February 28, 2023

The Digital Health & Wellness Summit 2023 - Barcelona, 28 February

DHWS Ecosystems EU Projects Global Health Connector Partnership The Digital Health Society

Complete success of the 10th Digital Health & Wellness Summit 2023 during 4YFN – Mobile World Congress

The Digital Health & Wellness Summit 10th edition at 4YFN – MWC, held on February 28th, has been a resounding success, drawing a full house all day long with not a single seat empty in any of the sessions. Attendees from various industries gathered to learn, engage and collaborate with some of the leading players in the healthcare industry.

See the photo gallery here
DHWS23 highlights video here
Access to speakers’ presentations here
Access to the interviews here

The DHWS23 has received 400+ experts from 70+ countries

The lively involvement of attendees created a great positive atmosphere throughout the day and provided an excellent platform for healthcare professionals, researchers, and technology experts to collaborate, share ideas, and gain insights into the latest healthcare innovations. We were extremely pleased to have so many members, ecosystems and partners presenting, attending and taking part in the DHWS Summit.

Under this year’s topic: Connecting needs & solutions globally for emerging digital health & wellness markets, the summit brought the ability to use a number of methodologies to showcase innovation, and to highlight future trends and common barriers in a series of panels and fireside chats that were mixed with audience participation, thought leadership from around the world and presentations from key players from all stakeholders whether it be on patient engagement, data sharing, issues around trust or digital health skills.

One of the great stand out features for the Digital Health and Wellness Summit was the opportunity to convene a truly global event featuring content and involvement from USA, India, Africa, Latin America, Europe and Australia.

Highlights from the DHWS23

We have summarised The Digital Health & Wellness Summit in 12 takeaways:

Infrastructure, leadership and regulations are the key barriers for scaling up globally, according to the digital health leaders from Africa, India and US.
There is no need to over-regulate and reinvent the wheel while regulating – learning from the experience of the other countries and applying good practices is more effective. For that, we need to invest in collaboration and exchange.
Innovation in health cannot ignore healthcare professionals (not only doctors, but nurses, formal and informal carers) and the patients – they should be engaged in the development of the service or solution from the start and taken seriously.
Involvement of patients does not mean only their participation in surveys and focus groups but understanding the life of the user, their daily struggles and why they need the solution. Often in the surveys.
Attendees gained insights into the roles of doctors in a teaching hospital, an international healthcare consulting practice, and a national care association.
CINFA, a pharmaceutical company have presented its innovation platform and opportunities to collaborate with them internationally.
For the innovations to emerge and for digital health solutions to be scaled up, we need institutionalised dialogue between the different stakeholders and the government. This kind of communication channel is very helpful for the developers, investors and implementers to be able to understand their needs and available solutions better. Unfortunately, in many countries this dialogue is still quite weak.
Metadataworks, a leading provider of health data management solutions, explained how to curate health data sets quickly so silo busting and making the data sets widely available for research to improve health services for patients.
On the side of the decarbonising healthcare efforts, the policy makers, hospitals and procurers associations are interested in limiting the carbon footprint of healthcare, which is quite high. This topic has been a bit of a taboo but is getting more traction recently. Unfortunately, the hospitals are missing tools and methods to understand which solutions are “green” and sustainable. The regulatory work of the European Commission in this area as well as work of the various coalitions and associations is expected to help in this process.
Nixi for Children won the pitch battle with their box of information for children and parents before hospital stays, including VR.
McKinsey outlined the opportunities in the health and wellness data market, including main customers, data categories, and success factors.
Qualcomm explained and showcased wearables innovation with on-device AI, moving the center of gravity to mobile users, and SaMD (Software as a Medical Device).