Lady in the lead at Road2: The future of digital health care

Can you accept constructive criticism? For the sake of #science, you probably should. Science is just that important.

Whether or not you can accept constructive criticism, it’s a good idea to listen to the advice of a seasoned scientist - one that at Road2 , we esteem as a treasure on our advisory board.?

“Do good, do well.”?

While that’s quite a broad piece of wisdom, it’s what Dr. Efrat Shefer , the immediate past president of 飞利浦 Israel, holds close to her heart. Both of her parents were scientists who expected all of their children, male or female, to excel in every endeavor. “There was always an expectation of excellence, from everyone and everything,'' explains Efrat. "This was very natural to me at the time, but in retrospect, I see it was very unique. It still is.”?

“There was no question of how important science was. I was encouraged to pursue scientific methods solving all kinds of problems” While a scientific career was encouraged, the route she took was something that she created for herself with her own two hands.?

When Efrat started out, she was one of the few women in the room at many meetings because there weren’t many women in #physics. As she climbed the career ladder, there were fewer women to be found. Decades later, however, when she left Phillips this past spring, about half the company’s Israel senior leadership was female.

“I never felt that I made special sacrifices, the doors were open, and I was expected to do good work. I was rewarded with challenges and opportunities. Some people are risk-averse - I saw every risk as an interesting challenge.”?

The humility of constructive criticism

According to Efrat, constructive criticism is humbling:

As for science, there is something about the data-based approach that I feel more comfortable with than other approaches, something honest about scientists and their ability to accept criticism based on other people testing and repeating their work. A scientist's work is always being reviewed, and all of this brings a level of humility. The system is built on the ability of people to criticize and build upon others' work and there is something I like about that.

Perhaps the humility of knowing that we aren’t always on the right track unless we collaborate with others is what brings about progress.?

Efrat shared her vision for the #healthcare industry’s future with me. It certainly has a lot to do with collaboration. In fact, she said that "Medical care and health tech are on the cusp of a revolution." And AI is at the center of it all.

Exactly what kind of a revolution are we looking at?

The healthcare industry: the gap in digital data and the awaiting revolution

Efrat's extensive experience in the healthcare industry, as a physicist, a clinical scientist, and then as the president of Phillips Israel, has led her to envision the future of healthcare. Digital health, based on the ability to connect data along a patient’s life and across many patients, gives us the ability to predict health risks and optimize treatment. However, when it comes to using #digital data, healthcare is considerably behind other industries. Over the last ten years, health care has become digitized- paper files are a rarity today. Everything is under an electronic management system - images, data, results, etc. The next step is connecting different types of data to data in larger #healthsystems such as community health and acute care. Bringing the #data together will create big data cohorts, allowing for the full potential of artificial intelligence. There is great potential for #digitalhealth to improve health care, and it is waiting to be implemented.

On the one hand, Israel is very advanced when it comes to bringing health data together. However, other industries like finance are more advanced. You take one plastic card (credit card) and can withdraw money with it almost wherever you are in the world. The whole #financial system is very well connected; a bank in Barcelona knows whether you have money in an account in Haifa. There is no one “card” or international database for patient medicine - a resource that can be critical for treatment, as well as for research and new health developments.?

So yes, the healthcare sector needs to catch up to other sectors. But what exactly will that look like?

Well, for starters, according to Efrat it’s multi-disciplinary - an integration of all the disciplines by tossing them into one pressure cooker and letting them work together. That’s where breakthroughs come from, and the same principle is true with medicine.?

The vision is that at the core of this integration will lie a strong #healthtech industry that collaborates directly with the healthcare system in Israel. By creating a collaboration between healthcare providers, the talent of academia, and the business world we will create ground-breaking innovations - an ace for healthcare. #Digitalhealth will not be an island, it will work side-by-side with other sectors.?

Personalized medicine - a digital genetic footprint?

A major goal in the future of healthcare is the ability to better identify the at-risk population and prevent the onset of disease. Diagnosing diseases has come a very long way, as well as treatment and cure. The next stage in the healthcare revolution, already taking place, is incorporating genetics into diagnosis and treatment.? In #oncology, for example, we have a deeper understanding of biological processes than ever before. We can look at a genetic profile of a tumor and identify aberrations, genes that are problematic, and the processes that are involved in creating the disease. Then, we can identify the right treatment. Extracting the relevant information from the genetic footprint is largely based on AI due to the astronomical amounts of data. Today's AI #algorithms can input all the data for a #patient and output personalized recommendations in a manner that far surpasses the abilities of humans.?

Moreover, AI will help identify at-risk individuals by creating a risk profile. This will incorporate lifestyle, family history, genetics, environment, and other parameters in order to create the best plan of prevention.?

How can we make this happen? The multinational ecosystem?

Start-ups in the digital health industry are very significant agents of innovation. Start-ups in Israel are looking for a connection to the international markets. Multinational #companies can play an important role in this. Their research #network as well as their sales channels have a very broad reach. International companies are very interested in tapping into this Israeli innovative ecosystem. There is a huge amount of significant Israeli #innovation in healthcare. This is a win-win opportunity.

Road 2

After Efrat left Philips Israel, Eitan Kyiet approached her about serving on the advisory board of Road 2. Their vision aligns extremely well with her views. Road2 is instrumental in building the local innovation #ecosystem - providing the infrastructure and bringing it to different players in the industry-academia & healthcare. This is a unique model and it will impact our #future.

The question is, will you be part of it?

#industryleader #digitalhealth #healthtechnology