Playback - Digital Academy Forum Q1 2021 (24th March 2021)

For anyone who was unable to attend our recent Digital Academy Forum Q1 Webinar event in March 2021, you can now watch back the whole event below. We also have a summary of each talk below (kindly put together by our colleague and friend Jim McGrane).

A list of presentations and slides (PDF uploaded soon) from the event are also available to view as follows:

• Introduction Q1 2021 (Martin Curley)
• Patient Journey & Potential of Digital Medical Twin (Dave Dimond)
• Ciaran Devane (HSE Board Chairperson)
• Digital Transformation (Prof. Henrik Blomgren)
• ValueCare in Ireland (Prof. Áine Carroll UCD)
• EIT Health UK Ireland Update (Christina Petris, Managing Director EIT)
• Blockchain in Healthcare (Anthony Day IBM)
• Technology in the care of my Type 1 Diabetes (Jeff McCann)
• The Future of Digital Healthcare (John Shaw Data Value Hub)

Introduction Q1 2021 (Martin Curley)

Introduction Q1 2021 (Martin Curley) Slides (coming soon)

Professor Martin Curley introduces us to the 2021 Q1 Digital Academy Forum and explains the disruptive technology in Healthcare theme underpinning the forum. He outlines the strategies which are the foundation of digital transformation in the HSE and explains how the stay left shift strategy will improve the quality of care we deliver to our citizens, improve the quality of life of our patients, and improve the overall clinician experience in the Irish Health Service.   

Caption Artificial Intelligence Technology Demonstration (Dr Jennifer Westrup – Consultant Medical Oncologist, Beacon Hospital and Dr David Burke –Consultant Cardiologist,  Beacon Hospital)

Dr Jennifer Westrup  and Dr David Burke give a live demonstration of Caption AI in this video.

Caption AI is a breakthrough Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) technology that empowers healthcare providers—regardless of prior ultrasound experience—to confidently perform diagnostic-quality ultrasound exams at the point of care. Dr Westrup explains and shows how the use of this system allows Cardiac ultrasounds to be performed without extensive training, removing the constrictions normally associated with the 6-12 months training required to use ultrasound technology effectively.  This live demonstration shows how the real-time feedback component on diagnostic image quality guides the user where to scan, while the quality meter component indicates where to get the optimum readings which are automatically recorded by the system.  The system is being piloted in the Beacon Hospital and is demonstrating the potential of AI to support an increase in access to life-saving diagnostics for different departments.  Dr Westrup and Dr Burke explain the benefits that have already been realised at the Beacon Hospital from putting this system in the hands of junior doctors and cardiac nurses who would not traditionally be able to use this technology. 

Patient Journey & Potential of Digital Medical Twin (Dave Dimond)

Dave takes us through the patient journey taken by his uncle, Jimmy Larkin, following his diagnosis with stage four lung cancer.  He describes the large volumes of data that they gathered from biobank samples and medical notes during this journey and reveals how this data was used in building a digital medical twin of Jimmy Larkin. He shows how the digital twin concept can assist in improving efficiencies and outcomes for patients starting on journeys similar to the digital twin.

Dave identifies inefficiencies and blind spots on the patient journey which gathering the data has shown and he outlines the potential to use the digital medical twin to remove these obstacles and to build a more individualised streamlined system that allows patients to move more efficiently through their personal journey, ultimately improving the care they receive.
Dave speaks of the challenges when gathering and combining the large volumes of structured and unstructured data together and speaks with great enthusiasm of the opportunities that digital twin medicine presents us with. He also explains how Dell EMC Healthcare Life Sciences are striving to put this innovation to the forefront of digital healthcare.

Ciaran Devane (HSE Board Chairperson)

Ciaran communicates the view from the HSE board about where the HSE is placed as an organisation and where we are going. He outlines the main priorities for 2021 which include managing the pandemic,  opening the day to day services outside the pandemic, and getting things right in community healthcare settings to support the increased population of older people who are best looked after at home.  Ciaran also discusses the challenges of tackling waiting lists and making sure that scheduled care occurs in a timely manner, ensuring people can get through the hospital system quickly and efficiently. He explains how the strategy going forward envisages a health system that will be vastly different from the one developed through the 20th century.  This will be achieved with the intelligent use of data and leveraging of eHealth technology.

He also discusses the importance of ensuring a system is in place which enforces and encourages the update of digital innovation by building a community of influence to ensure we get these innovations out of the digital lab and working across them across the system. He closes by exhorting us to show what digital innovations in healthcare can do to improve the health service and to build on our success from 2020 and 2021, right through 2022 and beyond. 

Digital Transformation (Prof. Henrik Blomgren)

Henrik reveals that he approaches digitalisation in healthcare from the perspective of an academic who has spent several decades trying to understand the impact of disruptive technologies on a closed system. He hypothesizes that the impact of digitization may be similar to the introduction of the European rabbit species to Australia in the 1800s which shook up the whole ecosystem on that continent for decades until it rebalanced and stabilised.

Henrik equates current health digitisation services such as doctors seeing patients through Skype to the early days of Spotify and Amazon where they started with an extremely basic offering and expanded their services to the extent that they revolutionised the internet and changed the way e-commerce and paying for music is conducted around the globe. 

He poses the questions “What more can digitalised health services do? “and “Are they even aware of what they could be up to? “. He refers to various digital services which have taken over from traditional health providers and he predicts that digitalisation is going to disrupt the whole healthcare system. He concludes by explaining how we can use the mistakes of the past to ensure we have an advantage in defining the future. 

ValueCare in Ireland (Prof. Áine Carroll UCD)

Aine delves into the background behind complex adaptive systems theory and showcases the ValueCare project being piloted in Cork and Kerry.

She outlines the journey towards patient-centred co-ordinated care in Ireland and explains why digital technology is an essential component of integrated care.  Aine focuses on is The ValueCare project which is a Europe wide initiative that has the goal of delivering efficient outcome-based integrated health and social care for older people with chronic health conditions.  She recounts how they aim to enhance the experience of older people through innovative digital solutions and to ultimately improve care outcomes while maintaining the quality of life for older people with frailties.  Aine then maps out the phases of the pilot project which will be run in clinical and home settings in the Cork and Kerry Regions for 240 older citizens.  She also talks about the importance of a co-design journey which enables them to answer the question “What matters to you?” rather than “what is the matter with you?”.

Aine discusses the challenges the Covid Pandemic have brought to the project and the virtualised solutions they have devised to overcome these.  She concludes by describing how the ValueCare project will support the physical, mental and social wellbeing requirements of its participants when it is up and running.

EIT Health UK Ireland Update (Christina Petris, Managing Director EIT)

Christina gives a whistlestop tour around EIT Health which is already Europe’s largest healthcare innovation partnership. She discloses how they aim to become Europe’s largest innovation platform facilitating longer healthier lives and more sustainable healthcare systems. She explains how this is being achieved through building sustainable connections between Innovation, Academia and Industry. The Irish component of EIT Health is detailed and the core areas of research commercialisation for commercially viable products and the Digital Health Revolution are outlined and explained.

Christina showcases some examples of successful projects they have sponsored. These include targeted improved data efficiencies in Uppsala Academic Hospital Sweden, the rolling out of a Transformative Digital Healthcare program for healthcare professionals and the Think Tank report which brings together Healthcare leaders to drive innovation in Healthcare.

Blockchain in Healthcare (Anthony Day IBM)

Anthony gives a fascinating glimpse into Blockchain technology which he portrays simply as a way of sharing data between multiple organisations. He outlines the potential uses for Blockchain technology in healthcare settings such as healthcare certificates for vaccines and Covid test results.  He explains how Blockchain technology supports privacy and anonymity and facilitates ease of use across multiple organisations. 

He describes multiple examples where IBM are already using Blockchain in conjunction with worldwide healthcare organisations, and he looks to the future and the challenges and opportunities  COVID-19 has presented us with.  Anthony lays out the ways Blockchain can be used as the foundation for the management of healthcare credentials for 8 billion people who may need digital health passports to travel, go back to work, attend sports and entertainment in future.   He then looks at the requirements of policy epidemiology, technology, and public and private partnership in healthcare credential management. Anthony concludes by showing how  Blockchain-based digital credential management will be the building block that will help accelerate the economic recovery and will facilitate the worldwide return to normal life post-pandemic. 

Technology in the care of my Type 1 Diabetes (Jeff McCann)

Jeff speaks as a user of a type one diabetes management system. He illustrates the improvements which digital technology has made in his quality of life including how Insulin Pump therapy has enabled him to move from interfacing with the Health Service in an Acute Healthcare setting to be able to care for his diabetes at home.

He talks of the improvements for him which the enhanced system has brought including reduced complications, reduced hospitalisations and nocturnal hypos. He discusses candidly of the struggles in keeping to the insulin pump regime including diabetes burnout and difficulties resulting from historic sporadic support from healthcare providers 

Jeff explains why he describes the latest Medtronic fully AI-supported Insulin pump as a “life changer". He details the time saved by having an AI-powered system that measures his blood sugars and makes decisions based on the readings.  He also outlines how managing his diabetes has moved to a home setting by the system which automatically uploads his medical data to the cloud where his healthcare providers can interpret this and make clinical decisions without the need for him to visit an acute setting.  He gives a fascinating personal insight into a patients view of a digitalised health system that is bringing better care to patients and lower costs for the healthcare providers. 

The Future of Digital Healthcare (John Shaw Data Value Hub)

John details how the Data Value Hub can help Irish Enterprises compete commercially by focusing on data, instigating digital Operational Readiness Assessments, building incubator projects and technology upskilling.

John gives a whirlwind view of the future of healthcare and talks about the benefits of utilizing a digital wellness maturity framework. He illustrates the work Data Value Hub is doing with Digital Health and Wellness Capability maturity and talks about the projection on life expectancy, population distribution and demographic as well as the leading threats to humanity. 

He explores how COVID-19 has exposed weaknesses in our approach to Health and Wellness and he shows how digital technology can solve our problems with Health and Wellness. Finally, he outlines the requirement and benefits of moving from a fragmented siloed approach to a capability Maturity Framework approach to optimize our worldwide healthcare offerings and to maximise the benefits for humanity.