Digital healthcare: The point-of-care is shifting

At the virtual.MEDICA trade fair, Lina Behrens hosted the "From Treatment to Prevention" expert panel discussion. The Managing Director of Flying Health has many years of expertise in digital healthcare and works with her team every day to shape the future of medicine.

In this interview with MEDICA-tradefair.com, she explains how Flying Health helps its clients develop new business models and gives an outlook on the future of healthcare.

Ms. Behrens, what are flying health's fields of activity?

Lina Behrens: Flying Health is the leading ecosystem for next generation healthcare. We help companies in the medical and consumer healthcare products industry and digital health startups to navigate the digital healthcare system. We offer personal touch support based on many years of industry experience, vast knowledge, and a strong network.

What does this collaboration with your clients look like?

Behrens: In healthcare, it is especially important to bring all stakeholders together to actively shape the future of medicine. That is why we work closely with the traditional players in the healthcare sector, including insurance companies, hospital groups, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers. We also support emerging digital health startups and companies from the consumer healthcare products sector and automotive industry that focus on next generation healthcare.

We connect with our customers at multiple levels: as a driver of innovation, we help them understand the current healthcare trends and what these could mean for their business model. The primary focus is to identify whether our customers may have to rethink their own business and whether then can and should harness these trends to develop new business models. If the answer is yes, we will jointly put these approaches into practice. This can include collaborations with startups, other market players or in-house at our customer's venue. We identify the technologies that are already available in-house or in the market and subsequently support networking and communication between the various players.

Your two spin-offs Dopavision and Neuraltrain develop digital drugs. What are digital drugs and how do they work?

Behrens: Digital Drugs can be an alternative to traditional medications, since they trigger a purely digital physiological response that has been confirmed by clinical trials. One example of this is the team of our sister company Dopavision, which specializes in ophthalmology and currently develops a digital drug for myopia, meaning nearsightedness. But again, they are still in the development phase and are presently conducting clinical trials. 

In your view, what will the future of healthcare look like?

Behrens: For quite some time, we have been observing an increasing shift in the point of care towards the patient, which has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While today's patient typically must leave his/her home to get a medical diagnosis or receive treatment, we see a future in which healthcare is more integrated into everyday life. Until now, "outpatient before inpatient care" has been the golden rule in Germany. We believe that there will be a new maxim in the future that dictates "digital before outpatient before inpatient care".

Telemedicine is clearly a step in this direction – but the concept goes beyond a mere video or telephone consultation with a physician. We mean an integrated care approach with home-use diagnostic options, which include at-home testing kits that have been available even pre-coronavirus and comprise comprehensive digital follow-up care. Increased innovation in wearables and integrated sensors enables this trend to grow, facilitating both a stronger focus on prevention and systematic self-monitoring of chronic diseases as part of everyday life. These technologies will continue to push advances in the future.

Digitization is part of Flying Health's DNA – how did you like the virtual.MEDICA?

Behrens: The virtual.MEDICA left a powerful, good impression on me. The overall presentation was very effective, and the individual sessions were matched well and complemented each other. I found a burst of inspiration and took away many exciting ideas from our "From Treatment to Prevention" panel – and I hope the audience feels the same way. I can envision successful hybrid concepts and formats in the future, which include on-site visitors and accommodate other visitors who may not have the opportunity to travel but get the chance to view concurrent virtual show rooms.