This is Australia’s premier health innovation convention on the technologies that are revolutionizing healthcare and the implementation of ehealth initiatives and I was honored to be asked to give a keynote presentation at the Digital Health Summit taking place in Melbourne 29-30 March 2017. The bonus was listening to so many great presentations throughout the day from some great speakers.
The Perfect Storm for Healthcare
The opening session that set the tone for the future came from Alfred Poor, Editor for Health Tech Insider who eloquently described the perfect storm of The Internet, wireless communications and the pervasive smartphones that last year shipped 1.5 Billion – enough to provide one for every 5 people on the planet. Innovation that can take off the shelf technology and create accessible telehealth programs that reduce readmissions from 20% to 6%.
Everything from wearables devices to non-invasive sensors and monitoring to allow the capture of data on patients, improve care and treatment options and allow the elderly to safely stay in their home. Innovations that address the major challenges around the world in the society that needs to adapt and focus on wellness:
2009 Continua Health Alliance Brigitte Piniewski, MD
Stuart Smith took us through the potential for Gamification: exploring the magic of video games in health and rehabilitation providing repeated examples where implementing Gamification to engage with patients was seen as some kind of Voodoo by his colleagues who were amazed at the incredible success and high utilization by patients
He showed examples of rehabilitation patients using Sony Play Station with Microsoft Kinect that made the rehab program a positive experience and even had the audience dancing along with Dance Dance Revolution explaining how they had adapted this to elderly patients and using Glenn Miller and Big band music
With the explosion of data comes increasing risks to the security and privacy of data and Nathan Steiner Veeam Software detailed the expanding risk and the staggering incidence of data breaches that extend well beyond healthcare which remains the top target for hackers. No surprise and notably the FBI highlighted the hacking community that is targeting vulnerable FTP servers.
Julian Bright and Adrian Medhurst from Amelie AI took the audience on an interactive journey with an Artificial Agent focused on mental health issues and braved the Live Demo gremlins as captured on this Periscope:
LIVE on #Periscope: @amelieapp @digitalhealthau #digitalhealthshow https://t.co/Xgv7baomwb
— Prof Stuart Smith (@StuSmith2454) March 28, 2017
Personalized Medicine
Dr Robert McLeay, Founder, DoseMe highlighted the changing nature of medicine that improves on the old style model of guess work on drug choice and dosage and builds individual models to reduce the side effects and maximize the selection of the right drug for patients first time round – practical personalized medicine available for your patients today
Professor Phil Robinson, Head, Cell Signalling Unit, Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI), co-lead of The Australian Cancer Research Foundation International Centre for the Proteome of Cancer (ProCan) shared the exciting international progress being made in fighting cancer with industrial scale proteomic system that they have set up in the Children’s Medical Research Unit that was Announced by Vice-President Joe Biden on 17 July 2016 in Melbourne as part of the Cancer Moon shot that has rapidly grown to include 10 Nations, 18 Institutions. They are now producing huge amounts of proteomic data and creating Digital Proteme Maps that has been committed to the public domain indefinitely to facilitate ou sharing and learning and will be providing new options for targeting cancer. You can see more about their project here.
Digital Health Innovations from the Front Line
We heard from 2 clinicians from the US Aenor J Sawyer, MD, MS Director, UCSF Skeletal Health Health Innovation &Tech in Ortho University California, San Francisco and Dr Megan Ranney, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine; Director, Emergency Digital Health Innovation program, Brown University. They shared the experiences from UCSF and Brown University of applying digital technology in the clinical setting offering insights into the use of sensors, Virtual reality and how to evaluate the technology in the context of a busy hospital and Emergency room.
After lunch, the panel session on the future of aging was hosted by The Hon Bronwyn Pike, former Victorian Minister for Housing, Aged Care, Community Services, Health, Education, Skills and Workforce Participation focusing on the innovations in place and how the sector can benefit from the data and analytics increasingly available from the digital transformation taking place. and then a detailed review of the great Victorian Stroke Telemedicine Program that has been rolled out with great success by Prof. Christopher Bladin, Program Lead – Victorian Stroke Telemedicine Project, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience & Mental Health with a proven protocol that is statewide and heading nationwide
A great protocol @StrokeAus #digitalhealthshow @DigitalHealthAU pic.twitter.com/REE1JB6IBs
— Prof Stuart Smith (@StuSmith2454) March 29, 2017
Social Media in Healthcare
Professor Enrico Coiera, Director, Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation offered some tantalizing insights into the way that social media is changing the way we think about health. Not only does Social Media offer a means of reaching and engaging with patients it is also a potential avenue for treatment. The social propagation of obesity as detailed in this New England Journal of Medicine article: Network Medicine — From Obesity to the “Diseasome” and these complex networks are of direct relevance
He left us wondering of social media can treat social disease (his BMJ article Social networks, social media, and social diseases talked about this concept)
Modeling of Data
James McCaw, Associate Professor in Mathematical Biology, The University of Melbourne shared insights into the modeling for influenza forecasting and pointed out that despite how much progress we have made in medicine the influenza pandemic of 1918/9 (Spanish Flu) would have a similar effect on the population today
The models for prediction have improved but he likened them to weather forecasting capabilities from the 1970’s
It was a great day filled with insights from a wide selection of experts covering a huge range of areas. All the talks were engaging with practical tips and wisdom that the attendees could take back and use.
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