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If we keep going like this, humanity will eventually have one more existential problem besides global warming, atom wars or meteors: their health.

The current state of healthcare

Developed countries like Germany are having big expenses for healthcare with the trend going up. In the last 30 years, the expenses for healthcare per year rose 2,5-fold: from € 155 bn to almost € 400 bn. One reason is that politicians and healthcare providers lacked the bigger picture for sustainable solutions. At Aescuvest we happily repeat our theme “From Sickcare to Healthcare” to emphasize the importance of preventive and predictive healthcare.

Innovation is key

  • In the “Global Strategy on digital health 2020-2025”, published by the World Health Organization, it is emphasized how the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – adopted by the UN General Assembly 2015 – is highlighting communications and digital technologies that will potentially enable great numbers of people access to healthcare services and data. WHO’s “triple billion targets” include that 1 billion more people benefit from universal health coverage, that 1 billion more people are better protected from health emergencies and that 1 billion more people enjoy better health and well-being.
    Quoting the WHO, Technologies that are going to disrupt the healthcare system include:- the Internet of things,
    – virtual care,
    – remote monitoring,
    – artificial intelligence,
    – big data analytics,
    – blockchain,
    – smart wearables,
    – platforms,
    – tools enabling data exchange and storage and
    – tools enabling remote data capture and the exchange of data and sharing of relevant information across the health ecosystem

All those emerging and/or already refined technologies will help the global healthcare system to improve medical diagnosis, data-based treatment decisions, digital therapeutics, clinical trials, self-management of care and person-centred care as well as to create more evidence-based knowledge, skills and competence for professionals to support healthcare overall.

What about…

1. Medical Monitoring?
Digital devices like phones, your smartwatch or other wearables are bringing the opportunity to make a big impact on patients by gathering and analyzing their health data continuously. Chronic diseases can be identified in advance to either prevent them from happening at all or at least make dealing with them a lot easier and convenient.

2. Preventive Healthcare?
Not only monitoring your health stats will help you live a longer, better live – also how this data is getting processed can literally change a life. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play. One of Aescuvest’s investment focus is Digital Detection & Diagnosis. This includes monitoring data to detect diseases but also diagnose date to recommend individualized treatments.
Digital Diagnostics for example is a healthtech company that is intending to change the way we view affordable, accessible, and qualitative healthcare. Their AI is able to predict eye diseases that will most likely lead to loss of sight down the road by simply scanning the eyes of a patient and interpreting the pictures. A company much younger than Digital Diagnostics that still offers great growth potential and has a similar business idea is currently raising funds via Aescuvest: check out Vivior if you want to learn more.

3. Digital Treatment
How is that even possible? Well, we are already on the way towards remote healthcare services. With “telesurgery” which basically is remote surgery, surgeons are able to facilitate a medical intervention without being physically with the client. But one step before this, telehealth is enabling patients already to see a doctor via video calls on their phone. This again democratizes medical treatments in the sense that everyone in Germany with a healthcare insurance (which is technically 100% of the population) can get an appointment with a doctor within 24 hours through services like the Teleclinic.
Another form of digital treatments are drug adherence management systems that are already out there and in use. Especially chronic diseases like asthma require patients to follow a strict regime of taking the correct amount of medication at the correct time. Same goes for diabetes. The Aescuvest Alumni VisionHealth is quite successful by providing their digital asthma companion in form of an app that helps patients to stick to their treatment.

And where money flows, the energy goes …

We have talked about the existential problems for humanity already – and we all are aware of the problems. That is why the economy is busy trying to come up with ideas to save humanity – like its usually the case. Technology and science are the main drivers of growth and human evolution. Luckily, we are right now peaking in terms of funding for digital health.

With all this money getting thrown at start-ups in digital health, we can be sure that we will see a lot of innovation within the next years – investors are expecting to get good returns on their money, therefore start-up founders are highly motivated to make their ideas work out and this leads to them leading their companies into successful innovation. It is a positive upward spiral that is building up right now. And we would love to take part in the rise of digital health.

#investinhealth with Aescuvest