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The race is on to create a coronavirus vaccine.
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Even as pharmaceutical giants and institutions roll out trials at breakneck speed, many entrepreneurs
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are also rushing to disrupt the way we see a doctor and are diagnosed.
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This transition that we are in, it started even before the pandemic.
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I'm speaking to three start-up CEOs to get the pulse on how they're evolving the medical
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technology industry amid the pandemic.
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The world was changing; we had to change as well as a company.
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We would like to understand how our device can support early detect Covid or better detect Covid.
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The World Health Organization describes medical technology, or medtech, as the use of knowledge
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and technology in devices, medicines and procedures to advance human health.
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One aspect of that which has been vital lately is telemedicine, or remote healthcare services.
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In 2019, the global telemedicine market was worth $45.5 billion,
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with projections to almost quadruple by 2026.
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With more people staying indoors and social distancing during the pandemic,
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there is a growing demand for remote medical services.
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We have more than doubled our volumes in a very short time.
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That's a market 32-year-old Swedish entrepreneur, Johannes Schildt, and his co-founders
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have been working on since launching their medical video consultation service in 2015.
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The platform, known as Kry, or Livi in English speaking markets, connects users directly
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with qualified doctors via its app as an alternative to in-person care.
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You save travel, it's very convenient, you don't have to be in a waiting room being sneezed at.
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Now, of course, with the rather sad backdrop of a pandemic, it's starting
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to be painfully obvious for a lot of people that this is a crucial part of their healthcare
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infrastructure moving forward.
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Between February and April, the company saw demand in Europe surge more than 160%, both
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both for Covid-19 queries and general care.
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Healthcare professionals, too, are eager to move their services online as a new revenue stream.
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There's definitely been a change from the clinician side, where they are eager to try
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out new services and deliver healthcare in new ways out of necessity
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because you have to.
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That has also prompted the company to roll out Livi Connect, a free basic service,
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in response to growing demand during the pandemic.
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While healthcare regulators were previously cautious about rolling out telemedicine services,
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Johannes says that's the pandemic has led to a rethink of regulations,
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which could accelerate his vision for healthcare.
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One of our bottlenecks has been market access, that you've had nations that were not
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allowed to do telemedicine, and it was not reimbursed.
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But this is now rapidly changing across the globe.
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On a policy side, I think a lot of this is here to stay and it has opened the eyes for
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a lot of people and entities that what we have been doing for five years is a really good thing.
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Elsewhere, some developments have come about almost by chance, according to Harpreet Singh Rai,
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CEO of Finnish smart health tracker Oura.
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The wearable, a titanium ring, was released in 2015 to give people a picture of their overall health score
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by monitoring their movement and sleep, among other functions.
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A drop in the scores could be an early predictor of an illness, and even pre-empt the flu season.
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As it turns out, the ring was also able to detect Covid-19 symptoms up to three days
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in advance with 90% accuracy.
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This all started on March 11th.
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A user of ours made a Facebook post detailing actually what happened.
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He saw changes in his Oura ring data.
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He had been traveling in the prior days and he decided to go get a test for Covid.
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Turns out he was positive. And then he detailed it. He described himself as asymptomatic,
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which he thought made this virus so dangerous, and told people about his experience with Oura
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and seeing such meaningful changes in data that allowed him to understand that he may be sick.
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Now, the company is finding ways to use telltale data, such as body temperature, sleep patterns
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and heart rate variability, to help detect cases among frontline workers and general users.
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We've obviously since then seen businesses who are interested as they try to figure out
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how to reopen this economy. The Las Vegas Sands actually was our first customer.
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Given what was happening, we just wanted to figure out how we could help.
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That includes partnering with athletes to get the sports calendar back on track.
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In June, the NBA bought more than 1,000 rings, which cost upwards of $300 each,
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as their season resumes.
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We work really, really hard with both the NBA and the NBPA, which is essentially their union,
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to make sure that players felt secure about their data. And so what we did as a company was,
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cleverly, our team came up with this idea of a risk score.
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It's an aggregated view of the probability of risk. And if someone is really elevated on the risk score,
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they then call the team medical doctor and they suggest that a second test be done for Covid.
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With finite tests currently available, and the costs still high, it's important to
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find alternative means of collecting data on the virus, too.
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That's where Lea von Bidder, co-founder of women's health company Ava, comes in.
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The Swiss company's flagship product, the Ava Bracelet, launched in 2016
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to help women track their fertility cycles.
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Ava the bracelet looks like this. I wear it right now. It picks up three million data points per night.
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Breathing rate, profusion, skin temperature, heart rate.
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Over the years, the tracker has helped more than 30,000 couples get pregnant in Europe and the U.S.
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But now the 30-year-old CEO and her team are using Ava's anonymized data to figure out
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how the coronavirus impacts women specifically.
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What's really interesting with us coming from this fertility, menstrual cycle background,
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is that we understand the 'normal' for women really, really well, which is important
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now when we look at Covid.
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And what might that mean for women and pregnancy specifically?
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In the past, we've often had the issue where women weren't included in clinical studies
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because they were quote, unquote 'too complex' for whatever was studied.
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I think in this case, specifically, it's really important to look at what changes already happen
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in order to really understand what's happening with Covid and women.
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Meanwhile, the multi-sensory bracelet is being put to use in various pan-European studies
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to monitor symptoms of the virus on broader cross-sections of society.
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We started in March our first clinical study to see if we could early detect symptoms of Covid.
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A few weeks later, we got a rather large grant in Europe to run a very large
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study with 40,000 participants using our device to monitor symptoms. And this is not only
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focused on women. It's also not only focused on fertility or pregnancy. It's really a
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broad study where we give our bracelet and our technology to a larger cohort to really
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understand what we can learn out of the data for Covid.
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While it's not yet clear what role these innovations will play in the fight against
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Covid-19, the way you keep your health in check in the future could look very different.
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Consumers know now that these devices have gotten more accurate, the health applications
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can be greater and greater, and I still think we're pretty low penetration. You know,
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if you look the value of that, the value of knowing that you may be getting sick and then
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protecting yourselves from spreading this and protecting your loved ones and your fellow colleagues.
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I mean, that's huge!