Digital health solutions can help us better address the challenges faced by almost every Western healthcare system – namely treating more and more elderly and chronically ill people, paying for expensive medical innovations, providing medical care to structurally weak rural areas. Digital health solutions enable better and more efficient care and wider access to medical expertise, especially in rural areas. Also, new forms of better care for patients at home can be realized.
– Stated in a report of the German Federal Ministry for Health (Source: https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/e-health-initiative.html#c11939).
However, a major challenge for digital health solutions is still the ability to capture accurate and continuous sets of vital data in everyday life. The vast majority of solutions that empower people to manage their health on their own, are struggling with the issue of how to obtain objective and reliable data from their users. In most cases, due to lack of possibilities, subjective data from the patient or data about their environment is used instead of using objective body data. However, this reduces the relevance of the insights created, which in turn can lead users to abandon this type of digital health solution.
An innovative sensor technology from Munich-based company cosinuss ° (www.cosinuss.com) is tackling this problem. Their in-house sensor technology, called earconnect, enables continuous and high precision monitoring of several vital signs in everyday life. Heart rate, heart rate variability, body temperature, blood pressure changes and soon also oxygen saturation of the blood can be continuously captured with one sensor inside the ear. In addition to these vital parameters, movement patterns and respiratory rate can also be recorded and included in further analyzes. This immense amount of objective data, in conjunction with the subjective data already collected by the respective health app, then enables AI and machine learning algorithms to create in-depth insights into the health of their users. In addition, cosinuss ° itself also provides analyzes based on the recorded vital data, for example on various stress indicators such as physical stress, overall wellbeing, emotional stress and fatigue and also evaluates the vital data individually if required.
cosinuss°’s own digital health solutions include the cosinuss ° One performance tracker for competitive sports, as well as the degree °, an intelligent and continuously measuring fever thermometer for children. Another solution still in the pipeline is OxMotion, a health app for COPD-affected people that motivates their users to exercise regularly and provides them with a safe environment at home to do so. To preserve and improve their rehabilitation successes and quality of life .
Based on high precision and continuous sets of vital data, digital health solutions will gain significantly in relevance and represent a real alternative and relief for the healthcare system.
