The Kantonsspital Baden (KSB) has roots that go far back into the Middle Ages. Queen Agnes of Hungary founded a hospital in 1349, which has kept pace with medical developments ever since. The driving force was innovation. This continues to shape the KSB to this day.
“We feel obliged to contribute to the further development of healthcare,” says KSB CEO Adrian Schmitter. “There is incredible dynamics in medicine. Progress is being made all the time. Accordingly, it is important to recognize and embrace new developments at an early stage.”
With this in mind, KSB established the KSB Health Innovation Hub at the beginning of 2018. The goal is to drive innovation in healthcare. Schmitter: “Innovation is always a collaborative effort. A good network is essential. If we want to sustainably change procedures, processes and technologies in the hospital, we also need to surround ourselves with people who think things differently than we do.” That’s why KSB works in the Health Innovation Hub with startups, technology partners such as Siemens and ABB, or institutions such as the ETH, the University of Zurich, the FHNW or the Paul Scherrer Institute.
One of these collaboration partners is heyPatient AG. The Zurich-based startup has developed a cloud-based platform with an integrated app that simplifies the many interactions between the hospital and patients and makes them paperless. “Our solution enables, for example, the arrangement of hospital and doctor appointments, including information on preparation, treatment and aftercare for patients,” says Regula Spühler, COO and co-founder of heyPatient. This information can be shared with family members as needed, making it easier for relatives to provide support and care. In addition, the patient’s own health data can be shared with the hospital or attending physician before the appointment even begins. For hospital staff, there is an administrative efficiency gain through digital process integration with internal HIS/ERP systems as well as Microsoft Teams.
“We have opted for the Microsoft Cloud from the very beginning,” confirms Regula Spühler. “In addition to flexibility and scalability, it was primarily our very high requirements for security and data privacy, which are guaranteed by local Azure data storage in Swiss data centers.” The team’s ambitions are big. In the future, for example, it should be possible to connect to the planned electronic patient dossier (EPD) as well as to wearables such as smart watches. For Regula Spühler, it is clear: “heyPatient and KSB have a shared vision: The heyPatient app should advance to become a digital companion in the entire Swiss healthcare system, which means that the app should not only support patients in the hospital, but also be there as a digital health assistant in everyday life for all people – whether sick or healthy.”
