wearables

“The new drug is the engaged individual,” says today’s guest, Daniel Kraft.

Daniel is the founder of Exponential Medicine where he has championed digital health and the explosion of wearable technologies.  He's also hosting the new Healthy Conversations podcast--go check it out!  There you will find interviews with the innovator’s of today’s medical culture, including shows with former FDA Director, Scott Gottlieb, and genomic medicine guru, Eric Topol.

Produced by the pharmacy chain, CVS, Daniel says the podcast is an effort to help “inoculate the world against the infodemic.”

But back to the wearables explosion . . . it’s been a while since we've had Daniel to the program.  He can riff about these new technologies like no other.  What are his thoughts on the pandemic?  What will be the longterm impact of COVID on medicine?  And . . . can he update us on the latest in wearables?  As Daniel comes out of a kind of stream of consciousness "flow state" when talking about the flowering of new technologies, we are left wondering what will the actual adoption be like.  Has COVID lessened society's concerns over privacy and nudged us closer to being friends with our "digitome?"

“ . . . there’s insidables, and underwearables for remote patient monitoring with a tag in ten pairs of underwear. You’re always censored. They’re being used to track respiratory de-condensation at home. It could be from COVID or from a pneumonia. And also, let’s go beyond the wrist. It could be from the laptop from which I’m talking to you with Skype or Zoom. The camera could be modified to pick up our vital signs or blood pressure or stress levels. Or wifi has been modified to pick up vital signs. Amazon Alexa type speakers can be modified to pick up heart rate. We’re going to start to pick up our digital exhaust, or our “digitome," for not just data but actionable insights. And I think what’s shifting and being enabled with COVID as a catalyst is moving from quantified self to quantified health. This will all start to flow—your digital biomarkers to your EMR, to your phyciscian, or to your payer, or to a pharma company as a clinical trial."

In today’s special studio interview, the health tech duo, David Shaywitz and Lisa Suennen, walk us through the changing paradigms around healthcare. They offer their thoughts on some of the new digital health and peer-to-peer social platforms which are becoming integrated in daily clinical care.

Lisa grew up in Silicon Valley and is an investor in the health tech space. David is a newcomer to the Valley and is currently the Chief Medical Officer at DNAnexus, a company that provides cloud based genomics data storage and analytics. They are both avid bloggers and recently compiled much of their written work together into a book, "TechTonics: Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare with Technology?" They also co-host a new podcast by the same name.