HTIC

Health Tech Lunch on Wednesday, November 27th at Energypolis in Sion (room Aula).
Biography : Prof. Sven Hirsch, PhD, Head of Center for Computational Health
Sven is a translational scientist, heading the center of Computational Health at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and is a passionate promoter of digitalization in health care.
He is a trained laser physicist in the field of computational health and holds a postgradual degree in audiovisual media (KHM). In his scientific work he combines statistical approaches like machine learning with mechanistic modelling to understand disease mechanisms and clinical pathways. He searches for new digital biomarkers from clinical images, time series signals, and patient data to improve diagnosis and care. In intracranial aneurysm research he contributed to the understanding of disease mechanisms and etiology by establishing image-derived factors and data-driven disease models.
The portfolio of the research center encompasses biosensor analysis and digital health solutions, medical data modelling, medical image analysis and biomedical simulation. The center embraces applied research questions and collaborates with clinicians, industry, and hospitals to deliver innovative digital health solutions and translate computational health research into clinical practice. He also directs the ZHAW digital health lab, an interdisciplinary platform that innovates patient-centered data-driven health care.
Abstract : Digital Health is a highly interdisciplinary field with high promises for improving the quality and performance of the healthcare system. Although we are now seeing an enormous push for these new technologies we also experience the challenges to translate these into real innovations. With all difficulties that the healthcare sector currently faces it is important to formulate positive future visions and offer viable ways to get there. The universities of applied sciences have an important role in formulating this vision and cooperating with the healthcare industry to make a vision come to life.
I will present insights from the Innosuisse flagship project SHIFT where we promote the use of new forms of organisation, digital technologies and the networking of processes and data to transform the hospital continuously into an intelligent system.
A second thought is the digital twin concept, which is a virtual representation that serves as the real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process, picks up attention in healthcare. The presentation will highlight the practical applications and potential benefits of these developments for healthcare innovation.
Health Tech Lunch on on Tuesday on October 29th at Swiss Digital Center in Sierre (room Atlas)
Biography : Tobias Nef is Full Professor of Gerontechnology and Rehabilitation at the ARTORG Research Center for Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Neurology at the University of Bern in Switzerland.His research team develops and evaluates sensor technologies for the detection of motor and non-motor symptoms in patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders. These methods enable novel, flexible and cost-effective technological approaches to improve diagnostics, monitoring and therapy. His work has been recognized with the Vontobel Prize for Research on Ageing (2023), the Research Prize of the University for the Elderly Bern (2023) and the Jean Wertheimer Research Prize 2016, among others.
Abstract : During the presentation, we will discuss the application of sensors for capturing motor and non-motor symptoms in patients with neurodegenerative diseases. The clinical use of wearable, object-attached, and ambient sensors will be covered. This includes use cases in the patient's room, in the instrumented apartment NeuroTec Loft, as well as in the patient's home. Finally, patient acceptance and future perspectives will be critically discussed.
Health Tech Lunch on on Friday, September 27th at Swiss Digital Center in Sierre (room Maïa).
Biography : Chris Awai is Chief Scientific Officer at Lake Lucerne Institute and Director of the Data Analytics & Rehabilitation Technology (DART) Lab. His research focusses on three main questions: a) Modelling individual rehabilitation trajectories after stroke and allocating appropriate interventions, b) Leveraging real-time feedback across the continuum of care for motor learning, and c) Assessment and prevention of falls. With a PhD in health sciences and biomechanics from the University of Sydney and University of Nice, he has developed biomarkers of movement quality and methods to track these in high performance athletes and persons with neurological injury. He has co-authored over 50 publications, lectures at 4 higher education institutes, and has created a dedicated Master’s program for Precision Neurorehabilitation at LLUI. He is member of the advisory boards of various companies in the neurorehabilitation space and is fully dedicated to bringing the outcomes of his research into clinical practice at scale.
Abstract : Chris Awai is Chief Scientific Officer at Lake Lucerne Institute and Director of the Data Analytics & Rehabilitation Technology (DART) Lab. His research focusses on three main questions: a) Modelling individual rehabilitation trajectories after stroke and allocating appropriate interventions, b) Leveraging real-time feedback across the continuum of care for motor learning, and c) Assessment and prevention of falls. With a PhD in health sciences and biomechanics from the University of Sydney and University of Nice, he has developed biomarkers of movement quality and methods to track these in high performance athletes and persons with neurological injury. He has co-authored over 50 publications, lectures at 4 higher education institutes, and has created a dedicated Master’s program for Precision Neurorehabilitation at LLUI. He is member of the advisory boards of various companies in the neurorehabilitation space and is fully dedicated to bringing the outcomes of his research into clinical practice at scale.
Health Tech Lunch on Tuesday, September 24th at Swiss Digital Center in Sierre (room Maïa).
Biography : Dr. Meystre is a physician and medical informaticist. His main interests and background include applications of AI and more specifically machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to support more effective clinical care and enable reuse of existing (unstructured and structured) clinical information for precision health and research applications, all while addressing responsible AI requirements (privacy-preserving, ethical, reproducible, explainable, efficient, secure, unbiased). Dr. Meystre is Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Director of the new Institute of Digital Technologies for Personalised Healthcare (MeDiTech) at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) in Lugano, Switzerland. He has a medical background, with an MD from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and several years of clinical experience. His training in medical informatics includes a MS from the University of California, Davis and a PhD from the University of Utah, both in the United States. After two years of healthcare IT experience in Switzerland, leading the design of a cancer research information system, he was Assistant Professor in Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA) where he focused his research on methods and resources to make clinical information easier to use for clinical practice and research, to enable clinical data reuse for clinical decision support and research, and on patient data privacy protection. In this domain, he developed a research team of post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, and established multiple interdisciplinary collaborations at the local, regional, national, and international levels. He also founded a startup company (Clinacuity) to develop commercial products from some of my research. In 2016, he accepted an Associate Professor in Biomedical Informatics position at the Medical University of South Carolina and was awarded a SmartState endowed chair position in Translational Biomedical Informatics. His research efforts expanded to also build operational resources for the institution (e.g., research database of about 5 million patients with advanced search capabilities enabled by natural language processing (NLP) and text analytics), to help efficiently manage the local response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to automatically discover patients eligible for clinical trials, and to implement high-accuracy automatic clinical text de-identification services. He has been promoted to (full) Professor in the Biomedical Informatics Center, Public Health Sciences department and Psychiatry department at the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) in 2020. He moved to the Netherlands in 2021 as Scientific Director for data science, AI and data platforms at the OnePlanet research center, a partnership between Radboud University and Radboudumc in Nijmegen, Wageningen University and Research, and imec, a nano-electronics and digital technology company in Eindhoven and Leuven (Belgium).
Health Tech Lunchon on Wednesday, June 5th at Swiss Digital Center in Sierre (room Maïa).
Biography : Thomas Vetterli graduated in 2017 at the EPFL where he obtained his Master of Science with a particular focus on biomedical engineering and data science for life sciences. During his Master's he spent 6 months at Columbia University working on deep learning methods to mine insights from imaging data and learn diagnostically relevant features. Thomas then moved to San Francisco where, as a Senior Machine Learning at Freenome and Berkeley Lights, he participated and led the development of machine learning and bioinformatic platforms and models for early cancer detection and single cell automation. Thomas is now the Director of Machine Learning and Bioinformatics at Hedera Dx - an oncology company specialising in liquid biopsy testing. In his role, he leads a team in developing NGS tumor monitoring pipelines for liquid biopsies.
Abstract : Liquid biopsies have emerged as a versatile technology with numerous applications in routine cancer care - from tumour profiling to minimal residual disease testing to early detection. HederaDx is an oncology company specialising in liquid biopsy testing. The company develops targeted sequencing kits as well as bioinformatic methods that have a focus on detecting clinically actionable variants to help with the prescription of targeted therapies. In this presentation we will review the clinical need of targeted therapies as well as the design strategies behind our kits and methods to ensure that they can be used in routine cancer diagnostics.
Health Tech Lunch on Wednesday, January 31th at Energypolis
Biography : Leonard received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemical and Bioengineering from ETH Zürich. Following a research internship at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, he joined the research groups of Prof. Shih and Prof. deMello at the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering at ETH Zürich to pursue his Ph.D., which he completed in November 2023.
Abstract : Paper-based microfluidics has emerged as a versatile platform for rapid, low-cost point-of-care diagnostic testing. The integration of electronic components into these tests opens up new device functionalities and facilitates the development of quantitative assays. Unfortunately, conventional electrode fabrication methods often impede capillary flow, limiting possible design architectures. We have introduced a platform that uses laser-induced pyrolysis of cellulose paper to create graphenic electrodes seamlessly embedded in the paper matrix, patterned using only a commercial laser engraver. The resulting porous electrodes not only exhibit high conductivity and electrochemical activity, but also retain the wetting properties essential for capillary transport. The unique properties of these laser-pyrolyzed electrodes enable their integration into devices with various flow configurations. Notably, we have developed a vertical flow electrochemical immunoassay for antibody serology or nucleic acid detection, and a flow injection analyzer for high-throughput analysis of small molecules or enzymes in biological samples. Moreover, placing the permeable electrochemical sensor at the core of these capillary-driven devices enables the development of smart tests that can continuously monitor assays and guide users through the testing process.
Health Tech Lunch le jeudi 11 janvier de 12:00 to 13:00 au Swiss Digital Center
Présentation des trois projets soutenus par l'axe santé en 2023. 1. Prédiction du risque de chute chez la personne âgée ou en réhabilitation 2. « Éthique des gérontechnologies. Deux mises à jour » 3. Intégration d'un chatbot vocal dans le processus d'obtention de PROMs.
Titre : Prédiction du risque de chute chez la personne âgée ou en réhabilitation
Biographie :
Simone Gafner, professeure assistante à la filière physiothérapie de la HES-SO Valais-Wallis est titulaire d’un doctorat de la faculté de santé, de médecine et des sciences de la vie, département d'épidémiologie, ligne de recherche fonctionnement, participation et réhabilitation, CAPHRI, de l’université de Maastricht (NL). Le sujet de son doctorat était en lien avec le risque de chute des personnes âgées (≥65 ans). En plus de sa carrière académique elle possède 9 années d’expérience clinque.
Sébastien Gard, professeur associé à l’institut d’informatique de la HES-SO Valais-Wallis, est titulaire d’un MSc en management des systèmes d’information et possède 16 ans d’expérience dans l’industrie. Il a assumé les fonctions d’analyste, de développeur, de responsable d’équipe, de chef de projet et d’architecte IT.
Résumé : Ce projet est le résultat d'une collaboration entre l’Institut Informatique et l’Institut de Santé, visant à prédire l’augmentation du risque de chute pour les personnes âgées. Cette prédiction s'appuie sur l'expertise et les travaux de recherche du Prof. Simone Gafner. Au cours des 6 mois de ce projet, nous avons créé un prototype de solution, incluant capteurs, logiciels et algorithmes, pouvant être réutilisé et déployé dans d’autres logements. Nous avons mis en place cette solution dans le logement d'une personne âgée et récolté les données des différents capteurs. Avec ces données quantitatives, nous avons analysé et évalué dans quelle mesure il était possible de prédire l'augmentation du risque de chute pour les personnes âgées. Cette mise en application nous a permis d'un coté de mesurer la pertinence des différentes données et capteurs, et de l'autre de mettre en évidence les avantages, limitations et problèmes liés à l'approche choisie. »
Titre : Intégration d'un chatbot vocal dans le processus d'obtention de PROMs
Résumé : Actuellement en Valais, les médecins collectent manuellement les données post-opératoires des patients de prothèse totale de hanche, un processus long. Le projet vise à digitaliser ce processus via un chatbot vocal pour améliorer le taux de réponse et soutenir la transition vers des soins de santé axés sur la valeur. Bien que les chatbots vocaux soient plus complexes, ils sont prometteurs, surtout pour les patients âgés moins familiers avec la technologie.
Présentation de Riccardo Bonazzi
Titre: « Éthique des gérontechnologies. Deux mises à jour »
Résumé : Le projet vise à évaluer si les recommandations éthiques actuelles pour l'utilisation des gérontechnologies intègrent adéquatement les principes de l'éthique numérique et de l'IA. Il comprenait trois volets : une analyse critique de la littérature existante, des focus-groups pour explorer les pratiques de développement des gérontechnologies en Valais, et l'élaboration d'un projet futur basé sur ces analyses. Un état des lieux, réalisé en partenariat avec Pauline Melly, sera présenté lors d'un colloque international.
Présentation de Jean-Gabriel Piguet