Even though the iDoc24 team is now headquartered in San Francisco (we are creators of the First Derm- dermatology app), we are excited to lead the digital health revolution in other parts on the world. iDoc24/First Derm’s founder and CEO, Dr. Alexander Börve has recently been elected as a mobile health advisor to a research consortium of Finland, the Center for Health & Technology (CHT for short). Don’t worry, he is still First Derm’s CEO and based here in San Francisco, but expect to see more of him on the digital health circuit in Northern Europe in 2015.
CHT’s founding partners
What exactly is CHT? CHT is an innovation center based in Finland that represents the interests of university research, industry, and primary healthcare providers in Finland & Scandinavia. In their own words:
“CHT combines the best ideas, people and resources from different industries and science fields (ICT, bio- and health technologies) for co-creation of next-generation health technologies, appliances and services. CHT´s central role is to prepare and coordinate projects and to recognize the funding possibilities which create conditions for co-operation.”
A primary initiative of the CHT consortium is to innovate in digital health. They strive to change healthcare’s focus from a “reactive illness centered model to a citizen centered proactive service model.” Their guiding philosophy is to “increase the end-user perspective in connected health service design”.
In other words CHT aims to empower individuals to control their own healthcare services and data. First Derm’s focus on direct-to-consumer preventative medicine app fits with CHT’s vision for a digital health future.
As an advisor, Dr. Börve will be in close contact with this CHT, sharing the mHealth insights that First Derm team has learned in Silicon Valley and spreading them to Finland & Scandinavia. Dr. Börve adds:
“I think this is a great opportunity to combine the latest in digital health technology with academic research. We still are not certain if digital health is actually cost effective. Going forward it will be very important to understand if a large amount of healthcare data generated by digital health increases or decreases healthcare costs, and if so, to what extent? I hope this consortium will give the digital health community insights into this question. Finland is the perfect country to be the testing ground: Sound healthcare system, relatively small and tech-savvy population, as well as the birth place of the cellular phone”.
