Digital Healthcare Conclave 2019 heralds new era of connected care

Digital Healthcare Conclave 2019, a platform to discuss and deliberate how to leverage innovations in digital healthcare was recently held in Bengaluru. The conclave, supported by the Government of Karnataka, was attended by innovators in digital health/technologists, start-ups, researchers and academicians, corporates, industry experts and medical practitioners. Top Swiss and Indian innovators exchanged ideas between India and Switzerland on how to best leverage and digitise healthcare across borders.

Representing the Government, Dr Balasubramanya, Senior Consultant, Bio Facilitation Cell, KITS, said, “In line with the Karnataka Integrated Health Policy, 2017, we are keen to support healthcare organisations that are leveraging technologies like AI, big data, Cloud, IoT, mHealth, etc., to strengthen reproductive and child health services and aid in early detection of non-epidemic diseases in the state for providing treatment at low cost without burdening the patients.”

Topics that were deliberated included, “Communication in cancer care” delivered by Prof Dr med Andreas Trojan, Founder, Mobile Health and which focussed on stabilising daily functional activity in collaboration with physician, monitoring quality of life and impact on future clinical trials. Ahmed Abdulla, Founder, CEO, Digipharm presented on “Value-based Pricing in Healthcare” and touched upon smart contracts through blockchain enabled platform, rewarding patients for health-related behavior to reduce payouts along with facilitating new effective drugs. Randy Ramin-Wright, International Business Director, Clinerion spoke on “Improving Healthcare Outcomes with Real-World Data ecosystem throughout India” and how patient outcomes could be improved, new treatments could be brought to patients faster and the use of world evidence to support healthcare decision making.

Prof Dr Hans-Florian Zeilhofer, Head of Department, University of Basel spoke on “Driving Digital Health Innovation” while Dr Sailesh Mohan, Professor, Public Health Foundation of India spoke on “Leveraging Digital Technologies to Strengthen Health System and Improve Health Outcomes”. Prof Sven Hirsch, Head, Biomedical Simulation, ZHAW and Prof Markus Melloh, Head, Institute of Health Sciences, ZHAW presented on “How Universities can Lead the Transformation to Digital Health” and Samuel Cobbi, Science officer, Embassy of Switzerland in Singapore spoke on “How Switzerland reaches out to Asia in HealthTech” outlining a future health technologies programme. Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, Chairman, CEO, IKP Knowledge Park spoke on “AI, ML for Global Health” while Prof Dr Hans-Peter Beck, Head of Molecular Parasitology-Epidemiology Unit, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Dr. Prajwal, CSO, Clemedi spoke on detection of malaria through AI and detection of antibiotic resistance to TB through machine learning.

Sebastien Hug, CEO, swissnex India, Consul General of Switzerland and Dr Swetha Suresh, Head of Innovation Partnerships, swissnex India were also present at the event.