What is Openwater trying to achieve in Healthcare? Openwater is creating MRI-resolution wearables that leverage consumer electronics manufacturing facilities and techniques with a physics breakthrough based on a now half-century-old technique, mostly forgotten, and re-invented every decade or so by a group that didn’t know about the previous go-arounds. I figured out how to build this half-century-old physical principle into consumer electronic devices that can be made in the world’s high volume manufacturing facilities and also leverage the awesome compute power and AI methods we have at our fingertips today. The result can drive the size and cost of the best medical imaging systems down to consumer electronic prices. I will not guarantee the first systems we ship hit smartphone pricing; in our first products we may choose to cover development and amortization expenses. Yet at volume production, we see no reason why we can not achieve consumer electronics pricing. Our systems, as they evolve, can ultimately both read (image) and write (perform surgery, ablate, provide targeted therapy, accelerate drug testing, etc) to specific areas of the body or scan the entire body. And beyond. The very same systems can be used to read thoughts and pull the images that you are thinking of, the words that you are about to say, and whether you are really listening to what I’m saying or not as has been shown for the past 5 years by dozens of research groups using fMRI machines to do this. These fMRI machines image 10 cubic mm voxels of oxygen use in the brain to be achieve these results. Openwater systems can go well beyond this. Openwater is a moonshot to telepathy; to reading and writing thoughts and connecting our minds directly to each other and to our computer networks. Our approach is incremental - we are enabling a suite of products along the way towards our moonshot that can be transformational in healthcare. Some of the best diagnostic tools in healthcare are the multi-million dollar MRI, PET and CT scanners that can see inside of our bodies at high resolution. They diagnose conditions, more accurately than was possible before, earlier than possible before, and save millions of lives. At Openwater we are transforming diagnostic imaging tools to make them widely available and portable. The portability together with low cost enable something not yet possible - continuous monitoring of the body with high resolution images of our insides. We are working to provide high resolution continuous imaging systems that leapfrog the room-size multi-million dollar systems of today and can be deployed in homes, ambulances, doctor’s offices, and throughout the developing world. That means better, faster and cheaper - lowering the cost from millions of dollars to consumer electronics levels all in the size of a portable. We are creating a wearable with the resolution of a multi-million dollar MRI system that can fit into a ski hat, a bandage, or a piece of clothing. This could enable diagnosis of all kinds of conditions from cancers, to clogged arteries, to internal bleeding to never-before-possible monitoring of brain diseases - from mental diseases to neurodegenerative diseases that currently disable approximately one billion people globally and account for together, by far, the highest healthcare expenditure in the world. Non-invasive continuous monitoring of neurological conditions can enable better care, better therapy, the ability to titrate therapy or localize therapy and will likely help us better understand and someday cure mental diseases and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen - Founder & CEO Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen is the founder of Openwater whose goal is a wearable with MRI-plus resolution that can enable telepathy as well as drastically transform diagnostic costs for healthcare. Previously she was an engineering executive at Facebook, Oculus, Google and Intel. In addition Mary Lou has founded 4 startups including One Laptop per Child where she was CTO, chief architect and delivered to mass production the $100 laptop. Her startup CEO experience includes the world’s only fabless display screen company which was based in Taipei. She has been a professor at both MITs: RMIT in Australia and MIT in Cambridge. She is an inventor of over 200 published or issued patents and has shipped billions of dollars worth of consumer electronics on the hairy edge of what the physics will do. She has been recognized with many awards including TIME magazine’s “Time 100” as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and as a CNN top 10 thinker. Openwater Technology Our goal is to create a wearable to enable us to see the inner workings of the body and brain at high resolution. Using novel opto-electronics we aim to replace the functionality of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) with a true wearable enabling constant monitoring. Implications are broad for detection and treatment of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, internal bleeding, mental diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and beyond - for communication via thought. We use an utterly unconventional approach that enables us to leapfrog MRI technology by using the scattering of the body or the brain itself to focus infrared light to scan the brain or body bit by bit or voxel by voxel. This is enabled by LCDs with pixels small enough to create reconstructive holographic images that neutralize the scattering and enable scanning at MRI resolution and depth coupled with the use of body-temperature detectors. These LCDs and detectors line the inside of a ski-hat, bandage or other clothing. We are making our own LCDs to do this in the vast factories that make liquid crystal displays - custom designed to modulate the interference of intensity and phase in the near infrared regime with the video-rate computer generated holograms integrated with embedded detectors. We can scan out the brain or body systematically or selectively. This basic system can be used in reverse, to write, to focus light to any area of interest in the body or brain (to irradiate tumors for example). This technology enables continuous scanning of the body and brain in the form of a true wearable the size of a ski-hat or bandage. The implications of this architecture are profound for healthcare and can even enable communication with thought alone (as has been well documented by neuroscientists using the room size MRI scanners). With read/write ability - we may be able to upload/download and augment our memories, thoughts and emotions with a ski-hat form factor, non-invasively. Source : https://www.openwater.cc/

McLaren Applied Technologies In Healthcare When McLaren Applied Technologies was created almost three decade ago, people looking in understood we could use racing as a sandpit to develop technology for motorsports and the automotive industry. From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to see how we could take that into other forms of transport, and today, we have both an Automotive and Public Transport business. With healthcare it was different: our ability to tackle critical challenges in health was not immediately obvious to the outside world. That said, true innovation isn’t derived from being predictable. It comes from pushing boundaries, working with partners who share your ambition and finding the diamonds in the rough to achieve those incremental gains. And with something as important as our health, continuous improvement really is performance critical. Now, let’s put it in context. Motorsport is the interaction between man and machine. If you go into a hospital, you see a similar thing. Modern healthcare is driven by optimising interactions between a biological system, or patient, and often a sensor technology reliant upon sensors. The main difference between a hospital and a racetrack? Instead of drivers and engineers, we have patients and doctors. For me, the similarities between these two worlds make them a good fit – and that’s exactly why I’m confident in our abilities to deliver real improvements in health. Yes, there are many areas of medicine that are highly optimised. In those, there’s not a lot more we can do to engineer better health outcomes. But there are key areas, which promise a significant delta between what we’re doing today where we believe we could be doing more to make that difference in patient outcome. Providing even a very small amount of extra insight where patient behaviours play a very significant role can lead to radically better results. And we’ve already started. Initially we began with elite athletes in partnership with UK Sport – but this type of technology quickly found its way into healthcare applications. NHS Next we went directly into our own health system, the NHS. Here we started by developing a simple technology designed to provide objective information to support weight loss in obesity, with an eye on ultimately preventing the onset of type 2 diabetes. The solution: a system which provided data to show how much energy was being expended by patients prescribed an exercise routine by their clinicians. It was simple, but effective: by wearing the technology, we created a feedback loop. Patients were able to see how much work they were doing and were far more successful at losing weight. So with only a small amount of the right insight we could drive the correct behaviours, in an incredibly powerful way. This shows the power of data to drive change. It can be incredibly effective when used to inform patient behaviour. The main advantage? It is accessible, can have a real effect on outcomes, and does not risk the negative side effects of more aggressive therapies. So what next for Applied Technologies in health? I believe there are five therapeutic areas where we can do what we’re here to do, have impact and improve lives. 1) Diabetes 2) Respiratory Medicine 3) Cardiology 4) Mental Health 5) Bone and Joint Health And we’ve already started on the latter, supporting orthopaedic surgeons achieve better outcomes. How? Consider a joint replacement procedure and the resulting movement of the joint. When it comes to bone and joint health, clinicians don’t use good, objective functional data, but instead, rely heavily upon X-rays. That’s a structural dataset. To really make a difference, make a change, you need the full picture: functional datasets of the way in which people move. You can then analyse the loading patterns around about the joint in order to inform the best type of reconstruction with all the data available, and drive an improvement in patient-outcomes from surgery. But this is only the first leg of our journey. Applied Technologies is growing fast in health, from the UK to Singapore. And our mission in health is only growing. As a team, we will create intelligent products and processes to improve health outcomes, reduce health inequality, at a cost that we can afford. It’s all about improving lives. Source : https://www.mclaren.com/appliedtechnologies/news/how-mclaren-use-formula-1-technology-improve-healthcare/

It seems that every week there is a new smartphone app, artificial intelligence platform, or virtual reality program targeting behavioral health. But behavioral health is a broad term that captures the services offered to address or prevent mental (e.g., depression), behavioral (such as overeating, medication noncompliance) and addictive concerns. Innovation for behavioral health is certainly needed as disorders like depression and anxiety are already a leading cause of global disability, healthcare spending, and personal suffering. But which announcements of new digital behavioral health technologies offer true innovation today compared with more aspirational claims for the future? There is no clear answer but in this article, we offer a simple framework to help approach new digital behavioral health technologies. Although this is not intended as business advice, we highlight those points we often consider when we try to understand and contextualize new product or company announcements. The overarching formula that drives recommendations on what to look for is a well-accepted behavioral health formula: impact = reach x efficacy. Without being effective in the actual setting of interest, a digital health product is not a solution. Without being accessible and engaging to the user group (patients and clinicians), a digital health product does not have enough reach. Without impact, it is not likely to be profitable. Many companies suggest that they have products that work and will integrate smoothly into patients’ lives and into the existing healthcare infrastructure. One focus has been on identifying payers who will cover the cost. Once payers are on board, the assumption is that doctors will recommend the product, patients will download and use it, efficacy will be similar to that observed in highly controlled clinical trials. It is also assumed that doctors will track user data (an additional administrative burden that is typically not reimbursable and potentially introduces some liability). These recommendations break down aspects of the clinical implementation process that, in our experience, indicate whether these assumptions are reasonable for a particular product: Do clinicians (psychologists, psychiatrists) with expertise in digital health work for the company? It is difficult to develop a product for a market that you do not really know inside and out. While many companies have behavioral health providers as subject matter experts and consultants, fewer have in-house clinician-scientists who are actually integral to the product development / improvement process. Behavioral health clinicians receive years of training in how to produce the types of change digital platforms seek to make and they are vetted by licensing boards. Companies without this seem likely to miss important opportunities to drive clinical innovation. Related to this point, many companies employ non-behavioral health clinicians (e.g., primary care doctors) or doctoral level scientists (e.g., neuroscientists) as the key clinical contributors. Unfortunately, this is similar to employing a chemical engineer to produce a robot. The engineer may be able to transfer pieces of their skillset, but they are not a software engineer who has been specifically trained and vetted in this area. Has the product been evaluated in its intended use setting? Many products boast strong outcomes generated in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Randomized controlled trials, however, do not always translate to real-world efficacy especially in behavioral health. RCTs typically involve a high level of participant outreach, select for highly motivated participants and incentivize engagement with the platform (e.g., compensation for study visits, module completion). Just because a depressed patient completes 16 sessions of digital health program in an RCT, does not mean that the same patient, let alone a less motivated patient, would complete 16 sessions of a digital health program in their routine healthcare settings where the reinforcement is usually entirely intrinsic and study staff are not calling regularly to check in. To date, there are few real-world RCTs for behavioral health technologies although, if available, they certainly would offer valuable information. Promising companies show the efficacy of their products in actual healthcare settings when the products are recommended by actual providers or payer systems, and there are no external incentives or study staff are encouraging engagement. This evidence should be more than anecdotal or simple endorsements; rather it should be rigorous and objectively collected. It is also worth carefully checking a company’s website to determine if the evidence cited is for general behavioral health principles (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy) versus treatment delivered by the actual product (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy on a certain smartphone app) What does user engagement look like in the real world? A related but separate consideration is the extent to which the program itself draws users in. For a product to be viable it needs to be something that users actually engage with initially and stay engaged with over time. In real-world (non-research) settings it is standard for habituation to occur and engagement to drop off even within days. No one would expect someone who took three days worth of a 12-day course of antibiotics to get better. Without user engagement, digital health interventions cannot produce change. So, when evaluating a company or product, we look at engagement metrics. Has the company evaluated engagement? If so, what engagement levels do we see in real-world settings where artificial incentives often seen in research are not present? App download metrics may often seem impressive, but downloading an app or software is often unrelated to how many users actually engage with it in a meaningful way. There is even evidence that the number of app downloads, or star ratings on app marketplaces, does not correlate well with the usability or clinical validity of behavioral health apps. What demands does the product place on clinicians? Tracking options and clinician interfaces have become common in digital health products. While appealing in theory, in practice they may place more burdens on providers than the market can withstand. Clinicians tend to already be overburdened with administrative tasks – tasks that, while important, distract from patient care and do not drive their salaries or the clinic’s bottom line. When digital health products add to this burden by providing another piece of information to check they place strain on an already strained system, which means something has to give. Simple additions to a `clinician’s schedule, such as requiring them to log onto an interface that is separate from the electronic medical record, reduce clinicians’ likelihood of engaging. Clinician engagement is key since studies suggest it may drive patient engagement. Low clinician engagement may also leave clinics and the digital health company vulnerable to legal ramifications if patients are providing key health information with the understanding that it is being monitored, but then it is not monitored. In the future, we may see models where providers can be reimbursed for time spent doing administrative work related to digital health treatment. At that time, many doors could be opened. Until that time, additional administrative burden is unlikely to be well received within healthcare systems. Is there any value offered by the product even if patients and providers do not engage with the product? If we assume that many of these products will not generate ongoing engagement from patients and providers, we are left asking what else can they do? The answer may be to provide alerts when data collected via passive sensors suggest a problem. It may be tracking patterns of behaviors that are reviewed in routine appointments (e.g., steps for cardiovascular patients being advised to increase activity). It may be nothing. If it’s nothing, we rely entirely on user engagement for value of the product. And, as already discussed, user engagement is likely the biggest challenge in digital behavioral health, given that a motivation is often at the core of behavioral health concerns. When the answer is yes to these above questions, we expect to see high reach and high efficacy. In short, we expect to see high impact. While the field of behavioral health and especially digital technology for behavioral health is always full of surprises, in-house clinician expertise, real-world evidence, low burden on healthcare providers, and delivering value even when engagement is low are useful points to always consider in your personal assessment. About the Authors Jessica Lipschitz, PhD is the Associate Director of the Program in Behavioral Informatics and eHealth within the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), a Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospital. Lipschitz also provides clinical services as part of BWH’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Program and supervises residents in the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency program on how to conduct CBT. She has a background working within the VA Healthcare System and consulting for digital health startups. John Torous, MD is co-director of the digital psychiatry program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospital, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and clinical informatics fellow. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences and received an undergraduate degree in the field from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at UC San Diego. Source : https://medcitynews.com/2018/03/5-factors-consider-evaluating-new-digital-behavioral-health-tech/?rf=1

It's the humanity. It's the technology. It's the vast complexities of our evolving world that both humanity and technology just can't seem to find a middle ground. I've found that many of life's discussions--from the dining room to the emergency room--often move to a polarized perspective where human-centricity and technological advances clash in a tumultuous battle where only one perspective can survive. It seems that technology and humanity are in battle with each other. And this can certainly be revealed in the emotionally-driven decisions in clinical care that attempt to balance quality of life versus issues like survival. We can even see this in the emergence of the robotic burger flipper that contrasts automation with human employment. Time for a new Q Maybe technology needs to be more empathetic. But perhaps and in curious way, it might just be humanity that needs to become more empathetic to technology. I don't think there's a mushy middle here--a bland compromise that obscures and doesn't resolve. So, I'm fine with defining our humanity by IQ. And I think that EQ is great too. But maybe it's time for a new Q. And this time, technology is demanding a seat at the table. My argument is that there's a new perspective that's driven by the amazing advances in technology that range from neural implants to artificial intelligence. And as much as it makes people nervous, I contend that humanity itself is changing and morphing into a techno-powered transhuman reality. And yes, I did say transhuman. After you have completely integrated your smartphone into your lifestyle, received that pacemaker, the new hip, LASIK vision improvement, and a few other technological implants, you might consider yourself a bit changed. And your relationship with technology (and your new self) is going to change too. So, how do you put it all into perspective? Is the emerging 'you' composed of just flesh and blood? Or has silicon replaced carbon as part of your techno-physiology? How can we consider things like IQ and EQ in the context of the techno-evolved human? If fact, it's been argued that we may already need to expand IQ into a broader perspective, that can include BQ (body quotient) and MQ (moral quotient) to better capture today's reality. I'm suggesting that we include a new framework beyond IQ and EQ. As our exponential world unfolds before us, intrinsic intelligence and empathy will help us ride the technological wave to an exciting new world. But, our ability to assimilate these changes into our lives and our bodies may be just as important. TQ : Technology Quotient Introducing TQ. A technology quotient representing a person's ability to adapt to and integrate technology as compared to the statistical norm or average for their age, taken as 100. Any Mom or Dad can understand the value of IQ and EQ in projecting the potential for a child's success. And while the perfect combination of IQ and EQ may be in question, book smarts and street smarts are always high on the wish list. But what about technology? The ability for the toddler and the teacher to understand, embrace and assimilate technology will be a defining aspect of their lives as we speed into the future. And in many instances, this techno-ability will drive achievement and success. In the final analysis, we are increasingly defined by technology and our active participation in everything from smartphones to Facebook. It might just be time for the basic human needs of food, water and shelter to incorporate technology too. And when that happens, it just might be a good idea to measure it. Technological innovations are arriving faster and faster--becoming less an option and more an imperative. As this reality unfolds upon us, the value of TQ may emerge as a core determinate of success in this crazy place we call the future. Source : https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-digital-self/201703/technologys-battle-iq-eq-or-something-very-different

Disruption in healthcare is happening now, what can the industry do to keep up? Since 2000 digital disruption has demolished 52% of the Fortune 500, with tech disrupting many industries such as music, publishing and retail. There are many cases already of established players who failed to ignore customer demands and reacted too slowly. Remember Blockbuster? We now have Netflix. Other examples abound: Companies like Amazon, Volkswagen and McDonalds are all at the top of their game through fostering and leveraging innovative, even disruptive, supply chains built around strategic relationships and mutual trust In four years, Airbnb has completely disrupted the hotel industry and today has more than 100 million users Robotic process automation helped an international insurer cut down reporting times from 90 to 12 minutes, with 100% accuracy Electric carmaker Tesla, which produces a fraction of vehicles compared with major US automakers, has achieved a higher market capitalisation than any — based on its prospects, not profits. It uses personalized digital marketing, as opposed to a dealer network, to drive sales. The pressure is on the health sector to catch up and keep up and it is just a matter of time before it impacts the pharmaceutical industry. Why pharma is ripe for disruption Industry disruption usually occurs for three reasons: Technological meteors, such as when science creates breakthrough technology Wasteful, outdated business models Economic or policy changes All three of these factors are present in the pharma world. Nearly $140 billion is spent on pharma R&D each year and yet results in only 30 to 40 new drug approvals. The R & D process, including how clinical trials are conducted, is inefficient and needs to change. Things are starting to progress- the FDA has been progressive in the adoption of health technology in clinical trials, and pharma is turning to ‘value based’ care models. But tech disruption will provide a smarter and quicker path for drug R&D, industry regulations and new tools. For example, blockchain technology could help pharma adopt the Falsified Medicines Directive – a direct response to the enormous financial and humanitarian cost of fake pharmaceutical drugs in the supply chain (10% of market share and an estimated 1 million deaths). Companies like Qad.re use the inherent audit trail and security that comes with blockchain to assign a tamper proof unique identity to pharma products, which can be tracked with a smart phone for a secure supply chain management solution. Technology driving change Other innovative start-ups use artificial intelligence to mine and analyse biomedical information, from clinical trials data to academic papers to identify molecules that have failed in clinical trials and predict how these same compounds can instead be more efficient targeting other diseases. For example, Benevolent AI uses the predictive power of its AI algorithm to design new molecules, extracting a new hypothesis based on a knowledge graph composed of over a billion relationships between genes, targets, diseases, proteins and drugs. Developments in technology will also change how patients engage in research and in their own care. Patients who participate in trials will expect trial results and treatments to be available more quickly than the current system. As more patients finally gain the ability to download their own data from electronic medical records and other sensors, patients will be more likely to share their health information – especially from wearable devices – and will want transparency and expect the system to be both convenient and personalised. If that data can be shared, more services and technology will become available to consumers. A new health ecosystem The arrival of technologies like blockchain, which has started to change the face of banking and financial services, is now coming to disrupt healthcare. Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies will enable people to have complete control over their medical records and share their data with whom they decide, and even be paid for it. Could this be the start of a health ecosystem where citizens, as the gatekeepers of their own data, could be incentivised to share it with pharmaceutical companies who could then use the insight from this data to develop better drugs, more quickly, at lower cost and reward people for healthier lifestyles? Could this be the start of pharma moving from a sickcare model to a preventive health paradigm? It is already happening in Estonia, and predictions are that other developing nations, for example, in Africa, will leapfrog the developed world using these new technologies without being constrained by legacy systems, wedded mindsets and cultural inertia. According to John Nosta, the digital health guru who sits on Google’s strategic health advisory board, pharma has relied on line extensions and extended release drugs as the source of income and innovation for too long. The wake up calls for pharma are coming from a wide variety of industries, like retail, as well Google and Apple (recently in the news for its dermal sensor for measuring blood glucose and managing diabetes). The arrival of the tech giants For traditional pharma companies, the arrival of Google and Apple on their territory is unsettling. Only a fraction of the value of a drug is in the physical pill or injection itself. Could new entrants from Silicon Valley and beyond take over like everyone is predicting? Will Google become the next pharma? Beyond getting patients to take their pills properly, could pharmaceutical companies ever compete with the tech companies who excel at getting close to the customer and leveraging insights from their data? At a recent EyeforPharma Patient Summit in London I caught up with Guy Yeoman, Head of Patient Centricity at AstraZeneca, and asked him some of these questions and whether ‘pharma disruption’ will be good for patients and for citizens more broadly. Yeoman was decidedly upbeat: ‘Disruption that empowers people to engage with their disease and enables them to manage that disease more effectively will change the healthcare landscape. Technology will be the key enabler to make this happen and AZ is trying to make this happen in asthma. The sooner the Googles of today or tomorrow’s world engage in healthcare, the better.’ There are still some hurdles. Most activity so far has been limited to fitness apps providing motivational information rather than truly medical-grade data. The apps for chronic diseases so far have not been trailblazing successes, being poorly designed, not user friendly and ineffective in addressing the complex behavioural issues at stake. To provide real research value health apps need to be connected to electronic patient records and there remains significant systemic barriers to this happening in most countries, not to mention public concerns over data privacy. Partnership & collaboration The healthcare ecosystem itself could use a boost of collaborative innovation. This was the top take away from the Patient Summit. Pharma is tussling with how to deliver value based care and showing benefits to patients. Trust is still a major issue with the general public over lack of transparency and concerns over corruption – and the debate at the Summit was on the need for more equal partnerships and pre-competitive collaborations with patients and the public in a sustainable way that delivers positive outcomes to society. What sort of partnerships and collaborations in the next five years will specifically address wider societal benefits and truly empower people in a sustainable and scalable way to improve health? Yeoman says, ‘I see no limit to potential collaborations – why not banking, telesales, supermarkets? Data is being merged from across all these industries today. . . .’ At the Summit there was discussion around ‘transcelerators’ – a sort of cross- company innovation vehicle- and the need to be bold and aspirational working together as an industry to solve major global problems, akin to what we have in energy with the Kyoto agreement to addressing climate change through lowering carbon emissions. But who will drive these sorts of collaborations in pharma? Yeoman admitted, ‘we need to address fundamental issues such as trust first and work out what wider societal benefit we deliver, before we can make a credible agreement. Some of us say we should absolutely just deliver medicines, others that we embrace much broader society impact. The agreement must be aspirational, based on unifying principles and we need measures to demonstrate delivery.’ The big questions Pharma is only just now starting to ask these questions of itself and of its role in society. In a very interesting recent conversation between Richie Etwaru, Chief Digital Officer at Quintiles, leading contract research organisation, and Milind Kamkolkar, Chief Data Officer at Sanofi, it seems the industry is starting to question its very own survival too. Etwaru states ‘I love that metaphor. . . on the comet and the dinosaurs that you’re talking about. The crux of the matter today is not so much how I engage with patients, or how I discover drugs, or how I figure out my pricing, or my analytics. Those are all individual problems. But at the core of the problem is the notion that the business model of the pharmaceutical manufacturer is starting to expire. If the three of us were given $3 billion today. . . to go start a pharma company to manufacture treatments for those that are disenfranchised by health, I’m not sure we would pick the model we have today that takes 8-10 years to discover a molecule and bring it to market.’ Kamkolkar says in turn, ’we are at a point now where there are technology paradigms that are allowing us to have data that is protected but shareable at the same time. . . we have a reality in front of us with the invention of the blockchain, with asymmetric cryptography and distributed ledgers to truly start to build business models where data can be protected but shared at the same time. And that, I think, is opening up a lot of opportunities. . . we’re really making a conscientious effort to break down some of those silos and really tackle these issues from a patient-centric perspective and also, from a physician and caregiver perspective, as well. It’s really looking at the holistic care package.’ This is where the debate is starting to go in pharma- transformation of the business model taking learnings and ideas from other industries: Technology companies are using social and consumer engagement platforms, coupled with data analytics and mobile health solutions, to develop personalized, actionable insights on a population health level. Retailers are driving insights into patients’ lifestyles and behaviors and becoming the future of health care service. Consumer product companies are introducing user friendly technologies from other industries and making big bets on nutraceuticals and superfoods. Start-ups are accelerating the industry’s speed to market, spurring fresh thinking and forcing traditional players to move fast. Innovation in today’s disruptive digital economy can come from anyone and anywhere—inside and outside any enterprise. This means companies must fire up and fuel co-innovation like never before across all functions, grade levels, geographies, partners and customers within, without and among their four walls. And often, the most novel solutions often come from outside the industry silo. Pharma had better get going before it is too late and Google takes over. . . About the Author Tina Woods is founder of Collider Health, a health innovation catalyst that works with organisations to think and do differently and transform health with meaningful impact. She also heads up the Future Health Collective, a cross-industry, interdisciplinary group to foster collaboration and radical innovation in areas of unmet need in health and social care. Source : https://disruptionhub.com/google-next-big-pharma-healthcare/

Introduction to Mindstrong Health Founded by three of the world’s leading authorities in neuroscience, medicine and computer science, Mindstrong Health is redefining behavioral healthcare by redefining how care providers will diagnose and manage brain disorders. Mindstrong’s technology will – for the first time - give patients and providers a seamless and instantaneous method to objectively and continuously measure mood, cognition, and behavior in the home and work environment, delivering insights not possible with traditional clinical, neuropsychological, and imaging techniques. Mindstrong builds on one of the founder’s digital biomarker platform developed over years of extensive R&D. Mindstrong has developed and patented a biomarker panel that measures brain function from interaction patterns captured passively and continuously from human-computer interfaces found in ubiquitous mobile technology. The Smartphone Mindstrong’s science begins with the smartphone. With over three billion smartphones globally and more than 75% of American adults owning a smartphone (92% between ages 18 – 29), this powerful mobile computer has become ubiquitous. Digital Phenotyping collects data from the smartphone to provide measures of emotion, cognition, and behavior. In three rigorous clinical studies with over 200 person-years of data, Mindstrong has used powerful machine learning analytics to show that specific digital features correlate with cognitive function, clinical symptoms, and measures of brain activity. Digital Phenotyping Digital phenotyping uses three kinds of signals from a smartphone. Sensors measure activity, location, and social meta-data (e.g. number of messages out vs messages in). Human-computer interactions capture keyboard performance including typing and clicking. Voice and speech data analyzed with natural language processing can yield insights into emotion and cognitive coherence. Together these signals contribute to the picture of mood, cognition, and behavior we call the digital phenotype. To identify the digital phenotyping features that could be clinically useful, research volunteers completed extensive neuropsychological testing, clinical assessments of mood and cognition, and, in some cases, neuroimaging with fMRI. The results revealed a set of digital biomarkers from human-computer interaction (keyboard performance) that correlate highly with select cognitive measures and brain connectivity. While single markers correlated highly with cognitive and neural features, combining markers yielded even higher correlations. In one study with 100 patients with depression, combining biomarkers yielded high correlations with the PHQ-9, a gold standard measure of depression. Mindstrong biomarker platform was used by the National Institutes of Health grant UH2HL132368 “Engaging self-regulation targets to understand the mechanisms of behavior change and improve mood and weight outcomes” Improving Clinical Outcomes These initial studies demonstrate the feasibility of using digital phenotyping to collect data over a full year in research volunteers. Will this approach improve outcomes in clinical practice? Our current studies address this question for people with serious mental illness. Mindstrong’s scientific challenge is to go beyond predicting current measures to develop novel objective measures that can predict relevant outcomes and yield precise diagnostic information – the scientific basis of predictive medicine and precision medicine. Mindstrong Health is participating in several trials selected to test the value of digital phenotyping in clinical populations. 1) Clinical Trial for Depression - Stanford University (funded by NIH) 2) Clinical Trial for PTSD - University of North Carolina (funded by NIH) 3) Clinical Trial for Serious Mental Illness - Humana Health The Future At any given moment, roughly one in seven of the world’s 7.5 Billion people is struggling with mental illness. "All modern medicine is based on objective measurement, yet tracking mental health has been limited to subjective reports in a clinical environment," said Dr. Paul Dagum, founder and CEO of Mindstrong Health. "To improve outcomes for people with mental disorders, we need the kind of objective measures we have for other chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Mindstrong's technology delivers continuous, objective measures of behavior and cognition at a level of resolution and insight that has never been possible." In June 2017 Mindstrong announced a $14 Million round of Series-A funding. Led by Foresite Capital and ARCH Venture Partners, the round included participation from Optum Ventures, Berggruen Holdings and the One Mind Brain Health Impact Fund. The investment will be used to build Mindstrong's elite technology and clinical operations team to support large-scale research and development. "What excites me about Mindstrong is the transformation of an individual's patterns of typing or scrolling on a smartphone into precise measures of cognitive function," said Dr. Tom Insel, co-founder and President of Mindstrong Health. "This new, powerful approach to assessment serves as the foundation for developing better interventions to improve mental health care. Mental disorders are global health problems. With smartphones we have a potential global solution." Source : https://mindstronghealth.com/science/

Inaugural GDHP Summit - February 2018 Health leaders from thirteen countries, Hong Kong SAR, and the World Health Organization (WHO) have joined together to create a Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) that will support best use of digital technology in modern healthcare. The GDHP is an international collaboration between governments, public agencies, and multinational organisations responsible for policy, funding, and delivery of health services to their citizens. The Hon. Greg Hunt MP, Australian Minister for Health, and the Hon. Shri Jagat Prakash Nadda, Minister for Health and Family Welfare, welcomed senior digital health officials from Austria, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the WHO to the inaugural GDHP Summit in Canberra, Australia’s capital city. During the two day summit, participants shared knowledge and experiences about interoperability, cyber security, ways to improve engagement with consumers and clinicians, and the value of strong evidence and evaluation. Participants agreed that the partnership is an opportunity for deep, transformational engagement by governments, digital health agencies, and the WHO to learn, share policy and other evidence that supports them to deliver better digital health services. Now that the GDHP has been established, the participating countries are engaging in an international dialogue to learn and share lessons on effective policy design and practical delivery implementation of digital health services. Over the coming year, the GDHP will collaborate on the following topics: 1. connected and interoperable health care 2. cyber security 3. policies that support digital health outcomes 4. clinician and consumer engagement 5. evidence and evaluation of digital health Secretariat Australia is hosting the secretariat for the GDHP for the next 12 months to support this vital exchange of ideas and experiences. About the Global Digital Health Partnership The Global Digital Health Partnership is an international collaboration between governments, government agencies, and multinational organisations responsible for policy, funding, and delivery of health services to their citizens. Following a number of bilateral and multilateral discussions, interest in the partnership has grown strongly. Senior digital health officials from Austria, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the WHO attended the inaugural Global Digital Health Partnership Summit in Canberra, Australia. The participating countries are now engaging in an international dialogue to learn and share lessons on effective policy design and practical delivery implementation of digital health services. For further information on the Global Digital Health Partnership, email GDHP@digitalhealth.gov.au Source : https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/news-and-events/news/media-release-new-global-digital-health-partnership/Agency%20GDHP%20Summit%20Media%20Release%20-%20February%202018%20-%20FINAL.pdf

Chatbot adoption in healthcare Improved chatbot adoption in healthcare can be achieved by adding a set of key features that promote engagement and usability. In general, long-term adoption of consumer healthcare technologies has been limited. On the one hand, a large portion of the population believes that they are healthy and that they don’t need any help or guidance regarding their wellbeing. This behavior is especially prevalent among the younger population. On the other hand, consumer healthcare related technologies tend to be adopted mostly by healthier, wealthier and technology enthusiast subsegments of the population — i.e., segments that tend to benefit little from using them. In this way, once the newness and coolness factors have worn off, the ability of healthcare devices and apps to capture users’ attention and motivate them rapidly decays over time, leading to high dropout rates (e.g., 42% of users stop using their fitness trackers within six months). To address this high churn, consumer healthcare developers and vendors have been experimenting with different sets of new features in their products. Furthermore, the more segment-specific these features are, the more effective they tend to be in becoming part of the users’ routine. For example: - younger generations tend to value more intense interactions that involve 1) a technological component 2) a high level of social connectivity 3) gamification 4) a competitive component 5) unpredictable rewards - older generations tend to value interactions that: 1) are about improving quality of life 2) are personal 3) and that involve their family, friends or caregivers Healthcare chatbot technology has been following a similar pattern of adoption to other consumer healthcare technologies. Being on an early stage of the adoption curve, its early adopters tend to be young, curious and impatient, and the technology itself still requires significant improvement — current chatbot-human interactions are not the same as human-human (and they may never be), often leading to user frustration. In this way, to keep healthcare chatbot early adopters engaged, to guide them through their experience, and to minimize their frustration, segment-specific features, and aids (as listed above) are essential. That’s why the menu and quick replies of Florence are different for every user, and we ask a few setup questions at the beginning (see image below). For example, it doesn’t make sense to show a healthy person the medication reminder. After that Florence learns more about the user based on his input. We are currently working on more segment-specific content. Source : https://blog.florence.chat/how-to-improve-the-adoption-of-chatbots-in-healthcare-1a728100cb73 https://florence.chat/

AI health services to the citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Babylon, the innovative British healthcare technology company, announced an agreement between themselves and THIQAH to provide AI health services to the citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in association with the KSA Ministry of Health. The signing of the partnership, which took place on the Healthcare UK stand at Arab Health, marks the start of the introduction of AI health services to the region on this scale. The agreement will mean that babylon will make its digital health AI functionality available within KSA, including the advanced symptom checker and other unique digital health tools. These will be integrated into the current Saudi healthcare system to provide cost-effective, accurate, on-demand health information and will help the population better triage, monitor and manage their health. Healthcare UK and the Saudi Ministry of Health Ayman Abdullah Alfallaj, CEO, THIQAH, said: “After extensive global research into AI health services, we were in no doubt that babylon has developed the most sophisticated health artificial intelligence and has invested an enormous amount of effort in making their technology world leading. Because of this we knew that babylon were the right partners to bring AI health services to Saudi and we are delighted to be working with them. We thank the team at Healthcare UK as well as the Saudi Ministry of Health and the British Embassy team in Riyadh, for their respective roles in bringing the partnership together so successfully”. Dr Ali Parsa, Founder & CEO, babylon: “babylon’s purpose is to put healthcare into the hands of everyone on earth and we are delighted to be working with THIQAH and the KSA Ministry of Health to extend our AI technology and health services to the people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who are leading the way in making innovative healthcare services available and accessible for everyone”. Shadi Abu-Hayyeh, Assistant Director, Healthcare UK, Department for International Trade: “Healthcare UK is delighted to have played a role in this very exciting contract win, working jointly with the British Embassy team in Riyadh to help facilitate the agreement between babylon and the Saudi Ministry of Health. It’s a great example of what Healthcare UK was set up to do, connecting UK healthcare suppliers with significant commercial opportunities around the world”. — SG Source : http://saudigazette.com.sa/article/527866/BUSINESS/babylon-and-THIQAH-in-deal-to-provide-first-AI-health-services-to-Saudis

Testing blood sugar without breaking the skin Rumors abound that companies including Apple are looking to crack noninvasive glucose tracking, which would let people test their blood sugar without breaking the skin - but according to Valencell, which licences biometric sensor tech to Samsung, Sony and other big companies, it's a nonstarter. "It is completely impossible to have a truly noninvasive glucose monitor," Valencell CEO Steven LeBoeuf told Wareable. Right now, invasive techniques can tell diabetics what insulin dosage they need by measuring their blood and interstitial fluid. This can be done by pricking the skin for blood, or tracking interstitial fluid just beneath the surface, as Dexcom's devices do. But according to LeBoeuf, being able to advise someone on their insulin requirements using a noninvasive technology isn't just difficult; it's impossible. "There will literally be stem cell regenerated pancreas cells in the body before there is ever anything that can be a truly noninvasive glucose monitor for dosing insulin," he said. You can't change the laws of physics When Valencell started out, LeBoeuf said it was approached by a large venture company offering a lot of money if it would focus on noninvasive glucose monitoring, but LeBoeuf said he didn't think it would ever work. "You can have all the money in the world, but you can't change the laws of physics." He added: "The good news is that these minimally invasive technologies are really working well right now." He also doesn't believe research by companies like Apple will be totally futile, as other benefits will likely arise from it. Apple following the Google Smart Contact Lens? Apple is reported to have a team busily researching the possibility of noninvasive techniques, presumably with the hope it could one day offer this feature in the Apple Watch. Google was also working on a contact lens for tracking glucose noninvasively from the eye, but the project has gone suspiciously quiet. Heart rate tech company Cardiogram just published a study showing that it can use heart rate variability in existing HR sensors to detect if someone has diabetes with 85% accuracy. However, the company is explicit about the fact this is only for detecting signs for the condition, not diagnosing - and certainly not being able to advise diabetics on their insulin requirements. But it's possible that tech companies will find other routes to helping diabetics manage their condition. Fitbit just invested $6 million into Sano, a company developing a coin-sized glucose tracker, while Siren has created a pair of socks that can detect early signs of injury for diabetics, who are at risk of neuropathy, the damaging of nerves, and more prone to foot injuries that don't easily heal. Source : https://www.wareable.com/health-and-wellbeing/noninvasive-glucose-tracking-impossible-valencell-1268

Intro to Woebot Woebot is an automated conversational agent (chatbot) who helps you monitor mood and learn about yourself. Drawing from a therapeutic framework known as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Woebot asks people how they’re feeling and what is going on in their lives in the format of brief daily conversations. Woebot also talks to you about mental health and wellness and sends you videos and other useful tools depending on your mood and needs at that moment. You can think of Woebot as a choose-your-own-adventure self-help book that is capable of storing all of your entries, and gets more specific to your needs over time. AI, Machine Learning and Mental Health Woebot is using AI and NLP to build a chatbot that will help the millions of people who struggle with their mental health. Mental health is in crisis: Depression is the leading global cause of disability, and on US university campuses, about 50% of students report anxiety or depression so severe that they can’t function. In addition to the human anguish, it also imposes a huge economic burden: Heart disease costs the US healthcare system $147B annually; mental health costs even more, over $200B. Building a chatbot for mental health represents a grand challenge for AI and NLP, and will help millions. Science and Technology Woebot is built using a combination of natural language processing, therapeutic expertise, excellent writing, and sense of humor to create the experience of a therapeutic conversation for all of the people that talk to him. In a recent study conducted at Stanford University, using Woebot led to significant reductions in anxiety and depression among people aged 18-28 years old, compared to an information-only control group. 85% of participants used Woebot on a daily or almost daily basis. You can read the entire peer-reviewed study here - https://mental.jmir.org/2017/2/e19/ Features and Benefits Meet your own personal, charming Woebot. Chat, learn, and reflect. No couches, no meds, no childhood stuff. Just clinically tested techniques + the occasional dorky joke. Drawing from principles of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Woebot helps you learn about yourself. Woebot asks how you’re feeling and what is going on in your life and sends you tools depending on your mood and needs at that moment. You can think of Woebot as a choose-your-own-adventure mental health manual that gets more specific to your needs over time. Woebot can: - Track your emotions through friendly conversation - Guide you through science-based techniques for a range of problems - Help with mood management; relationship problems; grief; habits and addictions - Personalize your conversations the more you chat - Teach mindfulness Cross Platform Woebot is available on Facebook Messenger and iPhones and iPads. We know that lots of people also use Android phones, and an Android version of Woebot is in the works. Leave your email here so we can contact you when Woebot is available on the Google Play store. Our mission is to make the best psychological tools radically accessible to those who need them. As such we are lucky enough to not have to charge users for Woebot’s services at this time. However, this may change at some point as we move towards establishing a sustainable business. When using Facebook Messenger to chat with Woebot to deliver those therapeutic conversations, nothing is posted to your Facebook profile or newsfeed. If you “Like” our Facebook Page, your friends can see that. iPhone App https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/woebot/id1305375832?mt=8 Source : https://woebot.io/

Intro to Sentiance Sentiance is a data science company turning IOT sensor data into rich insights about people’s behavior and real-time context. These insights enable companies to understand how customers go through their everyday lives, discover and anticipate the moments that matter most, and adapt their engagement to real-world behavior and real-time context. Sentiance context intelligence enables solutions for lifestyle based insurance, contextual marketing & commerce, smart mobility, connected health, smart home, smart city and connected car. Sentiance’s AI platform turns IOT sensor data into rich insights about people’s behavior and real-time context. These insights help companies engage with their customers in a very personalized way. Sentiance’s technology is used in insurance, health, mobility, smart home, connected car, and commerce applications. Sentiance has offices in Antwerp (Belgium), New York and London. Sentiance for Health Provide more personalized health care and coaching through contextualizing care adherence, well-being coaching and assisted living services. Wellness and adherence coaching Tailor messaging to observed and predicted moments throughout the day Optimize timing of messaging based on semantic time Adapt coaching to individual routines and lifestyles Proactively detect significant behavior changes Remote monitoring and assisted living Use IOT sensors to establish behavioral patterns and routines Identify deviations from behavioral norms to predict critical issues Detect anomalies real time to enable timely interventions Journeys - Discover the capabilities of Sentiance technology Journeys is our training data gathering and demo application. The app automatically creates your personal behavioral profile based on your activity patterns throughout the day, all just by analyzing your phone's sensor data. Download the new Journeys and discover yours. Automate data collections for panels through IOT sensors. Reduce costs of data collections through automation Build profiles and context in a matter of weeks. Gather observed data in addition to more traditional declared data https://itunes.apple.com/be/app/journeys-2/id984087229?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sentiance.journeys Source : https://www.sentiance.com