Tag: Mobile Health

akampion Meets…Dr. Roman Rittweger, Founder and CEO of Roman Rittweger Advisors in Healthcare and Organizer of the IIHC Conference

 

akampion: You are organizing a new conference called Innovations and Investments in Healthcare (IIHC). What is the idea behind this new event?

R.R.: I had been organizing an exclusive, invite-only German event for the past five years in Munich, but I felt it was time to open the format for new ideas and new people and also attract a broader, international audience. The past conferences have been very successful because we were not relying on the typical company presentations, but instead hosted interactive panels consisting of four experts and one senior partner of Roman Rittweger Advisors in Healthcare. No boring slides! The new event takes the concept even further and is, among others, inspired by the TED conferences.

 

akampion: So what exactly is the goal of the IIHC?

R.R.: Our goal is to present exciting international developments to healthcare players in Germany. We want to confront German opinion leaders with the latest business ideas from the US, Asia etc. As an example, take the mobile health businesses that arrived in the US and large parts of Asia already, but not here. We are also taking a look at how other countries organize and re-organize their healthcare systems, for example emerging countries. What is their cost-benefit assessment of proven and novel products?

 

akampion: Can you tell us more about the program?

R.R.: The program is a good mix of interactive panels, three-slide presentations in front of an expert jury, and so-called “speed-dating sessions”, which gives selected attendees the opportunity to tell others about his business. And the keynote is extremely important, too – this year, we got Brian David Johnson, Futurist and Director, Future Casting and Experience Research at Intel Labs, U.S. We even have panelists from Abu Dhabi and Kazakhstan, where the healthcare systems are currently being completely re-invented.  Moreover, a trauma surgeon will introduce telemedicine approaches to improve the treatment of traffic accident victims, we will talk about the “quantified self”-movement and how health and gene data can help to improve quality of life and the healthcare system. We will also discuss what drives investments in healthcare, what regulators require these days from innovations and what pharma and medtech companies can learn from a venture capital fund.

 

akampion: Who is your target audience?

R.R.: We are primarily targeting German decision makers, but will increase the number of international attendees over time, e.g. from Scandinavia or Eastern Europe. It is important to us that we attract representatives from both start-ups and emerging markets, as well as established companies and countries. Regulators and payors are key target groups, too.

 

akampion: Sounds very exciting! Last but not least – why did you choose a venue in Berlin?

R.R.: We are fully aware that the informal part of a conference is extremely important, especially for networking and attracting a broader international crowd. Therefore, we have decided to host the conference in Berlin. We will also have evening receptions and offer our attendees the opportunity to explore Berlin´s fascinating nightlife.

 

More information about the IIHC can be found at www.iihc.eu

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

Andreas Menn in Wirtschaftswoche introduces the latest medical applications of smartphones for monitoring physical functions, ranging from the heartbeats of unborn children to blood sugar, blood pressure and pulse rates of elderly people to even pacers and other implants. According to Menn, the Mobile Health sector has a 19% market growth. In the US, patients are joining movements like The Quantified Self to collect health data for research purposes (and, as an example, to determine the ideal moment for wake-up). Contact lenses measure and report blood sugar levels, while tests strips or clothes with in-built wearable electronics control breathrate, wound swelling and urine for dangerous deviations. The field is still littered with startups, but big players like Siemens, Philips, sanofi aventis and Deutsche Telekom also have stepped in already.

Joachim Müller-Jung in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports from the recent meeting of the Stem Cell Network North Rhine Westphalia. The debates focused on quality control of induced stem cells and the ability to derive motor neurons from such stem cells.

In The New York Times, Nicholas Wade reports on a recently discovered bundle of genes regulating the growth of heart muscles cells. The study published in Science will be of great interest for the development of novel therapeutics. It is known today that heart muscle cells are replaced in humans – however, the growth rate is too slow to replace the loss of many cells, e.g. in a heart attack. By modulating these genes, it might one day be possible to regenerate heart muscle in a targeted manner.

In Wired, Brandon Keim features a proposal by theoretical physicists that bacteria might transmit electromagnetic signals by using their DNA chromosomes as an antenna. The proposal is likely to trigger controversy as many biologists doubt that bacteria emit electric signals. French nobelist Luc Montagnier had already claimed in 2009 that bacteria do transmit radio signals in the 1 kHz range.

In the New Scientist, Ferris Jabr introduces a super twisty beam of laser light that is able to tell left-hand molecules from right-hand ones, with potential applications in drug development. Rowan Hooper reports on successful attempts to cure certain forms of blindness by introducing genes from algae into the eyes. The genes are encoding for channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), a photosensitive protein used by unicellular algae to orient towards light. The mice carrying a hereditary form of blindness were treated with subretinal injections of viruses carrying the algal gene and subsequently were able to use light beams for orientation in a maze. Trials in humans, the article states, might begin in two years. Finally, Andy Coghlan features findings that humans can be grouped by one of three gut ecosystems. These three “enterotypes” – dominated by three different species each – have been found all over the world and have a bias towards degradation of certain nutrients and production of certain vitamins.

And finally, for those of you who loved the Get a Mac ads by Apple (“I’m a Mac, I’m a PC”), please have a look at the ad campaign of Ion Torrent comparing its PGM sequencer to competitors such as MiSeq.