The founding team met for the first time in summer 2023 and discussed the founding theses of HippocrAItes. Although healthcare professionals do their jobs well, the data is not available for them when it matters the most - during patient encounters. Later we found numbers to support our claim: according to World Economic Forum study from 2019, a whopping 97% of data produced in Hospitals goes unused. To me, it seems that many people have first-hand experience in this topic, highlighting the commonness of the issue.
Based on the initial discussions, we devoted ourselves to searching for better ways to gather, use and present health data which lies (mostly unused) in Electronic Health Records and national repositories. From the very beginning, we had the idea of combining the data from healthcare service providers with personal measurements stored at Personal Health Records (for example in smartwatches and smartrings) to build a complete personal digital twin of an individual for healthcare purposes. We recognized early on that the key to revolutionizing the use of data was the way we present the data to the healthcare professionals. A simple concept that is often forgotten.
According to another research, 45% of physicians time is spent using Electronic Health Records. We started working closely with physicians to understand their needs and to build a user interface and data views that would support their workflow as well as possible. According to our initial user study, we could save up to 10 minutes of physician’s time per patient encounter.
During 2024, we have been working tirelessly to conceptualize our vision of offering a platform that aggregates health data from multiple sources and combines it with medical analysis tools. Now we know that the data is available, as long as we stay compliant with industry regulations. We have learned that the soon-to-come European Health Data Space (EHDS) will pave the way forward for companies like us to take the full advantage of health data from multiple sources and embrace the EHDS key principles such as interoperability and empowerment of the individuals.
The year 2025 will bring lots of discussion as EHDS implementation in EU closes in. Many things will change and healthcare service providers will need to adapt, for example in how they provide data to individuals and how they ensure interoperability with external systems. Interoperability standards like HL7 FHIR will help, but the challenge of data conversion from old data models to FHIR prevails. I see the change as a positive thing, laying groundwork for better data usage in healthcare.
At the same time, we are witnessing a major development phase, where AI powered medical decisions support and other advanced medical analysis softwares are entering the market. I believe HippocrAItes platform is a missing center piece of the puzzle. To be useful, AI and other analytical tools need comprehensive data sets of individual’s health, and HippocrAItes, as a platform aggregating health data to a single repository, can feed the data in.
For HippocrAItes, the year 2025 will be the year of market entry. We will finalize the first version of our platform early in 2025, enabling us to showcase our capabilities and start piloting to assess the true impact we can make in the healthcare sector. I am proud of what our team has achieved so far and look forward to proving our capabilities to both healthcare professionals and individuals seeking more personalized healthcare.
Happy holidays and a wonderful New Year!
- Juuso
Juuso Haavisto is the co-founder and CEO of HippocrAItes. His previous experience ranges from startups to Fortune 500 companies, offering a solid package of business development, technology, and cyber security expertise.