Shaping the ecosystem for the future of health
In its 5th edition, the DayOne Conference set new records: 850 participants attended via an event platform. 90 project champions applied for one of the 30 spots at the Open Innovation session co-creating their venture journey together with over 200 experts. This success was possible thanks to the support of main sponsor Arcondis, to Innosuisse and to the collaboration with the BioData World Congress.
Once again the DayOne Conference brought different perspectives of healthcare innovation together. The program started with the patient champions from the DayOne Health Hack. Backed by a strong consortium from the healthcare ecosystem, the participants of the DayOne Health Hack produced 15 hands-on solutions to real world challenges that were curated together with nine patient champions.
The bright ideas session delivered insights to some of the most pending questions for the future of health: How to build a health data ecosystem? How to make value-based healthcare happen? How to bring and validate new digital solutions faster? How to implement smart prevention measures like personalized nutrition?
Thomas Szucs, Professor at the University of Basel and President of the board with Helsana, stated the clear need for change while keeping an eye on what is really needed and feasible – in his words on “true innovation”. This statement was picked up in Session 2 when entrepreneurs gave their insights on the success factors for digital health ventures: Mostly, it is not about having a great idea, it is about creating value for patients.
Manuel Kammermann, Arcondis: “The DayOne Health Hack and the Conference demonstrated how much appetite and need there is to create digital healthcare solutions. It’s now up to us – the healthcare ecosystem, their advisors and implementers – to catch the ball tossed to us and jointly score the next point.”
And these were our take-aways from this years’ conference:
1) Patient centricity is a low-hanging fruit
Most of the stories from the patient champions driving the challenges of the DayOne Health Hack made it clear that it’s not about fancy technology, but about basics like dealing with information overload, not having a clear understanding of what happens next and being left alone with a diagnosis described to them in a language they do not understand. In a nutshell, there are still enough low-hanging fruits to be picked for healthcare innovators wanting to improve the experience of people being patients.
2) The bottleneck is the business
The question is: who benefits from improving the patient experience – other than the patients? This question persists for most of the big healthcare innovation ideas that were presented. They don’t work in the common business model of “sick care”. So what incentives drive change? Eventually, it can only be the citizen and this means society at large demanding new ways to provide healthcare.
3) It is all about co-creating value
Healthcare innovation, in it’s true sense, is not about finding new market opportunities in a current setting. Innovators should focus on value creation, and most of all on demonstrating this value to the ecosystem serving patient needs. In other words: business follows value and not the other way around. So rather than pushing more of the same into an existing market, innovators should focus on opening doors to new fields. In healthcare, this is rarely done by lonesome riders. It needs an ecosystem where different stakeholders are eager to collaborate and co-create.
A big Thank you to all the speaker and supporters who made this DayOne Conference happen.
