Digital Health Coffee Time Briefing ☕

Your morning summary of digital health news, information and events to know about if you want to be “in the know”.

👇  News

🩸 Great Ormond Street Hospital is using AI to predict Parkinson’s Disease up to seven years before symptoms present. The AI is being applied alongside a simple blood test. According to a press release, it can “provide a diagnosis with 100% accuracy” in patients already known to have Parkinson’s Disease. In patients without a diagnosis, the AI was able to match the clinical conversion rate.

🧭  Ramneek Kaur Ahluwalia, the winner of Samsung’s ‘Solve for tomorrow’ 2022 national technology competition has used the £10,000 prize money to develop a high-tech cane to help visually impaired people navigate their surroundings. According to a story published on 29 June in The Standard, the cane, from MyVision, uses AI, LiDAR and GPS technology.

🏆 Afon Technology has won the Peninsula Health and Safety Gold Award, recognising its commitment to health and safety standards. The Monmouthshire-based company is developing a non-invasive blood glucose monitoring system, according to BusinessNewsWales.

📈 Imperial College London and the Royal Academy of Engineering have launched a Science and Technology Venture Capital Fellowship. The 12-month fellowship is designed to “improve investor capability in identifying and deploying capital into high-potential, scalable, life science and deep tech ventures”, according to a press release published on 27 June.

💷   A research project from Bath University School of Management, Aalto University School of Business and Erasmus University Rotterdam has found that non-medical professionals are more likely to prioritise price, over long-term effectiveness, according to a press release. The research involved offering purchasing managers, medical professionals and general managers the choice between two pacemakers for bulk-buy – one a cheap, basic model and the other more expensive with additional benefits.

📖   What we’re reading

Evidence generation for digital health technologies: clinical simulation and its regulation – A report from Imperial College London proposes a framework that can be used to evaluate clinical simulation in evidence generation for digital health technologies.

The report also explores the challenges of regulating digital health technologies and puts forward clinical simulation as an evaluation tool.

According to the report, the main issue is the difficulty for digital health tech companies to utilise traditional randomised control trials – considered the gold standard of academic research – in order to generate evidence that can be submitted to regulators.

❓ Did you know?

While digital transformation is driving healthcare forward, digital devices may be having the opposite effect on children, according to a study published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry on 28 June.

Researchers claimed that “tantrums cannot be cured by digital devices. Children have to learn how to manage their negative emotions for themselves”.

According to the research, the tendency for handing a smartphone or tablet to a child who is having a tantrum could be limiting their ability to manage and regulate their emotions. Researchers warn this could lead to anger management issues later in life.

More than 300 parents of children were assessed for the research and then followed up a year later to draw their conclusions.

🚨  Upcoming events

18 July, WHO online event – Enhancing cybersecurity in health: protecting digital health information systems