Published by Pharmaceutical Market Europe

Fortunately, digital healthcare technologies may hold the key to increasing pipeline efficiencies, and a new breed of startups looks set to revolutionise the sector, provided they can attract the attention of suitable investors. Healthtech hubs – such as the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland – offer these fledgling companies an environment alongside pharmaceutical giants and other innovative corporations, providing a new collaborative culture to drive drug development deep into the 21st century.

The pharmaceutical industry is behind some of the greatest discoveries in the history of humanity, with distinguished medical minds and novel therapies prolonging lifespans and improving well-being. Vaccines have eradicated diseases and helped to fight global pandemics, while ‘miracle drugs’ such as penicillin and insulin have changed the face of clinical practice, saving millions of lives. However, even with the seemingly endless introduction of new medicines to the clinician’s armamentarium, certain disease areas still lack efficacious therapies, leaving unmet needs and opportunities for companies willing to adapt to enhance drug discovery.

Reinventing the pharmaceutical industry

Digital tools emerging from the booming healthtech sector are responding to the demands of the industry, helping it to evolve so that life-saving therapies can continue to solve the world’s health problems. The ever-increasing uptake of digital solutions is already enhancing patient engagement, increasing access to care, and lowering the cost of drug development.

The latter is especially pertinent for large corporations with multiple therapies in the pipeline, as improving process efficiencies could translate to huge savings. This is evident with the emergence of decentralised and hybrid clinical trials – enabled, in part, by digital tools such as wearable devices with remote monitoring – which offer patients far greater levels of comfort and convenience, while lowering overall costs by improving retention rates, reducing operational overheads and accelerating time to market.

With change comes opportunity

The inevitable shift to a more digitalised industry provides ample opportunities for healthtech startups to grow. Many of these companies have potentially game-changing technologies, but often struggle to find the means to get their ideas to fruition. Conversely, the pharmaceutical giants have ample resources and access to worldwide markets, representing the perfect vehicle for startups to scale, expand globally and get their solutions in front of patients.

The challenge, then, is to bridge the interface between two polar-opposite cultures – startup versus corporate – to enable them to establish successful and symbiotic partnerships.  Healthtech startups are often founded by a mingling of brilliant minds – including scientists, software engineers and health informaticians – but they can lack experience in developing clear, long-term business models, especially when collaborating with big pharma and the exponential scaling that follows.

What they do enjoy and rely on for survival is speed as, with limited resources, they need to move fast. This is in stark contrast to the conservative, risk-averse nature of the pharmaceutical industry, which needs to move slowly, because of the enormous cost of drug development and the ramifications of getting it wrong.

Healthtech hubs – a scientific melting pot

Traditionally, the contrast between these business models could have stopped innovation in its stride. However, modern-day approaches to drug development recognise it as a strength, resulting in the establishment of thriving ecosystems replete with companies of all shapes and sizes.

For example, the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland opened its doors to the outside world in 2021. As a result, the Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area was established on site, offering a place for startups, growing companies and partners in the life sciences to work in close proximity to one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. In fact, many of the spaces are publicly accessible, breaking the shackles of the traditionally private pharma ethos. This provides a unique environment designed to catalyse scientific progress by encouraging collaboration between great minds from all aspects of drug discovery, from microbiologists and chemists to healthtech developers and data scientists.

Matthias Leuenberger, Country President for Novartis in Switzerland, weighed in on the subject, saying: “The Novartis Campus in Basel is a space for dialogue, collaboration and scientific innovation, characterised by its dynamic and lively working environment and its unique atmosphere encompassing parks, restaurants, cafes, event spaces and sports facilities.

“Every architectural and artistic detail has been carefully selected to better foster inspiration and cooperation, providing the ideal environment where researchers, entrepreneurs and other experts in the healthcare industry can meet to work on new ideas and develop partnerships.

“We open our doors to companies and institutions of different sizes to inspire and bring the best minds in the industry together in Basel, which has established itself as one of the most important scientific hubs in the world today.”

A catalyst for innovation

The Basel area is home to over 700 life sciences companies, comprised of more than 32,000 employees – including 8,000 for Novartis at the campus alone – making finding the right person to pitch to, or company to partner with, an intimidating prospect. The startup mindset may lead to individuals eagerly trying to sell their idea or technology, without considering its relevance to the therapeutic indication of the other company’s portfolio.

On the other side of the table, big pharma can be slow to engage its smaller counterparts, where speed – as well as access to funding and resources – can be make-or-break factors.  A means to ignite the critical conversations that lead to the discovery of mutual interests is often needed, followed by a way to nurture the relationship into a successful long-term collaboration.

A major factor for the ongoing success of this healthtech hub is access to support from Basel Area Business & Innovation, an independent, non-profit agency that provides assistance with the relocation or expansion of companies. The company has helped over 30 startups settle in the Novartis Campus, as well as hundreds more businesses and entrepreneurs in the cantons of Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft and Jura.

A key aspect of its remit is to provide community management activities on campus – including frequent events, roundtable discussions, pitch sessions and more – to generate networking opportunities. Its DayOne Accelerator has also been vital in helping many startups scale their technologies.

Scaling new heights in Basel

Many of these startups are in the rapidly expanding field of AI, offering products or services through partnerships or software licensing deals that can be applied to pharma pipelines. One notable example is Holmusk – a company originally from Singapore – that expanded its operations to the Novartis Campus to capitalise on the robust life sciences and pharma presence in the Basel area, as well as the wealth of specialised talent. The company uses AI-powered analytics to enrich its large mental health platform ‘NeuroBlu.ai’, helping pharmaceutical companies improve drug development and commercialisation.

The future of healthtech

Pioneering ecosystems such as the Novartis Campus – located in an equally scientifically vibrant city – help to not only accelerate drug discovery and development, but also secure a prosperous future for the region by enticing global players to its shores. The world-class resources, state-of-the-art facilities and varied personnel found there only attract more investment, additional startups and other major pharmaceutical companies, perpetuating the innovative environment that is nurtured by local agencies established to accelerate scientific progress. This has led to a healthtech hub bursting with talent and novel ideas that continues to deliver cutting-edge tools to enhance drug discovery, accelerate time to market and improve patient access to care.

Published by International Hospital & Equipment

Alarmingly, chronic pain affects more than 30 percent of people worldwide, [1] yet current treatments can be ineffective or lead to drug dependence, leaving many individuals in dire need of innovative solutions that will help them find relief. New ways to manage pain – from neuroplasticity training through interactive games to therapies that use virtual reality (VR) – promise to shake up the status quo of clinical pain management in the years to come.

Pain is a complex and multifaceted biomechanism that is experienced differently by each person. Its subjective nature means that it can’t be measured or quantified; a person’s perception of pain is unique and influenced by various factors, including genetics, past experiences, and emotional state. Psychosocial elements – such as mood, stress levels, and support systems – also shape how a person perceives and copes with pain. This complex web of factors has plagued healthcare professionals for a long time, making chronic pain treatment incredibly challenging. Traditional therapies offer temporary relief, but long-term use can lead to dependence and addiction, which is evident with the opioid crisis in countries such as the  US. Many clinicians are therefore looking for alternative treatments, while also seeing the benefits of taking a more holistic approach to the pain management paradigm.

Novel solutions for treating pain

Dr Elan Schneider is CEO and Co-founder of the Israeli company TrainPain – comprised of a team of healthcare professionals, scientists, and technology experts who have developed a neuroplasticity training game for chronic pain. Dr Schneider has dedicated the best part of his career to finding novel solutions for treating pain. He explained: “Pain can destroy a person’s quality of life for prolonged periods, yet there isn’t always a clear correlation between the physical damage in the body and the intensity of pain felt. The latest understanding of pain suggests that neuroplastic changes can heighten the sensitivity of the body’s pain-processing nerves. This means that even minor threats to the body can trigger pain, amplifying these nerve signals and resulting in disproportionate levels of pain relative to the actual harm.

“Despite extensive research in this field, many findings haven’t made their way into clinical practice. At TrainPain, we’ve translated some ground-breaking concepts from neuroscience into tangible solutions. Our method is to train the body’s natural ability to regulate pain by enhancing the neural circuits that naturally turn down the volume of pain-related nerve signals sent to the brain. While this approach isn’t new – opioids and cannabinoids, for example, work similarly to mimic the body’s inhibitory neurotransmitters – traditional medications not only come with side effects, but also fail to promote the body’s inherent learning capabilities for long-term changes in pain regulation.”

Transdiagnostic pain management

The team at TrainPain has taken a transdiagnostic approach to pain management, looking at mechanisms that are common across different types of chronic pain. This could help to meet the dire need for novel therapies for neuropathic pain – including fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, and phantom limb pain – where current treatments are largely ineffective or insufficient.

Dr Schneider continued: “Various conditions display an overlap, with neuroplasticity in the nervous system being a pivotal factor. Engaging in numerous repetitions of therapeutic tasks can help address these maladaptive neuroplastic changes and promote healthier alterations in the nervous system. To this end, our solution harnesses sensory perception tasks, delivered through video games, to provide the necessary engagement and ensure that patients participate for sufficient time to benefit. This form of training aids learning and induces changes in how sensory neurons activate and communicate.”

Basel: a hub for scaling innovation

TrainPain is one of a handful of companies attracted to Basel, Switzerland, which is now arguably the healthtech capital of Europe. Basel and the surrounding area are replete with highly specialized scientific entrepreneurs and large pharmaceutical players, where growing companies such as TrainPain can be immersed in a forward-thinking environment to foster innovation. The company signed up for the DayOne Accelerator with Basel Area Business & Innovation – a non-profit agency that helps innovative companies develop and expand – to make the vital connections it needed to take its ideas to the next level and, ultimately, reach the patients they are designed to help.

Commenting on the accelerator, Dr Schneider said: “Participating in this accelerator gave us the opportunity to talk with the right people at the intersection of pharma and digital health. We learned a lot about the pharmaceutical industry and its needs, where our solution fits, and how to make important collaborations with healthcare organizations to ensure we are ready for the future.”

Another alum of the DayOne Accelerator is Rescape, a Welsh startup that develops VR solutions for reducing pain and anxiety. Rescape knew about the beneficial ecosystem of the Basel area, which helped the company take its innovation from conception to completion. Matt Wordley, Co-founder and Board Director at Rescape, explained: “We don’t get much exposure to pharmaceutical companies in Wales, so spending time in Basel has been crucial for our development as a small startup. It has allowed us to understand the complexities of the pharma world, and network with the right people. In fact, a couple of the collaborations born out of our time in Basel have really helped us fast-track our business, and a number of other opportunities are still being pursued. The team at Basel Area Business & Innovation has also opened the doors to mainland Europe, helping our VR solutions conform to the EU medical device regulations.”

Virtual reality in healthcare

VR is most often associated with gaming, but its applications are being explored in a variety of industries. In healthcare, a recent analysis of VR and augmented reality in scientific literature found more than 8,000 research papers on the topic, with the most common medical conditions under investigation including pain, stroke, anxiety, depression, fear, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders. [2] Pain and anxiety management have the largest evidence base for the use of VR in medicine, [3] where distraction through immersion – along with neurophysiological changes – contribute to therapeutic effects. This could lead to novel treatment options for patients with chronic pain, potentially reducing the reliance on opioids. [4] In addition, Rescape is already seeing significant benefits in a more acute setting.

Wordley explained: “The brain becomes ensconced in the environment that it is in, as it is not designed to cope with two realities. With VR, we are basically hacking the brain, so it shelves the pain or anxiety the patient is experiencing, and replaces it with a distracting or relaxing environment. We have found some wonderful results in paediatric patients, especially with children who are stressed or anxious about minor procedures, such as those involving needles. VR can actually help to reduce sedation requirements in children, and potentially eliminate the need for anaesthesia for minor operations. This is a huge benefit to both anxious children and stressed parents, as well as healthcare professionals, reducing the risks and recovery times for patients.”

Wordley continued: “VR is also being deployed in palliative care as a temporary respite for patients – a form of escapism – and in intensive care units (ICUs). A nice example in the latter setting involved a patient who was having around 20 panic attacks per day following an extended ICU stay, where he experienced pain and isolation from the outside world. Within a couple of weeks of using VR, he was having just the odd panic attack, and could be moved to a general ward. However, his story didn’t end there. Not long after being discharged, he needed to get his big toe amputated, but the medical team couldn’t use a general anesthetic because of his health, and it would need to be done using a regional block. This caused him to spiral into a panic attack, until he agreed to use VR to calm his nerves, allowing the operation to continue.”

Summary

The inaugural BOOM Summit will take place in April 2024. The venue will be the events hall at Messe Basel. According to a statement, the event will be dedicated to trends in digital health technologies. It will be “a highlight of the European healthtech calendar”, as well as provide an open forum for the discussions and strategies that are set to transform the healthcare sector.

The event is organized by DayOne, an initiative of Basel Area Business & Innovation, the investment and innovation promotion agency, and the Kenes Group, a leading global provider of medical conferences. The main partner is the Basel-based MCH Group, which is supporting the BOOM Summit as part of its strategy to position Basel as a leading hub for life sciences events. “The aim of the BOOM Summit is to promote collaboration and innovation in the field of healthcare technology,” commented Caoimhe Vallely-Gilroy, Director of Strategy DayOne and conference organiser.

Program offers great variety

The event is aimed at all professionals as well as entrepreneurs, investors and political decision-makers. The program includes expert panels, technology presentations, startup pitch sessions and interactive workshops. According to Dr. Leslie Anne Fendt, who is responsible for an advanced digital health project at Roche in Basel, the BOOM Summit will “bring together the best and brightest minds in healthcare technology and hopefully ensure that the latest and most exciting technologies can flourish”.

Opterion Health AG has now closed a financing round that was oversubscribed by 60 percent. According to a press release, the company managed to successfully secure investment totaling 6.5 million Swiss francs. As part of the financing round, additional option capital in the amount of 7.3 million Swiss francs was also issued. Both existing and new private and institutional investors participated in the financing round.

Opterion Health is developing a solution for an innovative peritoneal dialysis (PD) solution. According to information from the company itself, the solution is set to “revolutionize” the dialysis market by replacing the gold standard of the current market leader. At present, the solution is still in the preclinical phase. However, the fresh capital should now help to accelerate the process so that a Phase I clinical trial can begin sooner than originally expected.

Settlement supported by Basel Area Business & Innovation

In addition to closing the financing round, Opterion Health has also announced a change in personnel. In this context, Stefan Wohlfeil has resigned his seat on the Board of Directors in order to enter retirement. Shareholders have now elected Jan-Anders Karlsson and Robert Leitz as new members of the Board of Directors. The two newcomers will bring many years of experience in the areas of life sciences and finance to the company.

In 2021, Opterion Health moved its headquarters to Muttenz in the canton of Basel-Landschaft, with the aim of exploiting the region’s life sciences ecosystem. In so doing, the company was supported by the investment and innovation promotion agency Basel Area Business & Innovation.

Mazars can now serve its clients from its location in Basel as well. According to the company, it plans to use the new office to accelerate its growth in Switzerland “in this strategically crucial region.” Basel Area Business & Innovation, the investment and innovation promotion agency, supported the decision-making process. Mazars with its specific profile will contribute to the differentiated and broad offering of auditing, tax advice, and consulting companies in the cluster of Basel Area.

Mazars states that the Basel Area is an important European hub due to its location and geographical proximity to Germany and France. This is why it seemed logical to the company and contributed to their development priorities to open a new office in the dynamic city of Basel with one of the best life sciences clusters in the world. This brings Mazars closer to many existing clients based in and around the city on the banks of the Rhine.

Sponsor of accelerator DayOne Health 4.0

Fabio Cavalieri, Executive Director Audit & Assurance at Mazars in Basel, states: “We are already very active in the region and promote local entrepreneurship through the Swiss Venture Club, which also includes the Prix SVC Nordschweiz award, and sponsor local healthtech startups in collaboration with Day One and Basel Area Business & Innovation.” Mazars is one of the supporting partners of the accelerator DayOne Health 4.0 for scale-ups tackling digital health.

José Caneda, Country Managing Partner Switzerland at Mazars, also notes his particular connection to Basel: originally from Solothurn, he was born in the city of Basel.

As of 2023, Mazars is active in more than 95 countries and regions across the world and has more than 47,000 employees. A total of 30,000 members of staff work in an integrated partnership with Mazars and more than 17,000 in the Mazars North America Alliance. In Switzerland, the company is now supported by 400 employees at a total of ten locations. With the office in Basel, Mazars is now doubly represented in the Basel Area. The company already opened an office in Delémont in 2019, in the same building that houses the Jura Office for Economic Affairs and Employment and the Economic Development at Rue de la Jeunesse 1.

The Botnar Research Centre for Child Health (BRCCH) in Basel now has the opportunity to significantly expand its research activities. Following a donation of 50 million Swiss francs from the Basel-based Fondation Botnar, six new professorships can be created, three of which will be based at the University of Basel and three at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).

The research focus of the professorships will be on pediatric digital health. According to a press release jointly issued by the two universities, their research areas range from biomolecular diagnostics to the development, application and integration of state-of-the-art analysis methods, all the way through to investigating ethical and political framework conditions in digitized pediatric healthcare.

To the benefit of children all over the world

The two universities work with a couple of other partner institutions, namely the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), at the BRCCH, which was founded in 2019. Up to this point, the Fondation Botnar has funded their research activities to the tune of 115 million Swiss francs overall. This funding is intended to benefit the healthcare of children all over the world, but especially in poorer countries. More than 400 researchers have been involved in projects to date.

In the years to come, the new professors and their research teams will be based at a new BRCCH site located on the University of Basel’s Life Sciences Campus. This is situated in close proximity to the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) of ETH Zurich in Basel. “At the same time, we wish to emphasize that ETH and the University are determined to support the cutting-edge research at the BRCCH in the long-term”, explains Professor Torsten Schwede, Vice President for Research at the University of Basel, in the press release.

Published by Innovations in Pharmaceutical Technology

These advancements promise to propel healthcare into the future and make the seemingly impossible possible, including everything from optimizing patient care through robust data analytics, to aiding the discovery of complex disease patterns through artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. This article features some examples of digital technology, which are supporting pharmaceutical R&D in the innovative science hub that is the Basel Area, Switzerland, and describes how these latest developments will play a major role in the ever-changing healthcare landscape.

New Platforms for Drug Discovery

The pharma industry continues to be driven by the need to refresh pipelines, identify new targets, design new drug molecules and find new biomarkers for successful clinical development. With the days of ‘low-hanging fruit’ and serendipitous drug discovery in the past, new platforms are required to provide data-based solutions in R&D. AI, ML and other digital technologies can allow companies to benefit from large datasets that have been captured in recent years, including drug molecule libraries, genomic data, patient health records and medical imaging data. These different platforms have applications across the drug discovery and development process. Some enhance existing computational library screening efforts to identify drug-like molecules with very specific properties that would not be found with traditional methods; others highlight biomarkers of disease progression in electronic health records, feeding into both target discovery and clinical trial design. By tapping into the huge quantities of data that are now available, pharma companies can develop new drugs quicker and with an improved chance of success. Recent research suggests that even modest improvements in early-stage drug development success rates enabled by AI and machine learning (ML) could lead to an additional 50 novel therapies over a ten year period, translating to more than $50bn in opportunities.¹

Partnering for Innovation

Much of the innovation in this field has been driven by AI-native companies offering products or services through partnerships or software licensing deals that can then be applied to pharma pipelines. The move from traditional service and software models to the use of asset and pipeline development partnerships has led to soaring investment. Figures show that third-party investment in AI-enabled drug discovery has more than doubled annually for the last five years, topping $2.4bn in 2020 and reaching more than $5.2bn at the end of 2021.²

Health Tech Boom in Basel

One area where this synergy between digital technology and pharmaceutical R&D is making waves is the Swiss city of Basel, where a leading European innovation hub has grown to be the home of over 700 companies across the biotechnology, digital health, medical technology, chemistry and advanced manufacturing sectors. This includes pharmaceutical giants such as Roche, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson and Boehringer Ingelheim. Companies continue to flock to the Basel Area to take advantage of the world-class academic institutions and local talent pool of over 31,000 life sciences professionals, as well as the network of big pharma juxtaposed with scaleups and startups. Amongst the most recent arrivals are health tech companies looking to support R&D in the big pharma arena. For these companies, a presence in the region provides the perfect opportunity for meeting, networking and developing new relationships that are crucial for further innovation. Several companies are making the most of the thriving tech culture, supporting initiatives for health tech startups and dedicated innovation and co-working spaces, to drive success in the Basel Area.

Discovering Complex Disease Patterns

Examples of the work being performed include:

• Associating multimodal single-cell datasets (RNA-/TCR-/ BCR-seq, proteomics, etc) with clinical endpoints – such as disease diagnosis, progression, severity, treatment and toxicity response – to identify ultra-sensitive biomarker signatures and cell functionality states
• A research engine that introduces a new standard of interpretability and explainability to life sciences datasets using simple models and straightforward mathematical expressions to help pharma companies bring drugs to market faster
• AI-powered analytics and digital solutions to support improvements in behavioral health, delivering rich, high-quality and relevant real-world evidence information to healthcare providers, patients, researchers, payors and regulators by analyzing electronic health record data with analytics. This data helps providers recognize disease progression and provide tailored treatments to their patients, and aids pharmaceutical companies in improving drug discovery and development.

The Future of Digital Innovation in Pharma

The applications above are classic examples of how digital technologies can make use of the vast quantities of data that are being generated in healthcare and pharmaceutical R&D. Their innovative products and services are allowing new insights and a deeper understanding of complex processes – including disease progression, drug mechanisms of action and clinical effectiveness of new drug candidates – and they are improving the drug development process. The platforms themselves are driving a paradigm shift that could enhance the process of drug discovery, bringing new drugs to market more quickly, and reducing the large numbers of candidates that are currently lost along the development pathway. Strong partnerships between technology and pharma companies, academic institutions and hospitals, such as those being developed in Basel, are undoubtedly helping to revolutionize the future of healthcare.

References

1. 1. Morgan Stanley Research (2022), ‘Putting the ‘Tech’ in Biotech: Assessing the Potential for AI in Drug Development’
   2. Boston Consulting Group (2022), ‘Adopting AI in Drug Discovery’

Published by the Journal of mHealth

We are generating more digital data than ever before – at an estimated rate of 2.5 quintillion bytes per day¹ – and the great strides being made in informatics are helping to excavate ever-more meaningful and actionable information from these data goldmines. Tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning could hold the key to transforming a whole host of sectors, but perhaps none more so than healthcare, where game-changing technologies are under development.²

Building on a rich heritage

Several regions of Switzerland are well known for being bustling biopharma hotspots. The Basel Area in particular is home to industry giants including Roche, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson, as well as many smaller companies that are taking advantage of both the world-class academic institutions and the swathes of life science professionals embedded there. Below the surface of this rich biotech and pharmaceutical heritage is a new wave of digital innovation that has the potential to transform the healthcare industry, and Switzerland along with it. A new breed of entrepreneurs is combining biopharma knowledge with medical informatics to promise a digital healthcare revolution.

Laying the groundwork

It is no coincidence that this transformation is happening in Switzerland, since academic institutions like the University of Applied Science and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) have been laying the groundwork for years, by offering forward-thinking medical informatics courses.³ These multidisciplinary degrees are moulding medical, data science and business students into fully-fledged medical informatics experts ready to make their mark on the industry.

Prof. Miho is also the founder of the ETH Zürich spinout company aiNET – based in Basel – which uses artificial intelligence and large-scale networks to provide immunoinformatic services for the biopharma industry, as well as digital immunity data to aid personalized diagnostics. She continued: “We offer an antibody discovery service via high-throughput sequencing of immune cells and antibodies, using machine learning techniques to select sequences that successfully bind to viruses. We are also developing a digital twin of the human immune system, which evolves over time to mimic the dynamic nature of the real thing, allowing us to accurately model and predict disease progression to enable early diagnosis. We feel extremely lucky to be based in Basel, where there is a healthy collaborative spirit between academics, clinicians and biopharma professionals. There is a true culture of innovation here.”

Help is at hand

Launching a startup like aiNET can be a daunting prospect, as many startups fail within their first year.⁴ Switzerland is determined to buck this trend by fostering a supportive environment where fledgling companies offering cutting-edge innovation can thrive. Not only is there tax relief for startups, but organisations like Innosuisse and the Swiss National Science Foundation provide grants to help academic researchers and entrepreneurs commercialise their promising ideas, as well as promoting the activities of regional startups and SMEs. Accelerator and incubator programs are also available to provide startups with legal and logistical support, extra investment, and access to a network of experienced biopharma professionals. For example, The Digital Health Nation Innovation Booster program, hosted by DayOne and Innouisse, is fostering breakthroughs in digital healthcare by helping entrepreneurs transform their ideas into solutions that can deliver real value to patients and healthcare professionals. Basel Area Business & Innovation – the non-profit innovation promotion agency behind DayOne – also manages dedicated coworking sites that foster a thriving interactive community of digital health companies and entrepreneurs, such as the Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area at the Novartis Campus.

Switzerland’s digital destiny

Cutting-edge tools like AI and machine learning are set to revolutionise healthcare by generating remarkable insights from medical data and making previously unimaginable technologies – like immune system digital twins – a reality. By combining multidisciplinary degree programs, governmental support and accelerator and incubator programs, Switzerland is laying the groundwork needed for digital healthcare to flourish. Its thriving biotech hubs are an ideal breeding ground for a new era of startups, and the potent combination of biopharma heritage and novel technologies is set propel Switzerland towards its digital destiny.

References

• How much data do we create every day? The mind-blowing stats everyone should read. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/?sh=1c916ec960ba. Accessed 24.04.23.
• Transforming healthcare with AI: The impact on the workforce and organizations. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/transforming-healthcare-with-ai. Accessed 24.04.23.
• MSc Medical Informatics. FHNW. https://www.fhnw.ch/en/degree-programmes/lifesciences/master/medical-informatics. Accessed 12.04.23.
• Small businesses that fail in the first year always have these 3 things in common. https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannawiest/2020/01/24/small-businesses-that-fail-in-the-first-year-always-have-these-3-things-in-common/?sh=35cd5ff426c7. Accessed 24.04.23

Clinerion, a global data technology service provider with headquarters in Basel, is bringing its machine learning platform to market. It is linked to a global network of hospitals that provide anonymized electronic patient information, called real-world data, based on their privacy policies. In a press release, Clinerion states that there will be access to 425 million patients in 24 countries. Clinerion has developed its federated machine learning platform together with the Swiss innovation agency Innosuisse, the Bern University of Applied Sciences, and the University of Zurich.

There are two goals for this platform: firstly, it should enable researchers to perform sophisticated analyses and recognize patterns for various illnesses. For example, this would enable high-risk patients to be identified before reaching a critical condition and could be used to find undiagnosed individuals with rare illnesses. Researchers could train models using local data and further optimize them with models from other locations. This would expedite clinical research.

More efficient and efficace

Secondly, the platform aims to “radically” improve the efficiency and efficacy of clinical trial recruitment regarding data-based protocol optimization, location feasibility assessments, and patient screening in real time. Furthermore, it makes it easier for partnering hospitals to participate in these studies.

CEO of Clinerion Barış Erdoğan commented: “Personalized medicine, diversity and inclusion, and rare disease treatment will all benefit from this innovative new technology platform.”

In 2009, Hiroshi Kobayashi, a scientist from the Tokyo University of Science, presented the world’s first robotic teacher Saya. According to Kobayashi, machines are better than human teachers. The AI-powered robot knows the answers to all questions – it monitors and analyzes childs’ behavior to individualize the learning process and support their hidden talents.

This utopian vision of education has a lot to do with healthcare. Of course, nobody would like to be treated by artificial intelligence (AI) wearing a doctor’s coat – like no parent would prefer a robot over a human teacher. Human social empathy cannot be replaced by a rational machine. However, a lack of data causes medical errors, delays diagnosis and worsens the treatment prognosis. Humans make irrational health decisions, getting lost in conflicting recommendations and random advice.

AI’s capabilities to memorize the medical records of millions of patients, analyze data, monitor, forecast and make decisions based on facts are now becoming a critical transformational power in medicine.

New challenges require contemporary approaches

Doctors are drowning in administrative tasks, and the patient’s journey through the system is like a labyrinth. Healthcare professionals waste up to 1/3 of their time on administrative tasks. While WHO forecasts a shortage of 9.9 million doctors, nurses and midwives by 2030, such a waste of medical staff resources cannot be afforded.

There are many more statistics showing that healthcare needs radical changes: approx. 250,000-440,000 people die each year in the US due to medical errors. This is the third cause of death, right after cancer and cardiovascular disease. Cancer treatment delayed by one month increases the risk of death by approx. 10%. Non-communicable diseases generate 80% of healthcare costs. Paradoxically, 80% of heart conditions, heart attacks and diabetes can be prevented by modifications in lifestyle.

AI is a necessity, not just an addition to healthcare. Imagine the scale of the benefits when algorithms start reducing the number of medical errors by analyzing patient data and comparing treatment scenarios with the outcomes of millions of other people, relieving doctors of paperwork by automatically sorting information and collecting data in electronic records with voice processing systems.

How healthcare professionals and patients benefit from AI

Released in September 2021 by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the list of AI/ML-based (artificial intelligence/machine learning) medical devices already includes 343 items. By 2016, there were 15 items on the list. The largest number of medical algorithms certified by the FDA in the USA and CE-marked in Europe go to radiology. It is followed by cardiology, hematology, and neurology.

The advancement of digital and AI technologies in healthcare has led to a rapid increase in research in the field of AI and ML. So much so that in 2019, the prestigious scientific magazine The Lancet decided to release a separate version devoted solely to digitization – The Lancet Digital Health. Scientists from around the world publish research on (among others) the effectiveness of algorithms in healthcare (e.g., the one from April 2022 confirming the reduction in the incidence of colorectal cancer in the case of colonoscopy using AI tools.

Such a rapid development of algorithms is a logical consequence of the digitization of healthcare, cultural changes, and favorable legislative solutions. Systematically developed IT architecture in healthcare facilities and digitization of patient files facilitate the exchange and re-use of data by research centers and commercial companies.

Yet, it is no longer about advances in medicine – the competitiveness of the future economies will be measured by the scale of innovation and digitization maturity. The European Commission is aware of this and, at the beginning of May 2022, presented the European Health Data Space project. EHDS is intended to facilitate the secondary use of data, including supporting research and health policy goals.

The potential of AI in life sciences is being recognized by the pharmaceutical industry. Pharma leaders are working with startups developing so-called ‘digital therapeutics’ – platforms and mobile applications supporting patients in managing chronic diseases.

Broad range of potential applications

The range of potential applications is much broad. Novartis has partnered with a Chinese technology giant to develop AI Nurse – an intelligent platform that supports patients, doctors and nurses in managing heart disease. The program covered 500 hospitals. BioNTech, known for developing an mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, recently announced a multi-year partnership with InstaDeep Ltd., aiming to apply the latest advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to develop new immunotherapies for cancer and infectious diseases. And recently, Fujitsu has begun research to develop AI for early pancreatic cancer detection in Japan.

Big tech companies are also eager to enter the healthcare market. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced the launch of Isomorphic Laboratories in November 2021. The company aims to introduce an “AI-driven approach” to bio-pharmacy research by becoming a commercial partner for drug manufacturers.

Last but not least, public health has started to explore the power of AI. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO created the Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. By using AI to analyze health data, the WHO wants to prevent and limit future pandemics.

The gradual adaptation of AI by health and pharma organizations is an opportunity for digital health startups. Healthcare facilities are increasingly open to co-developing and implementing innovative solutions. Patients are also eager to use modern mobile apps to manage chronic diseases or optimize their lifestyles to stay healthy.

The biggest risks of AI in healthcare

Before the technological revolution gains momentum, some AI-related challenges must be tackled.

One of them is a low quality and limited availability of data used to train the algorithms. There are legitimate concerns about bias in data sets, which could lead to algorithms failing in populations not represented in the practice data—the so-called ‘black box’ (i.e., the way algorithms make decisions). Nobody knows how AI makes decisions, so it isn’t easy to verify the correctness of the entire process.

Citizens have concerns about data security and privacy. The use of diagnostic algorithms that are cheaper than human labor can potentially lead to two-speed healthcare, where diagnostic services provided by bots will be the standard, while contact with a human doctor will become a premium option, available beyond standard health insurance.

Doctors look at AI-based health systems with hope but fear. There are ethical dilemmas regarding professional liability for medical errors caused by algorithms. A mistake by an AI system suggesting the purchase of new clothes, a book or displaying the most exciting content on social media has no such consequences as an incorrect diagnosis or imprecise selection of a drug. Imagine such a bug in mobile apps used by millions of patients.

The legislation does not keep up with the rapid development of technology – many potentially beneficial solutions for patients are not scaled up on the market because health insurers do not reimburse them. However, this is also changing. In 2019, Germany adopted a new law that allows doctors to prescribe certified apps to their patients. Now France will implement a similar legislative framework.

The adoption of new technologies also requires a change in the work culture in healthcare. The case of IBM’s Watson Health proves that we are still far from balanced cooperation between doctors and AI. Neither the technology nor the doctors were ready. As a result, Watson Health was accused of making inaccurate and unsafe recommendations, prompting many hospitals to sever their cooperation with Watson. IBM eventually sold Watson Health.

Quantum computing will accelerate big data science

AI advances will be strongly related to advances in hardware. Solutions enabling the processing of large data sets and the detection of correlations in data invisible to the human eye (or rather, traditional statistics) have only become popular in the last decade. We are talking about so-called ‘deep learning/machine learning’ (DL/ML). And although the history of neural networks dates back to 1943, DL/AM entered practical use in this century. AI needs not only data, but also computing power. And this – according to Moore’s Law – grows exponentially: the number of transistors on a single microchip doubles every two years.

Yet, another innovation will fuel the development of AI – quantum computers with computational power incomparably higher than traditional computers. Google says its laboratory version of a quantum computer is 100 million times faster than any classic computer. Its performance can be compared to the strength of 5 million laptops. In tests, Google’s 54-qubit computer was able to complete a task in 200 seconds that would take over 10,000 years on traditional computers. Such machines can speed up, hundreds or thousands of times, the time it takes for AI systems to search for new molecules for potential drugs.

In 2017, a Chinese AI-based robot passed a medical exam. But even in China, with ambitions to become an AI leader by 2030, robots have yet to replace doctors. Instead, they support them. And one group will benefit most: patients.

AI, healthcare transformation and innovation ecosystems

Advances in healthcare and life sciences need a favorable ecosystem that fosters collaboration and supports the most brilliant ideas of young entrepreneurs. One place where these growth drivers can be found in Europe’s leading healthcare and life sciences hub is the Basel Area – a hotspot for progress in life sciences and medicine.

The people, culture of inventiveness, and location make it an excellent place to co-shape the future of healthcare. Based in Basel, it’s within walking distance from leading pharma companies working on breakthroughs in life sciences and – for a few years – also applying AI across their value chain. Here, Novartis cooperates with Microsoft within AI Innovation Lab, IBM plans a new center for quantum computing, while numerous international startups find symbiosis with the local supportive environment for entrepreneurship.

Based on this ecosystem, the DayOne is an accelerator that focuses on creating the ideal conditions for disruptive innovation in the life science industry. Recently ranked in the top 10 accelerators in Europe for health technologies, the DayOne initiative offers a platform for collaborative innovation across disciplines and industries by accelerating startups, launching catalyst projects, and hosting a community and events to bring innovative healthcare ventures forward. Since 2018, the hub has supported 23 companies with a combined valuation of over CHF 80 million, contributing to the life sciences ecosystem of the Basel Area, helping to launch, connect, and mentor many innovative healthcare ventures in medtech, medical devices, digital health, AI and more.

One example is Zoundream which uses AI to monitor baby cries to identify infants’ needs, emotions, well-being, and physical and neurological status. Another of its companies, Rekonas, has developed AI for EGG analysis to assess brain health, current, future cognition, and sleep macro/micro-structure. Or Nutrix, which applies AI to analyze molecules and biomarkers in saliva samples for health monitoring.

The future, AI-driven healthcare starts from ideas that can grow in the right ecosystem. The DayOne initiative represents a great example of the need to invest in ecosystem activators to achieve healthcare transformation.

Explore how DayOne is accelerating digital transformation in healthcare. Check the cooperation opportunities in its innovation hub >