HLTH 2022 Recap: Holistic care coming together
Addressing health disparities, sexual health, and patient experience are moving healthcare to the WHO definition of health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being".
Audio version of this newsletter.
Between 13 and 16 November, HLTH, the largest digital health conference with over 9000 attendees, took place in Las Vegas. Over 400 speakers discussed the current trends and challenges in the industry.
What did we hear? Finn Partners and Galen Growth partnered for an overview of the global state of investments in digital health. Investments have been rising for several years, especially during the pandemic, but 2022 is not following that trend.
“Funding is down. Everybody knew that. It's down about 35% year on year. It's not all bad news. Early-stage ventures are still getting more funding than they did before. So it's really the late-stage guys that are getting the hit. We're seeing the US and Asia back down quite a bit. Asia, because China's basically in lockdown now, and the US because it was such a bombing year last year that we're now going back to normal again.
That said, the Middle East is up. Latin America is up, and Europe is down, but not as much as the US and Asia Pacific. 2023 is going to be a lot bumpier because investors are very conscious of all the volatility and are, as a result, sharpening their knives a bit. They are becoming much more rigorous around the proof points that digital ventures need to bring to the table to get funding,“ says CEO of Galen Growth Julien de Sallabery.
Tune in to a short interview with Julien de Sallabery:
Oncology received the most funding, followed by mental health solutions. As says Katie DiPerna Cook, SVP of Partnerships at Headspace Health, the interest in mental health solutions is to be expected given the current global uncertainty and no lack of anxiety-inducing social trends.
Holistic care
Innovations in healthcare solutions are increasingly addressing all aspects of our lives - what we eat, not just how much but how well we sleep, how stressed we are, and what is the quality of the environment we live in. A developing field of innovation is looking at food as medicine. Healthcare Strategist and Board Member of The World Food Bank, Smriti Kirubanandan, who led a panel discussion on FoodRx, observes the movement of the industry toward preventative care and wellness. “Physicians have to be trained in culinary and also be trained in food science because it's such a foundational block of health. The more focus we give on what's really happening in one's home, on one's plate, this can really determine one's health as well,” she said.
Let’s talk about sex
Sex is another aspect seen as part of overall health with unaddressed challenges. Physicians often don’t know how to talk to their patients about issues related to sex. This relates to lack of training in sexual health and a lack of common language between doctors and patients. As was mentioned by Saad Alam (picture below), CEO of Hone Health “Men don’t want to admit to having a sex problem - whether it’s psychological, physical. We hate knowing something’s wrong with us,” he said. But when in discussion with others, if one mentions a problem, five others will raise their hands, saying, “I have the same problem”, he illustrated.
43% of women have a sexual health concern, said Lyndsey (McKay) Harper, Ob/Gyn, Founder/CEO of Rosy - a platform offering women a holistic approach to sexual health and wellness. At HLTH startup Rosy received the UCSF Health Hub Digital Health Awards in the Rising Star category for Consumer Wellness. “When I talk about women's sexual health, I'm talking about decreased sexual desire, trouble with arousal, trouble with orgasm, sexual pain, and also decreased lubrication. 43% of women have a sexual health concern, but physicians and the rest of the clinicians aren't trained to talk to our patients about these things. So what happens is women feel extra stigmatized and demoralized and embarrassed about these completely unnecessary and really common problems. There are evidence-based interventions that exist. When we can talk about these things freely, when we're able to innovate and really make progress in these fields, it makes a difference in the everyday lives of women, their families, and their partners. It's a very important part of overall health that's just been neglected, and it's time for that to change,” Lyndsey Harper said.
DTx and telemedicine
Mental health, pain management, sleep health, and nutrition are being addressed with digital applications and digital therapeutics (DTx) - clinically validated digital-only solutions with proven clinical impact. The panel discussion about the global overview of digital therapeutics showed that Europe seems to be at the frontline of incorporating DTx in reimbursement. Germany has been covering Dtx since 2015.
Listen to past episodes on DTx in Germany:
How did Germany accelerate the speed of the digitization of healthcare?
How Can A Digital Health Solution Become a "DiGA App" in Germany?
The current efforts in Europe now are focused on the acknowledgment of clinical results in various countries.
At the moment, Dtx providers need to get verified and approved by a different regulatory body in each European country, which hinders the possibilities of scaling. Especially since each regulator has a different idea about the required clinical evidence. In the US, regulators are still struggling with how to classify DTx for reimbursement. It is also challenging to justify reimbursement of preventive solutions when individuals change healthcare plans and providers every couple of years.
At the same time, telemedicine utilization rates have declined, with many visits moving to the in-person setting. However, this depends on the telemedicine offering, says Hagai Heshes, Head of Product Marketing at TytoCare - a provider of FDA and CE market medical kits for remote physical exams, enabling lung, ear and throat examinations patients can perform on themselves and share with their doctors for further analysis. “We see a decline in utilization rates of solutions that only provide audio and video for teleconsultations. We do not see such a decline in our solutions. For telemedicine to succeed, it always has to be coupled with more layers like physical exams and engagement with users,” he said.
Caregivers and the patient experience
Patient experience as a determinant of health outcomes is increasingly being raised as an area needing changes. However, healthcare providers currently don’t have incentives to invest more in the patient experience; there is no clear ROI for a “5-star hospital experience”, which also doesn’t have a definition. But what patients appreciate most in their care is when they don’t feel like clinicians only treat and ask about their symptoms but are present when doing rounds and having discussions with patients about their treatment.
Another unaddressed problem in healthcare is the role of caregivers, which are not compensated for their work. Caregiver and patient advocate Erica Olenski Johansen warns about the need for change. “The biggest challenge for caregivers is administrative burden before anything. Caregivers, more often than not, across the country are not paid for the services. In any other marketplace, what they do would be compensated. We have organized our industry not to pay the caregiver, and the of managing the care coordination and filling gaps in the clinical workflows is on them, without any visibility to the process or the workflows in the business,“ she said.
All in all, HLTH being focused on predominantly US healthcare, Aline Noizet, Digital Health Connector from Spain, observes the US market is addressing many issues about inequity and racial disparities we don’t see as much in Europe. “HLTH is quite focused on the US market, and for us, coming from Europe, it's a different perspective. There are certain things that we don't really see in Europe. For instance, there was a couple of session on health equity and health inequity among people of color. These are not really the type of conversations that we're having in Europe. Therefore it's really interesting to listen to those conversations to see how clinical trials or medical treatments are affecting people of color differently than white people,“ she mentioned.
Upcoming Faces of digital health episodes from HLTH:
1. Ada Health: An insight into the market’s supposedly most comprehensive symptom checker (Jeff Cutler, CCO at Ada Health)
2. Mental health Part 1: Wellness with Headspace Health and how the company is expanding to all populations and underserved communities (Katie DiPerna Cook, SVP of Partnerships at Headspace Health)
3. Mental health Part 2: The evolution and current state of telepsychiatry (Luke Hejl CEO of TimelyMD, and Michael Maus, CCO of Iris Telehealth)
4. Understanding US healthcare data Part 1: What can Komodo health do with data from 60% of healthcare data sources in the US (Arif Nathoo, CEO of Komodo Health)
5. Understanding US healthcare data Part 2: Synthetic data, automation of care tasks, and better insights in EHR data in acute and oncology care (Kathy Dalton Ford Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Project Ronin, Josh Rubel, Chief Commercial Officer for MDClone, David Lareau, CEO of Medicomp Systems, Inc. , Greg Miller, CGO of Lumeon)
6. Understanding US healthcare data Part 3: Why does Palantir Foundry believe in open data, and how does it help large organizations such as the NHS (Samir Unni, Healthcare Business Development Lead, Palantir Foundry)
7. How is voice technology reducing the IT burden on physicians (Punit Singh Sonu, CEO of Suki)
8. Where are blockchain and metaverse in 2022? (John Bass, Hashed Health Health)
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