S2: #020: Dr Daniel Kraft on Exponential Medicine and The Singularity

03/14/17 • 40 min

Digital Health Today 360 with Dan Kendall

My guest today is none other than Dr Daniel Kraft; a physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator. He has over 25 years experience working across health care innovation, biomedical research, and clinical practice. He is the Chair for Medicine at Singularity University and the Founder and Chair of Exponential Medicine, and we dive into his work at these organizations in depth on this podcast.

He’s earned an undergraduate degree from Brown University, finished medical school at Stanford and was Board Certified in both Internal Medicine & Pediatrics after he completed a Harvard residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital & Boston Children’s Hospital. Oh, and he also completed fellowships in hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplantation at Stanford.

Now you might think that with all that, I’ve completed the introduction. But you’d be wrong.

Daniel is also an avid pilot and he served in the Massachusetts and California Air National Guard as an officer and flight surgeon with F-15 & F-16 fighter Squadrons. He has conducted research on aerospace medicine that was published with NASA, and he was a finalist at NASA for astronaut selection. Oh, yeah, and he has two young children under 3.

The man is on the move, and I hope you do get a chance to meet him in person. He brings an incredible energy when he gets on the stage and he must have a lot of energy to keep up his schedule.

Today’s Topics:

‘The Singularity': What it is and what it means to medicine
Challenges and opportunities in medicine
The most exciting area in health technology today
Educating, Empowering and Enabling leaders
How to catalyze today's leaders to address the grand challenges
“Previvors” and Stage 0 patients
The XPRIZE and creating a new mindset to tackle audacious but achievable goals.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Quantified self to quantified health: how tech helps doctors fill gaps in patient records (Wired UK Article by Daniel Kraft)
Exponential Medicine
Singularity University Executive Programs
MatterNet – from SU.org
Made in Space
The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
Xprize.org
Tricorder Xprize
Contact Daniel Kraft on LinkedIn
Daniel Kraft on Twitter @daniel_kraft
Hololens at Case Western
Brain Power – tools empower children and adults all along the autism spectrum
Digital Health Events
Dan Kendall @ HealthTechDan
Dan [@]digitalhealth.com
Join Digital Health Today

Contact Detailss

LinkedIn
Twitter @daniel_kraft
Hololens at Case Western
Brain Power – tools empower children and adults all along the autism spectrum
Digital Health Events
Dan [@]digitalhealth.com
Join Digital Health Today

Previous Episode

S2: #019: Dr. Shafi Ahmed on Connecting a Billion Minds with Virtual Reality

My guest today is Dr. Shafi Ahmed. He is a colorectal surgeon in London practicing in the NHS at St Barts as well as several private hospitals. He is also a Director and Non-Executive director of several organizations, a Member of the faculty at Exponential Medicine at Singularity University, an Associate Dean at Barts and the London Medical School, a council member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a futurist, innovator and tech entrepreneur. He is also a co-founder of VirtualMedics.org and Medical Realities

You may have seen the coverage of Dr. Ahmed’s virtual reality surgery which he performed and streamed live in April 2016. In our conversation, he explains how he’s using Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) to teach surgery and accelerate the training of surgeons around the world.

In today’s conversation we talk about:

The unmet need for surgeons and surgery around the world
How to accelerate training and teaching using AR and VR technologies
How technology can help reach underserved areas of the world
How the role of surgeons will change with the use of augmented and artificial intelligence and robotics
The coming “surgical singularity” (see below!)

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Shafi Ahmed on Twitter: @ShafiAhmed5
Shafi Ahmed on Facebook
Connect with Shafi on LinkedIn
The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery
VirtualMedics.org http://stfi.re/egewozn
Medical Realities on the web (and follow on Twitter)
Ray Kurzweil – The Singularity is Near. http://amzn.to/2mbMxoX
Technological Singularity: http://stfi.re/ggkkavk
Wired Article on Virtual Reality Surgery
Follow Dan Kendall on Twitter (@HealthTechDan)
Join Digital Health Today

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Next Episode

S3: #021: Dr. Arshya Vahabzadeh on Developing and Applying Technology in Mental Health

In this episode of Digital Health Today, we’re going to switch things up and talk about something that needs more attention and resources: mental health. It’s being talked about more and more as we break down the barriers and stigma associated with mental health and mental illness, and to get this conversation started on this program, I went directly to one of the leaders I had the opportunity to meet several times last year. That leader is Dr. Arshya Vahabzadeh, he is a psychiatrist and Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He’s also the innovation officer at Massachusetts General Hospital, Chief Medical Officer of Brain Power - a wearables company focused on developing solutions for children and adults with autism.

He was raised in England and he moved to the United States to pursue his dream of leveraging clinical neuroscience to improve the treatment of people with brain disorders. He is a graduate of Singularity University and he speaks at conferences around the world - I’ve included a few videos of those talks at Exponential Medicine below. Dr. Vahabzadeh was recognized as a ‘40 under 40’ top innovator in 2015, and is working to bring exponential transformational change for global mental health.

Just as I was working to put the final touches on this podcast and release it, some news hit the headlines in the UK about a podcast that Prince Harry did where he spoke about his own personal challenges dealing with the death of his mother. It was a powerful podcast and he was very candid about how the approach he took early in life really caused him to close down emotionally, and how therapy helped him process things and develop a much better mental state. It is so key to have respected leaders on the world stage speaking candidly and openly about the importance of mental health, and I applaud and thank Prince Harry, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, for having the courage to share that in his interview. There are a couple links below you should check out showing why and what they're doing to raise the profile of mental health.

Today’s Topics:

Defining Mental Health, Mental Wellness and Mental Illness
The cost of mental health and mental illness
The subjective nature of diagnosing mental illness
The challenges and obstacles of getting help to where it is needed
The top technologies being developed for mental health applications
How regulators are approaching technologies for mental health and wellness
What people should do to help themselves or people they care about get the help they need

More about Arshya:

Videos:

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Prince Harry Podcast Interview on Mental Health
Pavlok – a wearable device that helps users reduce cravings & break bad habits
Pear Therapeutics – Digital therapeutics for enhanced clinical outcomes
AICure – clinically validated artificial intelligence platform visually confirms medication ingestion.
Brain-Power – empowering children and adults all along the autism spectrum to teach themselves practical life skills, and assess their progress numerically
Signal App – Communicate instantly without SMS fees
Psychology Today – Find a therapist