Heart disease is one of the major concerns in the world today. People in the busy life, usually give less importance to their health which eventually leads to the health disorders. One of the most common and dangerous examples is cardiovascular disease (CVD). The increasing amount of CVD patients is an alarming situation for the world. Some risk factors for heart disease cannot be controlled, but the risk can be reduced with the proper care of our body.
However, it is not possible always to reach out to the hospital for body checkup. Sometimes a medical consultation can be enough to be aware of the health conditions, especially in case of primary and secondary CVD. For this type of consultation, iATROS offers a great platform that assists patients to link up with the doctors. iATROS accompany people with CVD and connect them with the cardiologists anytime and anywhere in the world.
In an interview with Insights Care, Professor Dr Alexander Leber, the Founder of iATROS sheds light on the journey of his company, its mission, and how a virtual care is helping the heart patients to monitor their health.
Below are the glimpses of the interview:
Please brief our audience about iATROS, its values, mission, and the aspects that make it a global healthcare brand.
iATROS is designated to deliver innovative, evidence based, high quality care and to close obvious gaps in current health care systems worldwide. Our mission is to improve and facilitate the lives of millions of patients with heart diseases and to save costs for the system at the same time in any health care system worldwide.
Tell us more about your offerings and the aspects that make iATROS different from its competitors.
iATROS is the first Digital Heart Center in Europe. We are not only an App developer! On our vertically integrated platform, we offer the whole spectrum of virtual cardiovascular care. From teleconsultations with our cardiologists to digital health programs and continuous wearable and implant based telemonitoring, we design specific personalized solutions that are prescribed and used by physicians for their patients. We collaborate with renowned world leading institutions to create medical and socioeconomic scientific evidence that will guarantee us reimbursement from statutory health insurance systems on the major markets.
What is your opinion on the impact of the current pandemic on the global healthcare sector, and what challenges did you face during the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns?
The current pandemic demasked huge problems in the healthcare systems. Unequal distribution and access and the lack of digitization became obvious for everybody. It seems that solutions for these problems will now receive high priority.
With constant development in technologies, in your opinion, what could be the future of the healthcare industry, and how are you planning to adapt to that future?
Health Care Systems worldwide are facing huge problems. All problems combined will exponentially increase the already limited and unequal access to care for the population. The problem solver is technology, that will enable us to scale healthcare in a much higher degree. With iATROS, we use best in class wearable sensor technology, we develop AI based alerting and care algorithms and in future we scale the care capacity of cardiologists and nurses by a triple digit factor combining these innovations with telemedicine.
As an established leader, what would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs and professionals aspiring to venture into the healthcare space?
For me as a physician and scientist, digital health solutions should have the ultimate goal to prevent and improve diseases and their complications and that needs to be proven by evidence. Such evidence will warrant renumeration and make business models scalable and sustainable. I also see huge potential of solutions that facilitate processes from diagnosis over administration to treatment that will help to make healthcare more efficient and affordable even in the future.
How do you envision scaling iATROS’ operations and offerings in 2022?
First, we will generate evidence from our studies and pilots that will boost our efforts to increase the numbers of contracts with insurance companies and also our partner base within the healthcare provider scene.
About the Leader
Alexander Leber is an internationally recognized cardiologist. Over the past 25 years, he significantly contributed to improve diagnostics (especially in the field of cardiac CT and MRI), therapy, and telemedicine solutions for cardiovascular disease. He has published more than 100 scientific abstracts and papers and is appointed as Professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Out of his clinical perspective and an obvious lack of solutions to continuously manage patients, he founded iATROS 2019 together with Patrick Palacin and Dr.Georges von Degenfeld.
