Moving Digital Health

Takeaways

• Dyania Health uses AI to automate the chart review and abstraction process for clinical trials, saving time and improving efficiency.
• Synapsis AI, Dyania Health’s AI system, analyzes electronic medical records to identify patients who may be eligible for specific clinical trials.
• The match output from Synapsis AI provides a level of compatibility between patients and trials, helping physicians make informed decisions.
• Explainability is crucial in AI, and Dyania Health’s system provides granular explainability to physicians, allowing them to understand the reasoning behind the AI’s conclusions.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background

03:00 Automating Chart Review and Abstraction

08:09 Matching Patients with Clinical Trials

12:16 Matching Output and Explainability

13:55 Synapsis AI vs. General Language Models

17:07 Feedback and Learning Over Time

21:52 The Problem of Inefficient Clinical Trials

25:47 Success Stories and Impact

29:43 Building the Dyania Health Team

38:09 Revolutionizing Clinical Trials

Our latest guest on Moving Digital Health was Kyle Kiser, CEO of Arrive Health, discussing how his company is empowering consumers with the information they need to make informed choices about where they purchase medications — and critically — how much they have to pay.

"64% of patients were going to avoid taking their medication or take it differently than prescribed because of cost… it's a massive impact on a patient's ability to fill their meds, take their meds to be compliant with that regimen, and treat their condition." Kyle Kiser

Watch the podcast video now, or download from any of your favourite podcast players.

Mike Lovas (Director of Design & Innovation at Healthcare Human Factors, UHN) appeared on Moving Digital Health to discuss key factors driving the need for innovative cancer care solutions, including: 

• The number of cancer patients confined to their homes
• Burden of individual health appointments on both patients and providers
• Understanding the patient’s trajectory and their pain points through the treatment process

Our discussion also explored remote patient monitoring and the unique asynchronous models currently being created by the Human Healthcare Factors team. 

MDisrupt’s CEO and Co-Founder Ruby Gadelrab Tudor joined Moving Digital Health to discuss working relationships between digital health companies and clinicians, as well as some of the challenges that digital health startups face such as:

• Creating viable solutions to clinical pain points
• Navigating industry regulations
• Determining who in the market is the appropriate “payer” for these solutions

Our conversation includes identifying the values clinicians bring to healthcare startups, the industry’s push for clinical outcomes, and what digitalization holds for the future of healthcare.

Dr. Adrienne Leussa  

Currently the Director of Ecosystem Partnerships at 54gene, a health technology platform company, Dr. Leussa holds a PhD in biochemistry from Stellenbosch University. In addition to her roles in the business world, she has served as a university lecturer and managed an academic research laboratory.  

Dr. Leussa first encountered 54gene as a client—after leaving academia for the business world. Now, she leverages her academic expertise as she manages partnerships between 54gene and higher learning institutions across the African continent.

Episode Highlights  

• The importance of diverse data for precision medicine  

• Historically low patient-centricity as a bottleneck in clinical research

• Why 54gene focuses on genomics data to support drug discovery efforts

• How 54gene helps motivate individuals to donate their genetic data

• Advancements in digital health that can help benefit drug development

• How more inclusive data gathering would benefit the global community as a whole

• Major accomplishments 54gene has managed in just three years

• How 54gene leverages AI and machine learning in its data analysis

• Dr. Leussa’s own podcast, Africa Biotech Conversations, and its mission

Links  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrienne-leussa/

https://54gene.com

African Biotech Conversations podcast on Spotify

Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Medicine at Dalhousie University, Dr. Abidi serves as director of the Health Informatics graduate program and leads the university’s NICHE research group, bringing the benefits of knowledge management technologies to healthcare enterprises. Read Blog Post Here!

 Episode Highlights 

• The primary driver of digital health progress
• The two sides of AI, and where machine learning falls in this paradigm
• Two key problems Dr. Abidi and his team address using AI and ML for decision support
• How Explainable AI can help build physicians’ confidence in decision support tools
• How an AI decision support system can double as an educational device
• The adoption challenges inherent in black-box models
• Why more data is not necessarily better
• Why Dr. Abidi considers data collection the weak link in data quality
• Distinguishing between biases: which impact a model’s performance and which do not?
• Current NICHE team projects
• How the rise of e-therapeutics grew virtual care, and a crucial clarification of terms
• Barriers to digital health innovation, and countries/entities that are leading the way

Links  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raza-abidi-73b769111/?originalSubdomain=ca

https://niche.cs.dal.ca

https://niche.cs.dal.ca/raza_abidi/

Quotes  

• “The onset of digital health was the need to collect all the patient information and then make it available at the point of care.”
• “From a mindset standpoint, we have moved from that data-intensive digital health to more knowledge-and-services-oriented digital health.”
• “I think [the target] is: how can we actually use decision support to impact the operationalization of healthcare services?”
• “The entire reason for Explainable AI is to build trust, and once we build the trust, then the uptake of that decision model will actually be high. Otherwise, it will be used on and off, and there will always be ‘can I have a second opinion?’”
• “Biases come at two different levels, which we need to understand: Is it an ethical bias, or is it a bias that would affect the performance of the model?”
• “There are two sides of research: one is fundamental research, and one is applied research. And it is the fundamental research that is supported by these collaborations, because that is where we are asking the hard questions.”
• “One cannot discount the utility and applicability of artificial intelligence in health. It comes from all sides.”

CEO and founder of My Viva Plan, Loreen has 25 years’ experience as a registered dietitian and holds degrees in nutrition and psychology. Applying her deep understanding of the interaction between physical and mental health, Loreen engages and motivates patients to take ownership of their own health journeys. 

Loreen began her career at the University of Alberta Hospital, where her focus was on kidney disease. She started a private clinical practice, Revive Wellness, in 2006, and entered the digital health space in 2013. At My Viva Plan, Loreen is creating an app that will both empower patients’ self-efficacy and facilitate communications with their healthcare providers.

Scarlet Batchelor is a brand strategist and consultant in the wellness industry. After 8 years as a product manager at New Balance, she left to found the app-based fitness platform Coeo. Other prior roles include VP Brand Experience at Hydrow and CMO at Liteboxer, for which she was named a Business Insider CMO to Watch in 2021. These days Scarlett works as a consultant, lending her expertise to wellness products and brands that excite and inspire her.

Episode Highlights

• How Scarlett’s experience growing up as an athlete influenced her professional life
• The most engaging elements of startup work
• How she went from Hydrow beta tester to Vice President of Brand Experience
• Technology as a scale factor rather than a replacement for personal relationships
• Delivering experiences that leverage both the energy of in-person connections and the efficiency of remote models
• Finding the digital equivalent of a “high five”
• How to lead with listening
• Scarlet’s 3 big takeaways from starting her own company
• The entrepreneurial challenge: knowing when to be flexible and when to be steadfast
• The latest sport to capture her heart
• Current industry innovations, and upcoming developments Scarlet’s looking forward to
• Connecting with other female leaders through the Chief network, and the mission behind Scarlet’s new podcast, Brand New Women

Links 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scarlet-batchelor

https://liteboxer.com

https://hydrow.com

https://coeofitness.com

With degrees in art and mechanical engineering coupled with years of experience as a systems engineer, Juhan brings a complex understanding to his role as Creative Director of GoInvo, a healthcare user experience (UX) design firm. At GoInvo, Juhan leads a team designing services that facilitate patient engagement and work to impact health outcomes on all sides: from product design to public policy. 

Episode Highlights

• Crucial challenges in integrating both patient and clinician perspectives in design
• The “profit over people” philosophy he’s observed in some systems
• How a “constant review of systems” model could help shift health intervention to be proactive rather than reactive
• Where Juhan sees the future of primary care heading
• How improved primary care benefits society as a whole
• A few of the under-researched areas of health that he sees as top priorities
• How Juhan expects the data-sharing model to evolve over time
• Use cases for a more diversified data pool
• His experience with patients’ willingness to share their data
• How design and UX can help advocate for policy change
• What Juhan thinks customers really want from digital health services
• The All of Us research program from the National Institutes of Health (current GoInvo project)

Links 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juhansonin/

https://goinvo.com

https://allofus.nih.gov

Before founding Halifax VR, and later, MARS VR Lab, Daniel spent years as a project manager in the software development and e-learning fields. 

It was through his experience at Halifax VR that Daniel came to realize how far beyond entertainment VR’s applications can go. Now at MARS VR Lab, he combines his experience as a software developer with his thousands of hours of experience guiding others through VR experiences to create a pediatric rehabilitation process patients can actually enjoy.

Episode Highlights

• How Daniel became enamored with developing VR for medical purposes
• Making the most of pandemic-related delays
• Navigating the medical research trial process
• Daniel’s theory about healthcare’s notorious resistance to new tech
• Real-world benefits realized from the process of calibrating a virtual wheelchair
• How VR technology has advanced to an intuitive level of usability
• How MARS VR Lab’s program addresses specific competency criteria
• The emotional investment in the outcome when working with pediatric trainees
• Ethical challenges as a business working with a non-profit
• Instrumental partnership with the IWK Children’s Hospital
• Recommendations for someone who’s never tried VR before
• The charitable institution Mars VR Lab supports
• Exciting ideas he’s come across in his research

Links 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-baldwin-728929175/?originalSubdomain=ca

https://marsvrlab.com