HH Berlin

Patient Monitoring Roundtable

Patient Monitoring Roundtable – an interdisciplinary, interprofessional network at Charité

Launched on January 27th, 2022 – regular event

Event | Hacking Health Berlin

German version of the text available below

***

Next Roundtable: March 23, 2023 at 6:00 pm

Topic: Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM)

Purpose: creating a platform for a joint, interdisciplinary and interprofessional work on novel technologies.

Participants: up to 30 participants comprising nurses, physicians, patient advocates and industry representatives.

Language: German (English in small groups if needed)

Format:
face-to-face

  • Join us and register here!

In the course of digitalization, new possibilities and opportunities are constantly arising in the care of patients. Especially in the field of (remote-)monitoring, the use of innovative technologies can improve patient outcomes and reduce the workload for clinical staff. The roundtable will bring together clinicians, patient advocates and industry representatives for small group discussions.

The exchange between clinicians and industry is of outstanding importance to shape the future of patient monitoring. With the help of the roundtable, a platform is created for joint, interdisciplinary and interprofessional work on new technologies. The aim is to work together on realistic and patient-oriented solutions for clinical pain points in patient care.

Benefits for clinicians and patient advocates:

  • opportunity for contact with industry representatives and chance to give feedback
  • get to know technologies before approval
  • exchange with other clinicians on the topic of patient monitoring
  • possibility for joint project proposals
  • work on a user/clinician- and patient-centered topic

Benefits for industry representatives:

  • contact with clinicians to get informal feedback on their own technologies
  • insight into the interaction between their product and the ecosystem of a workspace
  • insight into the daily clinical routine and experience of clinical pain points
  • opportunity for joint project proposal

Contact us if you want to be a Sponsor or Partner: patientmonitoring@inch.de

The Patient Monitoring Roundtable is a cooperation between Hacking Health Berlin and the Patient Monitoring and Alarm Management Research Group of the Institute of Medical Informatics at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

 

***

“Patient Monitoring Roundtable – ein interdisziplinäres interprofessionelles Netzwerk an der Charité” 

Gestartet am 27.Januar 2022, regelmäßiges Event

 

Nächster Roundtable: 23. März 2023, 18 Uhr

Thema: Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM)

Zweck: Schaffung einer Plattform für eine gemeinsame, interdisziplinäre und interprofessionelle Arbeit an neuen Technologien.

Teilnehmer:innen: bis zu 30 Teilnehmer:innen, bestehend aus Pflegefachkräften, Ärzt:innen, Patientenvertreter:innen und Industrievertreter:innen.

Sprache: Deutsch (b.B. Englisch in den Kleingruppen)

Format: Face-to-Face

  • Mach mit und registriere Dich hier!

Im Zuge der Digitalisierung ergeben sich in der Versorgung der Patient:innen stetig neue Möglichkeiten und Chancen. Besonders im Bereich des Monitorings und der Telemedizin kann perspektivisch durch den Einsatz innovativer Technologien das Patientenoutcome verbessert und die Arbeitsbelastung für das Personal im klinischen Setting reduziert werden. Im Rahmen des Roundtables werden Kliniker:innen, Patientenvertreter:innen sowie Industrievertreter:innen für Kleingruppendiskussionen eingeladen. 

Der Austausch zwischen Klink und Industrie ist von herausragender Bedeutung, Mithilfe des Roundtables wird eine Plattform für ein gemeinsames, interdisziplinäres und interprofessionelles Arbeiten an neuartigen Technologien geschaffen. Ziel ist es, gemeinsam an realistischen und patientenorientierten Lösungen für klinische Painpoints in der Patientenversorgung zu arbeiten. 

Vorteile für Kliniker:innen und Patientenvertreter:innen:  

  • Möglichkeit für Kontakt mit Herstellern und Möglichkeit für Feedback  
  • Kennenlernen von Technologien vor der Zulassung 
  • Austausch mit anderen Kliniker:innen zum Thema Patientenmonitoring 
  • Möglichkeit für gemeinsame Projektanträge 
  • Arbeit an einem Nutzer/Kliniker:innen-und Patient:innen-zentriertenThema 

Vorteile für Industrievertreter:innen: 

  • Kontakt zu Kliniker:innen, um informelles Feedback zu eigenen Technologien zu bekommen 
  • Einblick in die Wechselwirkung zwischen einem Produkt und dem Ökosystem eines Arbeitsbereichs 
  • Einblick in den Klinikalltag und Erfahren von klinischen Painpoints 
  • Möglichkeit für gemeinsame Projektanträge

Der Patient Monitoring Roundtable ist eine Kooperation zwischen Hacking Health Berlin and der AG Patient Monitoring and Alarm Management des Instituts für Medizinische Informatik der Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Kontaktieren Sie uns, sofern Sie Sponsor oder Partner werden möchten: patientmonitoring@inch.de 

 

> Back to Hacking Health Berlin

 

Hacking Health BerlinPatient Monitoring Roundtable
read more

Katarina Braune: From Cyborg to Resident Physician and Pediatrician

Hacking Health Team Interview Blog Series

Meet Katarina Braune, Hacking Health Berlin Co-Chair, digital clinician scientist, patient advocate and medical doctor. We’re pleased to have a leader and digital health enthusiast such as Katarina on the Board of Hacking Health’s Berlin Chapter. Today, we want to share more about her journey as a medical professional, a person living with type 1 diabetes, her recent success in becoming board-certified as a Pediatrician, as well as her involvement in the DIY digital health scene and her experience living as a cyborg.

Here’s a recent interview we had with Katarina which should give you further insight into her professional life and ambitions, digital health interests, more on why she joined Hacking Health and highlights from past digital health events. Enjoy getting to know our Team!

Interview with Katarina Braune | Blog post by Alexandra Verzuh | Hacking Health Berlin

***

First of all, I heard you have now passed a huge step in your medical career. Congratulations on your recent achievement! What just happened?

Thanks a lot! I just finished my specialty training as a resident physician and am now a board-certified specialist in pediatric and adolescent medicine.

What did you have to do to achieve this? How do you feel now?

The exam preparation for the specialist exam felt a bit weird at first. During medical school, people basically study all the time and there are lots of skills to develop. On the one hand, it felt like just yesterday when I last sat down with a big pile of medical literature and exam protocols, and carefully went through them until I devoured all of the information – just like in the old days. On the other hand, I felt like “Wait a minute, I thought I already graduated from med school! Why do I have to do this again?”

The main difference between the exam prep for med school and the specialty examination was that I could combine a lot of my practical experiences with theory from textbooks. A piece of advice to my fellow residents: Trust the personal expertise you’ve developed over the years.

Also, no one knows all of the answers. If you have succeeded in your job in the past years, you will most likely pass the specialty exam. Don’t panic!

… and how it feels now that I’m done. Well, years and years of working hard and studying has finally paid off. Final destination: Pediatrics. It is an awesome feeling!

 

What motivated you to become a pediatrician of all things?

Working in pediatrics is something that you either love or hate. What I like about working with kids and their families is the important role that compassion and empowerment play as part of their care. Positive vibes and laughter are essential parts of our job. And don’t we all need a little more of that in healthcare? Also, I am more the companion-type of a physician than an old-school doctor with a god complex. My primary goal in delivering care is to make patients and their families experts in their own condition, and support them when and where they need it. Pediatrics is a perfect medical field for that.

What does digital health bring to your practice?

The potential of digital health is huge. It can provide wider access to care for people who would otherwise not be able to benefit from it and improves quality of care by offering better access to information and data. Unfortunately, the road of implementation is long in many healthcare settings and in day-to-day life, I often get frustrated with the available tools and the poor user experience on both the patients’ and the therapists’ sides. I wish regulatory frameworks and the speed at which we move in medicine and healthcare would be more on par with the otherwise rapidly evolving world we live in.

You’re no stranger to the hack yourself. How have you been involved in the DIY digital health scene?

Yes! In fact, I literally hacked (my own) health. I have lived with type 1 diabetes for 20+ years and am part of an online community of people with diabetes called #WeAreNotWaiting. Collaboratively, we create open-source systems for automated insulin delivery by using existing medical devices and re-engineering their wireless communication protocols. It has now been four years since I hacked into my own insulin pump and connected it to a do-it-yourself app on my smartphone for algorithm-controlled automation.

How is life as a cyborg?

Pretty good! I have lived most of my life with robot body parts. I started using an insulin pump as a kid, and ever since I have not spent a day without my body being attached to some sort of diabetes technology. But I can definitely tell the difference between human (essentially, my own) or artificial intelligence operating them. An algorithm is never tired, stressed or busy with other matters. Going “closed loop” made such a positive impact on both my physical and mental health. Managing type 1 diabetes is a 24/7 job and it was a huge game changer to automate it. By doing so, I’ve managed to take care of a good part of it.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into the looping scene?

Over the years, the #WeAreNotWaiting community has created excellent resources to read.  They are freely available online in many languages. My advice would be to start there and take the time to learn all of the aspects of managing diabetes with a closed-loop system. It’s important to understand how the systems and the components work. Also, make use of the amazing community that has evolved through open-source AID. I have met some of the smartest, kindest, most generous and genuine people there.

How and why did you get involved with Hacking Health?

When I joined the Charité as a resident physician, I was looking for others with an interest in digital health and found Akira Poncette’s profile on LinkedIn. Akira was one of the co-founders of the Berlin Hacking Health Chapter and a medical resident just like me. As we both wanted to connect with others interested in digital health, we initiated a series of meet-ups for digital health enthusiasts at the Charité. Later, we were able to establish Health Hackathons at the Charité and the Berlin Institute of Health, and continue to grow our network.

What have been some highlights from the previous events you would like to share?

It is always touching and inspirational to hear why people decide to commit a full weekend to attend a Hackathon. Some of them are motivated by their personal stories or because they have a loved one that lives with a health condition. Some work in a completely different field and are looking for purpose. 

Last year, we held an ad-hoc online remote Hackathon to combat the challenges around COVID-19. People from all over the world collaborated and I was stunned by how they even found out about Hacking Health and were willing to spend an entire weekend with us, even if they lived in a completely different time zone!

Furthermore, it makes me incredibly happy to see people thrive from Hacking Health events. This includes people who became successful with their hack later in life and are now CEOs of their own companies, researchers with a reputation in their field and people that have found their future cooperation partners at one of our events, to people who dared to take the next step to create a fundamental change in their lives. Hackathons are always full of unexpected surprises and opportunities.

What are the challenges you face as an organizer of such events?

As with every online or in-person event, things can go wrong all the time. It is important to note that none of us are professional event organizers by training. Most of us have a full-time job in healthcare, research or tech and do this as volunteers. It takes a dedicated team, a lot of creativity and definitely some caffeine to successfully prepare and run Hackathons.

Why are Hackathons important in this field?

The challenges of our time such as pandemics, hunger, antimicrobial resistance and climate change among others, won’t be solved within the four walls of a hospital or a research institute. We can only win as a society if we accept to take some of the responsibilities in our own hands, and think of how everyone can contribute individually. Hackathons bring members of the global community together that would otherwise never have met. We need to learn how to work together across different regions and backgrounds, and how to establish fast collaborations. 

It seems you are pretty engaged. What is something you do to unwind?

I am an ENFP personality type and thrive by spending time around great people. But when I do need to disconnect, there is nothing that charges my batteries better than spending time at the seaside, amongst good food, good music and other things. 

 

If you’re interested in connecting with Katarina, please reach out to her through the following channels: 

 

Stay tuned for more upcoming blog posts about our Hacking Health Berlin team. But for now, read our recent blog post about Hacking Health’s Berlin Chapter.

***

> Back to Hacking Health Berlin

by Alexandra Verzuh
Alexandra is a strong marcoms professional with a global focus and over ten years of international experience in communications, writing and marketing; widely travelled with a passion for healthcare, health tech, digital innovation and technology. She is also a Certified Transformational Coach with a BA in Psychology and an MSc in International Business Management.

Hacking Health BerlinKatarina Braune: From Cyborg to Resident Physician and Pediatrician
read more

Wavy: MedTech App offering cardiovascular disease patients a tool to lower stress and relieve symptoms

Daryl Autar, CEO and Steve Thijssen, CTO at Wavy both share a passion for healthcare hackathons and launched their own MedTech app, Wavy, after winning the TechCrunch Disrupt HealthX World Series in San Francisco. 

It all started when Daryl and Steve recognized that there was a large gap in treatment for patients suffering from cardiovascular disease such as Angina Pectoris. The main issue is that current treatment doesn’t provide support in lowering stress and retraining the brain, which is much needed for CVD patients who suffer from physical and mental stress on a regular basis. And that’s where Wavy comes in!

Wavy is a medical app that monitors and lowers CVD patients’ stress to relieve their symptoms. The app provides different relaxation exercises and music therapy to assist in stress reduction. Read the full interview to find out more about healthcare hackathons, innovation in healthcare, Wavy and their journey from idea to startup.

Interview with Steve Thijssen | Blog post by Alexandra Verzuh | Hacking Health Berlin

***

What exactly is Wavy and what’s the story behind it?

Wavy is a medical app which focuses on cardiovascular disease (CVD) patients, with an emphasis on Angina Pectoris and the subgroup Ischemia with non-obstructive coronary arteries (INOCA). Angina Pectoris is a medical condition where physical and mental stress have a large impact on their life. It affects over three million people in Germany and ten million people in the United States. The problem is that treatment and therapy is based on physical fitness, and there was no evidence-based treatment available to retrain behavior and lower stress. 

Wavy is a deep tech medical device app that monitors and lowers CVD patients’ stress to relieve their symptoms. The app combines quantitative data from smart wearables, with qualitative data from smart voice assistants, to form a personalized health profile for every individual heart patient. The app provides different relaxation exercises in combination with personal music therapy to lower stress. 

Our company started after winning the TechCrunch Disrupt HealthX World Series by Novartis in San Francisco. Daryl Autar, CEO at Wavy and Steve Thijssen, CTO at Wavy both share a passion for hackathons and met while working at the innovation department of a large bank in the Netherlands. Our passion for hackathons led us to the Vivatech Hackathon in Paris, where we made a solution for sign language with IBM software. It was an amazing experience and we were proud to win the IBM prize.

When we were back in the Netherlands, we decided that it would be a great challenge to compete at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in San Francisco. We found a very interesting challenge from Novartis, which was to help people with heart failure using consumer technology. When we saw the challenge, we immediately started brainstorming possibilities. Only the five best solutions would receive a ticket to San Francisco to present their solution at the Novartis stage. 

After weeks of working extremely hard on Wavy, we received an invite saying, “You are one of the five best solutions!” We arrived a few days earlier in our Airbnb in San Mateo, and during this time, we worked many hours into the night. But it was all worth it, because on the big day, we received a lot of positive feedback and won first prize at the TechCrunch Disrupt HealthX World Series by Novartis. This was when our company Wavy was born!

 

I hear you’ve been hackathon-hopping and have won multiple hackathons. Can you expand on this for us? Eg. What hackathons have you attended and won? How did they help you to further develop your product? How were they different/unique from each other? What do you think the real benefits of attending these hackathons have been for you as founders?

We love hackathons and it’s our passion to create solutions for big problems in this world! We’ve won over 40 hackathons worldwide over the past decade and each one has helped us improve our product, been great for growing our network and a good opportunity to share ideas and inspiration. 

In 2020, we won the following hackathons: Dutch Hacking Health Hackathon, reSTART HEALTHcare Hackathon, Global Hack 5G Hackathon and Odyssey Momentum Hackathon for the Future of Acute Healthcare track, one of the biggest hackathons in the world.

 

Prior to 2020, we won hackathons like: HLTH Hackathon in Las Vegas, Hackathon “Regie op Gegevens”, Blockchaingers Hackathon pension track, Hackathon in Los Angeles, London Angelhack: Best concept with Recowork (Description: Hackcellerator, where Recowork was selected as the best 15 products from more than 800 teams worldwide. Recowork was presented at the Global Demo Day in Silicon Valley), Brains Awards Best Social Innovation, Living Data City Challenge, Capgemini’s Innovator Race and many more. We even competed as the only Dutch team in the invitational Y Combinator Spring Hackathon!

We like healthcare hackathons because they focus directly on helping people’s lives and have a great atmosphere with amazing participants. The difficult part is to continue the project after the hackathon. Entrepreneurship requires a lot of energy and risk-taking. That’s also the reason why many great ideas aren’t continued after hackathons, when people go back to their day jobs. We decided to be different and quit our jobs to focus on Wavy.

It’s always great to work 48-72 hours on a solution with a talented team and work extremely hard to make something that can improve people’s lives.

Please tell us about the main highlights of your journey since the first hackathon in the Netherlands up until now.

Since the first hackathon we attended, we’ve had a number of noteworthy successes. Here’s a list of the main highlights of our journey to date:

  • Developed partnerships with Warner Music and Garmin
  • Been awarded more than €450k in non-dilutive grants
  • Got accepted in the Vision Health Pioneers program in Berlin
  • Got accepted into Fit4Start’s accelerator program and graduated as one of the five best health startups of the program, which secured us 150k total in non-dilutive funding
  • Received the medical device grant IMDI, together with five hospitals, a University, and patient organization
  • Signed partnership with five hospitals
  • Minimum viable product (MVP) being tested in trial
  • Got accepted in the ULabs from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)
  • Starting a partnership together with Universitätsklinikum Jena + Erlangen and FAU

From your experience, what are your thoughts on how hackathons can leverage the development of new ideas and innovation in healthcare?

Hackathons are a great way to break the daily structure and work together on disruptive challenges. Nothing is impossible! We see that healthcare has big problems, especially with reference to mental health and caregivers. We cannot continue as we did in the past, and processes must change. Otherwise it will be impossible to give everybody good healthcare. In light of these big challenges, a hackathon can help to work with many stakeholders simultaneously, bringing them together to come-up with solutions and take the first step in the right direction.

Can you tell us about your experience as part of the Vision Health Pioneers Incubator as well as any key learnings you’ve had to date?

Vision Health Pioneers (VHP) is a program in Berlin that helps healthcare startups to launch their business in Germany. The program is divided in the three phases: 

1 – Validate & fine-tune the concept
2 – Develop product version and plan launch
3 – Think and talk business 

Our experience with this program was amazing and it helped us a lot! When you are accepted in VHP, you will get funding, workshops, access to more than 60 mentors, team coaching and much more. Before VHP, our goals were to focus on the Netherlands and to expand as quickly as possible into Germany. We know that Germany is a big country where the healthcare system is different, but there are many possibilities especially now with DiGA. We knew we could expand into Germany, but the question was how do we start? This is exactly where VHP has helped us step by step.

Thanks to our varied program mentors, we’ve managed to create a good value proposition, started our regulation certification process, and a nice collaboration with Universitätsklinikum Jena and Erlangen and FAU for a medical device trial next year. VHP is kind of like a family, where they always help you, it’s amazing!

What advice would you give to hackathon attendees wanting to develop their own health startup?

Never give up! It’s a long process but if you believe in it, it’s worth it. Some other advice is to find a good team with different experience and to be sure to include all stakeholders as soon as possible when creating the product.

What are the next steps for you in growing Wavy now?

Our next steps in growing Wavy include starting trials with 250 INOCA patients, expanding our team with two new employees, starting the Angina Pectoris Medical Device Trial in Germany with Universitätsklinikum Jena and Erlangen and FAU, getting ISO and CE certifications, as well as applying to DiGA Fast Track.

 

 

In your opinion, how beneficial has DiGA been for Germany? And should this model be applied to other countries?

DiGA is a very innovative model, and Germany is taking a step in the right direction. Germany is the first country in the world with a national model, ensuring all insurance companies will reimburse healthcare apps. We know that we need healthcare innovation, but at this moment, if we look for example to the Netherlands, it’s too complex and the process is too long. 

Negotiating with each insurance company separately takes a lot of time, and in Germany they have solved this issue by introducing DiGA. When your medical device trial shows benefits for a specific patient group and you have the CE classification, it’s possible to apply for DiGA. There are two possibilities, the regular DiGA process and the DiGA Fast-Track. 

With the regular DiGA process, you have already completed the whole evidence process, normally an RCT study. With the DiGA Fast Track process, you will get one year to do your RCT study and show the evidence. The great part of the DiGA Fast Track is that startups already get revenue, so this makes it possible for them to pay for the RCT study. The problem for healthcare startups is the extremely expensive process, resulting from the certifications and trials. New innovations, like DiGA, are needed to help healthcare startups move in the right direction and bring innovation to the public.

How is Wavy embracing patient-centricity?

At Wavy we have two important goals:

  1. Create a positive impact on people’s lives and increase their quality of life and lower their discomfort.
  2. Close the gender gap in cardiovascular disease. CVD is the number one killer for women and Wavy is a first step in empowering women with heart problems to take control of their health.

We work with leaders in the field like Prof. Dr. Angela Maas (MD, PhD, FESC): Professor of Cardiology for Women at Radboud University Medical Center, most influential woman in the Netherlands 2020 and UN Women’s Representative 2020/21. Currently, we’re also doing clinical trials with the same cardiologists who are writing the guidelines on CVD treatment, for example the Dutch and European guidelines for INOCA. In addition, we organize focus groups and interviews every month to understand the problems that our target audience has and to improve the app.

Can you share about the uniqueness of your UI?

Wavy focuses on stress monitoring and stress reduction. Most of the solutions in CVD focus on exercise and nutrition. Stress is now one of the five most important factors in treating CVD according to CVD guidelines. But the problem is that they do not fill in the “How”. Wavy is the first solution to market that answers the “How”. Together with cardiologists and patients, we create the best experience for the user. The uniqueness of Wavy is that it totally focuses on stress monitoring and stress reduction. 

What are the journeys of the patient and caretaker (from the UX point of view)? How does this compare to your competitors?

People with chest pain have many complaints when their stress levels increase, and some subgroups like INOCA patients experience chest pain two times a week on average. The problem is that to better understand the effects of stress, they simulated stressful situations at the clinic under cardiologists’ guidance, which does not reflect real-life conditions. Another problem is that it doesn’t give a long-term overview, just a glimpse in that moment. 

During the cardiac rehabilitation programs, they use meditation programs, which takes time and does not give a good overview of the symptoms. Wavy uses implicit learning. This means that stress is lowered by retraining subconscious behavioral patterns, rather than explicit learning. The app combines the quantitative data from smart wearables, with qualitative data from smart voice assistants, to form a personalized health profile for every heart patient. Wavy is able to monitor the patient’s behavior throughout the day, giving patients deeper insights into their health, which they can share with their cardiologist.

In your opinion what is the difference between the American and some of the EU healthcare ecosystems? How can Wavy benefit from those differences?

Both ecosystems are strict, because of the regulations which is understandable. A big difference is the investment ecosystem. In the United States, investors are more open to bigger investments than Europe. In Europe, investors want to avoid risk as much as possible, and they usually only invest if you already have evidence that your product is a success and all the certifications. This is a big problem because the investment is needed to get the CE and ISO certifications ready. In the United States, they are willing to take more risk, which is something that we can learn from.

Why did you choose Berlin?

The healthcare ecosystem in Berlin is huge and the city is ranked number one for MedTech. Also, many pharmaceutical manufacturers and large university clinics are based in Berlin, including the Charité, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine and the Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin. Another benefit is the city itself. The city has many cultures, beautiful museums, many parks and forests, and great restaurants. It’s the perfect city for a healthcare startup and staying healthy!

 

Learn more about Wavy by visiting their website: https://www.wavyhealth.com/

***

> Back to Hacking Health Berlin

by Alexandra Verzuh
Alexandra is a strong marcoms professional with a global focus and over ten years of international experience in communications, writing and marketing; widely travelled with a passion for healthcare, health tech, digital innovation and technology. She is also a Certified Transformational Coach with a BA in Psychology and an MSc in International Business Management.

Hacking Health BerlinWavy: MedTech App offering cardiovascular disease patients a tool to lower stress and relieve symptoms
read more

Fostering Innovation with Hacking Health

Blog post by Alexandra Verzuh | Hacking Health Berlin

Hacking Health is a global movement to improve healthcare and fosters inclusive innovation by connecting people to solve real-world health problems. We have Chapters all around the world composed of volunteers who have come together to organize events and break down barriers to innovation in healthcare. Hacking Health’s desire is to drive impact, to focus on more action and less talk. By facilitating cross-disciplinary collaborations, we help generate creative solutions to real-world health challenges. Our methodology enables new ways to make the best ideas emerge and create a lasting impact.

Events & Hackathons

The Berlin Chapter has hosted a number of events ranging from hackathons and meetups to workshops, which have included diverse stakeholders from inside and outside the healthcare sector. Together, they address complex health challenges from a variety of perspectives, bringing fresh insights and helping us build new, innovative solutions.

During our events, we bring together patients, healthcare professionals, physicians, technologists, designers, entrepreneurs, decision-makers, business leaders, researchers, administrators, and governments to work collaboratively and resolve frontline health problems.

ThoughtWorks Hackathon

We partnered with software experts from ThoughtWorks, and held the first Healthcare Hackathon in Berlin, which focused on how using digital technologies can improve patient care. In five multidisciplinary teams, made of 25 experts from diverse professional backgrounds, participants generated innovative ideas to improve healthcare, worked on various healthcare challenges and competed in the hackathon.

 

Charité Hackathon

The Charité Hacking Health Berlin Hackathon, held at the Charité University Hospital, included 15 teams who created remarkable solutions for a wide variety of medical problems. The teams discussed health challenges, analyzed large amounts of data, as well as designed and created software and hardware tools to address medical issues. By the end of the hackathon, solutions against anxiety, depression, blood loss, diabetes, and many other health-related conditions were developed and presented at the final ceremony.

 

Hacking Female Health Hackathon

We organized a Hacking Female Health Hackathon, in cooperation with Fraunhofer Venture and the Berlin Institute for Health (BIH), a scientific institution part of the Charité University Hospital Berlin. The goal of the 48-hour hackathon was to create and implement concrete solutions for patient-oriented treatment options in healthcare for girls and women. Five different challenges were selected for the hackathon including breast cancer, infections of the female reproductive organs and urinary tract, endometriosis, female mental health and incontinence.

 

Learn more about our hackathons, meetups and workshops here.

 

Hacking Health Scientific Publications

Hacking Health has also developed scientific publications on hackathon topics to analyze its impact in healthcare innovation. For example, we created a case study in 2020 on hackathons as a stepping stone in healthcare innovation which was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

This case study describes preparatory steps and the performance of a health hackathon directly involving patients and healthcare professionals at all stages. This study shows that hackathons are effective in bringing innovation to healthcare and are more cost- and time-efficient and potentially more sustainable than traditional medical device and digital product development.

→ Read the full study here.


In addition, we created another case study in 2021 on the steps and methods employed in the conduction of a remote online health hackathon centered on challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to deliver a clear implementation road map for other organizations to follow. 

This study provides insights into how online hackathons can contribute to solving the challenges and effects of a pandemic in several regions of the world. The online format increases cross-regional collaboration, and can be executed much faster and at lower costs compared to in-person events.

Read the full study here.

 

 

 

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts about our Hacking Health Berlin team. But for now, read our recent blog post about Advosense, a digital health startup that began at our Female Health Hackathon in 2018.

***

> Back to Hacking Health Berlin

by Alexandra Verzuh
Alexandra is a strong marcoms professional with a global focus and over ten years of international experience in communications, writing and marketing; widely travelled with a passion for healthcare, health tech, digital innovation and technology. She is also a Certified Transformational Coach with a BA in Psychology and an MSc in International Business Management.

Hacking Health BerlinFostering Innovation with Hacking Health
read more

Advosense: A journey from Hackathons to successful digital health startup 

When Martina Viduka and Erin Webb decided to attend Hacking Health’s Female Health Hackathon in 2018, little did they know they would end up winning the Hackathon and go on to start their own digital health startup called Advosense. This dynamic duo’s story shows us how a Hackathon project can evolve into a startup.   

Now in 2021, the startup is a success, and we’re delighted to share a recent interview with Martina to give you the inside scoop on Advosense and the founders’ journey from Hackathons and accelerator programs to health startup. 

Interview with Martina Viduka | Blog post by Alexandra Verzuh | Hacking Health Berlin

*** 

Can you share with us how Advosense was born and the key steps that you took to turn it into what it is now?

In November 2018, we decided to attend the Hacking Health’s Female Health Hackathon to expand our Healthtech network in Berlin. It was at this Hackathon that Advosense was born. Although we were both purpose-driven, and ready to make some serious changes in our health system with regards to aging, we had no idea how we were going to achieve this.

Martina Viduka, Founder and CEO, Advosense

As a direct result from attending the Hacking Female Health Hackathon, today we are building intelligent elderly care solutions to empower and support our caregivers. From winning the Hackathon, to being selected into Fraunhofer’s AHEAD accelerator program, we were able to build on our ideas and with their technical expertise we were able to realize the concept, which was born at the Hackathon, could be a real thing. The journey continued with us taking this technical concept and turning it into an initial prototype, which we’re now building into our first MVP, with our newest member of the team and are getting ready to test the device on bedsides in North America and Europe this year. 

What exactly is Advosense?

Advosense exists to change the way we feel about aging, by championing dignity and respect in elderly care. Advosense envisions a world where the elderly feel heard, seen, safe and empowered.

Curious how? By supporting and advocating for our clinicians and their patients through innovative technologies. Our mission is to transform geriatric care. At Advosense, we’re developing the next generation of incontinence care products, to empower clinicians to know when, where and how best to respond to their patients’ needs.

What hackathons have you attended and won? How did they help you to further develop your product? What do you think the real benefits of attending these hackathons have been for you as founders?

Indeed, I doubt we would have come up with Advosense’s first product if it weren’t for the opportunity at the Hackathon, which to our surprise we won. From there we attended HPI’s Hackathon where we came in first place for best pitch. Regardless of the fact that the Hackathon was the catalyst, it really provided us with opportunities and networks we never had before. Thanks to introductions at the Hackathon, we ended up taking part in the Vision Health Pioneers Incubator program, which enabled us to create a company in Berlin and gave us visibility when applying for European grants. 

One of the greatest benefits resulting from this experience was gaining access to these networks and the diverse and engaged discussions, which took place thanks to the wide range of people from different backgrounds who attended the Hackathon. The global Hacking Health Hackathon community also introduced us to our partners in Montreal, Canada. It is here that we will  continue to co-create and validate our solution with our upcoming clinical research study, in collaboration with The Donald Berman Maimonides (DBM) Center for Research in Aging team CIUSSS West-Central Montreal and its connected health innovation hub OROT.

From your experience, what are your thoughts on how Hackathons can leverage the development of new ideas and innovation in healthcare?  

Hackathons can leverage the development of new ideas and innovations by bringing people together from all industries, allowing attendees to combine forces and knowledge with different people than who you usually engage with. These inputs facilitate open-mindedness and out of the box thinking, who knows what you can come up with. The energy during these sessions is palpable and you always come away with something new.

They are a platform that creates engagement in a safe and supportive way, letting you break free from the everyday. Having this space fuels innovation. But it is important to have next steps to push these ideas forward past the Hackathon. For us, it was great because we had opportunities to continue exploring our idea with Fraunhofer AHEAD and HPI as part of the winning team’s prize. 

Erin Webb, Founder and COO, Advosense

Please tell us about the highlights of your journey since the Hackathon up until now. 

The top three highlights since the Hackathon would be our time at Vision Health Pioneers Incubator, which provided us with incredible mentorship. The support we received enabled us to found our first startup, win the Deep Tech Award and EIT HeadStart Grant in 2020 and expand our team. We’re pleased to welcome Florian Gmeiner to the Advosense team, as our new co-founder and CTO this year. 

Can you tell us about your experience being part of the Fraunhofer accelerator program and the Vision Health Pioneers Incubator in 2020, as well as any key learnings you’ve had to date?

In both programs, we were the ginny pigs in the first cohort. We found this to be beneficial and learned to be flexible and work collaboratively to achieve mutual goals. Both the Fraunhofer AHEAD and Vision Health Pioneers gave us the expertise and support where we needed it most, and gave us the confidence to keep pushing forward when that inevitable imposter syndrome kicked in. 

What advice would you give to Hackathon attendees wanting to develop their own health startup?

Just go for it! Leverage your networks. We met some amazing individuals at the Hackathons, many of which we still collaborate with today. 

How is Advosense embracing patient-clinician-centricity?

At Advosense, the patient and clinician are inseparable. By building tools to support patients, we are supporting our clinicians. When we innovate to help our clinicians, we are supporting the care of our patients. Everything we do at Advosense is for our patients and our clinicians.

Since day one, we are embracing and involving them each step of the way to make sure we are providing the right support and empowering them. To serve them we must first understand them, which requires empathy and compassion to ensure we always know why, who and what we are working for.

How are you disrupting the field of incontinence?

We are challenging the way incontinence is being managed. The care process for those suffering from incontinence is in desperate need of change, and like many other inefficient processes, clinicians are left doing their best just to get by. And we believe we can do better than that. We are helping organizations imagine new ways of caring for incontinence, using tools and technologies. In a nutshell, we are giving a voice back to patients and empowering the clinicians that manage them. 

Florian Gmeiner, Co-founder and CTO, Advosense

What is next for you? And where?

Next up, alongside our German collaborators, we are heading to Canada, Paris and the US to continue validating and improving our solution with caregivers worldwide in preparation for our market launch.  

What are you doing to expand the Advosense community?

The Advosense community, just as the aging population, is a global one. We are building our international community from the start, engaging with healthcare organizations worldwide, as well as advocating for our aging friends and families.

How can potential partners collaborate with you and how should they get in touch?

Collaboration with our community is of foremost importance to us, and we are always open to engaging with clinical and industry partners, patient and caregiver groups, and other founders and friends to keep improving the health of our aging communities and those who care for them. Anyone can get in touch with us via our website, LinkedIn or email address at info@advosense.com. 

Do you have a message to share with early adopters who might be interested in your product?

We are looking for partners who are interested in testing the product, providing us with direct feedback from the bedside and challenging us so we can continuously improve. If you see that your organization needs to find better ways for managing your patients or residents with incontinence, let’s figure out why and how we can make this care process more efficient, cost effective and improve the quality of care you strive to provide. 

Incontinence is not a normal part of aging, so let’s stop doing things the normal way. Join us and help keep our patients dry. Check out our website for more information: https://www.advosense.com/

 

> Back to Hacking Health Berlin

by Alexandra Verzuh
Alexandra is a strong marcoms professional with a global focus and over ten years of international experience in communications, writing and marketing; widely travelled with a passion for healthcare, health tech, digital innovation and technology. She is also a Certified Transformational Coach with a BA in Psychology and an MSc in International Business Management.

Hacking Health BerlinAdvosense: A journey from Hackathons to successful digital health startup 
read more