Learnings from the DHWC2024

Introduction

Digital Health World Congress 2024 was a two-day conference in Kensington, London packed with speakers from across the world contributing to various parts of the Digital Health (DH) or Smart Health ecosystem. The biggest barriers facing a DH solution are interoperability (overcoming fragmentation of data), scalability (incentivizing adoption and creating the right product), and personalization (curating to patient needs). Digital Health Technologies (DHT) are the collection of hardware (e.g. sensors), software (e.g. computing), and resources necessary (infrastructure for data management, security, etc). They have the potential to transform the way Clinical Trials are being performed. See guidelines for using DHTs in Drug Development according to the FDA and EMA. The rest of these learnings showcase DH market trends, DH as a business, DH design, many examples of innovative companies and what the future of DH may look like.

DH Market Trends

Dr. Martin Henrichs, Managing Director and Head of EMEA Healthcare at UBS, gave a talk on capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. He stated the global cost of living with chronic conditions in 2030 is projected to be $47 trillion. 50% of US GDP is used on Health care whereas only 18% in the UK. He says there is high demand for Oncology and Mental Health and that VCs are focused on innovative, scalable solutions. Examples include Tempus, Nuvo, and Waystar. Martin continued to show that from a market perspective, the DHT market is bullish across key factors such as inflation, interest rates, and equity dry powder (with bearish view on market debt). Sector trends included Chronic Care Management and shift to prevention, telehealth and remote patient monitoring, AI/GenAI, and Cyber Security and Data Management.

DH as a Business

Tammy Sharpe from EY, provided insight into the business aspect of DH, saying it needs to be scalable, justifiable, and sustainable. It should be seen as a B2B2B or B2B2C or innovative combination of the two. She shared her Digital Health Pricing Solution model and how DHT-based companies can profit through their Value-based ecosystem – one in which all stakeholders may benefit from value-share agreements. This leverages the maturity of infrastructure to realize the value that data contains and, hopefully, mass adoption. She also describes various funding mechanisms. For example, a hospital in England needs to pay 3 cents per letter sent to patient homes containing personal test results. A startup developed a secure patient app that earns 3 cents if the patient acknowledged receiving the test results within a day. This cost-minus + cost-plus business model is one of 3 identified business model mechanisms that may fund innovative startups.

DH Design

Mike Trenell from DAIZER, with over 30 years of learnings from failures in developing DHTs, taught us about the iterative nature of product design by using analogy of the bicycle. We have all collectively agreed on the core elements, sizes, proportions of the bicycle and limit customization. The same will need to be done with DHTs. We are still in the early stages of seeing the natural design DHTs will take on. He says that we are now seeing the 3rd generation of DHTs: highly scalable and using GenAI. For example, Farnaz Behroozi, Ph.D., Head of HUMA and Dr Lloyd Humphreys, Managing Director at Cogniss, both present at the conference, showcased their respective products - a low/no-code platform for clinicians to design apps for micro-communities. These are highly regulated patient-facing apps designed by and with a portal for clinicians. They are example “super apps” that are application-platform-as-a-service (aPaaS) that can serve large populations and scale down to smaller ones for better personalization. Raising Healthy Minds is an example app deployed in Australia supporting parents of young children made using the Cogniss platform.

Examples of companies innovating using DHTs

Dileep Mangsuli, Senior Vice President of Global Access to Care at Siemans Healthineers shared his philosophy of “where you live should not dictate the access to healthcare you need”. He demonstrated how Siemans tackles the access to healthcare in India by leveraging the fact that everyone has a smartphone! Healthineers are performing a digital transformation at a parallel pace by providing seamless access to health records, enhancing patient care, empowering citizens, boosting healthcare infrastructure, encouraging innovation, and improving public health care management. They have the infrastructure to capture data for Digital Twins and provide Precision Therapy, but are facing challenges with managing the amount, multi-modality, and complexity of connections in the data collected from individuals. They are leveraging GenAI to aid in Chest X-ray screenings (sharing that 73.9% of 3.6 billion radiographs are considered Normal). They have the infrastructure in place to prepare for the huge demand for telemedicine, teleradiology and AI, robotics and remote services across India. He also highlights the unequal distribution of expertise partly contributed to by the phenomenon of “Brain Drain”. Unequal distribution of medical expertise remains a barrier to access to healthcare[1].

Sarah Mintey MBE , CEO of Developing Experts, is addressing the need for future expertise by empowering elementary school teachers with educational content on an app about what current jobs looks like and inspire the next generation of leaders.

Lucy Jung , Founder at LYEONS and Charco NeuroTech engineered the CUE1+, a non-invasive alternative to a Deep Brain Stimulator for Parkinson’s Disease Patients, bringing patient mobility back nearly instantly.

Sam Decombel , CEO of FitnessGenes, entered the DH market by serving the fitness community who are interested in knowing what variants of genes they have. This has been used for screening, catering to subcommunities, and educating users to make more informed decisions.

Madison Rose , CEO and Founder of Aspedan , developed a Bio Analytics Engine into a user-facing app with a clinician portal that integrates health consultations, wearable devices, blood biomarkers, genetic predispositions, and blue tooth scales and blood pressure monitors.

Anna Worsley , CEO of FABRX Pharmaceuticals, is leveraging 3D printing of Drugs for precision care and tackling unmet needs in the Virtuous Cycle of Personalized Medicine. Her technology gives the right dose, to the right person, at the right time. This caters to the pediatric population by personalizing size, texture, and color of drugs produced, even printing gummies to increase patient adherence.

Paul Ko Ferrigno , CEO of eclateral, is leading the way in at-home testing with clinical confidence. He engineered a low-tech, low-cost lateral flow test that can test multiple substances (blood, sweat, tears, urine, etc) for a common test of the CRP protein - an indicator of Viral or Bacterial infection.

Assaf Barnea, Managing Partner at Sanara Capital, shared insights into the world’s second largest (to the US) biotech scene in Israel, supporting over 1800 Biotech, Medtech, and DHT-based startups. Their innovation in technology deserves a new name: Bio-Convergence – exemplifying the convergence and use of biology and physics alone to address healthcare needs. For example, a biotech startup has developed the technology using a low-intensity optical pulse to imprint on the cornea, then apply a drop. After blinking, one does not need glasses for another 3 to 4 months. Check out more of Sanara Venture’s innovative Portfolio.

Examples of Data Infrastructure and AI Safety

Sam Horlock , Product Lead, Giota Kourti , Senior Data Protection Advisor, and Benjamin Daley , Data Protection Advisor at Trilateral Research are addressing ethical AI by assessing model risk to overcome the stifling of innovation imposed by the EU AI ACT and the greater economic issues addressed in the Draghi Report.

Márton Veres , Delivery Manager at Erlang solutions, attended the conference to provide his company’s service in Erlang solutions: robust, scalable, distributed, secure data management.

Kurt Kammerer CEO of the DataVaccinator , shared his company's technology that "vaccinates data from impurities" providing quality assurance in data collection, security in data management, and regulatory adherence as a data sharing infrastructure.

Larry Ellison, CTO and Charmain of Oracle Health, says that Oracle Health now has the infrastructure to "shift 'clinical trials as a separate process' to 'trials as a seamless part of care'".

What is the future of DHTs?

Paul Ko Ferrigno says that self- and at-home testing is already here. Francis from EY mentioned Quantum Computing may overcome the data and computing limitations[2]. Another panelist mentioned DNA-based storage (lightweight, long-term, petabytes of space) to overcome the costly infrastructure for data storage.

Conclusion

This conference was truly an amazing experience. I hope this report gives insight into some of what is possible and already here. This is not exhaustive! There is so much work not represented here and much opportunity moving forward. Thanks to the organizer, Ahsan Zaman , for bringing the community together.

[1] Don’t even consider the hassle of international telehealth consultations and the adherence to international law.

[2] Moore’s Law and Nielsen’s Law