty of finding credible, helpful and nuanced information around blockchain, was among the triggers for the book Blockchain in Healthcare Innovations that Empower Patients, Connect Professionals and Improve Care.
Read MoreRafael Grossmann is a Surgeon, Educator, Healthcare Futurist, known in the digital health community as the VR surgeon. Originally from Venezuela, Rafael has been practicing medicine in the US for more than 15 years.
Read MoreHIMSS has more than 100.000 members around the globe and is often seen as the global healthcare IT community care-taker. Every year, the global conference in the US attracts more than 40.000 people, says Wolf.
Read MoreNext generations of doctors, who are supposed to embrace and use new digital health inventions, are trained in an outdated model with little room for creative engagement.
Read MoreDuring the planning of implementation requirements for the Perth Children’s Hospital, which took several years, Chris Johnson made sure to include in planning representatives of all the groups in the hospital, who would be affected most in the end — pharmacists, doctors and nurses.
In the end, around 40 people reviewed the implementation requirements and took part in meetings, where IT vendors were demoing their solutions.
Read MoreMany European countries have various successful national eHealth implementation stories, with patients having access to their discharge letters, ePrescriptions, and some form of a personal health record. The success can partially be connected to the fact that the smaller the country, the easier it is to achieve connectivity.
Read MoreIn the last decade, healthcare has started moving to value-based care and so-called patient-centricity. Patients are increasingly seen as customers, that don’t just receive information and treatment but instead take an active part in it.
Read MoreEpisode 22 of Faces of digital health offers a recap on a few lucid thoughts on interoperability, AI, and how we need to start thinking if we wish to live in a better society in the future, from Exponential Medicine.
Read MoreThe way we view data today is going to radically change in terms of ownership, says Ray. In the future, we will have more autonomy and will not to have to give away our data ownerships right to intermediaries. Until we get there though, one of the key things blockchain solutions need to figure out is the user experience and managing private keys.
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