Healthcare at the push of a button
Wearable technology, trackable medicine, embedded body scanners: are
these technologies the future of the healthcare industry? At CPhI North
America, digital technology experts Dr Bertalan Mesko and Nik Leist will
discuss this and more. They spoke to Speciality
Chemicals Magazine ahead of the event
Dr Mesko is director of The Medical Futurist Institute and
Amazon Top 100 author of My Health: Upgraded and The Guide to the Future of
Medicine. His session, ‘Science Fiction in Healthcare’, will explore how
science fiction can become science fact, the role that patient-led design is
having on technology developments, the new challenges presented by patients
finding an unregulated, technological solution for health problems, how
disruption is helping to tackle these new challenges and how this is resulting
in a cultural transformation as we move towards highly personalised digital
health solutions.
Where
do you predict digital technologies will be in 10 years?
Mesko: If the trends I see now continue to dominate, I’m sure that in
10 years patients will be the point-of-care. No matter where they are, they
need to get access to at least basic healthcare and this will only be possible
through the use of disruptive technologies. In 10 years, disruptive
technologies will be everyday elements of practising medicine and providing
care. Patients will be proactive and will want to be treated as equal partners
in the healthcare team. Physicians will have a chance to thrive on new
technologies that augment their capabilities. I know I sound overly optimistic,
but it’s because I am!
Leist: In the next five years we will see considerable growth through
partnership engagement, between digital medicines companies and health systems,
payers and pharma companies. The evidence supporting digital solutions as a
standard of care is already available and will continue to build. Digital
medicines will be better understood, accepted and prescribed by physicians and
embraced by patients as a way to help them achieve and maintain their health
goals. The 10-year mark will highlight the broadening availability and adoption
of digital technologies globally by healthcare providers and patients.
How
many companies are investigating/moving into this area?
Mesko: The Medical Futurist Institute has recently released a list of
the top 100 companies in digital health that do something innovative. Now, we
are working on a database of 500 companies that do the same. This list is
growing every day.
Leist: There are already hundreds of digital health companies around
the world, and more and more existing technology and healthcare companies are
moving into the space every day. Each company is looking to collect and
leverage data that can personalise health treatments and enable patients and
healthcare teams to manage health issues with new digital solutions. As
the number of companies with digital health technologies grows, competition
will increase, but this is a good thing. With competition comes the need to
prove the effectiveness of solutions, so need for real world commercial
evidence and link to outcomes will increase. This will help everyone involved
to understand which solutions really work for patients and especially
physicians, who tend to adopt new practices based on efficacy data.
Nik Leist is the senior director of ingestible sensor
manufacturing and site leader at Proteus Digital Health. His presentation,
‘Integrating silicon with drugs: pushing the boundaries of pharma manufacturing
with digital medicines’ will explore how the convergence of digital
technologies and healthcare is fundamentally changing the way patients interact
with their own health. With greater access to mobile applications and wearable
devices, they are actively engaging with their medications in ways never seen
before.
What
excites you most about healthcare digital technology and how did you move into
it?
Mesko: I’m fascinated by the fact that physicians today still have to
work with rudimentary tools while practising the art of medicine. It’s because
of their unique expertise and vision that patients haven’t lost trust and faith
in the system. Whenever I imagine how amazing healthcare could be with new
technologies and a cultural transformation of the doctor-patient relationship,
I’m more determined than ever to make it happen worldwide.
Leist: Most other industries have been transformed by using the
computers in people’s hands – mobile phones – to make regular activities like
shopping, entertainment and managing finances easier, more accessible and real
time. Now healthcare is experiencing its digital transformation. The impact on
people’s lives will be even greater and more beneficial because digital
medicines will help people achieve their health goals in ways not possible
before. From a manufacturing perspective, it’s exciting to work hands-on to
make something no other company has ever made: oral pharmaceuticals formulated
with an ingestible sensor that communicate to a mobile device when swallowed,
letting the patient and their health care provider (HCP) know that they’ve
taken their medication and at what time. This allows the HCP to have objective
information to know whether the medication is working for that patient. Being
involved with manufacturing a leading-edge product like this gets me excited to
go to work.
Will
digital technologies replace human contact if it is more accurate/successful?
Mesko: Artificial intelligence will be more efficient in almost all
tasks physicians do today, but human contact is irreplaceable. Empathy is
reflective, therefore even if an artificial intelligence algorithm could tell
me exactly what I need to hear while I’m vulnerable, I still won’t trust it.
I’ll have to feel that the other person cares for me and this only happens with
people. Because we are social beings, we will always need human contact in
care, even though I want my physician to use all state-of-the-art technology
available to get the best out of my care, while involving me in every
decision.
Leist: Digital technologies, specifically in healthcare, rely on
human contact in order to be successful. Digital health tools that involve
coaching and monitoring require a patient-provider relationship, but now with
digital health technology, it doesn’t have to be in person. With digital
medicines, for example, the goal is to further develop the relationship between
patient and provider by giving the provider objective information about how the
patient is doing with their medication during the 99.7% of the time when they
are not in the doctor’s office. This information enables the doctor’s team to
follow up with the patient by phone or ask them to come to the office if they
see something that is concerning. It also helps the doctor to know if the
medications prescribed are being taken and, if so, whether they are working
based on other health measures taken in more traditional ways.
Can you
give me some examples of “science fiction” technology that could become
“science fact”?
Mesko: The best way to show the impact of science fiction in our
lives is to describe what it would feel like in 2050 to look back at today’s
healthcare. I recently wrote an article on this, which can be found on my
website.
Leist: We’re already seeing products worthy of their own sci-fi
films, from cameras that can move through the body to virtual reality surgeries
being used to train doctors. I imagine we’ll eventually reach the point where a
simple press of a button will provide a patient’s full health report, both for
the patient and the doctor. Today these technologies exist separately; we have
glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, digital medicines and general Fitbit
technology. It’s only a matter of time when all these devices become part of an
integrated system to automatically display a comprehensive picture of how the
patient is doing at any given moment, whether in their doctor’s office or
thousands of miles away.
10 April 2018 - 0 Submitted by Charlotte
Niemiec
https://www.specchemonline.com/healthcare-push-button
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