MBR_ISSUE 53_JULY-compressed (3)

Malta Business Review
FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE
Eternal Sunshine
OF THE DIGITAL MIND
Companies are racing to digitise healthcare.
This week Finland is playing a starring role.
By Tomas Kellner
It can be hard to get a good night of
sleep in Helsinki in mid-June, where
fiery sunsets last nearly till midnight
and the bright sun climbs back up into
the sky just a few short early morning hours
later. But in a way, it’s the perfect setting
for Jack Page and his colleagues, who are
tasked with perfecting apps for machines
that put people to sleep.
To be sure, Page, who works for GE
Healthcare’s anesthesia business, isn’t
taking any of his own medicine to catch
some rest after a full day. (Like the locals,
he relies on heavy hotel blinds to keep the
light out at night.) But this week he flew
to the Finnish capital from his home in
Madison, Wisconsin, for HIMSS & Health
2.0 Europe, a conference focusing on how
data, software, artificial intelligence and
other digital tools are changing healthcare
and tailoring it to individual patients and
specific desired results. “This is the biggest
digital health gathering in Europe where any
digital company in healthcare would want to
be,” he says, about the European conference.
“Digital applications are the next frontier of
healthcare. It’s where the growth is, it’s
where the opportunity is, it’s where we need
to go in order to advance healthcare.”
Page’s employer had a large booth here, right
past the main entrance inside the cavernous
Messukeskus, Helsinki’s massive conference
center that in the fall also plays host to Slush,
a tech conference focusing on startups that
is widely seen as Europe’s answer to SXSW.
Besides Page’s anesthesia apps — which
are designed, among other things, to help
doctors reduce the use of the sleeping gas
they need in the operating room and also
to protect patient’s lungs during surgery
— the GE display also featured AI, machine
learning software, voice recognition and
other tools that can help, say, radiologists sift
quickly through gigabytes of X-rays and MRI
images and cardiologists monitor treatment
progress. “Everything is going digital and
software is already changing healthcare
outcomes,” says Peter van Heezik, marketing
manager for digital solutions in Europe for GE
Healthcare.
GE’s digital push is also leading to new
collaborations in the industry, both with
large players like Roche, whose stand in
Helsinki was situated right next to GE’s
outpost, and startups building their product
inside the Health Innovation Village, an
incubator located inside GE Healthcare’s
Finland headquarters in Helsinki.
Just last week, GE Healthcare and Roche
released NAVIFY Tumor Board 2.0, a solution
that pools medical imaging and other
patient data to give medical teams a more
comprehensive view of each patient in a
single place before they decide on treatment.
Roche said in a news release that the
product allows radiologists to upload their
patient records to the same dashboard
holding patient files from other disciplines
in the cancer care team. “Having complete
patient diagnostic information in one
location helps specialists use the limited
time they have during tumor boards to
review all relevant files quickly and align on
the best possible treatment plan for each
cancer patient,” Roche said.
At the GE booth, residents of the Health
Innovation Village like Top Data Science,
Adusso, Buddy Healthcare, and Rehaboo
presented their own demos. Top Data
Science, for example, has developed
machine learning algorithms that help
doctors identify high-risk cases inside
intensive care units, looking for patients
who may take a turn for the worse and
those who are progressing well and
can be released to standard hospital
care. Another solution is sifting through
computed tomography and magnetic
resonance images of the prostate,
helping radiologists spot cancer. The
company, which was acquired last
year by a Japanese investor, is already
testing two algorithms inside a hospital.
Rehaboo, another company present at
HIMSS, is gamifying physical therapy to
induce people recovering from a surgery
to exercise. But its games can also solve
problems inside retirement homes and
offices, where they can help break the
monotony and health risks of a 9-to-5
desk job. Rehaboo’s demonstrations drew
large crowds at the conference, getting
even the secretary general of the Dutch
Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport to
stretch and squat.
All four of the startups grew up inside the
Health Innovation Village. The business
incubator opened its doors in 2014, and
today it holds about 40 businesses. Buddy
Healthcare, for example, is developing a
smartphone app that syncs the hospital
requirements of patients to make sure
that when they show up for a procedure,
everything goes according to plan. Doctors
can send patients (or parents) reminders to
keep everyone on schedule. The company
is already working in half of the hospitals
in Finland, says Jussi Määttä, its founder
and CEO. He started the company after he
found out that between 10% and 17% of
all surgeries get canceled because patients
fail to jump through the requisite hoops.
“The hospitals lose money,” he says. “The
doctor is there, the nurse is there, but the
OR is empty.”
GE’s Page says that collaboration is
critical both for GE and startups. “As a big
corporation, we need to work with small
startups,” he says. “We learn from them,
they learn from us, get new, fresh ideas,
for example. It’s critical to taking the whole
industry into the future.” MBR
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