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This article series puts the spotlight on the Digital Health Academy 2024 cohort, highlighting their innovative solutions and their ongoing collaborations with digitalswitzerland members. Each article features one of the scaleups chosen to participate in the second edition of the academy.
Heart attacks and the underlying coronary artery disease (i.e. blockage of arteries with plaque 1, limiting and ultimately stopping the blood flow to the heart) are the number one cause of death–not only in Switzerland, but worldwide. This is a treatable disease, which is why it is important to identify affected people and save others from unnecessary examinations. Today, the most reliable diagnostic solutions are a CT 2 scans, MRI 3 scans, or an invasive catheter examination 4.
But how is it decided if a patient should undergo either of these procedures or if they can be sent back home without further investigation? To make this decision, there are currently no reliable preselection tools in place. This often leads to informed guessing, resulting in either significant amounts of unnecessary imaging and invasive tests–burdening both patients and payers–or missed cases due to incorrect risk assessment.
Exploris Health developed an AI-based test called Cardio Explorer®, which can reliably rule out and diagnose the presence of coronary artery disease at the same time. Both decision processes are enabled with similar accuracy as CT or MRI scans. This test, however, is purely software-based. It is CE-marked and has been clinically validated in over 4’500 patients. Only requiring blood test results, blood pressure, and information about the patient, it is easy to use and positioned as a first line test for healthcare professionals to efficiently identify patients that are at risk and recommend the appropriate next steps as suggested by the latest medical guidelines.
Patients with an acute coronary artery disease are identified more quickly. And for the others, unnecessary further examinations are avoided, saving them from waiting times, radiation, and unpleasant invasive interventions.
“Thanks to artificial intelligence, we finally have a tool that can meet the high demands in primary diagnostics.”
– E. Schönmann, MD, Primary Care Physician, Aarau
“We believe Cardio Explorer, Exploris Health’s innovative cardiac test, will significantly improve care for patients with suspected coronary artery disease.”
– Dr. med. Thomas Helms, Chairman of the Board of the German Foundation for the Chronically Ill.
Serial entrepreneurs, experts from pharma, diagnostics, AI, and Professors from university hospitals in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US.
Exploris Health works with a diverse range of collaborators and partners to advance its mission. The company collaborates with university hospitals to access data, identify unmet medical needs, develop innovative solutions, and conduct clinical validation. It has established distribution partnerships with electronic medical record providers, as well as key players in diagnostics and the pharmaceutical industry, to facilitate the adoption of its solutions by general practitioners, resident cardiologists, and emergency departments in hospitals. Additionally, health insurance providers collaborate with Exploris Health to support the reimbursement of its tests. Occupational health physicians and service providers also partner with the company to integrate its tests into employee heart health check-up campaigns.
Leverage AI to decode human biology and identify personalised diagnostic and therapy solutions in order to improve patient outcomes and substantially save costs for healthcare systems by enabling decisions at the right time and place.
The aim from this collaboration with Exploris Health was to identify focus areas and establish contacts across Swiss Post and Sanela, creating a short- and longer term win-win scenario. Three such potential focus areas were identified:
The collaboration ensured to quickly identify the appropriate stakeholders within such a large organisation as Swiss Post and identify areas for joint value.
Occupational Health:
EPR / Digital Health
Ecosystem
“Things take time to materialise, but the seed is planted. We feel very comfortable that we will further collaborate for the benefit of Exploris but also Post and Sanela.”
– Dr. Manuel Roemer, Chief Strategy & Business Development, Exploris Health AG
“As someone with a public health background and a deep passion for cardiovascular health, mentoring Exploris Health has opened my eyes to the innovative possibilities for early detection. By fostering connections and building bridges between tools for the early detection of chronic diseases and the EPR ecosystem, we can lay the groundwork to advance preventive healthcare and improve public health outcomes across Switzerland.”
– Dr. Theresa Reiker, Business Development Specialist, Head of Compliance, Post Sanela Health AG
Exploris Health: https://en.explorishealth.com/
Swiss Post Digital Health: https://digital-solutions.post.ch/en/digital-health
Post Sanela Health: https://www.post-sanela.ch/en/
In collaboration with Swiss Healthcare Startups, digitalswitzerland launched the second edition of the Digital Health Academy, a 6-month cohort based programme for AI-driven digital health scaleups that enable patients to better understand and monitor their health. AllesHealth, CNS Therapy, Exploris Health, mobile health and Pathmate were part of the 2024 cohort and, through this academy, were positioned as thought leaders in the digital health space. As part of the programme, they joined a collaborative workshop with the programme’s partners, were mentored by experts, benefited from in-depth workshops and took part in a panel discussion on health monitoring at our partner Swiss Healthcare Startups’s ecosystem event, Digital Health Day in Zurich.
Want to know more? Check out last year’s publication “The Swiss healthcare system: entering a new digital era”, on the state of innovation in digital health in Switzerland.
Footnotes
1Plaque: Buildup of fats, cholesterol and other substances in and on the artery walls
2Computed tomography (CT): A diagnostic imaging procedure that uses a combination of X-rays and computer technology to produce images of the inside of the body.
3Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): A medical imaging technique that uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce detailed images of the inside of the body (incl. organs, bones, muscles and blood vessels)
4Invasive catheter examination: An invasive procedure in which a thin tube called a catheter is inserted through an artery and guided to your heart to identify important information about the structure and function of the heart.
The Digital Health Academy is back. In collaboration with Swiss Healthcare Startups, we relaunched our 6-month cohort based program for AI-driven digital health scaleups who enable patients to better understand and monitor their health. We are proud to announce that five scaleups will be participating in this year’s edition alongside our valued partners: ELCA, Ergon Informatik, HKT Design, IBM, MME Legal, PersonalPulse, Swiss Post and Salesforce.
The participating scaleups will benefit from:
We are very happy to give you a sneak peek of our five selected scaleups chosen for digitalswitzerland’s Digital Health Academy 2024.
AllesHealth is a comprehensive hospital and patient management solution enabling clinician efficiency, remote patient monitoring and personalised healthcare research. The holistic health management platform empowers patients to be in control of the care they receive and enables them to own their own health records.
CNS Therapy enables chronic patients to be pain-free using a neuromodulation device and behavioural therapy without medication, surgery, implants or cannabis. The solution combines physiological approach (cardiac gated stimulation) with psychological approach (eLearning-based behavioural therapy guided by biometric data) to eliminate chronic pain, restore the autonomic nervous system and increase life quality. It is low risk, non-invasive and highly successful.
Exploris Health provides impactful AI-based diagnostic and therapy solutions, which focus on significant improvement of the most challenging areas of diagnostics and therapy while reducing healthcare costs. The first product, Cardio Explorer to detect Coronary Artery Disease has already been launched (CE-marked). Further multi-marker algorithms are already in the pipeline (Heart Failure, Breast/Prostate Cancer).
Mobile Health offers a patient-centred software application which enables patients to record their well-being and symptoms as well as vital parameters and medication intake in a structured and standardised electronic way (ePROs). Patients can also automatically record their vital signs using various medical devices. The doctor receives a structured, clinical grade picture of the patient’s condition and the current and historical course of their therapy. The doctor’s decision-making is supported by AI modules.
Pathmate develops digital coaches to support people with chronic diseases and makes them accessible through its own certified coaching platform. Pathmate’s mission revolves around the fusion of medicine, behavioural psychology and data science to empower individuals on their health journey. At the heart of their solutions is a chatbot that informs, motivates and guides users to improve and take charge of their health.
Are you interested to learn more about the Digital Health Academy?
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