EDITOR’S LETTER
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he healthcare industry is not only growing in terms of size, but is also becoming smarter by instilling latest technological advancement into all its processes. This is benefitting both patients—for getting more comprehensive treatment in lower costs, and care providers—in terms of better communication with patients and increased profits due to minimizing costs due to streamlined processes. This swift and positive transformation within the industry can be credited to innovators who are introducing new practices and healthcare organizations, who are openly accepting these innovations for their processes. In the magazine, “The 10 Most Impactful Healthcare Solution Providers of 2019,” we have featured the companies who are helping the industry to become smarter and more efficient by providing their out-of-the-box solutions and services. These companies include, Camomile Healthcare Ventures, Canadian Plasma Resources, Conversa Health, and Medbelle. We have also explored how these companies are benefiting the various parts of the pipeline.
Healthcare In The Midst Of A Transformation
On the cover of this issue, we have featured Trisotech, a company disrupting the Healthcare Information Technology Market by empowering the development of visual shareable clinical guidelines and pathways to tear down the wall that exists between clinicians and informaticians. We have also interviewed, CEO & CTO of Trisotech, Denis Gagne, who has thoroughly explained us the difficulties in the traditional systems, and how he and his team are positioned to eliminate those complications. To give an insightful overview of the current trends and advancements in healthcare, we have also included experts' views on current scenario and well researched articles written by our editors.
Deepali Sarwade Editorial Coordinator
CREDIT PAGE Publisher : Archana Ghule Editor-in-Chief : Vikram Suryawanshi Editorial Coordinator : Deepali Sarwade Vidya Joshi Rakesh Mahto Shubham Biradar Balkishan Dalai Project Managers : William Taylor Joseph Thomas Vinayak Todchetwar Pandurang Kulkarni Art Director : Vinod Alhat Visualizer : Mark Davis Graphic Designer : Sumit Bonage Aniket Diwane Sakshi Bendre Head of Distribution & Production : Aakash Mahajan Head of Operations : Robert Smith Research Analysts : James Adams Advertising : Maria Smith
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Experts Corner Andrea Calcagno CEO Cloud4Wi.
30 Empower Personalization Garnering Customer Insights, Respecting Privacy
10
the Disruptor! Cover Story
Giovanni Letellier Founder & CEO SiO Digital
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Where To Begin If You Want To Deploy AI In Your Business Operations
Camomile Healthcare Ventures
16
A Tech-Driven Advisor Helping Healthcare Organizations To Make Better Decisions
Canadian Plasma Resources
22
Saving Lives In Canada And Across The Globe With High-Quality Plasma
Conversa Health
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Transforming The Healthcare Experience With A Care Management Virtual Health Assistant
Key Source International
34
Providing Clinical Desktop Security And Infection Control Solutions
Medbelle
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Rebuilding The Healthcare Experience To Provide An Exceptional Level Of Patient Care
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Articles
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Smart Vision
Health Dash
How Smart Farming Is Renovating Traditional Farming Methods And Tools
Do You Know About A Disease That Is As Lethal As Alzheimer’s?
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risotech is disrupting the Healthcare Information Technology Market by empowering the development of visual shareable clinical guidelines and pathways to tear down the wall that exists between clinicians and informaticians. To enable this disruption, Trisotech offers clinicians a simple to use modeling environment where workows and decision logics are visually created by the Subject Matter Experts (SME) themselves. This puts clinicians squarely at the heart of the solution.
the Disruptor!
Cover Story
Denis Gagne CEO & CTO of Trisotech, sees software interoperability, evidencebased medicine, and automatable clinical guidelines as three of the most critical and challenging areas that need improvement in the HIT industry. These are also the most prominent changes that took place in the industry during the last couple of decades. Clinical practice is widely based on data and analytics. Care providers are incorporating more and more data into their day-today clinical operations and decisions, which is now referred to as evidence-based medicine. This allows clinicians to make critical decisions not only based on millions of previous cases but also to achieve better and more precise results.
The Wall Informaticians stand on the other side of the wall, as data accessibility is the main issue that they must address to make the clinicians the center piece of the solution. The systems that most care facilities use to store patients' information are called the Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). The problem is that these systems are known to be closed to other systems that might want to interact with their data, which makes data accessibility limited or even impossible. The obvious solution is to make this data accessible to other computers and networks and thus create an environment for the Clinical Decision Support system. However, this can be taken a step further by making the information consumable by computers. The combination of the standard-based process and decision modeling techniques makes it possible to create models that completely translate the guidelines into visual diagrams and thus make this data widely available to computer systems. Trisotech views sharable clinical pathways and guidelines as reusable knowledge artefacts that can interact with their global information environment via modern healthcare standards such as FHIR and CDS Hooks. These high valued artifacts can then be adapted and customized to the local reality of the organization that adopts them. Informaticians can integrate this new component within their IT environment thus tearing down the wall and changing the future of healthcare informatics.
Trisotech is committed to providing an interchangeable and interoperable future based on visual clinical models!
Cover Story
Trisotech’s Digital Enterprise Suite brings strategy, design and technology together providing your organization with insight for gaining competitive advantage.
A Great First Step Denis Gagne is an active contributor to the Object Management Group BPM+ Health taskforce. Trisotech has shown interest in the HIT industry sector after his participation in the development of Field Guide to Shareable Clinical Pathways. The Field Guide positions the HIT industry and technology implementation as follows: “Despite major increases in the power and flexibility of computing there remains a gap between our ability to implement technology and our ability to understand how that technology will impact the performance of care. Synchrony between information flow and the appropriate workflow of clinical care is a key principle for usability efficiency, and care quality. When HIT design decisions are not based on improving the efficiency and quality of clinical health care, the resulting solution can rearrange clinical workflow by accident rather than by design. This Guide aims to make an explicit, understandable connection between HIT and the methodical improvement of clinical health care.” In support of these lofty goals, Trisotech provides a clinician-friendly modeling environment that creates standard-based models. These visual models have the unique characteristic of being interpretable both by clinicians and machines, making them fully automatable. Trisotech’s modeling environment allows non-technical users to create automatable clinical guidelines. Their modeling tools enable simple and easy creation of process and decision models. The environment is designed in such a way that every resource can manage their own responsibilities inside the models, as well as initiate the DevOps process with one-click conversion to microservices. The company offers the so-called Trisotech Service Library that makes the generated microservices readily accessible. IT staffs can use this tool to access the full API invocation template of auto-generated service endpoints (including CDS Hooks) for external system integration. Keeping in mind that Trisotech’s main goal is improvement of patient care, they offer flexibility by allowing organizations that create the automatable clinical guideline to choose between using the entire models or invoking the microservices within their existing systems.
Trisotech is taking on the HIT Market Growth, development, and improvement are Trisotech’s main goals in every sphere of their business, from technology implementation to partnerships. Trisotech managed to establish a presence on the market despite much bigger competitors. They’ve accomplished this by not only leveraging their knowledge and expertise in Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), Decision Modeling Notation (DMN) and Case Management and Modeling Notation (CMMN) but also by driving the technology to the point of automation. This results in lowering barriers to entry for their clients by making the modeling visual and clinician friendly. When you couple that with state-of-theart automation you get a huge leap that is disrupting the norms of the HIT Industry. Denis Gagne says, “Working with Colleges of Medicine and large Health care providers,
we have been enabling them to understand and embrace the value of visual clinical guidelines and pathways. When they couple these visual models with micro-services and further automation, we pave the way for the intelligent clinical processes, integrating intelligent decisions and case management.” Having in mind the growing maturity of the market, Trisotech is expected to grow rapidly and internationally thanks to its successful SaaS model. The company already has plans to expand their markets in Europe and Asia through healthcare innovations as part of the BPM+ Health initiative by the Object Management Group. When it comes to Trisotech’s vision of the future of healthcare, they predict that it will be driven both by leveraging data to enable fast and efficient methodical improvement of care, and the ability to relate it to interoperable Health IT systems.
Why is Trisotech a contender? Trisotech is disrupting the Health Information Technology (HIT) market by tearing down the wall that exists between clinicians and informaticians. To enable this disruption, Trisotech offers clinicians a simple to use modeling environment where workflows and decision logics are visually created by the Subject Matter Experts (SME) themselves. By using international modeling standards, Trisotech ensures that the resulting visual models are not only understandable by clinicians but are also interpretable by machines. These automatable pathways and guideless becomes key components of the HIT architecture of the future. Trisotech views sharable clinical pathways and guideline as reusable knowledge artefacts that can interact with their global information environment via modern healthcare standards such as FHIR and CDS Hooks. These high valued artifacts can then be adapted and customized to the local reality of the organization that adopts them. The future of the HIT industry is boundless and evolving. According to Gagne, “Trisotech is committed to providing an interchangeable and interoperable future based on visual clinical models!”
Trisotech is led by the original core management team, innovating to transform the DNA of the organizations of the future.
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Company Name
Company Info
3M Healthacre Mike Roman, Chairman & CEO
Global leader offering medical, dental and orthodontic solutions, health information, food safety and drug delivery systems. www.3m.com/3M/en_US/health-care-us
ACCOLADE Rajeev Singh CEO
Accolade is a personalized health and benefits solution that dramatically improves the experience, outcomes and cost of healthcare for employers, health plans and their members. www.accolade.com
BASEHEALTH Dan Hoemke CBO
BaseHealth is the first predictive health analytics platform that is evidencebased and data-driven without reliance on retrospective claims and ICD data. www.basehealth.com
Camomile Healthcare Ventures Raghava Rao Co-Founder & CEO
Camomile Healthcare Ventures is one of the fastest-growing and largest healthcare strategy and implementation consultancy organizations. www.camomilehealthcare.com
Canadian Plasma Resources Dr. Barzin Bahardoust Co-Founder & CEO
Canadian Plasma Resources (CPR) is a pharmaceutical manufacturer licensed by Health Canada and certified by the European Union (EU) and the International Quality Plasma Program (IQPP). www.giveplasma.ca
Conversa Health West Shell III Co-founder, CEO, & Chairman,
Conversa Health is helping healthcare organizations overcome these challenges by providing them a conversational platform to communicate with and monitor their patients. www.conversahealth.com
Grifols Tony Procaccio Vice President Operations
Grifols is a global healthcare company founded in Barcelona, with more than 100 years of history, dedicated to improving the health and well-being of people around the world. www.grifols.com/en/home
Key Source International Philip Bruno CEO & President
With a primary focus on serving healthcare, Key Source International (KSI) has transformed what was once a vessel for germ and bacteria growth into an intelligent healthcare tool. www.ksikeyboards.com
Medbelle Daniel Kolb & Leander De Laporte Co-Founders
Medbelle is offering the first digital healthcare hospital platform that is userfriendly, cost-effective, and ensures it is easy for providers to navigate the patient’s treatment journey in order to deliver customized care. www.medbelle.com
Trisotech Denis Gagne CEO & CTO
Trisotech is disrupting the Healthcare Information Technology Market by empowering the development of visual shareable clinical guidelines and pathways to tear down the wall that exists between clinicians and informaticians. www.trisotech.com
Camomile Healthcare Ventures: A Tech-Driven Advisor Helping Healthcare Organizations To Make Better Decisions
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igital transformation has revolutionized every industry, in healthcare specifically, technology is helping us live longer and lead safer, healthier, and more productive lives. This has resulted in healthcare services being taken out of the confines of the hospital walls and integrated the care delivery with user-friendly and accessible devices. With the help of devices like smartphones and tablets, patients and doctors can communicate efficiently and discuss the patient’s health status. Despite such solutions, there are still many challenges faced by healthcare entities. Today, there is a need for a dedicated framework for communication between different stakeholders and regulations. Moreover, the increasing complexity of diseases is affecting healthcare organizations to deliver better care at a lower cost. The quantum of healthcare information is increasing year-over-year by 48 percent. This data is poured from new research, electronic medical records, imaging, wearables, and epidemiological monitoring, along with all the environmental factors that affect health.
Raghava Rao Co-founder & CEO
With a vision to be the industry’s most-respected, future-focused, data-driven provider of end-to-end healthcare solutions, Camomile Healthcare Ventures is overcoming these aforesaid issues by expanding its horizons to offer compelling technology-based solutions to transform healthcare organizations in emerging markets. A Boutique Healthcare Advisory Partner for Healthcare Organizations
We combine deep business insights with the understanding of future healthcare needs that would impact the industry and business models. 16
Headquartered in India, Camomile Healthcare Ventures is one of the fastest-growing and largest healthcare strategy and implementation consultancy organizations. The company’s mission is to help healthcare organizations make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements in their performance. To achieve this, it is providing them with the information they need to make datadriven decisions. Camomile’s core values symbolize its passion and dedication towards bringing up a change that the healthcare industry needs. These core values ensure that it maintains an independent perspective, observes the highest ethical standards, and conducts business with absolute integrity. Along with these, it delivers sustainable value and excellence to its clients and
advocates a caring meritocracy for patients, employees, partners, and other stakeholders.
Improving Employee Performance via Training, Forums, Workshops & Brainstorming Sessions
Being a boutique healthcare advisory partner, Camomile offers comprehensive solutions that are focused on three key areas: Strategic advisory and direction setting, Operational design and implementation and IT design & transformation. Since its inception, the company has been working with leading organizations across the private, public, and social sectors. These organizations include McKesson, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Manipal Hospitals, Care Hospitals, Tata Trusts, Government of Andhra Pradesh, and others.
As the market and technology landscape changes very quickly, it becomes extremely important to have updated information on industry, technology and its applications as well as the right skills to manage all the operations. Camomile understands the significance of having aforesaid assets and strongly believes in hiring and retaining the best talent. The company recruits talented individuals from the globally ranked Ivy League schools such as Harvard University, Imperial College London, IIM’s, TISS, Manipal University and other top institutes. Moreover, Camomile’s employees spend more than 50% of their time in learning new skills, gaining knowledge, and understanding problems in the industry. To further enhance their skillsets, they attend forums, workshops, and converse with industry experts more than thrice in a week, making the learning much more productive. As a result, they are able to solve the industry’s problems in unique ways.
Camomile’s Unique USP In the healthcare industry, many organizations provide solutions similar to Camomile. To stay ahead and differentiate itself from competitors, the company focuses on its USP, which is blending its deep domain expertise with technological know-how. Specialists and teams at Camomile are conscious of all constraints in the existing hospital workflows and have tested and offered alternatives solutions that: Ÿ Require minimal training, Ÿ Reduce the turn-around time (tat) of processes, Ÿ Automate non-value added activities, Ÿ User-friendly and improve utilization, and Ÿ Are compatible to practices in India. This uniqueness can be witnessed in the company’s excellent offering of Management Information System (MIS) developed for the Department of Medical Education, Government of Maharashtra, and Tata Memorial Hospital. This system enables each college to document various initiatives that are being undertaken to build their capacities to offer comprehensive cancer care. It also enables sharing of best practices, treatment protocols, and others between various institutions. Building Future-Forward Innovative Services in the Healthcare Sector The influx of technologies like AI, big data, IoT, robotics, 3D printing, etc. is transforming the healthcare industry into a completely new one. Today, healthcare payers and providers are turning to information and analytics to obtain insights into how they can enhance services while lowering expenses. The Co-founder and CEO of Camomile Healthcare Ventures, Raghava Rao believes that these technologies will play a transformative role in enhancing different deliverables in the healthcare sector. Therefore, Camomile is working on several healthcare initiatives to help healthcare organizations achieve the best results. This includes Hospital.AI, e-ICU services, Oncology Information System, Business incubator management, and Distraction-free driving initiative.
An Accomplished Leader behind the Success of Camomile Healthcare Ventures Raghava is an accomplished leader in the global healthcare space and has held senior management and Board positions in various Indian and Multinational healthcare companies. He cofounded Camomile with the focus on advising Healthcare CEOs and Board of Directors on transformation and value creation. Under Raghava’s leadership, the company has become one of the largest and most influential healthcare consulting companies in India and the Asian region. To further improve Camomile’s capabilities, the accomplished CEO with his skilled team collects data from partners and clients around the globe, as the availability of data is extremely low in Indian healthcare. Then, they pursue deep data integration with the obtained data to bring out solutions that help transform processes. Presently, the company is deploying its expertise to develop AI-based technology products that improve operational efficiencies and clinical outcomes. The team of Camomile is also in the process of collaborating with hospitals and other partners for feeding their AI. Their AI products utilize machine vision and cognition, image analytics—pattern recognition and search by fragments, decision management, and text analytics and NLP. Through other deep learning techniques like batch normalization, long short term memory, learning rate annealing, etc., they are delivering outputs much better than those in the market.
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Experts Corner
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Canadian Plasma Resources: Saving Lives In Canada And Across The Globe With High-Quality Plasma
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n the past few years, the treatment of rare diseases and the development of biologic-based therapies have gained considerable attention. More particularly, the plasma protein industry has been growing quite rapidly where the overall market doubles every 7-8 years, and by 2023, it is expected to reach $45 billion. Previously, a large portion of raw material used to come from the blood sector in the form of recovered plasma. However, with the rapid development in the demand for plasma proteins and stable or declining use of fresh blood products at the hospitals, there is an increasing demand for source plasma. More than ever, the plasma required for manufacturing the therapies for patients is supplied by the commercial source plasma industry. Moreover, almost 80% of plasma required by the fractionation industry worldwide is supplied and gathered by the US today. Dr. Barzin Bahardoust, the Co-founder and CEO of Canadian Plasma Resources (CPR), believes that depending on one country is not sustainable and may prove hazardous to the security of supply for patients. Through CPR, Barzin and his veteran team are trying to make Canada a global contributor of plasma-derived products.
Dr. Barzin Bahardoust Co-founder & CEO
At Canadian Plasma Resources, we believe in our motto of Give Plasma, Give Life. 22
A Visionary Leader Improving the Integrity of Canada’s Healthcare System Barzin targeted the plasma sector to reduce Canada’s dependency on other countries for products made from plasma, primarily the U.S. Currently, Canada imports roughly around 80% of its blood plasma needs from the US. These figures clearly show that the manufacturers of the plasmabased products heavily depend on plasma collected from foreign donors and more specifically on US source plasma collection companies. To address this issue, Barzin with his seasoned team is endeavoring to expand the global collection of plasma and ensuring the long-term security of supply for patients in Canada and around the world through their plasma
collection facilities in Canada. As the CEO, Barzin manages the executive financial and operational aspects of his business. The visionary leader and his team are developing or adopting the latest technologies used in the Plasmapheresis industry in both hardware and software. With this, they are ensuring high productivity of staff and reducing donation times for their generous donors. Striving to Become a Global Contributor for Safe and Quality Plasma CPR is a pharmaceutical manufacturer licensed from Health Canada and certified by the European Union (EU) and the International Quality Plasma Program (IQPP). It is a source member of the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association (PPTA). The company strives to become a global contributor for safe and quality plasma supply as well as wants to increase the local production capacity in Canada. It collects quality plasma from healthy donors and uses it for further manufacturing to treat a variety of health conditions. The Canada-based company handpicks its donor through certain criteria, rigorous screening, and testing. If a donor tests are positive for infectious disease, then all of the plasma he/she has donated previously is isolated and removed from the production batch. Providing Training Programs to Enhance the Employees’ Professional Development As a prominent plasma-based products manufacturer, the CPR team consists of a range of well-versed scientists and healthcare professionals. To ensure plasma donors’ and products safety, the company offers comprehensive training programs to its employees according to their positions. These training programs help employees and new recruits to deliver high standard products, improve their professional development, learn new skills, and reach their long-term career goals. Furthermore, its team approach at the collection facilities and the in-depth training programs has greatly helped them in improving their performance.
screening, CPR ensures that the donors are in a healthy state while donating their plasma during every visit: The donor must meet the basic donor eligibility criteria. Ÿ The donor must pass the health history and current health review criteria on the donor questionnaire. Ÿ On the first visit and every 16 weeks, the donor must pass extensive screening including serum protein evaluation. Ÿ The donor is tested for the specific transmissible disease markers using the latest technologies. Ÿ
CPR also checks donors against the National Donor Deferral Registry to ensure that donors are healthy and clear of any diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B or C. For its plasma donors, the company offers compensation in the form of Donor Value Card, which is credited after each donation. In addition to this, it has created a Super Hero Rewards loyalty program for all the plasma donors. Working on Innovative Projects CPR’s vision is to increase plasma production in Canada and to reduce dependency on foreign source plasma. To achieve its vision, CPR has acquired approval from Health Canada to allow its donors to safely donate more plasma. In Canada, for the first time, donors can donate plasma twice a week and 104 times per year. In a week, donors can donate plasma again as long as it is two days apart. From CPR’s viewpoint, it is removing the last advantage US companies have over them. Currently, the company is developing an entirely paperless blood bank information system, which will make the process much more efficient for its donors and staff members. It is planning to expand its network of collection centres in Canada from 2 to 10 in the next three years. Moreover, CPR is also preparing to collaborate and develop different plasma collection projects in jurisdictions outside of Canada and mainly in the Americas, Central Europe, and Asia.
Testing Criteria and Compensation for Donors The plasma collected from healthy donors is used to manufacture plasma proteins. These in turn are utilized to treat rare diseases and conditions, some of which are even life-threatening. Therefore, healthy donors are selected for donating their plasma. By following the four layers of
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Smart Vision
How
Is Renovating Traditional Farming Methods And Tools?
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n the hyper-digital environment, individuals are using electronic devices to stay connected with each other. The state-of-the-art technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), machine learning (ML), big data, virtual reality (VR), etc. are disrupting various industries and transforming their traditional models into digital ones. Farming is one of the old forms of agriculture. This industry has witnessed some major technological transformations over the last few decades. From handheld tools and horse-drawn plows to machinery and chemical fertilizers to sensors and drones, traditional farming evolved and shifted towards technology-driven processes. Today, by using numerous smart agricultural tech innovations, farmers have gained better control over growing crops and maintaining livestock. This is a result of integrating AI, cloud, and IoT-powered systems in farming better known as Smart Farming.
Applications of Smart Farming
What is Smart Farming?
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Smart Farming is a combination of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) with traditional farming practices to enhance the quality and quantity of agricultural products. Currently, a number of technologies are used to digitize the farming processes including sensors and actuators, robotics, GPS, big data, drone, etc. By adopting smart farming, farmers can reduce the additional costs, increase crop yield, improve the production of crops, and lessen labor. Now that we have learned about what smart farming is, let’s take a look at its following applications.
Presently, farmers with their labors monitor the farm. However, they can gain better insights about their fields through drones. During the flight, the drones collect multispectral, thermal, and visual imagery. From this, farmers will receive the foresights on the plant health indices, plant counting and yield prediction, plant height measurement, nitrogen content in wheat, drainage mapping, weed pressure mapping, and so on. As a result, they would be able to focus on the lacking areas of their fields.
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Crop Management Devices and Livestock Farming
In traditional farming, farmers need labors for handling crops and livestock. As a result, they waste resources on unnecessary things. But, with IoT-powered system, the farmers can gather data specifically related to crop farming like temperature, rainfall, soil quality, etc. At the same time, they can monitor the health of livestock and adjust their nutrition accordingly. Through the analyzed data, they can identify whether the animals are sick or not as well as monitor crop’s health and nutrition needs. If animals are sick, they are isolated from others to prevent the spread of disease. If plants are not well, then additional nutrition can be supplemented to them. In this way, farmers can manage their field activities smartly and efficiently. Use of Agricultural Drones
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Implementing Automation in Smart Greenhouses
Traditional greenhouses regulate environmental parameters through direct action or a method of proportional control that often leads to a production failure, energy loss, and increased labor costs. However, IoT-driven greenhouses smartly scrutinize and control the climate, which in turn removes human intervention. This can be further improved by integrating the system with cloud technology so that the generated data can be saved and processed at the same time in the cloud-storage. As a result, it will save time and cost. Ÿ
Automatic Planting and Seeding
In farming, sowing seeds is a tedious and difficult task. With advanced seeding machines or robots, the task of sowing seeds becomes easier. The seeding machines or robots come with geomapping and sensor data. This data consists of soil quality, density, moisture, and nutrient levels so that the seeds can grow in a health environment. Using this data, the machines or robots can plant the seeds in appropriate and conditioned places to grow healthily. Ÿ
Top 5 tips to consider before implementing smart farming Smart devices and technologies have numerous ways to help farmers increase their farm’s performance and revenue. However, farmers face different set of challenges while thinking about investing in smart farming. Therefore, it becomes necessary to consider following 5 tips before implementing smart farming Ÿ Farmers need to focus on what type of hardware will be required for collecting their farms’ data. Ÿ They will require powerful data analytics capabilities. Along with this, predictive algorithms and machine learning will be needed for obtaining actionable insights based on the collected data. Ÿ The purchased hardware should be durable and easy to maintain. Otherwise, farmers will need to replace the sensors more frequently. Ÿ Remote access to the farms’ data will be available through smartphone and desktop computer. Therefore, they must know the nature of the applications. Ÿ The system should be secured and safe to use so that there should be no possibility of data hacking.
Automatic Watering and Irrigation
A widespread irrigation method known as Subsurface Drip Irrigation (SDI) allows farmers to control when and how much water their crops can take. By incorporating these SDI systems with smart IoT-enabled sensors, farmers can continuously track moisture levels, plant health as well as intervene only when it is necessary.
In short, modern technologies such as AI, ML, IoT, and cloud computing are expected to advance the development along with introduction of more robots powered by AI into farming. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement in farming. In the upcoming years, the farming tools and models will completely embrace the digitization. In the coming days, smart farming will play a significant role in delivering more productive and sustainable agricultural products, which will be based on a resource-efficient and precision approach.
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Conversa Health: Transforming The Healthcare Experience With A Care Management Virtual Health Assistant
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he evolution of technology is transforming the way the healthcare industry operates and delivers care. The current system is more effective, efficient, and flexible than ever before. However, there are a few challenges that the healthcare stakeholders are currently trying to overcome with the help of technology and innovation. The rapid surge in the cost of primary care, lack of access due to the financial burden of physical proximity, poor shared understanding of health resulting in low adherence rates, and unnecessary readmissions are some of the complicated issues that need to be given great thought. Moreover, it is no secret that the administrative burden is mounting on healthcare practitioners and payers, and the disconnected loop is creating hindrances for everyone to communicate. Conversa Health is helping healthcare organizations overcome these challenges by providing them a conversational platform to communicate with and monitor their patients. They offer an artificially intelligent (AI) conversation-based Virtual Health Assistant (VHA) in order to solve complications by enabling seamless communication between patients and care providers.
West Shell III Co-founder, CEO, & Chairman
By building the right solution for the market, we've made conversation a cornerstone of healthcare experience. 28
The company focuses on eliminating tangled issues arising due to the current visit-centric mode of treatment, which is being operated majorly through static portals and telephonic approach. With these traditional practices, patients are unable to experience the ongoing and personalized support and guidance they need to make better decisions to self-manage their care. Believing that better conversation leads to better care, Conversa transforms this inconvenient, expensive, and unsatisfactory user experience into a smart and convenient relationship. Benefitting all the Facets of Healthcare With the Conversa Conversation Platform™, the company aims at benefitting all the parts of the healthcare ecosystem. Consumers and patients can reduce the cost of unnecessary face-to-face visits and acquire a better understanding of their treatment and health plans, while communication with their caretakers helps to achieve shared decision-making. Furthermore, the increase in access to appropriate services and scope for self-management can be achieved by this solution.
Care providers on the other hand typically rely on the information collected during infrequent and episodic interactions to manage the health of their patient populations. Using Conversa, providers can deliver care while reducing inperson visits, capture and analyze valuable patient generated health data, handle continuous risk stratification, reduce administrative burden, and simplify in-hospital communication.
taxonomy-driven patient profile, that automatically calibrates the timing, priority, and sequencing of modules of the conversation content delivered. As no two patients are alike, the conversational AI-powered platform intelligently learns and identifies profile-based patterns. While learning, the platform dynamically adjusts and improves what is asked and said and which data is to be collected from each patient during each conversation.
For pharma organizations, Conversa helps to increase clinical trial participant engagement and retention, encourages medication adherence, provide patient support, and promotes ongoing symptom management.
Conversa’s Conversation Platform™ is meeting each individual’s needs with automated and personalized conversation experiences that lead to more meaningful patient relationships, effective population management, and ultimately, better clinical and financial outcomes. The company has an extensive library of over 700 “clinically-intelligent” conversation programs including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure (CHF), diabetes, hypertension, joint replacement, and many more.
Lastly, payers can enjoy the benefits such as personalized health plan assistance, smart triage of queries, augmented consumer engagement and retention, consistency of claims and transparency all of which help in scaling care management capabilities. The Team and Their Achievements Market success is almost guaranteed when a well-thought solution is backed up by a well-versed team. The talented team of Conversa is dedicated to transform the healthcare industry and is led by the Co-founder, CEO, and Chairman, West Shell III. West is a 5-time startup CEO having excellent skills in business strategy, product management, e-commerce, mobile devices, and enterprise software. West and his team promote a vibrant culture that is fun, compassionate, and strives to deliver a solution that truly makes a difference in healthcare. Prior to Conversa Health, West led several successful companies including Pacific Marketing Group (PMG), Netcentives, Sapias, and Healthline Networks. Under his leadership, Conversa has been a recipient of several prestigious awards including Top Patient Relationship Management Solution by Chilmark, and Top Patient Engagement Solution by IDC Research. West, his co-founder Dr. Philip Marshall, and the Conversa team are enabling better care by making patient-provider communication meaningful and transforming healthcare from reactive and episodic to a new relationship that is proactive, continuous, collaborative, and personalized.
This conversation platform enables patients to stay in touch with their doctor or healthcare provider with personalized conversations regarding their medical plan or history. Additionally, it also integrates biometric data from wearable devices into EHR systems and other enterprise applications. With Conversa Health’s Conversation Platform™, healthcare providers receive data in real-time, allowing more informed allocation of resources and ongoing adjustments to care and treatment plans as needed. Crafting the Future of the Healthcare Sector The healthcare industry is rapidly evolving the way healthcare services are offered to customers. Personalized, consumerfriendly and automated patient experiences are also transforming the patient-provider relationship. Through this redefined relationship, Conversa is seeing the healthcare industry reach unprecedented levels of continuous and collaborative healthcare, which will ultimately deliver better care at a lower cost. Conversa is helping propel this transformation, and is welldeserving of this Top 10 Most Impactful Healthcare Solution of the year recognition.
Delivering Personalized Care Knowing that every patient is different and has a different set of healthcare requirements, the team of Conversa has built a platform that satisfies every patient’s distinct healthcare requirements. The conversational platform includes a
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Experts Corner
Empower Personalization Garnering Customer Insights,
Respecting Privacy I
n today’s age of chatbots, pop-up boxes, and email marketing, it’s all too easy to think that the best way to gain insights into customers is through digital platforms. This simply isn’t the case, particularly for brands that operate offline. While online tools certainly have their benefits, brickand-mortar businesses are missing out on tremendous opportunities by not using their physical locations to grow and enrich their customer database. But here’s the good news: thanks to advancements in mobile, connecting with customers in a physical location — be it a retail store, a shopping mall, a hotel, a bank, a museum, a theater, or a restaurant — is easier than ever. With the right tools and best practices, brands can use guest WiFi to gain customer insights and enhance experience across the physical and digital worlds, digitally delivering a much more personalized experience. This, in turn, will open the silos of the offline and online ecosystems, and create a holistic and interactive communication channel. It’s the most accurate and best way to listen to the voice of the customers. Here’s how.
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Empower customers to intentionally share their data It’s not about providing customers with a general free guest WiFi. Brands must strive to deliver an AI-powered first-class experience to customers who opt-in to their services. When using data to enrich their customer database and profiles, brands should go beyond simply asking for their customer’s contact info. They need to empower customers to proactively share their information. Information that’s intentionally provided by the customer is called zero-party data, and it’s something that every modern brand should strive for. Having zero-party data means that brands no longer have to guess or infer what customers need, since the information is coming straight from the customers themselves. Zero-party data enables brands to cultivate stronger and more direct relationships with their customers, which in turn leads to better personalization. Social login is a valid method for gathering zero-party data. It’s also preferred by the majority of customers — 60% according to a study by Annex Cloud — particularly when accessing WiFi through a mobile device. As such, brands should give customers the option
to login using social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. In addition to paving the way for better customer experiences, social login enables brands to build a trusted relationship with their customers who are open to sharing their personal details with their favorite brands, such as their gender, age, location, etc. As a result, brands will continuously feed their CRM, creating richer customer profiles and highly tailored customer experiences. Gather insights into offline customer behaviors Using guest WiFi brands can also get to know their customers through their offline behavioral characteristics such as locations visited, date of each visit and related dwell time. It also lets brands predict behavior patterns such as the probability of a customer returning to the location in the next 30 days. These metrics can be quite valuable not just from an operations standpoint, but also for the purposes of personalization.
“Cloud4Wi’s solution enables us to understand who our customers are and how they behave in the stores while respecting their privacy. Thanks to this in-depth knowledge, we will be able to deliver compelling and much more personalized experiences.” Lorenzo Bertelli, Owner and CDO Prada Group. Offer tremendous value to your customers One of the best ways to empower customers to share more about themselves is to use their data to deliver tremendous value. Enticing offers and exclusive content can be effective in getting guests to log in through the location’s guest WiFi and provide their details. Exclusive promotions work great, particularly in the retail sector. In addition to getting customers to opt-in to the retailer’s services, such offers can also drive sales and conversions.
For instance, implementing in-store WiFi enabled The Prada Group to transform the customer experience in more than 600 locations across the globe by creating new customer profiles and assigning a digital identity to a guest’s device upon their initial login. When the customers subsequently visit any store, the network can then recognize their device, associate it to that individual, and trigger notifications (i.e., an email or text message) welcoming them back and promoting a new item they’d likely be interested in. Sales associates can also be notified when a returning customer walks in so that they can provide the customer with the attention they need. These types of specialized services help The Prada Group to better personalize the experience for their instore customers, in turn boosting loyalty and build stronger relationships.
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lternatively, brands can provide location-based services and content to their customers. Gruppo FS Italiane, for Ainstance, offers a navigator, timetables, travel assistant, and a point-of-interests map to station visitors. This is also a perfect fit for shopping malls.
The example above illustrates the value of having a cohesive view of the customer journey. By integrating their physical and digital ecosystems, brands can get to know their customers better and offer unparalleled experiences that drive loyalty and sales.
Getting the most out of customer insights
In today’s hyper-competitive market, lackluster and impersonal customer experiences just won’t cut it. In order to thrive, brands must continuously engage with customers in ways that are relevant to them.
Brands that want to get the most value out of their customer insights should strive to “connect the dots” between multiple data points and channels. For instance, they can analyze their location analytics together with POS data to deeply understand on-site traffic and conversions. They can further integrate all that data into their mission-critical systems (e.g., CRM, CDP, etc.) to get a complete, 360-degree view of customers as they move from one channel to the next. This way, they can engage with individual customers across multiple channels to personalize their experience based on their online and offline behaviors. Here’s a scenario of how an integrated 360-degree customer profile would work. Say, a shopper — let’s call her Ashley — walks into a fashion boutique to look at some accessories. Ashley connects to the in-store WiFi, allowing the retailer to log her visit.
5 questions to determine if your personalization capabilities match your goals The first step in delivering a personalized experience that balances value and noninvasiveness — and a crucial preparation before selecting technology partners — is for retailers to establish what they want to accomplish with their personalization strategy. Answering these questions can help: Ÿ
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Ashley leaves without buying anything, but after a few days, she receives an email from the boutique promoting one of the products that she was interested in.
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At that point, Ashley decides to swing by the store to purchase the item, and when she walks in, the retailer’s WiFi network immediately recognizes her and notifies a sales associate. Armed with this information, the associates welcome Ashley into the store and offers a personalized shopping experience. Ashley ends up buying the item, and after a few days, receives an email from the retailer asking her to review her experience with the sales associate. Entirely pleased with the service that she received Ashley gives the associate top marks.
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What is the customer’s need for personalization, versus what can the retailer presently achieve with its technology capabilities? What kind of data should retailers collect from customers, and when should they be collecting it? How can retailers collect data without being creepy? What are the main goals/customer metrics retailers should strive for as a result of personalization initiatives? What are appropriate vehicles for personalized messaging, such as text messages, emails and push notifications, and what level of customer comfort is necessary for retailers to deploy each?
Cloud4Wi helps companies do all that and more, through a robust application suite that lets brands gain actionable customer insights. Get in touch to learn more or view our success stories.
Key Source International: Providing Clinical Desktop Security And Infection Control Solutions
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he healthcare industry continues to face a multitude of challenges. Breaches are widely observed in the healthcare sector and can be caused by many different types of incidents. These incidents involve credential-stealing malware, an insider who either purposefully or accidentally discloses patient data, or involve lost laptops or/and other devices. As healthcare possesses millions of private patient records today, data security is a major challenge which needs to be addressed promptly.
Philip Bruno CEO & President
We educate healthcare customers that the out-ofthe-box keyboards they're using are bad for patients, bad for healthcare's bottom line. 34
Additionally, other key challenges the healthcare sector is facing are prescription abuse and hospital-acquired infection. These pain points are creating havoc in the industry which leads to fraud, prescribing errors and reduction in care quality. Witnessing such circumstances, healthcare institutes and organizations are turning to technologies for the ideal solution. To efficiently fulfill this need, Key Source International (KSI) steps in to continuously inform clients of the significance of overcoming aforementioned issues. The company’s mission is to empower healthcare to save patients’ lives, increase productivity, and protect consumer data by providing high quality, innovative clinical desktop security, and infection control peripherals. Converting the Conventional Keyboard to a MultiFaceted, Intelligent Medical Tool KSI is celebrating its 40th year of delivering quality technology to end-users around the world. The company’s value statement ‘Patient lives depend on our technological ingenuity’ reflects its pioneering spirit and strong technical expertise honed over the past four decades. The clinical desktop security provided by the company’s durable, cutting edge products keeps pace with the ever-changing needs of global users seeking secure, compliant and scalable
solutions compatible with their risk assessment and cybersecurity strategies. For infection control and patient health information security, KSI integrates fingerprint biometrics, RFID card reader technology, sonar walkaway presence detection, and a software-driven keyboard cleaning system that controls infection at the clinical desktop into a single device. Furthermore, the Oakland, CA-based company’s awardwinning LinkSmart™ cleaning button with San-a-Key® software is recognized by the American Hospital Association (AHA). This software is a game-changing innovation, preventing infection at the clinical desktop and holding the promise of saving many patient lives. Integrated dual-factor authentication makes this awardwinning software an ideal germ-fighting device that delivers the ultimate in foolproof security. Medical Grade Security Keyboards With a primary focus on serving healthcare, KSI has transformed what was once a vessel for germ and bacteria growth into an intelligent healthcare tool. The tool ensures that the clinical desktop is no longer a vessel for germ and bacteria growth that causes hospitalacquired infections, or an avenue for data breach that violates patient confidentiality. KSI keyboards can be easily disinfected with germicidal wipes throughout the day by pressing an integrated button that temporarily disables keys. These keyboards accompanied with companion software help hospital administrators know when, where and by whom all keyboards are cleaned. As for data security, the impactful healthcare solution provider has developed solutions for password replacement using biometrics, near field communication, contact-less smart cards, legacy HID badges as well as auto locking desktops used when a user walks away from their workstation. As a result, KSI prevents unauthorized access to patient health records and electronic prescription platforms. This highlights that KSI keyboards play a significant role not only in protecting patients’ health data but also their lives. The company’s healthcare customers recognize the effectiveness of its top-selling products in protecting the clinical desktop. By using these products, customers experience better security with this infection control solution.
Happy and Satisfied Employees Increase Customer Satisfaction Employee performance is critical to the overall success of the company. Therefore, KSI has developed a robust employee development program that contains crosstraining and tuition reimbursement. The company looks after employees’ development, both as individuals and professionals in their chosen fields and offers incentivizes based on meeting performance goals. KSI knows that exceptional service is a key driver of customer satisfaction and retention. So, it ensures that all employees are happy and well-trained to deliver stellar customer satisfaction. Building Strong Relationships to Expand Into the SAP Marketplace In the future, KSI will soon join hands with a new technology partner to promote its ability to better secure SAP workstations. With the rise of SAP, it has been seen that the use of HANA ERP has grown significantly in recent years. With data breach now a high-profile issue embedded in the public’s awareness, SAP consumers will benefit from KSI’s multifactor authentication solutions. KSI’s association with SAP allows expansion into new verticals and the development of new relationships around the world. Listening to the Voice of Customers to Serve Better Leaders play the most important role in the growth of an organization; their vision is what makes the difference. Philip Bruno, the CEO and President of Key Source International, guides his team of seasoned professionals where they need to go and informs the vision for what comes next. He ensures that KSI not only remains relevant within the healthcare industry but also continues to surpass competing technologies through innovation. Together with the skilled team, the CEO listens to their clients’ pain points and looks for more detailed information to deliver world-class solutions. The thought leader states that their best solutions are borne of listening to the customer and listening will always be part of the KSI business model.
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Medbelle: Rebuilding The Healthcare Experience To Provide An Exceptional Level Of Patient Care
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he modern healthcare landscape is shifting towards a more digitized, consumer-focused, and globalized direction. Today, consumers have grown accustomed to interacting with digital platforms on a daily basis and therefore expect the same high-tech services in healthcare too. Additionally, the advances in medical technology have resulted in more pleasant patient experiences and less expensive treatment prices, and an inux of day-case facilities competing in the market. Along with this, the tech wave is creating innovative tools that improve outcomes and processes. However, adapting and utilizing these novel tools is not easy for healthcare providers. To overcome this challenge, Medbelle is offering the ďŹ rst digital healthcare hospital platform that is user-friendly, costeffective, and ensures it is easy for providers to navigate the patient’s treatment journey in order to deliver customized care. Leander De Laporte
Daniel Kolb
Co-founder
Co-founder & Managing Director
We are rebuilding the healthcare experience from scratch to provide you with the outstanding level of patient care we would love to experience ourselves. 38
Exceptional Co-founding Duo of Medbelle In spite of the advancements in medical technology, there has been a huge gap in the services offered by healthcare providers. The lack of digitalization and consumer-focus in healthcare were the key reasons why Daniel Kolb (Cofounder & Managing Director) and Leander De Laporte (Co-founder) established Medbelle together in 2016. In the initial days, the co-founders worked as a team of two: Daniel built the provider network while Leander called the patients and wrote the code himself. Today, Daniel and Leander are passionately focused on building and supporting a strong team that is working to achieve the vision of the company as quickly as possible. The Dream Team at Medbelle Under the guidance and mentorship of Daniel and Leander, the team at Medbelle is currently working on strategic and
organizational projects along with taking key steps to strengthen their network that has vastly grown. The dynamic duo and their skilled team are rebuilding the healthcare experience from scratch to provide clients with the outstanding level of patient care that they would like to experience themselves. With the first digital hospital platform, a patient can enjoy a smooth, pleasant journey while allowing the doctors and surgeons to focus on providing them with outstanding medical and surgical care. Even though the team at Medbelle has grown, the co-founding duo is very much involved in making critical operational decisions and examining their outcomes closely. What makes Medbelle Remarkable? At Medbelle, the team strives to create a world in which all patients can navigate their treatment journey digitally and receive personalized care at the click of a button. The company is very much aligned on a quadruple aim of enhancing patient experiences, improving overall population health, reducing costs, and improving the work-life balance of healthcare providers. The unique qualities that make Medbelle the best medical provider in the UK are as follows. Ÿ
The Medbelle Family: The brightest minds in the industry are united on this platform and they have an insatiable passion for building the best possible patient experiences. The team is comprised of healthcare professionals, engineers, and entrepreneurs that are striving to bring healthcare into the 21st century.
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Rethinking Healthcare Technology: Currently, healthcare is dominated by an array of out-dated systems and processes that focus on the provider rather than the patient. Re-thinking the patient journey from scratch helps Medbelle build an entirely new platform that provides an easy-to-use, integrated experience for both patients and providers.
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Patient Care and Medical Quality: The core of Medbelle can be summarised by its relationship with its patients. Patients are considered the highest priority. This focus helps establish and provide an experience that people love whilst ensuring that they receive the highest quality medical care.
Overcoming Healthcare Challenges by Offering Unique Services Medbelle closely works with the UK’s most experienced surgeons to provide high-quality procedures and personal guidance. As the first digital hospital, it builds the technology that enables outstanding patient care from start to finish, thereby leading to more pleasant, more transparent, and more efficient patients’ journeys. The Medbelle team ensures each patient receives a seamless healthcare experience with a unique personal touch all whilst reducing the cost. The impactful digital healthcare platform allows hospitals and specialists to stay focused on their expertise and treat patients to increase their utilization, even in an increasingly competitive environment. Medbelle essentially takes care of building the technology, the personalized care processes, and ensuring the quality of “Excellence Network”. The aforementioned tasks are attained by successfully cultivating a perfect mix of providers, including both overnight and day-case facilities, to provide the best possible treatment for any patient. Currently, Medbelle is focused on growing and helping even more patients. Its latest developments include building & launching its “Excellence Network” for orthopaedic surgery. Impressively, many market players have already shown interest in this program. Taking a Closer at the Future of the Healthcare Industry According to Leander, the future healthcare industry will focus on digital patient experiences and value-based care, including better incentivisation of prevention and quality outcomes, while hospitals unbundle into specialized treatment centers.
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Health Dash
Do You Know About A Disease That Is As
Lethal As Alzheimer’s? 40
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s the world is shifting towards advancements in the healthcare technology, scientists are discovering new diseases every day. Many researches and experiments are being conducted in thousands of institutes and research centers only to find out new possible diseases which are altering human existence for centuries. Recently, Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a disease that is as fatal as Alzheimer’s disease. Known for its lethal fact, Alzheimer’s is considered very dangerous for survival. About a decade ago, Mayo Clinic’s researchers went to Alzheimer’s Disease Research Brain Bank that has been collecting brains from patients with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment. The researchers actually identified patients that had died and were pathologically confirmed to have a high probability of Alzheimer’s disease. In this process, they identified 342 brains with the same disorder and then decided to ship them down to Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, laboratory of Dr. Dennis Dickson for further diagnoses. Moreover, these brains were then sectioned into groups by the researchers. They thought that dead brains were probably affected first by the protein they were interested in studying in Alzheimer’s disease known as TDP-43. In the process, they sectioned the region of the brains into slides known as the amygdala to those 342 cases. These 342 cases were then immunostained to see if the protein was present in the amygdala region or not. Scientists were surprised with the result showing presence of TDP-43 in 195 cases. To find where and how much protein was present in those 342 brains, they sectioned 14 additional regions that had thousands of slides for characterization. Is the newly found disease as deadly as Alzheimer’s?
Alzheimer’s is inevitably irreversible and progressive brain disorder that slows down and then destroys the memories. It is currently the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, but recent studies indicate that the disorder may rank third, just before heart disease and cancer. To know the exact reason behind how a newly discovered disease can mimic Alzheimer, researchers at Mayo Clinic examined the segmented 342 brains and found the presence of Alzheimer disease pathologically. Further, brains were separated into two different groups; one group of patients that did not have the protein TDP-43, and another group of patients that did have this protein. The difference researchers noticed in the group that had the protein was small-sized brains as compared to the other group. The observed size-deformity of brains recognized as the cause of a type of dementia;
memory loss, inability to perform daily routine, etc., which were previously mistaken as the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Now, the interesting aspect of the study was that the particular group of patients who had Alzheimer’s disease according to definition but when died, they were normal. Researchers found that the missing protein TDP-43 caused their death. The disorder has recently been recognized for the first time when researchers have come to a consensus and called dementia; LATE (limbic-predominant agerelated TDP-43 encephalopathy). The similarity that blurs the lines inside a brain People always compare Alzheimer’s as the aging effect. The most general symptom of Alzheimer’s is difficulty in remembering things. It affects individuals differently based upon other symptoms such as difficulty in completing tasks, trouble in speaking, misplacing things, and trouble with visual perception. It is the most common type of dementia, but researchers have found other types that may be similar but act different inside the brain. Alzheimer’s is the accumulation of thin-flat proteins called beta-amyloid, and tangles, consisting of a different protein called tau in the brain. However, in the case of LATE, patients have a submission of a different protein, called TDP-43, which is misfolded in shape and deposited layerby-layer inside the brain. The third protein (TDP-43) plays a major role in Alzheimer’s disease pathology. In fact, people whose brain is TDP positive are 10 times more likely to be cognitively dysfunctional at death as compared to those who did not have the protein. It shows that TDP-43 has the potential to overpower what has been termed as resilient brain aging. It means people can have the Alzheimer’s pathology, the two proteins-beta-amyloid and tau, and they can still be normal but missing of the third protein-TDP-43, is no way normal and can cause catastrophic changes in behavior. To conclude, LATE is one of the common age-related diseases that can mimic Alzheimer’s disease. Both are complex and unpromising to cure but current approaches by neurologists, scientists, and healthcare policy makers are focusing on people to maintain mental health, manage behavioral symptoms, and exercise healthy lifestyle. In the coming years, researchers hope to develop therapies targeting patient’s genetic and cellular mechanisms so that the actual cause of the disease can be prevented.
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