Entrepreneurial lessons in Digital Health — Sven Jungmann

Dr. Sven Jungmann is the Chief Medical Officer at FoundersLane, a corporate venture builder.  He is the co-author (along with Felix Staeritz) of the book Fightback Now that released on Oct 01-2020.

He sits on the advisory board of Wellster, a major German online prescription platform, advises healthcare start-ups globally and supports investors in their due diligence for new digital health investments.

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jungmann talks about writing a book (Fightback Now) in a pandemic, the connection between healthcare and climate change, what successful healthcare startups get right, what are the major impediments in building towards a digital health future and why all of this is so important now more than ever.

Key Questions

17:26.40:. So, what do you think of these companies (ADA Healthcare and Ping-An), what have they got right as compared to maybe many other start-ups?

25:22.99: …what do you see as sort of the biggest impediments to realize a vision of digital health? 

31:11.98: Where do you see probably changes coming fairly soon besides the mental and the behavioural apps space?

36:08.68: …a learning healthcare system as you put, is it something that shortens the lag and maybe the research and clinical practice go hand in hand. Is that the vision?

36:58.45: The aspiring healthcare professionals of today, maybe who are in medical school or who are sort of thinking about a career and the healthcare profession – who can they look up to for inspiration and how should they prepare for digital health in the future?

Quotable Quotes

7:45.67: In terms of living without disease or living long the healthcare system only affects about 30%. 70% of health outcomes are determined by what we call social determinants of health. 

10:19.76: …we are in the decade of delivery there are a lot of things where if we don’t really act now, it’s going to probably be too late.

15:37.51: ..you have to deal with this interaction between both (care providers and patients) and you have to make it great for both –  it has to be human centric.

22:07.96: If you start a small startup and you’re pretty much on your own, I would strongly recommend that you try to find your advocates within the system.

29:03.07: …if you want to change things – you have to do a lot of behaviour change and a lot of the things that you could do for the benefit of the patient requires them to actively take part of it.

31.22.55: My two favorite areas or big macro trends will be, decentralization of care and then the emergence of learning healthcare systems. 

37:59.96: I think the biggest advice that I would give young doctors would be to try and find inspiration in the small things, to look at the small changes that they see happening and the small frustrations that they have and then think about how to change these.

Notable Mentions

3:12.54: Felix Staeritz, co-author of the book Fightback Now

9:49.13: Marc Andreessen, entrepreneur and his essay, It’s Time To Build

37:42.26: Eric Topol, doctor and author of the book, Deep Medicine

Mentions of episodes of the You+AI Podcast

16.14.59: The patient needs a doctor to be human @  The You+AI Podcast — S1, E1 — The Doctor-Patient relationship with Dr. T. R. Gopalan.

Connect

Twitter: @s_jungmann

LinkedIn: Sven Jungmann

Book: Fightback Now 

The You+AI Vodcast

A companion video segment full of fun and candid moments.

Watch it here!