In this episode, Priit Kruus talks with Professor Erkki Karo, Director of TalTech’s Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance. The discussion was inspired by this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded for research on creative destruction - Schumpeter’s innovation theory widely taught and applied at Nurkse.

Priit and Erkki ask: Is creative destruction needed, happening, or even possible in healthcare? They explore how change unfolds in a complex and tightly regulated system. Erkki explains how innovation takes place at different levels and through many interacting actors.

They discuss why timing and framing are crucial for reform. Regulation and incentives can both enable and hinder transformation. The conversation concludes with reflections on why healthcare is so hard to change, how measuring real outcomes remains a challenge, and why payment models must evolve to strengthen primary care and value-based innovation.

In this episode, Priit Kruus talks with Elli Valla, a recent TalTech PhD graduate, about her research using AI and microkinematic analysis to detect Parkinson’s disease through fine motor skill assessment & handwriting on tablet devices. With 96.6% accuracy achieved through synthetic data and deep learning, Elli shares how this method could transform remote diagnostics.

We also dive into the realities of healthcare AI—regulatory hurdles, real-world implementation, and the promise of digital twins in personalized medicine.

Live from the Health Data in Motion conference, a panel of leading experts explored one critical question: Can data standards actually fix the mess in healthcare data?

Moderated by Priit Kruus, the discussion featured Grahame Grieve (FHIR), Kerli Linna (TEHIK), Hanna Pohjonen (openEHR), and Sulev Reisberg (University of Tartu). From HL7 v3 and CDA to FHIR, openEHR, and OMOP, the conversation went far beyond formats. Panelists tackled the limitations of Estonia’s document-based system and the pressure to move toward event-based, API-driven architectures. They questioned whether Estonia’s centralized approach is a powerful asset—or a growing bottleneck. AI readiness was a hot topic: can we really train useful healthcare algorithms with imperfect, siloed data? The discussion also hit on the true cost of transformation—not just in money, but in shifting mindsets across the system. Everyone agreed: the challenge isn’t choosing a standard, it’s agreeing on how and why to use it. Whether you’re a policymaker, developer, or clinician, this episode unpacks the real-world complexity.