Introduction Founded in 2014, Nuritas is revolutionizing the discovery of novel, natural and scientifically proven active ingredients that can manage and improve human health. The company’s disruptive computational approach to discovery uses artificial intelligence, deep learning and genomics to rapidly and efficiently predict and then provide access to the most health-benefitting components hidden within food, called peptides. Nuritas has received global recognition for the impact its innovative technology will have on the future of food and health. This includes winning the overall Innovation Award at the Forbes Reinventing American Summit in 2015, the Nutrition Capital Network Venture competition in October 2016 and support from EU Horizon 2020 in 2016 for a peptide that carries the potential to prevent prediabetic patients from developing diabetes. Artificial Intelligence Platform Nuritas' proprietary platform targets, predicts and unlocks novel bioactive peptides from food sources. These deliver highly specific, efficient and life-changing health solutions. Nuritas begin the discovery process by precisely defining the health condition and targets we wish to modulate. We then use our proprietary search tools to identify the characteristics specific to our area of focus. Throughout this process, we use the most up-to-date academic and scientific knowledge to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of our prediction algorithms Having begun the discovery process as above, Nuritas take advantage of multiple proprietary Artificial Intelligence algorithms, including deep learning. Using these, we are now uniquely able to predict which novel food-derived bioactive peptides deliver the pre-determined effect that we are seeking. This cuts out many thousands of hours of trial and error. After targeting and predicting high potential Bioactive Peptides, Nuritas unlock them from within the food source for their pre-defined therapeutic use. Pharma Nuritas' bioactive peptides provide patented innovative solutions to companies needing new, better therapeutic options to deal with significant and growing unmet medical needs. The Bioactive Peptides we discover have the potential to offer new and innovative treatments for many of the illnesses that are becoming more prevalent as the world population continues to expand and age. Wellness Consumer awareness has driven a huge shift in health and wellness over the last two decades. Nuritas discover and deliver new patented and highly innovative ingredients for companies operating across the Medical Food, Functional Food, Supplement and Over-the- Counter treatment areas. Our bioactive peptides have the potential to offer people solutions across a number of areas including inflammation, blood glucose, anti-microbial and anti-ageing. Dermatology Nuritas' Bioactive Peptides have the potential to deliver solutions that increase the skin’s health, addressing people’s changing expectations around personal care and ageing. Peptides are already well recognized and utilised within the area of skincare and cosmetics. The Nuritas technology delivers natural, scientifically proven discoveries that meet the requirements of an ever more demanding and savvy consumer. Plant Health Bioactive peptides also have huge potential in the Animal and Plant Health areas. At Nuritas, we are committed to delivering patented Bioactive Peptides to answer the significant needs of these diverse areas. Investment Nuritas has received backing from some of the most successful investors in the world including New Protein Capital, early Facebook and Dropbox investors Ali Partovi and U2’s Bono and The Edge, as well as Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff. Nuritas, a biotechnology company that is revolutionizing the discovery and use of bioactive peptides through artificial intelligence (AI) and genomics, today announced the close of a US$20 million Series A funding round led by Chicago-based Cultivian Sandbox Ventures. This brings the total invested to date to approximately US$30 million, including early funding from U2’s Bono and The Edge, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Singapore-based VisVires New Protein and angel investor Ali Partovi. The latest round of funding will support Nuritas’ growth in the United States (U.S.) to address and solve many of the most pressing societal issues of the day, including the diabetes epidemic. “Nuritas’ unique platform delivers truly life-changing health benefits and we are very pleased to be involved in its growth – it’s a brilliant team and such an exciting technology,” said Nick Rosa, Managing Director of Cultivian Sandbox and Co-founder of Sandbox Industries. “We expect Nuritas to quickly emerge as one of the most innovative companies in the world, effecting real change.” Since launching in 2014, Nuritas has grown rapidly with its AI-powered peptide discovery platform, with applications spanning health and wellness, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and dermatology amongst others, attracting high-profile investors and partners, including BASF SE. “In an effort to expand our health solutions, we searched the globe trying to find such an innovative discovery technology and we eventually found it with Nuritas,” said Michael De Marco, Global Head, Research & Development Human Nutrition and Pharma Solutions, BASF SE. “The most immediate fruits of our collaboration will be the U.S. launch of an anti-inflammatory for sports nutrition in 2018. This is only the beginning, our collaboration is progressing and on track to yield more groundbreaking products in the future.” Another area of strong and sustained focus for Nuritas is diabetes, which is a major societal issue. According to the International Diabetes Federation, an estimated 352 million individuals globally are living with pre-diabetes which is considered an early warning sign for diabetes. An estimated 34 million pre-diabetics globally move on to develop full blown diabetes each year. In the U.S., 84.1 million individuals are estimated to have pre-diabetes. “Bioactive peptides are known to play a role in managing diabetes and many other areas, but the current methods of identifying those that may work is time-consuming, inefficient and expensive,” said Emmet Brown, CEO of Nuritas. “Our artificial intelligence platform has already disrupted this antiquated process by targeting, predicting and unlocking peptides that can positively impact in conditions like pre-diabetes while reducing the cost and time needed to find them. We’re excited to have Cultivian Sandbox and others join our mission to unlock these huge capabilities to improve human and animal health.” Nuritas Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Dr Nora Khaldi stated, “This investment will not only help us accelerate our route to market, explore new disease areas and grow our already strong team, but it will also push us even further in extracting the great potential of what our technology is capable of creating. What is so exciting is that the inflammation ingredient launching in the U.S. next year is actually the first healthcare ingredient that has been fully discovered through the use of artificial intelligence.” Nuritas uses a proprietary AI and genomics platform to rapidly analyze the billions of molecules and peptides in food to predict and identify how they impact specific health areas, molecular pathways or receptors. When compared to traditional discovery methods, the Nuritas platform has been shown to identify peptides ten times faster and 500 times more accurately while significantly reducing costs. Source : http://www.nuritas.com/

There is no doubt that digital transformation within the NHS is a significant undertaking. While technology has already revolutionised the healthcare landscape for patients and organisations alike, a large investment of time and money is the only way to ensure a truly digital future. Digitisation will not only help boost patient care through ensuring timely access to full patient records, but will allow effective reporting on data held should a Subject Access Request be received – a key requirement of GDPR. With access to a growing range of data and insights, the positive impact is expected to be felt in terms of patient care and beyond. The process of managing that data, however, is an issue rapidly climbing up the agenda. When GDPR is enforced in May 2018, the EU regulation will oblige NHS departments to fully analyse their digital functions, including processes for the storage, security and identification of patient data. While the NHS has admitted it is unlikely to meet its 2018 target for digital transformation due to the current ‘state of hospital IT systems’, this does present an opportunity to begin integrating digital technologies from the ground up to ensure compliance. Beyond viewing regulation such as GDPR merely as a compliance burden, however, healthcare IT professionals will be able to use it as a springboard to big data utilisation. The drive to digital transformation The sharing of health-related data across networks has become a necessary component to the smooth running of today’s healthcare operations. GDPR contains several new requirements regarding how all organisations should process, store and safeguard personally identifiable information (PII). Of particular interest within healthcare is ensuring data breaches are reported to relevant authorities within 72 hours, the employment of a Data Protection Officer, and policies to secure data portability. In adhering to GDPR, the NHS will have to utilise digital technology that not only ensures compliance, but also offers an increased level of business intelligence. While the new regulation’s primary objective is to strengthen data protection for individuals and simplify regulatory environments for organisations, the NHS now has the chance to go further. Instead, the data available can be used to vastly boost analytical capabilities, ranging from information around patient sickness trends to the most effective means of combating it. Data security prior to GDPR implementation In light of GDPR, the increasing amount of data on hand through digital transformation brings with it a greater need for security. Failure to comply with GDPR legislation could result in fines of up to €20 million, or 4% of annual turnover, whichever is higher. A growing and ageing population has led to more demand for medical services, but also a larger number of patient records and a greater amount of identifiable medical information. With an increased amount of data created and held comes a greater financial and security risk. This is exacerbated by the fact that when ensuring data security, staff are often the weakest link, with the efficaciousness of phishing attacks well noted against the NHS. Furthermore, many NHS trusts still utilise unsupported Windows XP operating systems, representing multiple layers of data insecurity. For the NHS, which employs over 1,500,000 people (a staggering 2.3% of the UK population), ensuring staff and patient data security is a huge undertaking. GDPR therefore represents a significant financial motivation to ensure security. Data normalisation To maximise data safety, normalising the vast amounts of data the NHS creates will be essential. Often, data held is stored in different formats, meaning that it would take IT staff a long time to sift through the information to detect a breach or event. Once this data is normalised, however, searching for anomalies and identifying threats is a much more streamlined process, allowing for a rapid response to minimise data-theft and fines from delayed reporting – key aspects to ensuring GDPR compliance. Considering the proliferation of breaches and consequences of non-compliance, the NHS can now fast-track digital transformation, integrating systems and processes, ensuring data security before GDPR comes into force. With a large amount of staff and patient data stored in disparate locations, healthcare organisations must be aware of exactly what data they hold, where it came from, how it is stored, what the process for access is and what is being done with the data. Once these criteria have been met, the next stage is to look at how this data can be secured, ensuring only those who need access have the credentials to do so. With just over a year to go until implementation of GDPR, healthcare management and IT professionals must now review existing systems to ensure regulations are met ahead of schedule, driving effective, innovative change in their sector. Conclusion GDPR represents an opportunity for digital transformation in the NHS – one that goes much further than adhering to industry regulations, helping to drive more efficient operations. Source : http://www.information-age.com/gdpr-opportunity-digital-transformation-nhs-123465268/

NHS healthcare professionals who are directing analytics projects and programmes, as well as IT managers in the NHS, cannot help but be engaged in arguments over how far it is desirable to use software algorithms in work previously carried out by people. Such decision-support software is also deployed in sectors other than healthcare, but its merits and demerits are more sensitive in that sector. In February 2015, the British Medical Association (BMA) complained that England’s 111 telephone advice service, which was launched in March 2013 and relies mainly on staff using decision-support software, was referring too many callers to GPs and to hospital accident and emergency departments. The service uses NHS Pathways as its decision-support software, which is also used by English ambulance services to assess 999 callers. The NHS system is managed by the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The BMA said a comparison of October 2014 with a year previouslyshowed that 111 referred 186% more callers to GPs and 192% more to A&E. The 111 service replaced NHS Direct, a national helpline that had made greater use of clinical staff, and used a system procured from AXA Assistance in 2000. Charlotte Jones, the BMA’s GP lead on unscheduled care, says the reliance on algorithms is part of the problem. “Computer-based algorithms, by their very nature, have to be relatively risk-averse and take the safest option,” she says. “However, they are not always applicable to the clinical setting or, if they are, they don’t allow for subtleties in symptoms, and symptoms don’t always fall neatly into boxes. “So the computer algorithms that call handlers have to follow don’t allow handlers to move away from them when common sense or your own individual knowledge calls for it.” Janette Turner is senior research fellow at the University of Sheffield and director of the medical care research unit at the university's School of Health and Related Research. She agrees that any kind of phone service is limited by the fact that it cannot diagnose. “You need a clinician face-to-face to make a diagnosis, to look at people and do tests,” she says. “This is about assessing the level of urgency and the level of care. The question is how well algorithms can assess, compared with clinically trained staff.” Turner and her colleagues assessed pilots of NHS 111 for the Department of Health in 2012. There are problems in comparing 111 with NHS Direct, because the previous service did not handle out-of-hours calls to GP surgeries. “People who called NHS Direct were calling because they weren’t sure what they should do,” she says, whereas many 111 callers have already decided that they want to see a GP. According to NHS England data, 29% of 111 call time was provided by clinically trained staff in December 2014. “It is true that a far bigger proportion of 111 calls are handled by non-clinical staff,” says Turner. But 111 tends to put callers through to its clinical staff on the same call or have them ring back in a matter of minutes, whereas NHS Direct often took several hours to do this – and the old service also had a reputation of being over-cautious. “It wasn’t known as NHS Redirect by the ambulance service for nothing,” says Turner. However, the Sheffield research on the 111 pilots did show that it resulted in a 3% increase in ambulance call-outs – enough to make a significant impact – although it did not find a significant impact on visits to A&E departments. Turner agrees with the BMA's Jones that any algorithm-based system is likely to err on the side of caution – partly because those designing the systems will be wary of taking risks, and partly because they lack the information available to someone in the same room as a patient. But Turner thinks it makes sense to use algorithm-based systems to assess callers initially, because some will want basic advice and others will have straightforward problems. She points out that ambulance services have used non-clinically trained staff equipped with decision-support software for two decades – the same NHS Pathways system used by 111 – although they only have to decide what level of urgency to attach to a call. The question is not whether to use such software, but what proportion of the work needs to involve clinically trained staff. What we need to do is ensure that any software used, while having to be safe, is also appropriate for patients, and not leading to potentially unnecessary harm with additional inappropriate extra tests. Jones argues that the English 111 service needs to increase that proportion – and notes that it is doing so. “The call handlers in 111 are given 12 weeks' training and they are not clinical staff,” she says. “There are clinical staff in some of the centres to help them, and that is increasing. Indeed, they are looking at putting GPs and more nurses in to support the decision-making of the individual call handlers when they feel the computer software needs to be overridden. “What we need to do is ensure that any software used, while having to be safe, is also appropriate for patients, and not leading to potentially unnecessary harm with additional inappropriate extra tests, causing anxiety or inappropriately reassuring people. “That is where the tension comes in. That clinical judgement, clinical knowledge and experience that develops over a long period of time means you can use that experience for managing individuals.” The belief that software should support, rather than replace, clinically trained staff is shared by Mateja Jamnik, a senior lecturer at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and an expert in artificial intelligence. She says that, as clinical decision-support systems improve, they are likely to need less input from non-clinically trained staff, such as call handlers. “However, the expert knowledge provided by clinical staff that the callers may be referred to will, as far as I can see, remain a crucial part of the service,” she adds. “But these clinicians will be supported collaboratively by expert systems.” Replacing clinicians with algorithms completely would be fraught with technical and ethical issues, says Jamnik. “For example, who takes the responsibility for a wrong or harmful decision by a computer program? While we have significant evidence that, in some cases, software can be more reliable than humans to make crucial decisions, I think that, for the foreseeable future, these systems will be designed for and used in collaboration with, and support of, clinicians. “They will make the role of clinicians much more efficient, and allow them, in addition, to consider new dimensions coming from biomedicine that we were never able to use before.” Jamnik says using software to support clinicians has already produced some significant case studies of improvements in patient safety. For example, a study in a Boston emergency department, which introduced a decision-support system to help clinicians prescribe a particular drug or course of treatment, saw errors decline by 55%. In the UK, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust has reduced error rates in prescribing through its Prescribing Information and Communications System (PICS), which uses the trust’s agreed procedures and policies to advise staff. I see the future in the hands of human experts, but heavily supported and helped with expert systems that are becoming more accurate all the time. For example, if a clinician orders a high level of a certain drug, PICS can query this. The user can override the software, but that override action is recorded. Such events are recorded to monitor how staff work, but also to adjust policies and train new doctors. The trust has licensed the software to other parts of the NHS. “I see the future in the hands of human experts, but heavily supported and helped with expert systems that are becoming more accurate all the time,” says Jamnik, particularly given progress in analysing data on patients with several medical conditions, as well as work on personalised medicines. “Clinicians cannot, in such complex patient cases, reliably take all the relevant facets into consideration,” she says. “Sometimes, electronic health records and clinical evidence need to be combined, and computers can effectively address this using statistical and machine learning techniques.” Software can also avoid errors that people are prone to making, such as overestimating the likelihood of events that happen more frequently, she says. “A decision-support system is less biased and therefore provides valid help to a human expert.” The University of Sheffield’s Turner says there is also potential for NHS staff in the community to use clinical decision-support systems to help them do more. Some 80%-90% of 999 calls are not life-threatening emergencies, she says, and the paramedics dealing with such call-outs could set up more appropriate treatment as part of their visit. “To enable them to do that, there is probably scope for hand-held devices with support software on them,” Turner says. For example, for older people who have suffered a less serious fall, the best treatment is for them to be visited by a specialist falls team that can help them make changes that allow them to stay in their own home. This is a better option than taking the patient to A&E, where they could face a long wait and risk infections – and it is also cheaper. While some workers have, and will, find their jobs replaced by IT, it looks more likely that skilled healthcare professionals will see software support them to become more accurate and efficient. Given that the ageing UK population and more expensive treatments are increasing demand for NHS services more quickly than economic growth can support – which is true of most developed countries – it looks more likely that the medics of the future will be cyborgs rather than robots. Source : http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/NHS-111-shows-how-medical-diagnosis-can-be-computerised

The health system in Sweden is founded on the principles of equal access and regional autonomy. Sweden recently updated its national eHealth vision, which now states that, by 2020, all residents aged 16 or over should have access to all health-related information documented in county-funded health and dental care. So, how are we doing so far? I have had full access to my electronic health record (EHR) online since 2012, when Uppsala became the first region in Sweden to make EHRs accessible to patients. I’ve continued to use the patient-accessible EHR (PAEHR) “Journalen” ever since. As a health informatics researcher and a member of the DOME research consortium, I also have a special interest in how the PAEHR is designed and used. The responsibility for healthcare provision in Sweden is shared between the central government, county councils and municipalities, with the county councils the principal providers. Private care providers also operate throughout Sweden, but they are publicly funded and an integrated part of the national healthcare system. This decentralized organization of healthcare also means that each county council (or private care provider) has the choice over which EHR system it uses. This means that throughout Sweden, many different EHR systems are in use and interoperability between them has traditionally been low. So how is it possible that as a Swedish citizen I can access all my EHR data in one place? Two things enable this; a national patient portal and a national health information exchange platform. Although the county councils are autonomous and can prioritize which eHealth services to focus on, the decision was made at a national level that patients should only have one way to reach healthcare. A national patient portal, ‘1177.se’ is available for anyone seeking healthcare or health-related information in Sweden. The patient portal actually consists of three parts: 1177 on the phone – a telephone advice service 1177.se on the web – a public service website where citizens can access and search for information about illnesses, symptoms and treatments, as well as finding out about healthcare in their particular region 1177.se personal e-services – after authentication (using a nationally approved BankID), individuals gain access to personalized e-services. Citizens can add their primary care centers or hospital units and send secure messages to them. It is through this portal that Swedes can access their EHR. Sweden has approximately 10 million inhabitants, 41% (about 4.1 million) of whom had created their own account to use personal e-services on the 1177.se portal by June 2017. Through this national patient portal citizens can reach the PAEHR and, in June 2017, the total number of unique users of this e-service had reached 1.3 million. But although the 1177 patient portal is national, there are still several different EHR systems in use across Sweden. So how can the patient view all their EHR data in one e-service, so it looks as if it’s all from one EHR? Well, Sweden has chosen to implement a national Health Information Exchange (HIE) platform to facilitate the communication between different health information systems and eHealth services. The national HIE platform enables a single point of connectivity for client applications, making all Swedish EHRs appear as a national, virtual EHR. The PAEHR is one of the e-services using the national HIE platform, making the information gathered from possibly many EHR systems appear as one continuous record to the patient accessing it. However, we have a long way to go. Despite the national HIE platform and the intention to provide patients with a complete overview of their health-related data, the view remains fragmented depending on where, when and why a patient seeks treatment, as there are important differences in how much information each care provider allows citizens access to. This is closely related to the difficulty of agreeing on a national regulatory framework for patients’ direct access to their health information. Another challenge has been resistance from healthcare professionals. Both within Sweden and internationally, healthcare professionals have raised concerns about how these changes might affect their workload. Some think that more of their time could be taken up explaining the contents of the EHR and dealing with increased questions from patients. There’s also a feeling that EHRs could make conflicts with patients, misunderstandings, and misinterpretations more likely, leading to those in care being unnecessarily worried more often. However, these professional concerns are often alleviated after the e-service has been in place for some time, and healthcare professionals who use the e-service themselves are less worried. Despite the identified challenges, preliminary results of a national patient survey among PAEHR users in Sweden indicate that the overwhelming majority of patients who have accessed the PAEHR are positive about it. Almost 90% of respondents completely agreed and 8% partly agreed with the statement “Having access to ‘Journalen’ is good for me”. With such a staggering vote of confidence from the actual users of the e-service, it does seem that Sweden is doing a lot right. However, we need to continue learning about how to best implement and use such solutions both within and outside of the country. In the recently started research project PACESS (patient-centered assessment of patients’ online access to electronic health records) Swedish academics have begun evaluating the current implementation and use of PAEHR through in-depth qualitative case studies in different regions. The goal is to achieve a better understanding of how roles, relationships, and organizational structures are affected. In addition, we will work together with patients and healthcare professionals to co-design future eHealth services based on the PAEHR to improve communication, collaboration, and co-creation of the EHR. We hope that this research will help move progress forward not only in Sweden but for all patients regardless of illness or country of residence. Source : https://www.futurehealthindex.com/2017/10/30/access-electronic-health-records/

Strategy Guided by their passion to improve people’s lives, Philips has been a leader in building and shaping markets with meaningful innovations for the last 125 years. With the world facing the challenge of tackling climate change and energy constraints, as well as providing effective and affordable healthcare to a growing global population, Philips see compelling opportunities in the health technology and lighting markets. Determined to win in both, Philips recently separated out their Lighting activities as a stand-alone company. This created more focus, giving Lighting the opportunity to grow and capture the vast opportunities in energy-efficient, digital lighting products, systems and services. Philips then enhanced their efforts to expand their core business to address the opportunities available in the health technology market outlined as 4 main themes - a) Global resource constraints on health systems are driving a shift to value-based healthcare to reduce cost, increase access and improve outcomes. b) Aging populations across the globe and the rise of chronic conditions are driving a shift of care to lower-cost settings and the home. c) More and more people are looking for new ways to proactively monitor and manage their health. d) The digitalisation of healthcare is shifting value from devices to software and services. Five years ago Philips believed these challenges could only be met through new, more integrated forms of care delivery across the health continuum, with a shift away from today’s focus on acute care and late-stage interventions. The convergence of Philips’ consumer technologies that facilitate healthy living, medical technologies that help clinicians to deliver better diagnosis and treatment, and cloud-based technologies that enable data sharing and analysis were identified as the key enablers of more effective, lower-cost integrated health solutions. Philips built their strategy around their core strengths of professional healthcare and consumer health and well-being. Focus Philips focused on 5 priority areas to expand their integrated solutions capabilities - 1) Personal health 2) Definitive diagnosis, 3) Minimally invasive guided therapy 4) Population health management 5) Connected care delivery Within 4 broad specialties - 1) Cardiology 2) Oncology 3) Respiratory care 4) Fertility, pregnancy and parenting In the last 5 years the company have successfully teamed up with hospital and health systems to understand their needs, provide integrated solutions, and engage in multi-year cooperation to drive improvements in terms of patient outcomes, quality of care delivery and cost productivity. Looking forward into the next 5 years, Philips will drive the benefits of scale further in their current businesses while delivering additional growth from continuing investments in innovation. They will also invest in their Philips HealthSuite digital platform to establish themselves as a leading cloud solution to connect consumers, patients and providers. Transformation, Mergers & Acquisitions “Philips has made a very massive transformation over the last five years and we have pivoted to be a focused health company,” Chief Executive Officer Frans van Houten said in an interview on Bloomberg TV recently. “we are not distracted by other performing businesses in other sectors.” Philips has made a series of acquisitions in recent months that have focused the 126-year-old Dutch company on health technologies including software and services. In the process, the company has moved away from its historic roots in manufacturing light bulbs, TVs and CD players. Is the Strategy working? What are the latest results? https://www.philips.com/static/qr/2017/q3/philips-third-quarter-results-2017-presentation.pdf Philips had a “particularly strong Q3 17,” in China, both at the consumer and hospital businesses, the CEO said, adding that he expects growth at private hospitals to offset any risk of governments giving preference to domestic suppliers. Sales of toothbrushes are also increasing. “The penetration of oral care of electric toothbrushes in China is still below 4 percent,” he said. “If you compare that to Western Europe or the United States where it is about 30 percent, it just underlines what positive journey is possible in the years ahead.” The Dutch company kept its outlook to raise profitability to the average industry standard for health care-equipment peers, including GE and Siemens AG, over the next three to four years. Even though organic revenue growth has not topped 4 percent since the beginning of this year, Philips kept its outlook for a 4 to 6 percent revenue growth in 2017.

Moore’s Law predicted that computing would dramatically increase in power and decrease in relative cost at an exponential pace. This increase in affordable and powerful computation has resulted in major economical, technological and societal impacts, driving pervasive breakthroughs across all industries--even health care. Founded on the same relative dynamics of Moore’s Law, Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future written by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson analyzes the framework shaping the digitally-powered business landscape of today. In the book, the authors describe three shifts which are fundamentally disrupting industries and lives. These shifts include moving from the human mind to machines, from products to platforms and from core businesses to crowds. As these principles establish a sense of urgency for business models to adapt to new technologies, there are significant applications for machines, platforms and crowds in health care--an industry known for lagging behind in modernization. Machines The first shift is moving from the human mind to machine as digital technologies continue invading the physical world. This notion suggests that we have entered into an era where machines have mastered cognitive tasks, far surpassing human expectations. With that comes the ability for machines to supercharge businesses through intelligent automation and machine learning that remove human constraints and physical limitations. For healthcare, this means being able to deliver a higher quality of care at a lower cost to a broader audience. The following are a few applications for the future of machines in health care: AI in Diagnostics: Machine learning provides the ability to test and diagnose a variety of illnesses with improved accuracy (e.g. mammograms, pathology interpretation, etc.) Remote Patient Monitoring: Intelligent automation is enabling remote patient monitoring and personalized treatment via chatbots and other mobile solutions--accessible anywhere, anytime. Nanobots: Robots capable of automating complex actions while being able to manipulate their environments are being used to gather and communicate information about internal organs; augment memory; surgically repair body parts; and deliver drugs to precise locations. Robotic Surgery: High resolution robotic assistance can eliminate limitations like speed, complexity and precision for dangerous operations. 3D Printing: 3D Printing offers a more cost-effective alternative to traditional prosthetics, as well as reconstructive surgery. Platforms Secondly, industries are shifting from products to platforms, using mobile devices to efficiently connect people to services. Platforms provide visibility, amplification and connections. Easily scalable, platforms also reduce waste while increasing consumption--and profit. For example, companies like Uber--the largest taxi company--own no physical cabs and yet foster a marketplace where both clients and providers benefit. Applied to health care, this translates to more convenient options for access and treatment through technology like: Virtual Reality: VR as a platform enables healthcare providers to plan and practice complex operations. It can also facilitate therapy for patients wanting to manage pain. Gig Economy: In support of collaborative consumption, solutions like Iggbo enable healthcare companies to automate the process of procuring, dispatching, tracking, and paying their labor to perform services. Augmented Reality: Putting information into eyesight as fast as possible, AR has practical applications such as helping nurses find veins more readily, or leveraging wearables like AR glasses to view patient data while interacting face-to-face with patients. Crowds The third shift is defined as a movement from the core--centralized institutions--to the crowd, which lowers the cost of interaction while perpetuating greater experimentation and innovation. This is most clearly demonstrated in the difference in how professionals maintain and curate encyclopedias versus how participants on the internet collectively manage contributions to online repositories. Crowdsourcing, for example, is faster and more readily available than traditional data sources. In healthcare, this provides opportunities for patients and clinicians alike to contribute their individual experiences and expertise in discussions in the following ways: Public Crowds: Patients can share their experiences with illnesses or conditions publicly to solicit feedback and advice from others experiencing similar illnesses. Private Affinity Crowds: Affinity crowds could consist of clinical specialists within a specific area convening within a private platform to collaborate and share information. Hybrid Crowds: Affinity crowds may collaborate to create content within blog-type frameworks that is shared with the public, allowing experts to control the information but expose findings to a broader audience. Non-human Crowds: Crowds composed of robots or other AI are able to teach each other, and in turn share that information with other forms of AI, exponentially increasing the number of robots who can do or understand certain tasks. Within all of these shifts--mind and machine; product and platform; core and crowd--there is no perfect balance. However, the rapidly changing world is shifting towards the latter in each. Applying this framework to the healthcare industry will enable providers and companies alike to improve the accessibility, quality and cost of health care that patients today expect. As more patients assume responsibility for their own health, hospitals, pharmacies, insurance companies and medical providers must chose to quickly adopt disruptive technology or face falling behind. Source : https://www.medstarhealth.org/digitalblog/2017/10/05/machines-platforms-crowds/#q={}

Craig Venter, a genetic scientist, led the team that first mapped the human genome. He is founder and CEO of the nonprofit J. Craig Venter Institute on genetic research; co-founder and CEO of Human Longevity Inc.; and founder of Synthetic Genomics Inc. Recent leaps in the biosciences, combined with big data analysis, have led us to the cusp of a revolution in medicine. For the first time, humans can intervene in changing our genetic code and the disease genes embedded in it that took biological evolution 3.5 to 4 billion years to produce. Not only have we learned to read and write the genetic code, we can put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life. In theory, that gives our species control over biological design. We can write DNA software, boot it up to a computer converter and create unlimited variations of the gene sequences of biological life. The most anxiously and immediately awaited outcome of this new capacity is its application for correcting genetic deficiencies that lead to a range of maladies, from cancer to diabetes to Alzheimer’s. Here, some humility must temper hope. What we know is surely considerable, but it is dwarfed by what we still have to learn. What we know The human genome, which represents each individual’s entire set of genetic information, was first decoded in 2000 by two competing teams. When the results were published in 2001, the biggest single finding was that we only had 20,000 or so genes, not the hundreds of thousands predicted by many scientists. That surprising discovery led us to rethink our assumptions about human biology and disease. Early genetic findings, such as the discovery of the Huntington’s disease gene and the cystic fibrosis gene, had led many to believe that most human diseases were caused by a single defective gene. Not so. The cost of sequencing the first genomes — determining the exact order of the base pairs of a segment of DNA — were astronomical. The private effortthat I led spent over $100 million on the first genome, while the U.S. government costs were over $2 billion. That meant that even understanding the genome by sequencing more than the reference genome was unlikely — until the technology changed. The discovery of a smaller-than-expected number of genes also caused some to question whether DNA was the full genetic material or if there was something more. A small team from my nonprofit research institute set out to answer that question in a definitive manner by synthesizing a chromosome from the four chemicals that make up the DNA chemical code. The project was much harder and more complicated than expected. But in 2010, we finally succeeded in booting up our synthesized chromosome, proving that a synthetic cell could be produced. Six years later, we produced the first cell where the genome was designed in the computer. It turned out that every cell function and every molecule in the cell derived directly or indirectly from the synthetic DNA chromosome — proving that DNA is in fact the complete genetic material. Interpreting the code The human genome thus understood has spawned hundreds of businesses, all based on trying to interpret the code to tell people their geographic ancestry, disease risks and even what foods to eat based on their genome. Most of these commercial genome shops don’t sequence the genome, they simply use so-called “gene chips” that give a readout on a very small portion of the genome. This is the approach taken by popular products like 23andMe, Ancestry and My Heritage. Many labs only sequence the exome, which represents about 2 percent of the genome but contains most of the protein coding areas. Very few actually sequence the genome to cover all 6.4 billion bases. We are still at the earliest stages of understanding the human genome, and most people get little value from genome snippet analysis. Those offering diet information are outside the realm of documented science. Cancer risk is currently one of the most useful areas of genome analysis, but we are at the very beginnings of being able to use only genome data for life predictions. Predicting disease At Human Longevity, we focus on generating clinical and phenotype data to aid us in the interpretation of the genome and to improve our ability to make predictions from it. In the process of collecting data from presumed healthy individuals, we have found that how you feel is not a good indication of your actual health. For example, 5 percent of all people that we test over the age of 50 have a major cancer that they are unaware of. The good news is we have had 100 percent success in treating these cancers due to their early detection. One percent of all clients have a brain aneurysm; 27 percent have fatty livers; and 12 percent are at high risk for a cardiac event. We are using machine learning tools to correlate this data with the complete genome sequence to discover the precise genetic cause of diseases. I predict that within a decade, the human genome sequence will provide sufficient predictive knowledge to make it a worthwhile standalone test. Unfortunately, we are not there yet. Correcting genetic defects — and the ethical limits Many believe that as we learn the cause of genetic defects, CRISPR or other editing tools could correct them. However, gene therapy has mostly failed so far — it has proven impossible to get the corrected gene into the right 100 trillion cells in the human body. Ex vivo gene therapy — where cells are treated outside of the body and then returned — has had some success. There have been some encouraging results with cancer treatments using immune cells that have been edited with CRISPR. I think we will see even more success in cancer treatments using ex vivo gene editing. There are some who want to take genome editing much further by editing the germline genome so that it will forever change a given trait or disease. This is a complex area because there are clearly devastating diseases that we would like to eliminate from humans. But to do so, we need to do human experimentation without knowing the consequences. Also, the current editing tools are not as precise as indicated in the press and have many unintentional effects, where other genes are changed along with the intended one. The world agreed at the end of World War II to stop all direct human experimentation. Human germline editing would cross that boundary and take us back into random human genome editing, just to see what happens. We should not let this happen. The prospects of eliminating disease and improving longevity are within our grasp. The way to reach that aspiration is to continue enhancing our knowledge of the genome itself so that genome editing can become a legitimate part of the future of medicine. Source : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2017/12/13/human-genome

Time magazine published its annual Best Inventions of the year list yesterday after considering hundreds of inventions from around the world. Let's look at the 4 Healthcare focused inventions that made the 2017 list - 1) eSight 3 - Glasses That Give Sight to the Blind eSight 3 is an engineering breakthrough that allows the legally blind to actually see. eSight houses a high-speed, high-definition camera that captures everything the user is looking at. eSight’s algorithms enhance the video feed and display it on two, OLED screens in front of the user's eyes. Full color video images are clearly seen by the eSight user with unprecedented visual clarity and virtually no lag. With eSight’s patented Bioptic Tilt capability, users can adjust the device to the precise position that, for them, presents the best view of the video while maximizing side peripheral vision. This ensures a user’s balance and prevents nausea – common problems with other immersive technologies. https://www.esighteyewear.com/technology 2) Forward - Clinics That Redefine Preventive Care A New Kind of Health Membership, Augmented with Technology. Forward is a full-stack company: doctors, designers and engineers work together to build their own software and hardware, including our own electronic health records system. This allows us to innovate faster and prevents us from being held back by legacy systems. We're constantly improving by adding new services and capabilities that are only possible because we rebuilt the entire system from scratch. Healthcare has a scaling problem: because it's a labor-based business, it's hard to keep costs low. We're building hardware and software to help our care team take care of more people than they could without technology. Our ambition is for Forward to be affordable to everyone. We started Forward to deliver better health to people at a lower cost. But if we had to do this by working within the existing healthcare system, we wouldn’t even know where to begin. How do you unwind everyone’s broken incentives, retrofit ancient software, and convince a bunch of people to change a system in which they benefit from the status quo? We felt it would make more sense to instead start from scratch and to build things the right way from the start. We made three major decisions about how to build Forward from scratch: We built it as a health membership instead of a transactional doctor’s office, allowing us to be proactive and preventative instead of reactive We built it as a full-stack company that combines software, hardware, and the actual doctors practicing medicine all under one roof We built it as a product for actual people, not insurance companies https://goforward.com 3) Willow Pump - A Portable, Wearable Breast Pump Willow is unique because everything works inside the Pump and inside your bra—with no external tubes, cords, or dangling bottles to hold you back. First, you align Willow with your breast, wait for the Pump to initiate latch, and then secure it inside your bra. Once latched, Willow senses let-down and automatically switches to expression phase based on your individual milk production. Your milk flows into the disposable, spill-proof Milk Bag tucked securely inside the Pump. And the best part is you can move freely while you pump and track your milk progress in real time on the Willow App. When you’re done pumping, simply open Willow and remove the Milk Bag (which doesn’t leak, thanks to our innovative one-way valve). Then pour it right into a bottle or store it in the fridge or freezer for later. As Willow works inside your bra, the Willow App displays what is happening. See things such as milk volume, pumping time and past pumping sessions. Compatible with iPhone 5 or newer. The Willow App is only available for iOS (iPhone 5 or newer, iOS 10.2 or later). We plan to offer an Android app in the future. https://www.willowpump.com 4) Bempu - Wristbands That Help Babies Get a Better Start Bempu Health is a public health organization funded by the Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, USAID's Saving Lives at Birth, and others. We received our first grant from the Gates Foundation in November 2014 after spending a year in the field meeting with more than 100 pediatricians and neonatologists around India to learn more about the true problems in newborn health care. We worked with doctors to brainstorm solutions, then built + tested prototypes, and now we are distributing our health tech. innovations. Our first innovation is the Bempu Hypothermia Monitoring Device – a novel neonatal hypothermia monitoring bracelet. Our device is built to serve areas where temperature monitoring is often overlooked due to understaffed hospitals and unaware or uneducated parents. The device alerts in the event of neonatal hypothermia through an intuitive audio-visual alarm, which promotes corrective actions like Kangaroo Mother Care (skin-to-skin contact) and swaddling, as well as positive health-seeking behaviors. We are a team of passionate and skilled health advocates working together to build technologies that will drastically improve global health. We are currently a team of 15 with expertise in biomedical and mechanical engineering, product design, medical electronics engineering, marketing & operations management, and public health. As of Summer 2016, our BEMPU Bracelet has protected 1000+ babies in approximately 150 centers across India! http://www.bempu.com TIME’s 25 Best Inventions of 2017 Source : http://time.com/5023212/best-inventions-of-2017/

Current healthcare systems – which are based on brick and mortar, in-person, hospital-centric models – are ripe for disruption in order to alleviate these pressures and to serve future populations. Healthcare systems today are facing monumental challenges. A significant increase in demand caused primarily by growing and aging populations, coupled with increased access and availability of healthcare treatments is putting unmaintainable pressure on healthcare providers. Slowly but surely, innovative technology is leading major transformations in healthcare, and there are five significant changes that I expect to see in the foreseeable future. 1. We’ll have longer appointments with healthcare professionals, less often With demand on healthcare systems growing, a large bulk of senior medical specialists’ time is spent practicing routine care in hospitals that could be carried out by paramedics, nurses, optometrists, etc instead. Over the next 15-years, I expect that technology will be employed to support healthcare professionals with some of this routine care. As a result, we will see senior medical professionals become more specialist and they will have more time to spend with the patients that need their expertise most. Although I foresee a future where healthcare specialists will see fewer patients, people will still need healthcare services, but not necessarily in-person. 2. Virtual care: Hospitals will no longer be the center of healthcare systems For example, at KSYOS TeleMedical Center, the first virtual hospital in the Netherlands, we deliver a teledermatology service. Instead of referring a patient physically to a hospital, a general practitioner may choose instead to take photographs and send them to the dermatologist that the patient would otherwise be referred to physically. From there, the dermatologist will make an assessment. We have seen a 74% reduction in physical referrals as a result of this teledermatology service. Moreover, it is common for waiting lists for dermatology specialists to be weeks long – months in some countries – but teledermatology reduces the whole process to just 4-5 hours, and at a quarter of the regular costs. Similarly, we use telemedicine to help control retinopathy in diabetic patients, resulting in a 96% reduction in physical referrals to the hospital. Over the next few decades, as telemedicine and other innovative health technologies advance, I expect to see more and more virtual healthcare solutions gradually introduced to healthcare systems. 3. Digital processes will improve efficiency Healthcare is overdue for a digital revolution to help improve efficiency. Several other industries have been transformed, from finance, travel, and hospitality through to retail. An important transition that I foresee as more and more health data becomes available, is the introduction of intelligent systems that will simplify existing complex processes, and support healthcare professionals with decision making. That doesn’t mean that we will be treated by robots instead of humans. In fact, I think the main role of the healthcare professional in the future will be to provide the human touch. Technology will make it possible to propagate the human touch in healthcare because if a healthcare professional rushes through 30 patients in an afternoon, it leaves little time for personalized care. However, if you replace these 30 patients with just four that really need your help, it introduces a human element back into treatment for those patients that will benefit most from it. And I expect that would be much more rewarding for the healthcare professionals too. 4. Sharing health data With the systems in place at the moment, it is challenging for healthcare professionals to share data with each other, or between hospitals. In an era where sharing data has never been easier, this is a huge frustration for doctors and patients alike. In order for healthcare professionals to share patient data efficiently, they will need access to secure, reliable and effective tools that allow them to do so. Meanwhile, the potential of consumer health trackers means patients will be generating a lot more health data themselves that is not being shared with their healthcare professionals. I expect that in the next 5-years or so, as these healthcare devices improve in quality and produce medical grade data, they will be incorporated into treatment plans. Health data could be shared remotely, so patients may no longer need to visit hospitals for routine tests that could be performed accurately from home. Before we can tackle patients sharing appropriate data with their healthcare providers, it’s important that it is made possible for healthcare professionals to share data with each other effectively first. 5. The growing role of prevention in healthcare As populations get older and live longer, some of the major illnesses we see affecting people, and which are straining health systems, are in part caused by lifestyle choices and are preventable. For example obesity, cardiovascular diseases, osteopathy, and even depression are all impacted to varying degrees by addiction to food, tobacco and lack of exercise. As such, prevention is an integral part of healthcare, from testing blood pressure and cholesterol to educating citizens about the risk of over-eating, smoking and the benefits of a healthy and active lifestyle. The introduction of initiatives that focus on prevention will likely increase in the coming years with the aim of avoiding people becoming unwell in the first place, and to improve health outcomes. The biggest challenge for moving towards healthcare systems that focus on prevention and population management is that it requires behavioral change on an incredibly large scale, which will be a huge hurdle, and one that shouldn’t be underestimated. It will require the healthcare industry, education providers, policy makers, and insurance companies to work together and this will take many years. Overcoming the barriers With so many innovative solutions coming out of the healthcare industry designed to help alleviate the unrelenting pressure on healthcare systems, what is holding back the transitions that we need to see? A significant factor is that funding is currently allocated based on traditional healthcare models, it is very difficult to scale-up the innovative technology that we’re seeing on a large scale. Unlike other industries that have been suddenly disrupted by a single type of technology (for example what Airbnb did for the hospitality industry, or what Uber did to the transport industry), change in the healthcare industry will be an evolutionary one, not a revolutionary one. I am confident the industry will adapt, and that the healthcare industry is going to facilitate and embrace change as it evolves into something very different to what we see today. Professor Doctor Leonard Witkamp https://twitter.com/leonardwitkamp Prof. Dr Leonard Witkamp is a former dermatologist and director KSYOS TeleMedical Centre, the first virtual hospital in The Netherlands. He has been appointed by the Royal Dutch Medical Association as Professor in TeleMedicine at the Department of Medical Informatics of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. He founded the KSYOS organisation in 2001 to develop, investigate and implement large TeleScreening, TeleConsultation and TeleMonitoring programs. KSYOS works together with a network of over 12,000 healthcare workers in TeleDiagnosis, TeleConsultation and TeleMonitoring. KSYOS yearly performs over 100,000 Teleconsultations. Over 1,500 patients are seen on a daily basis. His experience as research fellow in market research, as university professor and researcher, as practicing dermatologist and as director of KSYOS has been an excellent base for his present function as Professor in Telemedicine. Source : https://www.futurehealthindex.com/2017/05/22/hospitals-old-fashioned-idea/

The Royal Free was one of Google's first healthcare partners. Two years on, how is the product of their partnership working out? Back in 2014, Google bought UK artificial intelligence outfit DeepMind for a rumoured £400m. Since then, DeepMind has been expanding its AI capabilities into new areas including gaming and, most notably, healthcare. Google's DeepMind and the NHS: A glimpse of what AI means for the future of healthcare The Google subsidiary has struck a series of deals with organisations in the UK health service -- so what's really happening? The Royal Free, a teaching hospital located in the Hampstead area of London, was one of DeepMind's first healthcare partners. The pair began working on an app called Streams in 2015, and the app has been in the hands of clinicians since January 2017. While DeepMind is best known as an AI company, the Streams app doesn't at present have any artificial intelligence elements: think of it more as BI for healthcare. The rationale behind the app is simple: to rapidly alert clinicians to acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients, allowing them to respond more quickly. Acute kidney injury is suddenly-occurring kidney damage, usually as a result of another serious illness or injury. When the kidney stops working properly, the body's toxic waste products can build up in the blood and harm other organs. If an AKI becomes serious enough, it can prove fatal. According to the Royal Free, AKIs are linked to 40,000 deaths a year, and £1bn is spent on treating the condition. The idea of the Streams app is to make sure that the right information about AKIs finds the right members of the hospital team at the right time. It does that by analysing information, such as details about blood and liver function, from patients on certain wards including obstetrics and those leaving intensive care. It then sends an alert to a clinician's phone to let them know that a patient needs their attention. In the Royal Free, around six alerts are sent out per day, four of which are dealt with by the renal team and two by specialist nurses. Sarah Stanley is a clinical nurse lead at the Royal Free, and one of the clinicians that uses Streams in her daily work. The app is held on a dedicated smartphone that alerts her to level two and three AKIs (the more serious stages of acute kidney injury) that need her attention. The app crunches the data to detect in-patients suffering with acute kidney damage, what happens next is down to the doctors and nurses that get the alert. By opening the app, the clinician can get a snapshot of the patient's condition. By scanning which blood results are out of whack, they can start to build up a picture of what might be behind the AKI -- a low haemoglobin and raised urea might be indicative of blood loss, while a raised white cell count might suggest infection, for example. The app also fills in other information about the patient: text summaries of their X-rays, for example, and details of previous hospital admissions. "If you can see in under a minute they have had 20 visits to the elderly care ward, then that gives you quite a good clinical picture," Stanley said. Older people are particularly at risk of an AKI. Not only does kidney function diminish naturally as people age, those over 65 have an increased likelihood of having another serious long-term health condition and also tend to take longer to recover from knocks to their health. It's common for an elderly patient to come in with a pneumonia that can go on to cause an AKI, or for a patient to have been kept nil by mouth ahead of an operation and, being disinclined to drink afterwards, get so dehydrated their kidneys suffer as a result. Streams allows such AKIs to be detected earlier -- a matter of several hours, according to Stanley. "They would have been picked up [before], but probably not until the next day on the routine bloods," she said. Rather than have to find a working PC and sort through the patient's electronic record to find all the information needed to decide if they've had an AKI, the information is surfaced straight into the clinician's hand. "It's a massive time-saver. You save one to two hours a day just through filtering information," Stanley added. Finding an AKI earlier can mean that it can be treated sooner, and so the damage to the kidney and other organ systems is minimised. It can even be of benefit for patients that are terminally ill: "If the patient is imminently dying and we're getting to see them a day sooner, then we can make plans with them and their family about what could happen," Stanley said. In the future, the Streams app could be more of a two-way affair when it comes to data flow. Rather than just surfacing analysed data to clinicians, it could be used to study performance of clinical teams -- recording how long it takes to respond to an AKI alert, for example, and patient outcomes related to different clinical activities. "Pulling data back is a massive plus... you are only learning from the data you collect," Stanley said. There are currently two Streams phones in use, one by the day team and one by the night team. One of the devices is always on charge while the other is in use. While consultants can access the app over a VPN from home, for most staff, the app won't work when it's not connected to the Royal Free's wi-fi, keeping patient data accessible only within the bounds of the hospital. The app is, according to Stanley, "very user friendly". That's perhaps not surprising given the work that DeepMind has put into the design of the UI -- every element of NHS workflows and UX has been carefully scrutinised and refined. Even the model of phone chosen as the test device for Streams had thought behind it: it needed to be precisely the right size for the pocket of hospital scrubs, so users could make sure it wouldn't fall out while they're about their work on the ward. (Interestingly, considering DeepMind's ownership, it's an iPhone, but an Android version of the setup is planned.) For the design of the app itself, DeepMind spent time trying to make the app intuitive: for example, staff were shown icons without context and asking users what action -- a tap, a swipe -- it made them want to take, to try and create a UI that's as simple to use can be. "It's always the way of IT things -- people are worried they will create lots of work, but when they use [Streams], they instinctively know how it works," Stanley said. DeepMind even created a custom alert noise for Streams, to make sure that it couldn't be confused with any other alert sound a clinician might hear, and so would always get their ear. The design had to not only work for nurses and doctors, it had to suit patients too. Stanley said that clinicians can use the app to help explain to patients about changes in their kidney health. Because the Streams app shows changes through graphs and trend lines, patients can clearly see if certain markers of kidney health are spiking or falling, and by how much, making the progress of their condition easier to grasp. But not all patients whose data has been through Streams would have been aware. Earlier this year, a year-long investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office found that the 1.6 million patients whose data was used in testing weren't sufficiently informed that their information was being used in the pilot. The health trust that the Royal Free is part of, according to the ICO, wasn't as transparent as it should have been, and was advised of several measures it had to take to bring it into line with the Data Protection Act (there is now an opt-out form on the Royal Free's website). However, the research project itself was allowed to continue. Though the two organisations have signed a five-year deal to work together, there's no projected end date to the DeepMind research going on at the Royal Free. Stanley is hoping that the pace of the implementation picks up. It would be a "tragedy" if the trust doesn't roll-out Streams further, she said. "We are not embracing it quickly enough." Source : http://www.zdnet.com/article/deepmind-and-the-nhs-what-its-really-like-to-use-googles-kidney-health-app/ Source : https://deepmind.com/applied/deepmind-health/

Chinese phone maker ZTE says it's working with Qualcomm to develop a new category of wearable trackers. Remember those old "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercials featuring emergency medical alert devices? They may be getting a modern makeover. ZTE, a Chinese smartphone maker best known for its budget handsets, said at CES 2018 on Tuesday it was partnering with chip giant Qualcomm and personal security software provider Wearsafe on a new category of wearables. These personal safety trackers represent a more practical side of the ever-growing wearables markets, which includes everything from fitness trackers to smartwatches and smart glasses. This category isn't new -- personal alert trackers and devices have been out for years -- but ZTE is hoping to put a modern spin with a more powerful Qualcomm processor and software smarts from Wearsafe. "The work between ZTE, Qualcomm Technologies and Wearsafe will create the next generation of personal safety solutions through a small wearable device," said Jeff Yee, vice president of product marketing and strategy for ZTE. While ZTE's bread and butter continues to be budget phones for the prepaid market, the company has increasingly branched out with unique products. The company offers an Android-powered projector and wireless hot spot, and in October released the dual-screen Axon M, which folded on a hinge. The company also developed a phone based on fan input, a mid-range phone called Hawkeyethat allowed you to navigate without touching the screen. ZTE will use Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 1100 platform as the processor and tap Wearsafe's software, which has a low power mode that lets it run longer and specializes in personal security tracking. Like the devices of old, it is a direct life line to emergency responders. Wearsafe software also stores and records information about the user's situation, including location, how fast someone is traveling and any available audio information to better assist the emergency worker. ZTE says the Qualcomm and Wearsafe assets allow the company to create a wearable device that is more discrete than past bulkier's gadgets. Qualcomm, meanwhile, appreciates the opportunity to enter a new category. "We are looking forward to bringing a product to operators in the US and globally over time," said Pankaj Kedia, senior director of product management at Qualcomm Technologies. Source : https://www.cnet.com/news/qualcomm-zte-wearsafe-next-wearable-trend-personal-safety-trackers-ces-2018/

Having worked in healthcare for over 20 years I am passionate about the sector. Being part of something that really changes, impacts and improves people’s lives is truly a privilege. My passion for health is both intrinsic and taught. My days at Johnson and Johnson, Ethicon, reminds me of the company credo daily instilled in us, a sense of purpose, belief that you are part of something amazing. I still carry this belief and applaud Johnson and Johnson for the effort they put into their business internally to ensure they got the best results for their businesses and the patients they helped treat. The fundamentals of an established healthcare company are strong. Tenure, market experience, investment and strong revenues. Built over many years but also with a strong eye on the key commercial factor who is paying, where are the revenues coming from? I had the privilege of being part of the team that set up a division within the UK JnJ business. Our remit was to establish the Bariatric market in the UK. We undertook a huge amount of work to identify and establish users, patients, early adopters, Key Opinion Leaders, thought leaders. One thing however we never wondered about was who was going to pay? The reimbursement path was clear, although no coding was allocated at the time (2005 ish), our previous relationships and willingness to work with one of the biggest names in healthcare opened doors of hospital chief execs, finance and procurement directors through to the Department of Health, head of policy! Now I split my time between established companies and the healthcare start up space and it’s a very different world. Having worked on the “inside” and now helping companies looking in from the outside, there is a naivety that seems so obvious to me, but in many situations truly a revelation to the start ups. I often joke about the films, “Field of Dreams” :“If you build it, he will come”, or for the more musically minded, “Wayne’s World: If you book them they will come”, this naive self belief works in the movies. Sadly not in the UK Health system today! I maintain that having the most innovative, exciting, disruptive product is not the answer, it’s the execution of how you sell it and having a clear path to funding. This may seem really basic, but I see it missed time after time by the people so involved in their outstanding innovations, they forget the basic commercials. If you strip back any successful company it’s their clear view of their customer and the budgets they can spend which ensures success. Many really exciting digital health companies in the UK are now looking outside of the UK market for this reason. Trying time after time to break into the NHS, it’s a huge investment and the system is just not geared up for it. I spent years working with surgeons, doctors, theatre staff, procurement, finance in NHS hospitals nationwide. Working with numerous stakeholders, using products I was introducing, analysing the health economic benefits and savings to the trusts, it became clear that the hospitals on the whole are not set up to receive or promote innovation. There are a few famous teaching hospitals that embrace innovation BUT rarely pay for it. They give companies the privilege of “piloting” their innovation. The pilot programmes help the hospital with their status of adopting innovation and the pilots themselves help the healthcare companies share some exciting stories with existing and future investors. But when it comes down to the day to day acquisition of the new shiny product or service many people are left scratching their heads and no better off. A huge amount of time is spent on pilots in the NHS, showing savings of time and or money. But to push it into the mainstream funding channels, to become a standard product/service that demonstrates in-year savings is not easy. The coding system for reimbursement is still fairly limited. Most hospitals in the UK are now operating at a deficit. Payment terms for suppliers are stretched, killing cash flow, which for a small company can end them. It’s a huge risk. It’s not surprising then that the big institutional investors and banks shy away from digital health investment. Many investors I speak to are pondering whether start up digital health is a good place to invest now at all. The story of innovation in health care is a good one. But when you’ve spent so many years watching a creaking system day to day, I believe you would wonder too, how is this ever going to be mainstream in our current system? It’s not all doom and gloom, NHS Digital have some really exciting plans for digital transformation, alongside existing and fairly new services which are transforming how we receive our healthcare digitally who have managed with huge effort to carve out funding streams. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s a bumpy ride! I’d love to hear your thoughts :) Julie Pelta https://uk.linkedin.com/in/juliepelta With over 20 years experience in healthcare. From classic corporate roles through to consultancy and medical device distribution. Experience in working with Med-Tech product and service companies. From product innovation, delivering enhanced patient outcomes to digital service innovation. About Us Industry knowledge specialists who work across the vertical to minimize risk. We use our network and in-depth understanding of the system, and how to navigate it. We work in areas from Digital Health to Med-Tech; Education to Service provision; Commissioning to Investing; our experience is vast and track record impressive. Activities undertaken with companies developing products : Whether an SME or corporate, the need to build a proof of concept and validate the market early is essential. We believe “fail fast, change quickly” is the key to success and the only way to develop “market-ready” products at pace. Activities undertaken with companies developing products: • Market Validation • Co-Design: Demonstrating demand side articulation of need • Stakeholder Mapping • NHS Readiness Assessment Activities undertaken with companies investing in products: Making objective decisions based on limited due diligence in an opaque marketplace like the NHS is tough and risky. Deep knowledge allowing for informed decision-making should be central to any investment strategy. We will provide the clarity needed. Our due diligence services for companies investing: • Opportunity Sizing • Market Validation • Risk Assessment • Competitor Analysis We will make sure that your organization is equipped with the tools to make the right decisions and that your product has the highest chances of success that it can. This includes support during product design, creation of your go-to-market strategy, managing stakeholder engagement and general understanding of the health economy. With over 20 years of experience working with people that commission services and those that provide them, we understand the barriers and how to overcome them. Being successful starts by clearly articulating your product or service and defining a precise problem that it solves. This is our core business. To help you become more successful. We work with start-ups, SMEs and established corporates all at different stages of their product life cycles, but who all face similar challenges. Contact Us: j@jpmed.co.uk +44 (0)7866 501 084