Digital Health

This week's top stories include Amazon expanding its Amazon Care telehealth services, Doctor on Demand and Grand Rounds forming a virtual healthcare company, and the Biden administration releasing $12 billion for COVID-19 testing and treatments.

As of last July, developers of digital health apps (DiGA) in Germany could no longer host sensitive personal data on American cloud servers. Dr Philipp Kircher from the Health Innovation Hub reveals what startups and cloud providers may think.  

Security must be "fundamentally and foundationally embedded" into a digital transformation, and not just bolted on, says Troy Ament, field CISO of healthcare/pharma at Fortinet.

Up until this point, Amazon Care's app-based services have only been available to the company's employees in Washington state.

Also: PainChek's app picks up European and Australian regulatory clearances; Digital health access as a social determinant of health.

Scale Venture Partners and Insight Partners led the financing with participation from Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins, Threshold Ventures, CRV, Innovation Endeavors and Susa Ventures.   

The startup's platform now covers more than 20 million lives and is available worldwide.

Dr. Uché Blackstock, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, weighs in on strategies to work toward true equity in healthcare.

Member States and the European Commission have set up a service to allow national apps to talk to each other. 

The Palo Alto startup said that 2020 was its strongest year to date.