Save the date: 20-22 September

Planned for the weekend of 20-22 September at C-Mine in Genk, Hack for Health is an initiative of Microsoft Innovation Center Vlaanderen and is co-organised by HealthStartup Europe.

The concept is simple: Hack for Health will bring together a group of enthusiastic software developers, designers and project managers for a few days of intense collaboration on health-related challenges and datasets. It’ll be a lot of fun and most importantly will be a great opportunity to create innovative new solutions to Belgian healthcare problems.

Fix a real problem

Unlike most hackathons, Hack for Health will offer participants a set of screened healthcare challenges that are contributed by actual healthcare organisations.

This format ensures that the teams focus their effort on a real need in the market. Furthermore, if they convince the problem owner to take it further, for example, via a pilot project, they’re in effect landing their first client, which greatly increases the viability of the nascent business. In other words, Hack for Health is an opportunity to start a business and secure your first client, all in one weekend.

Will you join us?

So, if you’d like to participate let us know soon! There are several ways of taking part.

You can join as TEAM MEMBER (contribute a skill and lots of enthusiasm).

You can join as TEAM CAPTAIN (lead one of the team).

You can contribute a problem that needs fixing as CHALLENGE OWNER  (present a real need in healthcare and possibly commit to a pilot project if an interesting prototype is created at the hackathon)

And you can SPONSOR the event.

Find out more at www.hackforhealth.be and let us know if you have any questions!

www.hackforhealth.be

This year’s event will focus on delivering innovation and well-being, focusing on mHealth, cross border co-operation and empowering patients and staff through the use of ePortals. Speakers include Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda, and Dr Theresa Cullen, Director of Health Informatics at Veterans Affairs, USA.

Also check out their LinkedIn group to participate in pre- and post-conference discussion and use the official #WoHIT tag.

The Belgian healthcare ecosystem with its multiple stakeholders is more complex than any other industry. It’s therefore no surprise that in the integration of cure and care, innovative ideas are getting stuck. Changing this situation will result in a better use of precious resources, a healthier future for citizens, and give Belgian healthcare innovations a real chance on the world stage.

Matthieu De Beule and Bart Collet are closely involved in pioneering healthcare activities in Belgium. Both believe that innovation is the best solution for healthcare reform. “Our current system has become more about sick-care than healthcare. Organizations are not incentivized to keep patients healthy or to act preventively. Nevertheless, the pressure to change is coming from all sides; the challenge our healthcare system faces necessitates and even nurtures innovation but results in the opposite: more protection and less innovation. It’s simple physics: the more pressure on something, the more comes out or it bursts.”

Matthieu is co-founder of FEops, a spin-off from the University of Ghent providing engineering consultancy services in the field of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with a strong focus on medical implants. “We operate in the niche sector of minimally invasive cardiovascular implants, e.g. stents used to reopen narrow blood vessels. In the past, these tiny implants were designed in a process of trial and error, which is both time-intensive and expensive. FEops has revolutionized this process using simulation technologies based on those used in the aviation and space industries. Today, we can conduct simulations without developing a prototype, and compare the design to existing stents to evaluate performance and optimize the design. Besides a major reduction in time (days instead of months), our technique also dramatically reduces costs. The results even make it easier to secure venture capital. You can compare our technology with the automotive industry: every time a new car is designed, it has to pass various crash tests. In the past, any small adaptation meant a new car had to be manufactured and literally crashed into a wall. Nowadays, design modifications are simulated before manufacture.”

Supported by the IWT (Flemish Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology) FEops is currently developing new technology to bring these simulations into the clinical practice. FEops is convinced that combining the simulations with imaging of the patient will give the doctor novel insights helpful in selecting the right treatment and device for the right patient.

For the moment, the most successful healthcare innovation in Belgium remains niche, as the FEops example illustrates. This is not necessarily because of regulations, but rather the established order of entities involved: insurers, regulators, patients and their pressure groups, hospitals, nurses, doctors… Each of these presents a hurdle that slows innovation down because it endangers the individual position of each entity. In the healthcare ecosystem, there are always adversaries. It is also often the case that innovations are introduced too fast, obliging entities not to adopt them.

Creating a more hospitable environment where all healthcare stakeholders can connect and discuss innovative ideas would create a new dynamic. Ideas that don’t stand a chance would be quickly identified and those that do, would find financial support and stakeholder buy-in.

As one of the three entrepreneurs behind the Health Startup Europe initiative, Bart is making this happen. “Our concept is based on ‘We Startup’, a social network of over 1,000 entrepreneurs, co-founders, mentors and investors. Health Startup Europe tracks emerging trends in health-tech and builds an international network of healthcare experts and decision makers. But our main activity is bringing together the entire healthcare ecosystem – healthcare professionals, policy makers, investors, care providers, patients and entrepreneurs, at events where we focus on one healthcare topic. Entrepreneurs come to present their ideas and receive feedback: What do buyers think? Is the idea appealing to investors? How do patients feel about it? The idea behind Health Startup Europe goes beyond ‘is it a good idea?’ Crucially we confront entrepreneurs with reality: does their idea really answer a need and is there a return? Sometimes the message is clear: the idea doesn’t stand a chance. This is good, because it’s better to fail under these circumstances than to waste precious resources over a long period. Other ideas are validated and even implemented. For example, at one of our events, the manager of three care homes was impressed by a sensor technology developed by one entrepreneur. He said ‘If you can deliver this for €100 per room and connect it to the existing monitoring system, I’m in!’ The startup’s investor was also present and decided to provide additional funding to make it happen.”

Prevention & greater specialization

Healthcare has gradually evolved into a system evaluated on performance and making money out of illness. Organizations trying to buck this trend currently fight a losing battle in Belgium. In the US, healthcare provider and insurer Kaiser Permanente is a good example of how the opposite can be true. Their underlying philosophy is radically different: they actively invest in keeping people healthy for as long as possible. The incentive is lower insurance costs.

In his book ‘The Innovator’s Prescription’, Clayton M. Christensen sums up the healthcare versus ‘sick-care’ debate as the process by which hospitals automatically generate excessive overheads, thus making healthcare expensive. He argues that specialization would be a more efficient use of our resources: a specific heart hospital, lung hospital, and so on. In India, doctors perform heart surgery at the same high level as more developed countries, but at a lower cost and with a guarantee. If surgery is unsuccessful, patients can return at the hospital’s expense.

Choosing means not losing

In Belgium, we have a magnificent biotope of various population groups and languages, which is a perfect breeding ground for innovation. However, resources to support innovation and entrepreneurship in Belgium are too thinly spread across too many initiatives. This reduces their impact. In addition, government programs funding innovation, like their development aid counterparts, often forget to look at the business case of projects. The EU’s 7,8 million euro Hector robot is a good example. While initiatives in this area are to be applauded, under this model, rather than become self-supporting, innovators tend to limit themselves to waiting for the next funding round. Our dispersed innovation landscape creates overhead costs that could be better spent elsewhere, for example, on startups themselves.

Likewise, it makes no economic sense to only realize Belgian innovations within the borders of our (small) country. Inherent to the business side of digital innovation is its potential ‘to scale’. They should be commercialized abroad. But we miss this drive: we tend to compete internally, resulting in mediocre offerings when it comes to internationalization.

There are exceptions such as FEops and Biocartis (molecular diagnostics). Both are doing very well at commercializing high-tech applications for global markets. But with other digital and innovative healthcare products, foreign companies are taking the lead (blood pressure measurement devices, software for medical practices, etc.). Trying to compete with them is illogical and unsustainable in Belgium given our lack of critical mass. It makes more sense to focus our scarce resources on high-tech products and services with potential international impact rather than an abundance of mediocre ideas.

Sounding board

All startups should dare to take risks. It is also important that they dare to say ‘no’. But above all, they should establish a sounding board. “We launched FEops with three people, so we had a kind of natural sounding board. But we all had the same background, we went to the same university and we developed the same technology. It is imperative to explain your story to outsiders, all the stakeholders in your ecosystem and get feedback as soon as possible. This will save you a lot of trouble later on,” says Matthieu.

Bart agrees: “What makes the difference between a successful startup and a failure? At Health Startup Europe we see so many initiatives originating from brilliant, engaged entrepreneurs. But their presentations are often too technical and miss the point. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they may be convinced of the technology or product they are developing, but if it doesn’t solve anybody’s problem, it will fail. Focus on the problem you’re trying to solve and start from there.”

Sound advice for building a 21st century healthcare system in Belgium that really works for all stakeholders.

About

Dr. Ir. Matthieu De Beule graduated as a Master of Science in Civil Engineering and obtained his PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering, entitled Finite Element Stent Design. He is assistant professor at IBiTech-bioMMeda, Ghent University and co-founder of FEops (Optimal Solutions in Finite Element Analysis), a spin-off from the same university, providing engineering consultancy services in the field of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with a strong focus on endovascular devices.

Bart Collet is owner and manager of a care home for the elderly. He is co-founder of HealthStartup Europe, an initiative that organizes events in Europe to bring together entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, policy makers, investors and patients to support healthcare innovation. Bart is also the initiator of Zorgbeheer.com, an Internet platform for ‘captains of care’, launched in 2006. Self-taught, Bart has developed deep knowledge of database design, programming, web servers, network infrastructure, software development, social media and collaboration applications. Since 2005, Bart has been evaluating wireless monitoring and communication solutions in healthcare and is internationally recognized as an m-Health evangelist.

This article is part of the “Roadbook of Innovation: 28 conversations for the future” is brought to you by Accenture, iMinds and HR Productions. For more info visit http://www.accenturebelux.com/innovationbook

A big thanks to all participants for the best HealthStartup conference yet.  On the 12th of December we hosted 80 participants and 7 startups at the King’s Fund in central London.  Our overriding theme: health data transparency and why we need to tackle that challenge to accelerate tech-driven innovation in healthcare. For the full twitter stream and audience pics have a look at the Eventifier page.

“An extraordinary and well curated event that is educational, mind blowingly intense and most importantly extracts value for the high powered startups as well as the attendees. Bravo!”  - Eugene Borukhovich,  Initium Consulting Group

“The braveness to choose such a narrow topic made it possible to gather the right people and so add best value to the participating startups.”  - Külle Tärnov, Tehnopol Estonia

Our first expert panel  - Dr Mark Davies (NHS Information Centre, Cabinet Advisor Healthcare), Dr Al-Ubaydli (Patients Know Best), Dr. Peter Langkafel (SAP Industry Director Healthcare EMEA) and Rudi Van de Velde (CIO, University Hospital Brussels) – affirmed the importance of the theme and discussed some of the challenges and opportunities.  Dr Davies, for example, emphasised the NHS’s commitment to open data, explaining that the NHS’s operating principle is transparency and accountability.  To illustrate the progress, he mentioned that over 80% of all prescribing data had already been released and predicted that every patient will have access to their GP records online by 2015–and that this would simply be the start of a longer process.  Dr Al-Ubaydli emphasised the importance of patient control over medical records, as the basis for transparency, a point affirmed by many in audience.

“What worked for me was the great depth and length of discussion on key topics and the sufficient amount of time to connect with other participants.”

In the next two panels 7 startups took the stage to discuss their strategy and shared challenges.  The line up included MediWiSe (non-invasive diagnostics device), HealthDiary (personal health record for parents), myClinicalOutcomes (personal health record for chronic illness), Optimal Medicine (clinical decision support in mental health), Pervasive Health (data analytics), Sensimed (glaucoma monitoring via sensor on contact lens) and LabToWellness (reporting tool for laboratories).

After lunch we all gathered in groups for the breakout sessions –  6-9 participants per startup for an intense discussion on the startup’s strategy, challenges and tactics.

“Solid punchy format with ample opportunity to network.”

“A great opportunity for a startup like us to present to a genuinely informed and engaged room, and then drill down into the details with interested experts.” – Tim Willians, myClinicalOutcomes

“Inspiring and thought provoking day, especially the breakout session.” – Melinda Nicci, Ariadne Capital

The final panel – Julie Meyer (Ariadne Capital Ltd), Leslie Zieger (Rock Health), Vishal Gulati (Radiant Capital) and Martin Kelly (IBM venturing) –  tackled investor issues, the economics of healthcare innovation, and offered some great advice to startups and investor in the healthcare sector.

“The investor panel discussion managed to dissect the immediate needs, caveats and opportunities of the digital health space in a superb fashion.  It’s a credit for the event they managed to get these high calibre profiles on stage and aligned so nicely.” – Koen Kas

“I liked the networking opportunities – I liked to see the common thread of ideas running through all the start-ups.  I liked the frankness that people expressed in giving their opinions. I think the presentations and the panels were brisk and to the point – timing was kept quite well.  There was no chance to get bored!” – Peter Arndt

It’s easy to get excited about the future of healthcare. Thanks to advances in web and mobile technologies there is tremendous potential to create exciting new health services.  Hundreds if not thousands of apps are being developed that touch on practically all aspects of healthcare, targeting patients-consumers, clinicians, administrators, insurance companies, researchers and healthcare authorities.

Something is clearly happening in healthcare, but a more fundamental question is, will technology enable a radical improvement in the quality, productivity and accessibility of healthcare. It’s an important question because the future of healthcare, from a budgeting and staffing perspective, is in fact not looking good. In most developed nations healthcare costs have been increasing rapidly (and faster than GDP) due to the rising costs of drug development and the increasing prevalence of chronic illness (in turn due to ageing populations). Those cost drivers aren’t about to disappear–and this while the world economy itself is suffering from chronic illness.

The future of healthcare may look exciting from a gadget perspective but there is in fact a real danger that healthcare in many countries will first get worse before it gets better. Hence the importance of the question: will technology-driven innovation be the right medicine, radically improving quality and productivity just when we need it?  Unfortunately, the answer to that question isn’t simple. There are technical issues, legal issues, policy issues and business model issues to address.

However, looking at the state of technology and medical science today, we at HealthStartup Europe do imagine a radically different and vastly improved healthcare experience, especially from a consumer-patient perspective. It is a healthcare experience that should, in principle, be possible today if we found a way to deal with the various obstacles more rapidly.

Let’s call this vision of a better healthcare experience a digital health manifesto (feel free to contribute to the manifesto – comment below or via Twitter and Facebook and we’ll update the text).

A Digital Health Manifesto

1. A transparent market for healthcare services, based on cost, outcomes and reputations

We expect access to a transparent market of healthcare services provided by hospitals, clinics, GPs, psychologist, life/health coaches and so on.  With ‘transparent’ we mean knowing who they are, how (cost)effective they are based on objectively gathered costs and outcomes data and how satisfied their customers/patients are. Ideally, we will be using one of several competing recommendation engines that suggest caregivers and healthcare programs relevant to my current health needs and location.

2. Access to remote/mobile health services

We expect many if not most of our interactions with healthcare providers to be done on a remote basis via online tools. This means we reduce the number of face-to-face interactions (and thus reduce travel, time spent in waiting rooms), while simultaneously increasing the total amount of time ‘connected’ to the healthcare system via remote monitoring technology and diagnostic services. An obsolete reimbursement model and regulatory framework should not be the reason why we have to sit in waiting rooms and neither should it prevent us from gaining access to more frequent and/or ongoing services that can be provided efficiently on a remote basis.  Thus, we expect access to a globally competitive market of remote diagnostic services, including genetic testing, tele-consultations and remote monitoring of health indicators (e.g. cardiac, blood pressure, sleep, etc).  We are willing to give these services access to our medical records and data if it improves their diagnostic and predictive power. And if we are chronically ill (or in need of geriatric care) we expect to stay at home for as long as is medically and technologically possible. We are willing to take more responsibility for our care, if we have the (monitoring/tele-health) tools and information to be able to do so.

3. Access to updated/complete electronic health records, medical knowledge and decision support tools

We expect our care givers to have access to the best and most up to date clinical information and medical decision making tools. These include accurate and always-up-to-date medical records, diagnostic tools, treatment guidelines and research results.  As patients we also expect to have access to such information, as a basis for constructive doctor-patient communication.  We do not tolerate medical errors.  We expect data-driven care; and we expect to have access to that data too.

5. Access to certified personal health record services, devices and wellness apps that integrate with electronic medical records and are accepted by clinicians

We expect access to a competitive market of certified and interoperable personal health record systems, devices and wellness services that can help us achieve our personal health and fitness goals.  ‘Certified and interoperable’ in the sense that these services can plug into clinical medical record systems and are accepted by clinicians. We want to take a more proactive and goal-orientated approach to our health, and we expect our general practitioner to help us in that regard.

6. All my anonymous health data available to researchers

We expect medical researchers and scientists to have access to our health records data – it is our data and it should be put to good (and meaningful) use.

The trouble with health data transparency

It’s disconcerting that the vision described above isn’t yet a reality.  It could be and it should be. The data is out there.  Also, there are thousands of developers and entrepreneurs clamoring to create powerful, user friendly health devices and apps.  The trouble is, a lot of the data while ‘out there’ isn’t yet accessible or being used optimally (meaningfully). Medical records are locked up in closed legacy IT systems. Doctors and hospitals have few incentives to share data and invest in open technologies. Current reimbursement models, privacy legislation and security concerns deter investment in new technologies and new ways of working.  A lack of standards and the fact that most new gadgets and apps are single-purpose products means that we’re not yet seeing powerful ‘ecosystems’ of synergistic products and services emerge.

Where are the platforms?

Looking at the history of recent technological progress it is clear that open standards and APIs (e.g. TCP/IP and HTTP for the web, Apple’s iOS for mobile apps, Facebook’s API for social gaming) have been instrumental in unleashing waves of innovation. Something similar is needed in healthcare. Imagine if developers had access to open or partially open data platforms that link up health/medical records, medical research data/results, treatment guidelines, and body-monitoring data.  The resulting boom in clinical informatics, clinical decision making tools, collaborative EHRs and other ‘Dropbox for health‘ type tools will put us on the path to data-driven care and likely lead to radical gains in healthcare quality and productivity. It will make our digital health manifesto a reality as opposed to a dream.

We all have responsibilities

To get there, all stakeholders in the system have responsibilities:

Policy makers need to focus on standards setting, ‘open data’ services and improved reimbursement systems (creating the right incentives).

Healthcare providers and their IT partners need to start opening up their systems and transition from a document management approach toward a patient-relationship/communication approach.

Medical information publishers such as academic journals and medical associations need to take a more innovative approach to IP and content distribution, so that the world’s medical knowledge is made instantly available to those who need it.

Startups need to think beyond single-purpose products and explore how they can plug into the existing healthcare plumbing and link up with other synergistic developers.

Progress certainly is being made. For example, the US government has introduced legislation to encourage the interoperability of health information while other public authorities are building open data service platforms (e.g. Almere Data Capital/the Dutch Health Hub).

Healthcare providers are taking steps to open up their systems (e.g. the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ blue button initiative).  EHR providers too are beginning to open up their datasets to external developers (e.g. EHR company PracticeFusion is working with Prior Knowledge to open up the dataset to developers and entrepreneurs).  And EHR providers like Avado and PatientsKnowBest are trying to build systems that are more patient-doctor collaboration tools than clinical document management or bill-generating tools.

Startups too are beginning to think about APIs.  For example, data storage and file sharing company FolderGrid is not only focused on building a secure (HIPAA-compliant) system but is also trying to create an open platform on which other IT developers can build.  Makers of body-monitoring gadgets like GreenGooseare releasing APIs so that 3rd party developers can build apps on top of their platform.

And the path to data-driven care is being cleared by companies such as Humedica, Archimedes and Predilytics who are developing advanced analytical and decision-making tools for doctors and providers.

Initiatives such as these are exciting but the digital health revolution, from a data integration perspective, is still clearly in the starting blocks. Many challenges around technology, business models, strategy and policy remain.

It’s our aspiration to create the best, most inclusive guide to the world’s digital health ecosystem, but we need your help.  We may have missed a few interesting organisations, some categories are far from complete (e.g. Tech Transfer) and some categories we haven’t published yet (e.g. venture capital, corporate venture capital).  Therefore, we would be tremendously grateful if you could let us know who’ve we’ve missed! (hsuteam at healthstartup.eu).  And please keep in mind, that we are not endorsing any of these entities, we’re simply listing, so please make your own enquiries and certainly make your own decisions.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE WORLD’S DIGITAL HEALTH ECOSYSTEM

HealthStartup gives you an opportunity to redesign the healthcare industry.  Our boutique conference is known for its powerful format that facilitates intense networking and is focused on helping disruptive, high-potential digital health startups succeed.  Our theme for the London event: health data integration.

Following the success of our events in Brussels, Antwerp and Nijmegen we’re very much looking forward to bringing our unique format to London on 12 December, 2012.

In brief, we invite a select group of approximately 100 investors, entrepreneurs and healthcare decision makers to ‘go deep’ on a specific topic in digital health. The format includes panel discussions with topic experts after which we focus our attention on 8 high-potential startups. Each participating startup has been chosen from dozens of candidates through a stringent screening process on one criterion: their potential to make a significant difference to healthcare. The goal of the event is to maximize that potential. (If you’d like to apply as a startup, find out more here).

Following the panel discussions and presentations, we break out in small groups for an intense feedback session with each startup.  For the entrepreneurs involved it is often the most intense and rewarding feedback session they will ever have. For delegates, it is an opportunity to make a real difference to healthcare and connect with achievers in the field. For investors, it is a real-world due diligence session of months compressed to an hour and a half.  As a sponsor, it is an opportunity to connect with up and coming innovators and top-level decision makers in the field.

Our theme for the London event is the challenge of health data integration and its implications to medical diagnostics, hospital-based care, remote or home-based care, medical research and healthcare cost reduction.

As always, HealthStartup events are invitation-only. This is necessary because every attendee is an active participant in the event, and hence we need to make sure that we have the right mix of experience and expertise.  If you would like to attend, please don’t hesitate to send us a mail at hsuteam(at)healthstartup.eu with a little information about yourself (e.g. linkedin profile) –  we welcome your mail and will definitely consider your request!

Companies represented (update November, 18): Janssen Healthcare Innovation, MyClinicalOutcomes, IBM, TICBioMed, Patients Like Me, BioRN Cluster Management, TIE Brussels, ZinC Health Innovation, UMC Radboud, Reshape Healthcubator, Ariadne Capital, Dentinvest, SAP, iC25, Rock Health, Thomas More Kempen, Ventegis Capital, Novartis, Holst Centre/IMEC, Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, DADhealth, Px HealthCare, Shire-Movetis, LineHQ, Sensimed, Doctors2.0, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Optimal Medicine, MLOZ, InBioVeritas, Radiant Capital, Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol, Pervasive Health, Tartu Biotechnology Park, Happtique, The Greenhouse, Heaven Can Wait, Biolauncher, Initium Consulting Group, Blueprint health, Health2.0 Amsterdam, Cegeka, Doctorpreneurs, Capricorn Ventures, PMV, Capital4IP, Advisors in healthcare, UZ Brussel, Saffron Hill Ventures, IIHC and European Federation of Patients.

Hope to see you in London,

Bart, Leo & Frank

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SPEAKERS - Meet the people who will lead the discussion in London. Among others: Dr Al-Ubaydli (Patients Know Best), Julie Meyer (Ariadne Capital Ltd), Leslie Zieger (Rock Health), Vishal Gulati (Radiant Capital), Wolfgang Renz (Boehringer Ingelheim),  Dr. Mark Davies (Medical Director, NHS information centre) and Lucien Engelen (UMC Radboud, TEDxMaastricht, Reshape Healthcubator).  Full details here.

STARTUPS - We make a great deal of effort recruiting and selecting a portfolio of truly outstanding startups. Here’s the line up for London.

APPLY TO PRESENT YOUR STARTUP - Find out more here.

HEALTH DATA INTEGRATION - Here’s our take on health data integration, why it matters, and what it could mean for healthcare if we solved that puzzle. Or in other words, a digital health manifesto.

PRACTICALITIES & PROGRAMME - What you can expect on the actual day, venue, timing, etc.

Follow the stream online via: http://www.conferize.com/conferences/healthstartup-4-london-edition

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Agenda HealthStartup 12 December

THEME: The challenge of health data integration and its implications to medical diagnostics, hospital-based care, remote or home-based care, medical research and healthcare cost reduction.

PARTICIPANTS: 8 high-potential startups + 100 delegates (successful healthcare entrepreneurs, senior healthcare decision makers, policy makers, researchers and investors)

PRELIMINARY TIMING:

10:30 Welcome coffee

Welcome & introduction

Expert panel & keynotes part 1

Startup panel part 1

12:30 Lunch

Expert panel & keynotes part 2

Startup panel part 2

Breakout introduction

15:00 Tea

Breakout sessions with startups

17:00 Tea

Closing panel with breakout moderators

18:30 Food, drinks & networking

In brief, we invite a select group of investors, entrepreneurs and healthcare decision makers to ‘go deep’ on a specific topic in digital health.  All our participants are keen to make a real difference to healthcare and that means helping you, the healthcare entrepreneur, achieve your goals. If you’re selected you’ll be one of eight startups that has a chance to present your business to the entire group (approximately 50-100 participants) after which you’ll be the focus of a 90-minute breakout session with 10-15 relevant experts.  This is likely to be one of the most intense and rewarding feedback sessions you will ever have.  The exposure and PR associated with being a selected startup isn’t to be sniffed at either.

If you’d like to present your startup at HealthStartup IV then please apply here.  Note that if you are accepted we do ask for a participation fee of €600 to help  cover our costs and to ensure that we only attract serious candidates.

If you’d like to attend HealthStartup IV as a member of the audience then please send us an email via hsuteam(at)healthstartup.eu. Note that this is an invitation-only event; we are specifically looking for (serious) investors, experienced healthcare entrepreneurs, relevant experts and healthcare decision makers.

Finally, if you’d like to  know more about HealthStartup and what people say about us, have a look at this presentation.

“Well prepared event! A very nice format with a good balance between a few keynote presentations, a panel with lively discussion and interaction with the audience, the pitches and good breakout sessions. Catering and staff were excellent and there was a relaxed atmosphere for networking during dinner.  I really enjoyed it.”

Oscar Wijsman, Almere Data Capital

“Great companies, great presentations and great networking! HS3 was a fantastic showcase of European healthcare SMEs some of whom genuinely have the potential to help transform healthcare over the next decade. You attracted a really interesting audience and the quality of the discussions and networking was excellent.”

Steve Gardner, Biolauncher

“Good format, content and perfect orchestration from international health startups. To the point, good mix of participants. Personally I haven’t seen this kind of format in Europe, which I why I support it for boosting entrepreneurship.’

Vincent JH Dupont, Microsoft

“Interesting people and companies. Good timing.’

Peter Lems, Mobihealth

“I loved being invited for starters. Second, it is a very very good thing to have these kinds of sessions for start-up companies to help them focus/succeed. I think it was very well prepared with a wide variety in audience/reviewers.”

Jorrit Ebben, GlaxoSmithKline

“

“Great location, cool mix of people, intense discussion in the breakout session”

Philip

“I liked mostly that people with different backgrounds were able to challenge the business idea of a startup. Looks like a win-win situation to me.”

Mathias

“I liked the entire setup and involvement of attendees in discussions and trying to get the best out of products/solutions presented.”

Paul Epping

“Perfect organisation. Great speakers. Fantastic networking opportunities.”

Candide Kemmler, Fluxtream

The startup does not need to be ‘big data’ project in the formal sense (i.e. already collecting and analysing huge amounts of data) but it should have a longer-term ‘big data’ vision of some  sort. Our definition is purposely kept broad – we don’t see ‘big data’ as a distinct category of startups but as an opportunity for practically any health startup that is collecting/using data.  The goal of the event is to explore that opportunity in-depth (and if you’re pitching, to evaluate and improve your big data vision).

If you’d like to know more about what we mean by Big Data and our sense of where some of the opportunities are, check out these earlier posts.

Top Big Data opportunities for health startups

Some context to Big Data – the topic for HealthStartup III

Startup submissions are now closed. 

Interested in attending (as part of the audience)? Please let us know via email hsuteam(at)healthstartup.eu.

PROGRAM HEALTHSTARTUP NIJMEGEN, JUNE 26

13h30 Registration

14h00 Keynote Presentations ‘Big Data’

• Professor Stan Gielen - Stan is senior professor in Biophysics with appointments in the Faculty of Science, Mathematics and Computing Science and in the University Medical Centre of the Radboud University Nijmegen.
• Candide Kemmler – Candide is founder of Fluxtream.com/BodyTrack, a personal data aggregator
• Peter Lems – Peter is founder of MobiHealth, a Dutch provider of telemonitoring solutions

14h45 Panel Discussion: Developing your Big Data Strategy

TOPIC:

• Where are the big data opportunities?
• What do you need to consider when developing your big data strategy?
• Open data – what’s happening? What are the issues?

15h30 Break

16h00 Startup Presentations: 5 startups x 7 minutes

Biovotion is a Swiss based medical device company, developing truly mobile and wearable medical devices for continuous, non-invasive vital sign monitoring under everyday life conditions. The first product will be a mHealth solution for patients with COPD.  http://www.biovotion.com/

Healthcare data is privacy sensitive and as such needs to be properly anonymized and prepared before it is handed over to external parties for research purposes. Content2Context (NL) develops software for the anonymizing of patient records, computerized summarization & metadata labeling of scientific research. http://www.content2context.com/

Promedas (NL) is a medical diagnostic expert system for knowledge and decision support. Promedas uses patient data from Hospital Information Systems as input for a smart algorithm and generates the most relevant diagnoses. http://www.promedas.nl

The power to deliver best clinical practice for individual patients at the point of care requires a new generation of powerful analytical tools that can operate at clinical population scale, marrying large and complex datasets from multiple sources. Danish company GenoKey claims to  have developed such an analytical toolkit based on a new mathematical foundation that could deliver these benefits across the wide range of healthcare applications. http://genokey.com/

FolUp (US) is an innovative social platform that connects patients to physicians and researchers, allowing each to collaborate and actively participate in improving patient monitoring and clinical research. http://presentation.folup.com/

17h00 Break-out Sessions for each startup

90 minutes in-depth questioning and discussion on the startup’s strategy and business model. As a member of the audience you can choose which startup you’d like to join.

18h30 Food, drinks & networking