Meet Eugene Borukhovich: the digital health influencer who puts passion before everything and anything

Eugene Borukhovich is a leading advocate in healthcare consumer issues and open health data.

An international expert on healthcare information technology innovation, Eugene is also the co-founder of Health 2.0 NYC and Health 2.0 Amsterdam.

He currently serves as a Global Head of Digital Health & Innovation at Bayer
Driven by passion, Eugene was ranked 8th in the top of the most influential voices of digital health [source]

A perfect speaker for the second edition of ICEEhealth, the content stream of ICEEfest 2017 dedicated to the ehealth industry.

Eugene is also a jury in the 200 seconds of fame competition, so if you’re developing a startup … don’t think too much and enter the competition!

Until June, when we’ll have the opportunity to ask him some face to face questions, Lorena Macnaughtan (ICEEhealth Event Director), long term friend and digital health fellow, talked with Eugene about his life as an influencer and tried to reveal his viewpoint about the potential of healthcare innovation in the CEE region.

What do you think is an influencer? How does it feel to be one of the top 10 digital health influencers?

I don’t even think about it. I just do it! I have strong passion for digital health and I simply share it.

l enjoy engaging with interesting people and having impactful discussions in private and public forums.

The rest is up to the algorithms to figure out if I am an influencer or not but that is never my goal.

What do you think is the most exciting trend in digital health?

Artificial intelligence is highly misunderstood and contains many applicable technologies sometimes summarized into those two simple words.

While the two words carry some hype, there are real use cases, which are accomplishable today leveraging the subset of these technologies across the whole healthcare vertical.

What do you think of the Central and Easter Europe potential to innovate in healthcare?

Being born in the Eastern Bloc (though it was many years ago), as well as having first-hand experience in my previous role, traveling across Eastern Europe – I was amazed by the talent in the region.

There are great technologists that are capable of doing many things.

Obviously each of the Eastern Bloc countries healthcare systems vary and while the overall global challenges are the same, the unique flows of each country need to be well understood by the local entrepreneurs.