Thanks a lot for attending the ZHAW Digital Health Lab Day! We were thrilled to meet you and others from healthcare, management, IT, start-ups and research at the Digital Health Lab Day on Monday, 12 September 2022. It took place at the ZHAW School of Health Sciences, in the building "Haus Adeline Favre, Katharina-Sulzer-Platz 9, 8400 Winterthur."

"Smart Healthcare & Digital Innovation" was the focus of the fourth edition of the ZHAW Digital Health Lab Day. Through compelling keynote addresses, energizing start-up presentations, in-depth workshops, and a panel discussion on innovation management in the field of digital health, participants grasped the full meaning of innovation in healthcare. The emphasis was on practical approaches to adopt digital health.

Our key takeaways from the day:

• The ZHAW Digital Health Lab is growing, and many concrete projects have emerged, including large consortium projects such as SHIFT and the Zurich Applied Digital Health Center.
   
• Type I diabetes requires a lifetime of management. People with Type 1 diabetes must make 180 more decisions than their healthy counterparts every day. Digital applications are essential in this context, but they also provide lifelong value. Life is made significantly simpler by CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring), telemedicine, peer support in online communities, and the creation of the closed loop as an innovative commitment from the patient community. For further sustainable innovations, the technical perspective is important, but empathy is even more relevant: patient needs, and challenges must be heard and understood - "it's about gaining different perspectives".
   
• Digital health is different from digital public health since the former focuses on individual solutions while the latter concentrates on the entire population or certain subsets of it. Digital public health is concerned with the advantages and disadvantages of digitalization for society, as well as the resources and capabilities needed for a digital health system. Currently, short-term projects are warmly embraced and encouraged, but frequently without considering how they will affect health systems and the general welfare of the population in the long run. This necessitates thorough digital health literacy: "...Competencies and resources important for searching and finding, understanding, evaluating and applying digital health information."
   
• A central unit is required to firmly establish the theme of innovation in the hospital. This department may assist personnel in transforming their concepts into useful goods and services. But innovation is not a free service; organizations must be willing to provide workers with resources, particularly time, so they can be innovative. It's crucial to approach the subject of innovation widely to include medical products and administrative process advances. Courage is also advised when it comes to approaches: a design thinking exercise using Lego can be just the thing to spark ideas, even at a conventional university hospital.
   
• Fundamentally, comparable basic concepts apply to effective digital transformation in hospitals as they do in other sectors: technologies should make the life of the target populations easier. However, the concepts of "good patient experience" and "acceptance is the most important factor" must never be neglected and must take center stage. Continuous measurements are required here, with a continual emphasis on the patient experience.

We hope you made new contacts and will continue to shape the future of our health care system with us!

Review the event:

• Enjoy the picture gallery
• Take a look at the detailed programme
• Deep dive into the presentations, speaker and workshops, and poster abstracts

Thanks to our valued sponsors:

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About the ZHAW Digital Health Lab: The lab is a collaboration of digital health experts from the fields of biomedicine, health, technology and business and has the aim to become a leading and internationally recognized competence center in the field of digital health in Switzerland.  In order to facilitate research, innovation and technology transfer, we develop solutions for creating innovations, act as a liaison platform and cooperate interdisciplinary with service providers, industry, health insurance companies, politicians and other research partners. Find out more about our activities here: zhaw.ch/digitalhealth