Finalist | Connected-Health.Eu (Germany) - Reinventing the connection between doctor and patient

Connected-health.eu, a German startup located in Hamburg, has one goal: to improve the connection between doctors and patients. Their product, LifeTime, allows patients to transfer health data (like their medical history or data from wearables) into the doctor’s office locally and securely from and to their smartphones. We talked to Gabriel Adorf, business developer at Connected-Health.Eu about how and why this should be done.

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Where did your idea for the company come from?

Gabriel Adorf (Connected-Health.eu): Connected-Health.eu reinvents the way data is handled in medicine. Currently there is no standard process to transmit information between patients and doctors. Patients often cannot remember details of medications and treatment they have previously received – information that is important for doctors. Diagnostic data is provided to patients on paper or CDs, and at the same time valuable data from wearable technology and smart health devices never reaches the doctor.

For which kind of audience is your product or service intended and what problem is it solving?

Gabriel Adorf (Connected-Health.eu): Our solution to these problems is a smartphone app in combination with a hardware hub located at the doctor’s office. The patient brings his smartphone near the hub and in a matter of seconds shares with the doctor any relevant information pertaining to his medical history, as well as his wearable data. Between doctor’s appointments, the app provides a continuous and comprehensive overview of the patient’s medical history with context-sensitive advice and benchmarking services.
Our product is initially aimed at technically oriented people who like to handle data digitally. However, the population owning smartphones is already more than 50% and we are convinced that our solution will soon help the general public in their everyday lives.

Tell us a bit about the company’s founders like their professional or industry background and the origins of the founding-idea.

Gabriel Adorf (Connected-Health.eu): Dr. Johannes Jacubeit worked as a medical doctor and was thus able to experience some of the numerous flaws in the German healthcare system. He also perceived these deficiencies from a patient’s point of view. There is enormous potential for innovation in healthcare, for example – doctors still use fax machines and there are still no iPads in hospitals. As somebody with technical and programming background this really seemed archaic. Soon the idea of establishing a company to tackle these problems on the grass roots level developed.

Your market seems to be quite difficult: Ordinary people worrying about the consequences of personalized healthcare data available to the health care sector. And the quite complex health care sector with its insurance companies, health care institutions and doctors. Both sides need to be targeted by you. What’s your approach with this?

Gabriel Adorf (Connected-Health.eu): The data is already out there, however it is distributed among various doctor’s offices and you have no idea who has what information about your body. Now we are giving the data back to the person it belongs to – you. Everything is stored decentrally and encrypted on the patient’s smartphone; without using the Internet it can be locally transmitted in the doctor’s office. This way there is no possibility for insurance companies or anybody else to obtain the data. Finally, you are the only one with your health information all in one place.
For doctors, the benefits of the system are pretty evident. They save both time and money by having immediate digital access to all information required for their examination. To obtain important information, they don’t have to rely on the patient’s memory and they have more time to spend on the actual treatment.

See Connected-Health.eu live on the CODE_n Stage on Tuesday, 17.03.2015.