Under the motto "Fit and healthy through bits and bytes", the state government organized its fully booked annual digital@bw festival in Tuttlingen on July 19. 500 visitors were able to discover the potential of digital health applications through lectures, discussions and guided tours in various medical technology companies. We also participated in the festival and invited the visitors to experience our digital solutions for the individualization of medical technology live at our visitor center KLS Martin WORLD. Thomas Strobl, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digitization, was also among the visitors.
"At a very early stage, the district, the city of Tuttlingen and many companies applied to host the health festival in Tuttlingen. We were happy to accept this invitation - after all, Tuttlingen offers an outstanding environment. With its approximately 400 companies and 12,000 jobs, the region is regarded as the world center of medical technology far beyond our national borders. For more than 150 years, people have been working here in the medical field - so medical craftsmanship and medical innovations have a long tradition here. Here you can see that health in the digital age is already being lived in Tuttlingen," emphasized Minister of Digitization Thomas Strobl.
For us, the individualization and digitalization of patient care began as early as 2014 with the first additively manufactured patient-specific implant. Our individual implants in the field of craniomaxillofacial surgery are accompanied by our digital software solutions under the concept of Individual Patient Solutions (IPS®). The presentation of the digital solutions was conducted by Thomas Samyn, Head of Product Management Implant Systems and Sebastian Steppacher, Head of Operational Product Management Implant Systems.
"In order to utilize the potential of individualization, it must be combined with the possibilities of digitization. The digitized system solution makes all the difference," says Thomas Samyn. Our goal was therefore to digitize and standardize the process of planning orthognathic cases as well as ordering and manufacturing a patient-specific implant, thus making it accessible to more patients. He demonstrated how we implemented this vision using the IPS CaseDesigner®, a software for virtual planning and simulation of orthognathic cases, and the IPS Gate®, a digital communication platform that enables the user to digitally manage the planning and ordering process for a patient-specific implant, just like Amazons ordering platform.
Through the digitized and standardized process, we will be able to sustainably improve the quality of life of 10,000 patients in 2019 alone with custom-made implants. Sebastian Steppacher illustrated this with a real patient case. In order to be able to help even more patients, we are working on expanding our indications and technologies used. According to Thomas Samyn, robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality could also play a role in product development in the future.
Christian Leibinger summed up the health festival as a successful initiative of the state government. He was particularly enthusiastic about being able to exchange ideas with various institutions and individuals on the subject of digitization and its facets. "From controversial ethical topics to highly innovative research projects such as organ printing, all areas were covered. This was innovative, informative and exciting. I’m glad we could be part of this event."