Leading Innovation, Continents Apart | Updates on Developments in Digital Medicine From Europe and Asia
By Kaitlyn Landgraf
Although much of the Medicine X conference focuses on showcasing innovations in health care and technology here in the United States, Sunday morning included two panels devoted to developments in Europe and Asia. Denise Silber highlighted innovations in medicine throughout Europe, while Louise Schaper debriefed the crowd on the state of digitized health care in mainland China.
Silber, founder of Paris-based Doctor 2.0 & You and an international digital health expert, provided the audience with snapshots of tech and health care startups in several European countries and Israel. Some of the startups she featured included:
- Medexo in Berlin, which provides patients with second medical options and eliminates many unnecessary surgeries
- Esperity in Brussels, a multilingual online cancer community
- FightTheStroke.org in Milan, which advocates for young stroke survivors
- Tavie from Paris, which provides patients with digitized coaching from their own nurses.
Although Silicon Valley is the epicenter of the startup concept, Silber said, there is a “burgeoning startup community in every major European city.”
The innovation isn’t limited to just Europe, though. Louise Schaper, CEO of the Health Informatics Society of Australia, debriefed the audience on the state of health care and digitized health in China, where 100 million people live in rural areas and do not have basic access to medical care. Additionally, she pointed out, there is one doctor in China for every 5,008 people, and by 2025 the country expects that 300 million of its population will be over the age of 60. With this kind of strain on the health care industry, the country is focusing on efficiency and throughput, and private investments are skyrocketing in the Chinese digital health care sector. With the increased availability of high-speed internet, a focus on health care reform, and the deregulation of the digitized health industry, Schaper argues, China looks poised to becoming a leader in health care and technology.
As Silber and Schaper demonstrated on Sunday, innovations in tech and health care are truly a worldwide initiative.
Kaitlyn Landgraf is a graduate student in the department of journalism at Stanford. She previously attended Thomas Aquinas College and Yale University, where she studied philosophy and religion. Follow her on Twitter at @KaitlynLandgraf.
