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Originally Published: Nov 28, 2023
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7EKIyivuQk
In this exclusive interview with João Bocas, a renowned healthcare entrepreneur and digital health visionary, we delve into the ever-evolving landscape of global digital health innovation and trends. João shares insights from his extensive 20-year career in the healthcare sector, discussing the significant changes he's witnessed and how they've shaped his work. He highlights promising emerging trends in healthcare and wearable technology, drawing on his reputation for identifying and leveraging these trends to create impactful solutions.
João also reflects on the lessons he's learned from founding and leading healthcare technology companies, shedding light on how these experiences have influenced his entrepreneurial approach in the healthcare field. As a dedicated philanthropist committed to improving global health, he discusses a specific initiative he has supported and the impact it has had on healthcare access.
The interview delves into the role of technology in bridging healthcare disparities on a global scale, emphasizing how it can democratize healthcare access. Finally, João shares his excitement about the positive changes underway in the healthcare industry. This interview offers a comprehensive exploration of digital health innovation and trends, providing valuable insights from a true expert in the field.
João Bocas, CEO & Global Digital Health Influencer, The Wearables Expert ™
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Moderator
GMT20231031-172123_Recording
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Megan Antonelli: Welcome everybody. This is Megan Antonelli at Health Impact. Thank you for joining us today. I am so excited about our guest today. João Bocas is [00:00:36] a healthcare entrepreneur and digital health influencer, and he is the CEO of Digital Salutum.
And I had the pleasure of chatting with him earlier and You know, he's been someone I followed. He's got a YouTube channel called Health Care Uncomplicated. Welcome, Joe. How
João Bocas: are you? I'm doing well, Megan. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to connect with
Megan Antonelli: you. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what you do at Digital Solutum.
João Bocas: Yeah, sure. So Digital Solutum, we are a global digital health consulting business. Primarily we are companies [00:01:12] to grow and scale within Europe and also us. And also we are companies in in the marketing space around creating a presence, basically helping companies and people and the industry to get to know that they exist, I think that's the first step for success.
Megan Antonelli: Indeed it is. That's great. Yeah, I know it. I can't wait to learn more about how you do that and what you do there and all the differences. It's so it's always been so fascinating to me in terms of just the health care system as a whole, and how organizations can bring their. [00:01:48] Products to market overseas as well as just expand globally.
I know on the pot on the YouTube show, you have some great people you interview. Tell us a little bit about some of your favorites.
João Bocas: Oh, yeah. Well, I shouldn't like take any favorites. But I mean, I'm very proud about my YouTube channel. As you know, we're talking early about that. Actually, I have a bit of a story very shortly.
I'm gonna I'm going to tell the story during COVID. I was stuck at home with lockdowns in UK. I am Portuguese, but I live in UK. I work globally, as you know, and I was thinking, how can I leverage my [00:02:24] network, my contacts and create like some value for the industry as well as trying to keep going with the business.
So I created the YouTube channel and I had great names there in the industry, my vision was to create the best and the biggest YouTube channel, the health care YouTube channel in the world. I'm not sure if I'm going to accomplish that, but I'm, I think I'm well on my path. And I had the likes of the start was with John Nostra, which I admire.
And John is a friend. So I had John Nostra, I had Daniel Kraft. I had my friend. Professor Shafi Ahmed. I had Dr. [00:03:00] Eric de Paul, but I had many global leaders. And every week I interview a global leader and it's going really well. This afternoon, I know it's morning in U. S. I interviewed the chief clinical officer at Google.
So things are very exciting, you know, so yeah, lots of good
Megan Antonelli: stuff. It is one of my favorite things to come out of the pandemic really is that we've continued to do some of these virtual engagements and that they really allow you to talk to some great people that you don't always get to see at the live events and continue that [00:03:36] dialogue throughout.
So that's great. And even more so connecting overseas. You know, I know I empathize on the scheduling because that can be so, it's so challenging. But tell us a little bit about your story about how you got to digital health and the work that you do at Digital Solutum. Sure.
João Bocas: So I've been in health for over 20 years.
I always say that I have two passions, health and sport. I was in professional sports for a number of years. Oh yeah. What did you say? I was a, an amateur footballer and I become a [00:04:12] professional referee and I was a fitness trainer. I've been a pt I've done, I was a soccer coach for an academy of a very well known football club in near in UK now in Brighton, Noval in football club.
So I've done a number of things. Also always sport or else related. So I always say that. Sport goes and health goes hand in hand with sport because the majority of sportsmen or women are fairly healthy or they should be at least at the competitive level. So I always have these two passions, but I entered them.
I was in corporate wellness for over 10 [00:04:48] years, but I entered, let's say the digital health per se. In 2015, I was doing a digital health startup with a business partner. Things just took off from there. And in 2015, I used to go to networking events and startup events, and I called myself a digital health influencer.
I had a business card and people used to ask me, what does that mean? And I was like, stirring conversations and connecting people and talking about all these. Major issues and the challenges in health care and here in UK and also overseas and Things just [00:05:24] snowball from there. I created the digital presence with the following on twitter linkedin and Yeah start working globally And it's been really
Megan Antonelli: great.
Yeah. So 20 years is a long time. Even in health care, we can get some work done in 20 years for sure. What are some of the changes you've seen both, you know, where you are in the UK, but also in the markets you serve as well as globally in terms of, you know, whether it's adoption or even around trends around innovation.
João Bocas: Yeah, so certainly Yeah, definitely. technology [00:06:00] advancements and the evolution of AI and cloud computing and machine learning. I always like to talk about wearables and wearable tech has been really fascinating seeing when Fitbit, for example, released the first bracelet in 2000, not in 2009.
And now where things are now. And I even. Could play devil's advocate to believe that in five or 10 years time the bracelets and the smart watches could become obsolete because now we have smart rings, embeddables, implantables. We have smart belts, smart shoes, smart [00:06:36] clothing. So things are evolving so, so fast.
And that's certainly that one area that I keep a very strong pulse on and it's fascinating to me.
Megan Antonelli: What's your favorite one right now?
João Bocas: I wear the aura ring is charging now, but I like to track my sleep. In a few years ago, I was very interested in the steps, but think things that evolved. The steps are not as exciting for me right now, but certainly the sleep is, which is a foundation of full performance and sleep nutrition.
And certain things are very important. [00:07:12] So I. I like the other ring is also fashionable because you can choose a color and you can go for the gold or for the platinum and yeah, what
Megan Antonelli: about it's funny it's changed. It's changed my jewelry wearing as well because I wear more jewelry to sort of offset it and larger rings to offset it but I do I love it.
It's by far my favorite and it has, it's given me a totally different appreciation for sleep. And I think you know, like right now there's a lot like Peter Atiyah's new book out around the importance of sleep and that even in, when you think about [00:07:48] the healthcare culture too, and how much that's changed, right?
Because 20 years ago when docs were going to medical school, they would, you know, they were required to stay up 80 hours, not, you know, all of that was totally accepted. And not that it's changed enough. But there is some recognition of how important sleep is both from a patient safety perspective, but the mental health perspective.
And I think that a lot of these devices are helping with
João Bocas: that. Sure. I mean, and if you see, for example, the ORA ring, they then recently deals with the F1, Formula One drivers and with the NBA, because for [00:08:24] professional sports, performance is everything and sleep is a foundation of all.
Megan Antonelli: So. Yeah, absolutely.
No, nobody knows that better than a parent, of course, but yes, professional sports too. And so in terms of that, I mean, I think that is, it is exciting. And then obviously the integration between AI. And all of that data, right? The ability to actually process that data, make, you know, and understand it so that we can make better decisions around our health has made some significant changes.
Is there anything in particular, I mean, when you look [00:09:00] at the US population, or even in the EU, in terms of different countries and their. adoption or interest, you know, I've been recently watching like the blue zone. So I have this image, you know, of the hills and red wine, and that's how we're managing our health.
But I bet there's a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different places. So tell me a little bit more about that. I want to know where I need to go.
João Bocas: Sure. I am interested Megan has mentioned before in elf monitoring and the remote patient monitoring as a piece in healthcare is very important.
Of course, wearables play a strong, [00:09:36] in medical devices, play a strong role in there. But going back to what you mentioned, the differences in, countries and of systems and culture, I always follow, for a number of years, the Nordic countries and the Nordic countries seem to be very advanced. In terms of organizational health and public health for a couple of reasons.
They foster innovation. They support entrepreneurs. They they have grants. They also have one big plus. Generally, they are[00:10:12] smaller populations of 2 million or 5 million. So I'm talking about Finland, Denmark, Iceland. I'm talking about like those countries generally they give access to the innovators to the hospitals to do pilots to the health systems.
So they, they have this culture of openness, which is really great. And they're fairly healthy. So, I mean, probably around 50 percent of the population is fairly healthy and they foster, I think culturally they're very advanced. And I always look up to, I always look up to [00:10:48] them.
And I'll give you an example, Estonia, for example, is considered the digital capital of the world for many reasons, because everything is digitalized, the public health from electronic health. Records to banking. Everything is digital. But what they've done extremely well was they had the strategy and they implemented and what I see in some other European countries in the U.
S. Is just is a lack of strategy. I'm based in UK, as you know, in a year in UK. I really feel that, for example, in public health, things don't [00:11:24] work very well because there is no clear strategy. There is no follow through. There is a lack of leadership. There is also a lot of changes. And so I think I always look up to these countries and I learn a lot and I bring those insights to, I mean, to my clients, my partners into the people I work with.
Megan Antonelli: Well, yeah, that's interesting. And I think , the smaller the country, I suppose a little bit, the more agile they can be, with some of that, but also they don't have maybe the history that it takes to kind of make the change happen. Right. Which we see certainly here. In the U. S. [00:12:00] Anything in terms of like pre, , in the last five years or so, I mean, we've seen such a huge jump in adoption of telehealth and things like that.
Has that, was that a catalyst there? And how, you know, how are things going in terms of adoption, whether it's the U. K. Or another, some of the other countries you watch closely?
João Bocas: Steve, the pandemic there really play a crucial role. I mean, we have We, we kind of pushed to bring this agenda forward because people, they couldn't go to the hospital.
You couldn't go to clinics, you couldn't go anywhere. So [00:12:36] telehealth took I'm really took off. But also I'm hearing a lot of like, feedback right now that is slowing down and is definitely a plateau there. For one reason or another maybe because a lot of companies are still very averse to change.
Some companies don't know how to implement it. And also in healthcare is a very conservative industry and change averse. I always compare healthcare with insurance. They are very risk averse. That's why we move so slow. Unfortunately, but certainly telemedicine and [00:13:12] telehealth play a big part in the healthcare delivery of the future, and we are seeing now a lot of hybrid services as we do hybrid meetings and online conversations and everything.
Anything can be delivered online and talking to people. So telehealth is playing a major role. And of course, adoption has increased significantly over the last two, three years.
Megan Antonelli: Right. Yeah, absolutely. And we're seeing the same thing here for sure. And it's I think we're all, you know, I think the progress that's being made is significant.
And now it's a little bit of, what do we keep and [00:13:48] what do we invest in? And then, of course, there's obviously the resource issue , that financially that the health systems are in a tough spot, but How they can, , leverage some of this technology to get to a better place.
Where are some of the things in terms of the tech and in terms of your clients that you're seeing, , where are they having the most success in terms of whether it's scaling or, you know, getting into new markets. Yeah. So in
João Bocas: terms of technology, I mentioned wearables before, but there's a lot happening now with data acquisition platforms and also [00:14:24] new revolutionized business models.
Because one of the things that I'm noticing, Megan, is that. A lot of people realize that the health systems are up for disruption, but also they're not sustainable in four or five, 10 years time. So we eventually need to evolve. So I see some of the. Companies that I work with creating innovation, but also apart from innovation, because the marketplace is very competitive.
If you talk about, for example, telehealth, there are hundreds of companies, [00:15:00] if you talk about telemedicine, there are hundreds of companies doing the same thing, even thousands. Yeah. So how do you differentiate? But what I'm seeing now is a really forward thinking about trying to disrupt the. Healthcare delivery in terms of business models.
And I think those are the ones that gonna be successful in the future and gonna create something new, something that works, whether there is online, there is hybrid. And one thing that I also see that is lacking is the, How we create the processes around the healthcare because it's not just about [00:15:36] technology.
It's not just about creating the delivery is about creating engagement, the experience personal human touch, because we can say, okay, I got the great platform, a great digital product, but the other, all the other things are missing. And one of the things that I hear a lot in our industry throughout the leaders is Healthcare and humanity in keep the humanity in the personal touch and we see major challenges globally around the lack of health professionals and shortage of health professionals everywhere.[00:16:12]
So I think these things Are very important to consider is not just creating innovation for the innovation sake is creating innovation that is meaningful. That is, of course, problem solving creates keeps that connection amongst people because healthcare is a people business.
Megan Antonelli: For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that, creating technology that makes physicians and clinicians want to do their job and stay in their job is our biggest challenge right now, , it's always been, , how do we keep people healthy?
And of course, that's important. And,[00:16:48] , the fundamental piece of it, but it is right now, one of the biggest issues is that there's just not enough people who want to be Yeah. Giving caregivers, right? So physicians are clinicians. And that's something obviously that is a global problem at the moment.
And what we can do. I think we're seeing a lot of, AI and automation that take some of the pain points out , and also, I think that cool tech can certainly make the job interesting for sure. So. A lot of that. So tell me a little bit about in terms of just the over the [00:17:24] years, some of your what are your key messages and learnings for your folks that you say, you know, if you're going into the digital health business, if you've got a technology, here's some of the tips.
This is what you need to do to succeed.
João Bocas: Sure. Well, I've certainly had I had a few lessons throughout the years. I had some failures. I think you learn on the job. You can't become an expert just by seeing it. You have to do it. This is what I believe probably because I'm still a sportsman in my head that I like to, I'm a doer if you like, [00:18:00] but certainly I see when we talk about technology, digital health, we always, Need to create, of course, the logic of a product market fit.
Yeah. Something that is needed, something that other people can understand, can be integrated, used and be valuable. But also I learned that. Creating the right messaging and the right marketing for the company or the message is extremely important. And that create a bit of a slogan lately.
That is my personal mission about fixing healthcare. Of course, [00:18:36] it's a mission impossible, but I see companies doing lots of different things and creating marketing and content, I see that a differentiator. And a clear message is extremely important. And I'll give you an example. Apple is extremely successful with their products.
We love Apple. We use our watches or the phones, and they always aim to be as simple as possible when they create new products. The messaging is not complicated at all. And I think in healthcare, we can really [00:19:12] look at these examples and say, actually, what am I trying to achieve? Okay, I'm going to help people to be healthier, live longer.
So I think the messaging. In simplifying, simplifying, make health care. I created a YouTube channel. So, everything. Yeah. And can complicate simplifying things is extremely important. Starting by the messaging and also getting people to know that you exist. It's a, it's kind of common sense, but you can have the best [00:19:48] technology, the best product, the best company in the world.
But if you're not out there telling people what you are doing, nobody can do business with you. So I always Tell my clients to go big on marketing because marketing can be really the winner or the loser factor, you know,
Megan Antonelli: so yeah, that's interesting. And I think health care is one of the places that marketing is, sometimes it's seen as a bad word.
Whether it's just from the kind of academic perspective that we come to it from. I mean, I, I worked in CME for a long time. There is this, because of pharma [00:20:24] marketing and the perceptions of that. And so then we. We blur the lines between marketing and education and everybody wants to be patient education and not marketing.
And then it becomes, well, are we really investing in the right places? Do you know Gita Nair? She'd be a great person for your YouTube show if you haven't interviewed her. But she has a new book out and it's about the, messaging and miscommunications and health care and, , really elaborate, obviously stories from the pandemic.
But her take home on that is that health systems have to empower and also [00:21:00] help their physicians tell the right stories and educate and that isn't just the job of You know, it can't be all put on the physicians. It has to be , organized by the organizations themselves. And that marketing is a big part of that.
So, and so I've been thinking about it a lot lately since my conversation with her in terms of, because of course, that's what we do, right? I mean, we do a lot of marketing, both for, , health systems, physicians, individuals, organizations, and then obviously companies that come to us with products and services.
So, It's that fine line between education and marketing and how you do it [00:21:36] well and how you know, create that in health care that is important. Any, what are your, thoughts on that? Are the regulations and the sensitivities the same? In Europe as they are, you think, in the U.
S. or are we more?
João Bocas: I think it's similar. By the way, I already interviewed Dr. G. I've been thinking about interviewing her again, but it's a different story. Yeah, I follow her and we know each other fairly well. And I love her work and the book is fantastic. I think the challenges are similar in that regard.
And [00:22:12] it's, and also culturally. We don't want as human beings to be perceived. We selling things. Are we giving this impression that we're pushing out a message or but you see, for example, very unhealthy things are in our face all the time, whether there is beer or chocolate or whatever. And nobody cares about that.
Yeah. So why? It's a bit of a contradiction, but is a deep belief that is wrong to promote health care or to promote a service or to talk about the personal [00:22:48] issue. So I, we nearly talking about more the business side, but I am with you that actually. There is also the other side that is missing, which is the health education piece.
And when I talk about healthcare, I always feel that very strongly that healthcare is actually fairly simple. If we understand what we need to do to be healthy and create healthy behaviors is a bit more complex than that, but creating healthy behaviors, healthy messages and being encouraged. I remember in here in UK, a few years ago, it was a lot of campaigns about [00:23:24] Healthy eating smoking cessation youth pregnancy, lots of different things.
And now the last five, 10 years, there's nothing. So public health in one way, they're not doing their job for understandable reason. No excuses, but for understandable reasons, there is no money, no budgets in, in, in governments and everything, but also who is gonna Who is going to actually replace them who is going to give these messages out.
Megan Antonelli: Yeah. Right. I mean, it's, and it's always [00:24:00] been. From when I was in school, you know, for public health, their education, you know, through the education communication side of public health has always been under, underfunded and under emphasized, right? And the struggle that they've had, and Dr. G talks about that, of course, a lot in her book, starting with the AIDS epidemic and moving through, but, I think, did you go to health?
Were you there? I was not
João Bocas: there this
Megan Antonelli: year, no. So, health is a health care conference where marketing is. The priority, right? It is, and it's celebrated, right? [00:24:36] Their marketing is amazing. If you're there and you're not doing great marketing, then you don't look like, you came to play. Right.
So they're taking a very different. View of it. And really, it's a more modern, realistic view of what you need to do to succeed, even in telling a story. It's not, , to say you have to buy it, but to have to be, , to be healthy. You know that to get people to buy into the changes that they need to make that there's some marketing involved in those decisions.
And that's what, public health is always, , never had enough money to do it well enough, to get [00:25:12] there. Whereas, . milk does, but , on the flip side. So, but it is, it's an interesting area. And I think as healthcare gets better at it, we'll see changes.
And I do think that, , certainly the large consumer companies coming to healthcare are making, are making other, the other stakeholders within the. The fields understand the importance of marketing, right? And how to get there which is good, well, so I think we're sort of coming to time.
Are there some, , sort of what you would want to leave us with in terms of,[00:25:48] what you're working on and looking to the future in terms of both your healthcare uncomplicated YouTube channel or your work at Digital Solutum?
João Bocas: Yeah. So I'm doing a number of things as as you know, of course the YouTube channel was created to.
Give something back to the industry in terms of creating a big community of free content there from anything and everything you can imagine is there from patient engagements to cyber security to innovation healthcare wearables method anything and everything is there but also i'm extremely [00:26:24] excited about generative ai and the advancements in health and I Wrote a book chapter a while ago Where my vision was that wearables, the combination of wearables and artificial intelligence would be the game changer in healthcare.
And I think we coming closer for one reason or another wearables is not, I have a conversation with them, a very large health system in us this afternoon about wearables. And for one reason or another wearables have not really penetrated the industry the way we thought. And I've done many articles like in [00:27:00] 2017, this is the year of wearables, 2018, this is the year of 2019.
And then I stopped doing them because wearables didn't really take off the way I was thinking in terms of industry, because I have high expectations for the industry. But certainly I'm very fascinated now by generative AI includes technologies that can generate a lot of content prediction. And what really excites me right now is that anyone can use generative AI.
You don't need to be an expert. 10 years ago, you needed to be an expert in AI [00:27:36] to work in AI. Now, anybody can work in AI. You don't need to be a clinician. You don't need to be a technologist. So generative AI is certainly easier to make big strides in the industry. And we start seeing that already. So I'm excited about that and play a part in that.
Megan Antonelli: Yeah, me too. That is very exciting. Well, it has been a pleasure to have you here and I thank you for joining us and I hope that we can you know, both sort of, work together and I can help you with your YouTube channel and maybe we can bring you over to the U. S. for Health Impact [00:28:12] Live in person and for node health, digital medicine conference.
We'd love to have you participate. So thanks again, Joe, and we will talk soon.
João Bocas: Thank you so much for having me, Megan. Nice talking to you.
Megan Antonelli: Absolutely.