Digital health: Learning, discussing, networking

Cédric explaining what a standard toilet has to do with digital health

As mentioned earlier, one of the areas we invest in can be found at the intersection of tech and life sciences: namely digital health/e-health (we will also publish our digital health investment hypothesis later). You might also know that we have started to build industry expert clusters aiming at connecting and shortening links between start-ups, corporates, academia, research institutions and investors.

To turn theory into practice and learn, discuss and connect with digital health experts, we recently partnered with our good friends at Pfizer Germany and invited a broad mix of people to join our executive roundtables — an exclusive afternoon-event in Berlin. Among the 65 participants we could welcome representatives from

• big corporates (mainly from corporate innovation and business development departments)
• other venture capital funds (corporate and public)
• accelerator programs
• start-ups
• potential fund investors
• advisors
• …

The idea

The core idea of the executive roundtables is that all stakeholders benefit to a similar degree from participating. Here are some possible ways how:

• We all learn about the latest trends and technologies, focusing on specific areas of an industry to reach the necessary level of detail.
• The start-ups connect with investors and corporates for funding, cooperation or M&A activity.
• The corporates identify the most relevant trends and technologies and get to know the drivers of change.
• Our co-hosts connect with potential clients, cooperation partners and investors.
• Potential fund investors see what drives us and why it would be a good idea to invest in our fund, understanding that we offer — amongst others — a reliable network that helps our portfolio companies grow.
• Lastly, just like every participant, we expand our own network, and can position ourselves as experts in certain areas of interest.

We usually try to achieve these benefits through the following setup: two short start-up pitches followed by panel discussions, several moderated breakout sessions covering certain aspects of a topic and, last but not least, by extensive networking possibilities throughout the event.

Here is the thing with the toilet: Well, there are actually two things about it. First, if the costs of IoT sensors continue to plunge as quickly as they have over the past years, toilets could soon become smart and analyse your health “on the sit”. Secondly, if the costs of DNA sequencing continue to plunge the way they recently have, flushing your toilet will become more expensive than sequencing your genome in a few years’ time. Now, before anyone starts to shout: This is not reality and might never be reality, it is just a slightly radical visualization of some trends we are facing.

The event

After a joint intro presentation by our co-hosts from Pfizer and our Managing Partner Cédric detailing our views on digital health (and outlining the aspects we consider interesting from an investor’s point of view), we discussed two major topics:

1. The role of AI and big data in healthcare

2. The question how the digitalization of the healthcare system could be used for innovative therapies in the future

Marvin Rottenberg, Head of Marketing at Ada Health started with Ada’s fascinating vision of an AI-powered personal health companion. Ada helps you with a first diagnosis and assessment whether you need to see a doctor, also granting immediate access to a pool of approved physicians via a telemedicine service. But more than that, Ada can use the extensive patient data it gathers over time to efficiently identify and match patients with clinical trials. If you have an idea how much money pharmaceutical companies spend on clinical trial recruitment, you know that this could be a very nice source of income for Ada.

The second Part was kicked off by Szabolsz Nagy, CEO of Budapest-based Turbine, who gave a glimpse into the future of therapeutic decision-making, claiming that solving biology is key to novel approaches in drug discovery. Turbine is pursuing ways of using AI-guided simulated experiments to get away from the current spray and pray drug discovery process that leads to an average of 12 years and $1.5bn before a drug is market-ready (with only roughly 1 percent making it this far). With today’s data explosion, cheap computing power and integrative solutions, Turbine hopes to cut through complexity and highlight the most promising drug candidates early in the development process by accurately simulating cancer biology and analysing it with AI, making personalized treatments and successful prevention more realistic.

The breakout sessions between the two major thematic parts offered the participants the chance to discuss and learn about three topics:

• Personalization of treatment through data
• Blockchain in healthcare
• Opportunities from digitizing corporate health

It was good to see and hear that discussions were continued at the buffet and even later in bilateral talks. To us, this is the most visible sign that the event was a success.

Coming up next

We are already planning our next executive roundtable events which will take place sometime in autumn and deal with Robotics and Autonomous Systems on the one hand and PropTech on the other hand. If you would like to participate, shoot us an email or sign up for the newsletter on our website.