UnternehmerTUM Together with the Klinikum rechts der Isar and the Health AI Lab Munich, we have brought together over 200 physicians, nurses, computer scientists, startups, investors and established companies on the topic of “digitalization in hospitals”.
At the "Healthcare Innovation Night" at TranslaTUM, twelve physicians shared their views on where they would like digital support in their daily routines. Startups presented their digital health solutions. The goal of the organizers, Dr. Dominik Böhler, Dr. Franz Pfister, and PD Dr. Dominik Pförringer, is to use interdisciplinary exchange to accelerate the sluggish digitalization of German hospitals.
Digitalization offers great potential for hospitals: diseases can be detected earlier, internal processes organized more efficiently, healthcare costs reduced, and patient care improved. Artificial intelligence, robotics, sensor technology, big data, additive manufacturing, and augmented reality—the technologies for this have long been available.
Startups provide concrete use cases
The startups provided concrete examples at the "Healthcare Innovation Night": The solutions ranged from automated laboratories for tissue samples and intelligent algorithms that evaluate 3D camera images of patients with motor disorders to cloud-based software that helps nurses better plan their daily tasks in order to have more time for patients.
"There are already numerous solutions on the market. But many hospitals are unaware of them. We want to bring together the various players in the healthcare system to jointly drive innovation,"
said Dr. Franz PfisterHe is an entrepreneur, physician, and data scientist, as well as the initiator of the Health AI Lab Munich.
“The actors are not sufficiently networked with each other”
The reality in German hospitals, however, is different: bureaucracy, outdated structures, a lack of accountability, and unstructured data are slowing down digitalization in hospitals. Studies illustrate the plight: In the Bertelsmann Foundation's Digital Health Index, for example, Germany ranks second to last in the "bottom-of-the-pack" group, coming in 16th place.
Why is digitalization making such slow progress in German hospitals?
"The actors are not sufficiently networked with each other. In particular, there is a lack of interdisciplinary exchange between physicians, innovative entrepreneurs and investors,"
says Dr. Dominik Böhler, Partner in the Entrepreneurship & Tech Education department at UnternehmerTUM and responsible for the Digital Healthcare Entrepreneurship initiative.
