Exciting Startup Session at the Digital Health Lab Day 2021

Health-Trends co-hosted the Startup Pitching Session at the ZHAW Digital Health Lab Day mid of September. A total of eight startups participated in the pitching session, with Resmonics and TOM Medications taking the top prizes in the jury and public voting. Our team was on-site and has summarized a few impressions for you.

The third Digital Health Lab Day at ZHAW took place this year on September 16, 2021. Around 170 participants from universities and industry discussed the latest trends and solutions in the field of digital health. Another 150 health professionals, developers, managers, practitioners and researchers followed the keynotes and start-up pitches online.

Startup pitching session with two winners

Part of the program was also a startup pitching session, for which a total of around 40 digital health startups applied. A final total of eight startups were selected by the organizers for an on-site pitching session. They were allowed to present their business model in front of a large audience in the main hall. After the pitches, a public voting as well as a jury voting, consisting of Markus Wirz and Chris Russ from ZHAW and Matthias Mettler from Health-Trends, took place.

The first prize in the public vote went to TOM Medications, while Resmonics won the race in the jury vote. The two winners received attractive prizes from Health-Trends. The representative of TOM, Sven Beichler, received the recently published Swiss Digital Health VC Report worth CHF 99 from Health-Trends, while Peter Tinschert of Resmonics received a social media package from Health-Trends. Part of this package is also to report about Resmonics here in this blog post.

Resmonics: Shifting the paradigm in respiratory disease management

Resmonics is an award-winning spin-off from ETH Zurich, one of the world’s top 10 universities. It has been founded by Dr. Peter Tinschert (CEO) and Dr. Iris Shih (CTO). Before founding Resmonics, both founders worked together in the same research lab at ETH Zürich and University of St. Gallen on the research behind Resmonics. 

The Resmonics team has received multiple recognitions, among others it is a Venture Leader Mobile 2021 (part of the Swiss Startup National Team representing Switzerland at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona) and a winner of all three stages of the competitive Venture Kick program. 

Early warning system for patients with a chronic respiratory disease as key mission

Resmonics targets the chronic and acute respiratory disease market. More than 500 million people globally suffering from chronic respiratory diseases and 20 billion respiratory tract infections occur every year. Based on the avoidable healthcare expenditures for patients suffering from asthma and COPD alone , it is estimated that healthcare systems in the EU and US could save CHF 10 billion each year due to better disease monitoring. In comparison to other digital health fields, the respiratory care market lags behind in adopting digital health, so experts expect a strong market growth in the next years. 

Resmonics is tapping into this market by developing the world’s most convenient symptom detection and early warning system for patients with respiratory diseases. Resmonics’ CE-certified software as a medical device “ResGuard Med” enables companies with health apps to offer easy and convenient respiratory symptom monitoring to their end users to increase engagement and deliver better therapy outcomes. For companies without an own health app, a white-label app is available for licensing.

AI-based respiratory symptom detection

To achieve high quality of life and good clinical outcomes, patients with diseases like asthma and COPD need to monitor their symptoms. Today’s health apps, however, have to rely on subjective questionnaires or on dedicated devices to measure lung functions. Both functions are not used regularly because they are too burdensome for end users to be used daily. Resmonics’ solution, which companies can integrate into their apps, automatically detects and analyses symptoms. 

This technology works as follows: First, signals from the smartphone’s microphone are processed on-device. To preserve a patient’s privacy, no data needs to be uploaded. Second, artificial intelligence (AI) extracts symptoms out of the acoustic data. The AI is based on a novel architecture, which was developed specifically for the detection of respiratory symptoms like nocturnal cough. Third, Resmonics has developed a proprietary scoring algorithm that puts patients after each night into one of three zones (green: “no action needed”, yellow: “caution advised”, red: “action advised”). This algorithm is based on real-world data from patients. 

Resmonics’ software is currently only available for smartphones, which has the potential to attract new users who wouldn’t use today’s health apps because they don’t see a clear value in comparison to traditional disease management methods. In this way, Resmonics’ customers can offer a more attractive value proposition that is compatible with a patient’s everyday life.

Go-Lives in Switzerland and Finland will take place soon

Resmonics is currently working on the first update to its medical product, which will become available in Q4/2021. For this new version, the performance and robustness of the AI have been further improved. 

ResGuard Med is a B2B toolkit for companies that target patients with respiratory diseases through their digital therapeutics, device and/or drug companion apps, digital health platforms, or telemedicine services. Resmonics’ will enter the European market in the next months: The solution will go-live with first customers in Finland at the end of October 2021 and in Switzerland in December 2021.

Get in touch

If you’re interested to learn more about Resmonics or their product, get in contact with the team through their website (www.resmonics.ai) or directly via e-mail: contact@resmonics.ai.