Challenges

Alignment of vision and strategic priorities is important for us at HealthCare Lab. Therefore, the 2nd Batch of HealthCare Lab will focus on  3 strategic challenges that have been selected and validated by Roche and EIT Health and are to be addressed by the applying startups. The challenges reflect the identified needs of regional healthcare ecosystem, but also strategic priorities of the Main partners.

Challenge 1

Healthcare Data Management

How can we gather healthcare data from different sources and derive valuable insights for evidence-based decision making in healthcare?

Big data and data analytics are disrupting every industry around the world, including the healthcare industry. However, healthcare data is still fragmented and managed differently by a large number of stakeholders, ranging from handwritten prescriptions, to unstructured patient records or hospital operations, etc. Additionally, the increased adoption of wearables, health apps and telemedicine solutions causes an exponential increase in digital healthcare data available for providers to provide better care.

The main challenge is to securely collect, store and structure healthcare data and present insights about patients from these different data sources in a way that allows healthcare stakeholders to move from reactive care to more integrated, personalized and preventive care.

Some key aspects of this challenge include:

  • How can we help providers to collect, consolidate and maintain valuable historical and real-world patient data to deliver better healthcare outcomes?
  • How can we derive valuable insights to support evidence-based decision making for Healthcare providers?
  • How can we enable easy and secure patient healthcare data exchange among providers, government and industry?
  • How can we enable seamless and secure connection of the physical and digital world of healthcare?

Challenge 2

Screening and Early Diagnostics

How can we ensure widespread, more precise and timely diagnosis of diseases, in order to deliver better health outcomes?

Many of the diseases which are widespread in today’s society (e.g. heart disease, diabetes or cancer) are preventable and screening or diagnostic programs for most of these diseases exist. Yet, the key issues are still that many patients undergo diagnosis either too late, not at all, or screening programs are not available for patients within their immediate environment. Moreover, healthcare systems also lack interconnectivity and interoperability of data from various screening and diagnostic programs. In turn, late diagnosis often leads to poorer health outcomes for the patients.

The main challenge is to ensure widespread, accessible, more precise and timely diagnosis of diseases and conditions, in order to achieve better health outcomes for patients.

Some key aspects of this challenge include:

  • How can we support timely screening and diagnosis among wider patient groups?
  • How can we support providers in delivering accessible, timely and accurate diagnosis to patients?
  • How can we leverage the power of real world data, wearables or digital biomarkers for convenient, timely and accurate diagnosis?
  • How can we ensure better connection and flow of patients and data between different screening programs?

Challenge 3

Digital Therapeutics and Disease management

How can we help patients and healthcare providers to better manage diseases and conditions in a transparent and personalized way?

Patients and healthcare providers have limited time, resources and information to manage diseases beyond the care received in hospitals, which leads to poorer health outcomes. In addition, patients are often faced with uncertainty, long waiting times and confusion along their entire patient journey from diagnosis to follow-up, which adds stress and increases the risk of lower adherence to therapy. Moreover, patients and providers can lose contact beyond the occasional care provided in hospitals, which may lead to larger information asymmetries (e.g. patients not reporting adverse events or other problems), leaving patients with generic and unpersonalized disease management guidance from their providers.

The main challenge is to help patients and healthcare providers to better manage diseases, conditions and associated challenges in a transparent and personalized way outside of hospitals.

Some key aspects of this challenge include:

  • How can we use technology to make remote therapy and disease management easier and personalized for patients?
  • How can we help patients, their involved providers, and others (e.g. family & friends) to manage diseases, reduce severe impact on life outside of hospital and navigate along their patient journey?
  • How can we help providers to improve and personalize their patients’ experience with the overall healthcare they are providing, from diagnosis to follow-up?