[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to introduction to digital health entrepreneurship. I'm Mark Comiskey. This digital health entrepreneurship specialization includes four classes and a capstone project. The class we're going to go through today is called, Introduction to digital health entrepreneurship. And we'll focus on sort of key trends, key markets and key opportunities in the digital health marketplace. Second class will really focus on technology and product planning. And it will cover things like minimum viable product topics, user centered design. And working with health systems with your technology and how that can be accomplished. The third class business planning, really focuses more specifically on defining your problem and solution very carefully. Understanding what the value is to your customer, to your target customer for the solution that you're planning. And understanding how to build a business around that. The fourth class, starting a company, we'll talk about the technical and tactical aspects of actually starting a startup business. And taking your product to market. And finally, the capstone will encompass all of these aspects in a written final product that you will submit as part of your coursera specialization. This course, introduction to digital health entrepreneurship, will focus on three different areas. First defining digital health and its importance to medicine, both now and in the future. Second, we'll look at key trends shaping the digital health landscape, both from a clinical perspective, population health perspective and a reimbursement perspective. And finally we'll look at new approaches to population health management. A new area that really uses data and software to really identify key clinical and non clinical measures. That can improve the health of a large population, usually with one or more similar clinical conditions. For the course outcomes, we want you to understand the nomenclature of digital health and its application to medicine. Both now and in the future. We want you to understand the evolution and current importance of telemedicine as an example of digital health innovation. And the impact it's had on medical care now and will continue to have on medical care in the future. We want you to understand the landscape and the key trends and how they shape the digital health start up business landscape. The challenge those that are associated with starting a company and getting a product to market. And finally we want you to understand the role of population health and social determinants of health. Using data and digital health tools, to improve health status again, of a whole population, not just of a single patient. And that brings us to what is digital health. That is a really big question. Digital health covers a number of areas from healthcare delivery optimization, to precision medicine, to even patient privacy and cybersecurity. Digital health is using virtually anything that is healthcare and data related, to apply it to the practice of medicine. To the delivery of care, to the optimization of things like payments and routing of patients and routing of clinicians. All the way out to specifically treating clinical conditions, in a better way using data and software. And finally, obviously protecting that data and protecting that software. As it relates to patients and clinicians, as you see healthcare outcomes happen. We'll come back to that one. So understanding the various nomenclature of digital health, as we've said, it's a very broad area. And to break it down a little further, we're going to discuss digital health, versus digital medicine, versus digital therapeutics. Digital health, as I mentioned, is the broadest category, with digital medicine being a subset of digital health. And digital therapeutics being yet a subset of digital medicine. Digital health, as I've said, is the space really that is intersected when you think about health care with technology and data. Rock health really focuses on the technology and healthcare intersection is key to understanding what is digital health. It's certainly one of the broadest definitions and it uses anything from software and hardware and data in the healthcare space. The range of products can include anything from nutrition and fitness tracking apps, that you use as a consumer. To technology assisted surgery or therapeutics that actually treat a specific condition in a patient. To health system software that would help them manage costs and quality metrics. To improve the quality care for whole cohort of patients. Digital medicine is a little more focused. The field of evidence based digital health tools that measure or intervene in specific clinical conditions. In the support of practicing medicine, is really what we're talking about when we talk about digital medicine. It's really focused on the treatment, recovery, disease prevention or health promotion of specific individuals. Or can be applied across a population of individuals usually with the same clinical condition. It is really focused on trying to improve the health care using software and data and improve the patient outcomes. As I said, it's a subset of digital health, so it is basically a little narrower. It will generally require some FDA approval. The FDA increasingly is interested in using obviously it historically has been focused on things like medical devices. But is increasingly interested in using and focusing on data and software that can be used for treating patients. Again, the FDA interest is obviously in the patient safety and efficacy of that clinical treatment. But the range of products could include anything from patient monitoring and interventions in the form of software or hardware. To technology assisted therapeutics that could be used specifically for a given clinical condition. Or finally for population health measures that would basically address a whole cohort of patients. A subset yet of digital medicine, is digital therapeutics. Digital therapeutics employ a high quality software to deliver evidence based therapeutic interventions. That can manage or treat a broad spectrum of physical, mental or behavioral conditions. It's really focused on high quality software, high fidelity data, evidence based therapeutic treatments to advance clinical care and treatment. And one of the key things that differ digital therapeutics from digital medicine. Is this notion of really needing evidence to prove that your therapeutic, your digital approach. Actually improves the care of the patient and improves their outcome. This will likely include some form of clinical trial, to prove that your software and your data and your approach. Whether it's an artificial intelligence algorithm or merely a tracking app, will actually have an effect on that patient. The range of products is much narrower includes patient and conditions specific monitoring. An intervention software or apps and therapeutics that have a proven effect on the treatment of the patient. And on the outcome of the patients experience. So why is digital health important, the US currently spends about $3.8 trillion on health care every year. That's about $11,500 per person and it's growing at 4.6% in 2019. As a share of the nation's GDP, healthcare spending accounts for about 18% according to the U S Government. But health care is increasingly driven by data and software. It's not just surgical interventions and pharmaceuticals. When you think about things like telemedicine, epidemiology, remote patient monitoring using software and applications. Artificial intelligence and algorithms that can predict either the sickest patients or the ones most likely to respond to a certain treatment regimen. Accelerate drug or vaccine development, is also part of digital health. And that it's using data and software to really expedite the development of clinical treatments. And then finally genetics and genomics, is just a new example of how we can use data to improve patient care and improve outcomes. And the opportunities for innovation about as I've mentioned before. They can be anything from an algorithm that might help a hospital operate more efficiently. To a way for patients to actually report on their own personal care and on their own personal health status on a more regular basis. And it can also be used to treat a population of patients usually in a certain clinical condition. So that they can be treated better and actually improve their outcomes more quickly. So, let's talk specifically about telemedicine as an example of a digital health innovation. Driven by covid, Johns Hopkins health system as an example, went from performing less than 1000 telemedicine visits per year. To performing nearly one million telemedicine visits in just over 12 months time. The ramp was very quick and actually grew over time. Most major health systems that I've spoken with, expect telemedicine to continue to be in the range of 20-25% of their health care business for the foreseeable future. This stems from a number of reasons, convenience obviously for the patient. Obviously quicker access to certain physicians that you might not be able to see it as quickly if you had to schedule an in person visit. And obviously communication and improvement in communication over past systems of having to schedule an in person visit. And then obviously come back for a follow up visit. This allows you, telemedicine allows you actually to have potentially more visits in a shorter period of time. Complimentary enhancements like remote patient diagnostics, digital monitoring and digital therapeutics will increasingly be the norm. And these will enhance the telemedicine experience. And this is why I believe most major health systems see it as a significant part of their future business. Is basically the ability for you to be able to sit in your home or in some other convenient place away from a clinical setting. But still be treated and get significant improvement in your health status and in your clinical outcomes. We're going to talk a little bit about the digital health landscape further in this course. But if you think about telemedicine just as an example, think about what the implications of telemedicine are for payers. For health care systems, for hospitals, for clinicians and for patients or other consumers. You actually can do a very great number of things with the technology. Not just telemedicine, but all these different technologies we've talked about just briefly. For payers, it could improve and make things more efficient. They could actually, instead of having to pay for in person visits as many times. They could actually pay for telemedicine visit which might be slightly cheaper. For health systems data might help them improve their whole operating experience and actually improve their outcomes with patients. For hospitals obviously, it allows them to maybe even jockey to a third degree of care. Not just an inpatient setting, not just an outpatient technical experience, but also a telemedicine experience. And we'll talk about that further in this class. Finally, for clinicians and patients, it obviously improves their whole relationship. Because it improves and enhances their communication levels and their ability to actually see each other even if they don't come face to face. One of the area that should be considered is consumers. Increasingly healthcare is being consumer driven, you can see the level of just clinical technologies you can buy in your local drugstore. And you're basically off the app stores, some of which are better than others obviously. But they all have can have an impact on your health care status. Other implications are reimbursement model transitioning. How do we move from a purely inpatient setting, to now much more digital health driven setting of health care. Regulatory frameworks, how does the FDA actually regulate digital health. They're obviously very experienced in tracking and understanding clinical trials for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. But what does it mean to basically track and understand how an algorithm had an impact on a clinical pathway. Clinical pathways themselves and the traditional practice of medicine will also need to adapt to telemedicine and digital health technologies. The importance of population health and social determinants of health is also growing. Basically the ability to address a whole cohort of patients using data and software. And finally technology and data platforms will emerge to meet the needs of security and patient data privacy. That has obviously been a big concern in the past, and increasingly, data privacy is an even bigger concern. As hackers become a bigger part of the landscape of not only health care, but the society at large.
