Q&A: Professional says the tempo of technological developments is ‘underestimated’

As a long-time innovator and Stanford and Harvard-trained doctor and scientist, Dr. Daniel Kraft has seen how technological developments influence affected person care and has spoken extensively on the intersection of healthcare and expertise.  

Kraft, who can also be founder and chair of Digital.Well being and NextMed Well being, and in addition basic accomplice at Continuum Well being Ventures, sat down with MobiHealthNews to debate how his agency invests in digital well being firms and methods by which rising applied sciences are and can proceed to influence the way forward for digital healthcare.  

MobiHealthNews: What do you assume is the present state of digital well being?

Dr. Daniel Kraft: In some methods, it is exhausting to understand, but it surely’s nonetheless early. I imply, healthcare might be the final massive business to get digitized. After all, we’re nonetheless utilizing fax machines and DVD-ROMs to share data. And I might argue that almost all clinicians, whereas many extra are digital natives, few are but totally embracing this digital facet of well being and medication.

So, you already know, I believe the problem is now going between options and getting them built-in into workflow and reimbursement so we will actually transfer the needle. So, it is a time of large alternative, plenty of innovation, however the rubber hasn’t fairly but met the street. 

The basic instance is Pear Therapeutics, which simply went bust, proper? An important resolution with a very good proof base and reimbursement however not but leveraged by sufficient clinicians. And so a part of what must occur is there must be schooling for clinicians of all sorts to grasp the artwork of the potential – what’s right here and what’s coming subsequent.

MHN: You have seen digital well being change a lot over time. At this level, what kind of digital well being firms do you look to spend money on?

Kraft: I cofounded a comparatively new seed-stage-focused, digital-health-focused fund known as Continuum Well being Ventures, and we’re seeing a ton of nice innovation and entrepreneurs, and it is arguably a greater time to be an investor in comparison with two years in the past when the valuations are a little bit bit hyperbolic. And so there’s plenty of potential to spend money on actually high quality firms with good key ache factors they’re fixing for and unmet wants and a path to regulatory and reimbursement. 

I believe the larger reply is that individuals nonetheless underestimate how shortly issues are shifting, and AI and ChatGPT is only a nice instance. And once we’re constructing options as innovators and digital well being entrepreneurs and at the same time as clinicians, we do not wish to be working with a tech stack of 2023. You need to concentrate on what’s more likely to be right here in 2025 and 2033. 

We’re what we’re going to have the ability to do with this new period of straightforward to acquire steady data, which is able to result in like the continual bodily examination, and the way are clinicians and healthcare programs going to sift by all that to make it actionable and helpful for prevention and longevity, healthspan, diagnostics and remedy.

And so, I take into consideration healthcare as this continuum, from staying wholesome and optimizing well being to diagnostics, choosing up illnesses tremendous early, which digital instruments can do, after which remedy, which will be enabled, whether or not it is digital, therapeutic or utilizing these instruments to tell your drug, or your machine, or your surgical procedure. 

MHN: The place do you see the way forward for digital well being? How do you assume it’ll progress as expertise progresses and clinicians begin to embrace it extra?

Kraft: We’re on the precipice of with the ability to acquire huge quantities of knowledge, proper? From wearables, and your digitome and your microbiome and your sociome and your exposome, then begin to make sense of that in an built-in, extra customized, exact means. 

And so we will now create huge quantities of knowledge and new insights. The trick is translating massive knowledge to insights to actionability. 

There’s even an entire new discipline of implementation science. And I believe the place digital well being may also play a task is now shifting extra shortly from knowledge insights to motion, whether or not that is for the human, the buyer, the affected person, the clinician or the healthcare system. And so I believe the place it is heading is to, you already know, it is an overused time period, however go from our sick care mannequin of intermittent reactive knowledge collected within the 4 partitions to this close to way forward for steady proactive, customized anytime, wherever care.

And we see sparks of that in other places and in numerous programs. The trick, once more, is aligning the incentives, the workflow, and the fee fashions to make that change occur extra shortly, and naturally, COVID was a catalyst for that as properly.

And we by no means talked about AR/VR. I prefer to name them the Mediverse and that we’re heading to this world with this conversion of generative AI, the place I can nearly think about generative well being … the place you can create that kind of well being bubble round every particular person –the affected person and the buyer – that talks to them of their language based mostly on age, tradition, language schooling.  

This concept of adaptive well being blended with AR/VR/XR can create that form of consumer layer that makes it very intuitive to have interaction.

That is the place this generative well being piece can actually assist engagement as a result of plenty of these digital instruments, they typically aren’t as sticky. Generally they want gamification, generally they do not.

And I believe we’ll find yourself with the ability to mix the UI with actually efficient underlying expertise and connecting the dots. As a result of once I take into consideration digital well being, it is actually the power to attach knowledge, insights and join the dots to look after who you’re, the place you’re and in what setting, together with public well being and world well being. So a lot of alternatives, and I believe it is nonetheless early days.