The tricorder is no longer just a Trekkieās thing, as fellow BetaKit writer Tom Emrich found out last week. Digital medicine is here, andĀ thanks to the smartphone it can be found in most of our pockets.
Vancouver recently hosted some extremely insightful conversations about the current state and future of digital medicine. Specifically,Ā Genome BC hosted an exceptional evening for the 4th Annual Don Rix Distinguished Keynote Address, featuring Dr. Eric Topol.
Topol is an American cardiologist, geneticist, and researcher, and currently serves as Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California. His talk ā”How Digitizing Humans Changes the Future of Medicineā covered Ā the whole spectrum of digital medicine from sensors, to scanners, to DNA sequencing. In Topolās view, itās not fair to even call your smartphone, a phone. Itās the gateway to a new world of individualized medicine. His entire presentation is available here, and is well worth watching.
The general conversation about placing the patient at the centre of the healthcare universe continued over two days at the Interface 2013 conference. Organized by Sanotron and entitled āThe Future of Health: Smartphones, Wearables, Sensors, Big Data, and You,ā it featured an excellent line-up of speakers, discussions, and demos.
The first panel discussion Panel Trade + Investment and moderated by Dion Madsen, (BDC Venture Capital Health Fund), highlighted the notion that the digital health space is quickly filling up with āme tooā apps and products. Finding real differentiation from all of the noise is becoming a challenge.
Rich Osborn of RecapHealth Ventures offered a humorous yet sobering perspective regarding US versus Canadian investment for healthcare startups: “in the US we call it pivot. In Canada you call it fail.” Itās all about runway. Innovating in this space monumentally difficult.
Over a dozen companies ended up taking centre stage at the event, with these five BC digital health startups standing out:
Fatigue Science:is measuring fatigue and accident risk. The technology is improving workplace safety, human health & performance.
LionsGate Technologies: has developed Vital Signs DSPā¢ Ā a proprietary signal processing platform for the development and commercialization of ultra-low cost vital signs monitoring applications in mHealth.
Ayogo Health: applies game psychology to patient self-care. They have a portfolio of customizable social games and apps to engage, educate, and empower patients with chronic conditions
Medeo; has built a communication platform making it more convenient to see your doctor online.
Curatio: is a personal support & tracking tool designed especially to help people thrive with thalassemia. (We recently reported on Curatio’s $100,000 win as part ofĀ 7thĀ annual Health 2.0 Conference in Silicon Valley).
The overarching story playing out over drinks, meals, and networking was the complexity of our healthcare industry. Itās complicated.
Attendees Lynda Brown (Founder & CEO of Curatio), Michael Fergusson (CEO of Ayogo Health), and Dr. Alexandra Greenhill (Physician and entrepreneur) all shared their thoughts about healthcareĀ while attending a lively panel conversation, āclinical trials and the need for evidence-based data in digital medicineā.
For Brown, sheās always considering the question, āhow do we help people adjust behaviours?”
“It all starts with people,” said Brown. “We need to think about what people are going throughā¦ person behind the chronic illness, person behind the fertility treatment, person behind the recovery program; what are they actually going through?ā
Brown is pushing herself by the idea that technology ācan help people have a less isolating experience, better understand their own health, and connect with others going through the same thing.ā
Ayogo Healthās CEO Michael Fergusson said āour system is only getting more complex. The more people that are arriving to solve the problems the more complex the system becomes. Itās no longer a space where the only specialists are those with a healthcare background, now we see people with backgrounds in high-tech, software, and even game studio. Weāre also seeing more regulatory and technical complexity as a result.ā He also notes that āour incumbents are having a tough time keeping up conceptually.ā
From Greenhillās experience, she suggested that āHealthcare is still stuck figuring out and implementing 1.0 technologies. Many stakeholders have not realized technology is passing them by. Rules are completely different in terms of speed. Thereās massive bureaucratic institution speed and then thereās startup speed.ā
In terms of addressing the more talk-than-action syndrome, Greenhill added, āwe should collectively be reminding each other that planning, studying, evaluating, and measuring, Ā are only relevant in the context of action.ā
Some health issues are virtually unavoidable. Unfortunately thereās no getting away from our personal genetic makeup. The biggest challenge to a healthier society really isnāt a technical one, rather, it’s the healthcare system itself. Itās too complicated with too many competing self-interests.
And pointing fingers at the system isnāt a fix. Sadly thereās no app for individual accountability. Behaving badly and choosing poor lifestyle habits will keep costing us, and keep killing us, and all the medically valuable devices and applications will not save healthcare from ourselves.