Middle East Health speaks to Massimo Cannizzo, CEO and co-founder of GELLIFY Middle East about the company’s digital services for the healthcare sector.
Middle East Health: Can you give us some background about Gellify and your work in the healthcare sector?
Massimo Cannizzo: GELLIFY is the first innovation enabler that invests in B2B software digital start-ups and connects them to traditional companies with the purpose of innovating their processes, products, and business in a fast and sustainable way. Headquartered in Italy with offices in the UAE, UK, and Spain, we offer corporates across several industries, including healthcare – Open Innovation and Digital Services, for accelerating and sustaining their transformation journey to the future of markets and people.
Connectivity, digital wearable, data science, and procedure innovation are currently crucial for the healthcare sector due to the increased demand post-COVID-19 disruption. The industry is experiencing a significant paradigm shift from a provider- centric approach, to a customer-centric approach, which facilitates a proactive attitude in patients by empowering them to better understand and monitor their own health by leveraging advanced technologies that are available on the market today. GELLIFY is active in helping healthcare providers, healthcare organizations and tech start-ups develop smart solutions and ecosystem platforms that impact the over- all healthcare and wellness system, with connections between patients, physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories, insurance companies, paramedic service providers, researchers, and more.
Middle East Health: What is Gellify offering healthcare companies in the Middle East region?
Massimo Cannizzo: As an open innovation advisory, Gellify provides health organizations with expertise and professional guidance to focus on their greatest strengths – build strategies and capabilities to take full advantage of digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, create end-to-end customer experience journey through Digital Healthcare Platforms, Telemedicine solutions, Healthcare Mobile Apps, Personal Health & Wellness Assistants, and Health-Monitoring by integrating data collected with selected Wearable Solutions.
Middle East Health: Gellify has recently introduced ‘Augmented Health’. Can you explain what this is and how it can benefit the healthcare industry and patients?
Massimo Cannizzo: We are observing a strong growth of awareness and interest related to health topics among people. The increased understanding and knowledge have also facilitated the convergence between healthcare and wellness services, and has increased the proactive attitude in people to monitor and manage preventively the physical and mental health factors that determine their own quality of life.
All the available information, wearable data, and advanced technologies like AI are supporting this paradigm shift and as such are “augmenting” the traditional
healthcare and wellness sectors into a single integrated landscape where all components that concur to human health and happiness are accessible to people.
Middle East Health: What is the current state of digital healthcare in the Middle East? Which countries in the region are leading in the field, and why?
Massimo Cannizzo: Middle Eastern countries’ vision is based on advanced technology as a way to improve the way people live and work. Investments in technologies like AI, Big Data, IoT, and Blockchain are aiming to transform radically several industries at the same time. Healthcare is seen as one of the most important industries to transform in order to:
– Address some specific diseases and challenges in the Middle East region, such as diabetes, sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy food habits, as well as the novel Covid-19 virus that has drastically disrupted health. The continuous monitoring of disease trends, patients with chronic conditions, tracking data on the effectiveness of treatment, and keeping track of recovery improvements – are now all possible with the help of advanced technology embedded in what we call Digital Healthcare.
– In the long run, Middle Eastern countries are investing in innovation, to see how the convergence between digital technologies and biotechnologies can advance, and support human health and longevity, while offering the future residents a compelling environment to live and work and as well as enjoy their retirement. Countries like the UAE, Qatar & Saudi Arabia have already started this journey, leading internationally the innovation of healthcare.
Middle East Health: For those countries in the region that are lagging a bit in digital health implementation, what do you consider to be the main obstacles / challenges they face?
Massimo Cannizzo: Digital transformation is primarily about implementing a strategy that is supported by technology.
Many organizations recognize that they are neither ready to respond to digital trends nor satisfied with the progress on the initiatives they are undertaking, with the main challenges being not ready to make drastic and complex changes in the operating model, budget constrains into investing in the right resources, digital exclusion, privacy and security, rural connectivity. Healthcare providers need to understand that telemedicine solutions give the opportunity to get closer to “healthcare excellence”, as it allows people living in less advanced countries to leverage internet connection and gain access to international healthcare consultants and providers from advanced GCC countries.
Middle East Health: What do you consider to be the best way to overcome these challenges?
Massimo Cannizzo: First, organizations need to resist the urge to go back to the way things were. Digital interaction is the way of the future. Second, organizations need to start prioritizing data and not only the traditional research data but private patient data collected through the new wearable sensors — gather it, manage, and understand it. In health care, data affects nearly every aspect of the business, from research, education, and patient care to consumer privacy and cyber security. Third, companies need to start thinking like their patients: we are living in the digital era and moving to- ward a patient-driven healthcare model, where with a few clicks, they can make informed decisions about how they spend their money — including on health care. Healthcare providers need to deploy skills and cultural mindset change deeply into their organizations to provide easy access to healthcare, or consumers will find an- other entity that does.
Middle East Health: What technology solutions are currently available and what can we expect in this field over the next few years?
Massimo Cannizzo: Existing new technologies have already set the fundamentals to build the new digital healthcare ecosystem, such as mobile health applications, remote monitoring, wearable devices that monitor vitals 24/7, ingestible data-generating IoT sensors, holographic and robotic-assisted surgery and those are just a few. The next wave of technology will be more accessible, preventative, lower in cost, efficient, high in quality, less invasive, and deeply personalized.
But what will make more difference is the great empowerment of medical re- search and diagnostics, that AI is bringing into the healthcare and wellness landscape. We are working with start- ups, that have developed solutions, able to detect a high occurrence probability of some diseases, just using face or voice scanning, elaborated by sophisticated AI algorithms.
Middle East Health: What lies ahead on the road to digital healthcare, in general?
Massimo Cannizzo: The future of digital healthcare or healthcare is not easy to pinpoint, but we believe it will be shaped by the emerging technological trends with patients being at the centre. In particular, areas that are related to digital health, genomics, and extended longevity should see further upside potential over the longer term, the rise of chronic diseases associated with aging, as well as the growing financial burden of medical care. The growth of interconnectivity and the more efficient collection and transfer of medical data are sure to make digital care more ubiquitous in people’s lives and will bring a big change in lifestyle.
