Digital Health Days 2014 Recap

The European Digital Health scene met on the 25th and 26th of August in Stockholm for the second edition of the industry gathering “Digital|Health Days”. Next to a variety of interesting keynote speakers, high-class presentations and discussions, Tinnitracks claimed its share of attention and has been presented at the show as part of a group of European healthcare start-ups.

The Conference

The keynotes were exceptional! On Monday "e-Patient Dave" deBronkart gave a very impressing speech about empowering patients driven by his near-death experience (in 2007 he was diagnosed with kidney cancer). He aims to change the way, in which patients interact with their doctors and wants to enable them to become active partners promoting “participatory medicine”.

The next day was focused on technology and the disruptive powers it can exert on the world.

Keynote speaker Alain Labrique (Professor John Hopkins University)  talked about the potential of mobile health in Africa and Asia, because the need is tremendously higher there than in the western world. The image you access with this link is an impressive visualization of this issue: http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/StC_MortalityUnderAge5Map.jpg

Speaker Peter Speyer then gave a great presentation about data visualization that helps manage diseases and their determining factors on a global scale. His speech made it so much easier to understand key differences and the necessity to find a common solution which enables authorities to make informed decisions, allocate resources and set priorities. Have a look at the website.

Of course, an ever present topic at the conference has been “patient data“ – raising the questions of how it is collected and analysed and who owns it. (Most of the attendees agreed that the data belong to the patients.)

A complimentary fact that not everyone might know: Stockholm is really putting a lot of effort into supporting ICT and health start-ups – hence the conference location.

EIT ICT Labs Health & Wellbeing Community

Apart from Tinnitracks there were the other promising companies that are part of the EIT ICT Labs’ Health & Wellbeing community:

For instance Heiaheia.com, which is an activity tracker that is designed for employers to help them keep their employees active and motivate them to get engaged in sports.

Firstbeat is a piece of hardware that measures the heart activity over a period of three days. Afterwards a software program analyses the data in terms of stress and relieve indicators. Thus it provides insight into how stressful certain events are to the device bearer and indicates what he or she needs to change.

HealthyChoices by Magdalena Scheijgrond is about an easy access to the ingredients used in cosmetics, allowing people to cross-check them in terms of pharmacological interaction or any allergy issues. On most cosmetics consumers can only find basic information, so this service could be a great advancement in terms of transparency.

UgenTec is a start-up from Belgium that is building a product for enabling real-time analysis of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) data. There also was a presentation of Quick Posture and BIOSYNC Technologies.

Many thanks to the EIT ICT Labs Stockholm and EIT ICT Labs’ Health & Wellbeing Community for the great support!