Moderator Florian Aigner (AT), Florian Aigner is a physicist, scientist and science author. He works as a science editor at the TU Wien and writes as a freelance journalist for numerous media. Among other things, he has written the Austrian science book of the year 2018.

13:00 – 13:10 Welcome Address – A Medical Perspective on the Promises and Premises of Digital Therapeutics and Rehabilitation, Andrea Kdolsky (AT), Medical Doctor, Head of Department of Health, St. Pölten UAS,  Health-IT Consultant, former Austrian Federal Minister for Health

13:10 – 13:35 Keynote – The Establishment of a New Treatment Modality: Germany’s Experience With Prescription Digital Therapeutics (PDTx or “DiGA”) As a Blueprint for Other Healthcare Systems
Marius Mainz (DE), Strategy and Growth Manager at HelloBetter, Visiting Researcher at Stanford Center for Digital Health

With the 2019 Digital Healthcare Act (DVG), Germany created a globally unique reimbursement landscape for digital therapeutics. Since October 2020, doctors and therapists can prescribe approved digital therapeutics (DiGAs) to the 73 million citizens insured with a statutory health insurer that reimburses their use. Starting as a university spinoff, HelloBetter has now the most DiGA-approved therapy courses in Germany and is one of the leading providers of digital therapeutics for mental health, globally. The keynote focuses on the value of digital therapeutics, the learnings from the DiGA landscape so far, HelloBetter’s experience with pursuing reimbursement as a business model for a digital health solution, and what other European countries can learn from the German experience.

13:35 – 13:50 Educating the Digital Rehabilitation Professional of the Future
Kaisa Lälla (FI) Senior Lecturer, ERASMUS+ DIRENE Project Manager Institute of Rehabilitation, Jamk University of Applied Sciences & Patricia Renner (AT), Junior Researcher, Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research St. Pölten UAS, Inmaculada Riquelme Agulló (ESP), Department of Nursing and Physiotherapy, Universitat de les Illes Balears 

Based on extensive research of the literature, participative group interviews and questionnaires, this talk will present needed competencies of future rehabilitation service providers and users, as well as didactical strategies on how these may be taught and learnt. Powered by the consortium of the ERASMUS+ project DIRENE.

13:50 – 14:00 Research Innovations in Prosthetics with a Focus on 3D Printing
Tomas Chochole (CZ), Senior Researcher and Head of Interdisciplinary Cooperation, Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen

Presentation of the interim results of the project “research interdisciplinary innovations in prosthetics with a focus on 3D printing” of a prosthetic arm. Sharing of experiences of the work of interdisciplinary research team from 2 universities and their industry partners from prosthetic practice. Emphasis on the application of innovative approaches in the fields of healthcare, design and additive technologies.

14:00 – 14:20 Digital Health Students Pitches – Part I 

• MirReha – Smart Mirror for Patients With Parkinson’s Disease
  Katja Prüger, Tobias Doeringer
  + Team: Marlene Hagl, Hahn Svenja, Jana Hebeiß, Nicole König, St Pölten UAS
  “MirReha” is a smart mirror that supports speech therapy for patients with Parkinson’s disease in the home setting. The smart mirror provides exercises that extend the conventional speech therapy. These exercises can be performed in front of the mirror for example in the own bathroom while being instructed by the mirror. “MirReha” can enhance the motivation to perform the exercises and increase the patients’ compliance. The visual and auditive instructions and feedback for the performed tasks can also improve the self-awareness of the own symptoms.
• ACTivate – An Easy-To-Use App to Activate Health Promoting Behaviour in Employees
  Julia Daxenbichler, Major Patrick
  + Team: Ionut-Catalin Mocan, St Pölten UAS
  Progressing digitalization is fundamentally changing our working environment. Work 4.0 stands for networked, digital, and flexible working conditions. Above all, the flexibilization of work location and working hours also leads to growing challenges in maintaining the health and well-being of employees, but also in organizing a company’s structure. This flexibilization makes it more complex to maintain social interactions with co-workers and it also means that occupational health management measures can no longer be carried out in the usual way.
  ACTivate is an easy-to-use matchmaking tool for workplace health promotion to improve employees’ health and well-being. It supports employees in designing health-promoting measures themselves and using them adapted to flexible working conditions. ACTivate is an app for connecting people through activities and creating a health culture in your organization.
• WAROMA – A New Waiting Room Management
  Stefanie Pirzl, Dominik Edl
  + Team: Bernhard Fleck, Walter Landauer, Thomas Plöchl, St Pölten UAS
  Sitting in the waiting room of a doctor´s office or clinic is a shared experience across nearly all humankind. Most people, regardless of where and how they live, have been in this situation at least once in their lives. For patients, hospital waiting rooms are more important than health professionals or hospital management might recognize. Often, waiting rooms are the first contact point for patients when visiting a clinic. Especially outpatients spend the major part of their stay inside a waiting room. On the other hand, waiting rooms play a significant role for health professionals in managing patient flow, acting as the main buffer in the treatment routine.
  In addition, the emotional component of waiting room attendance is of great importance. When in need of medical help, anxiety, and restlessness build up easily. Managing this emotional component again strains health professionals’ capacities to keep up an effective workflow.
  The goal of this project is to find a digital waiting room management system that can tackle these challenges and improve the waiting room experience for patients as well as improve workflow from a management perspective.

14:20 – 14:50 30-min Coffee & Networking Break

14:50 – 15:10 Design and Usage of Exoskeletons in Healthcare
Yuvesh Chandra Aubeeluck (DE) Associate Researcher DIT – Deggendorf Institute of Technology, Technologie Campus Cham

Exoskeletons play a vital role in rehabilitation of patients with disabilities. With the evolution of actuator and sensor technology, as well as developments in Human Machine Interaction, there has been some improvement in the level of acceptance of exoskeletons. Besides, Additive Manufacturing contributes to a greater extent to the form, fit and function of these devices. With the ForCEs project from Deggendorf Institute of Technology, a prototype was developed which matches with the anatomy and biomechanics of the human lower limbs, with a focus on the knee joint. The goal is to enhance the comfortability and intuitiveness when it comes to wearing and using lower-limb exoskeletons for rehabilitation. In this talk, the challenges, research and key development points of exoskeletons in healthcare will be explored.

15:10 – 15:25 The Patients’ Rights in Digital Healthcare
Saija Inkeroinen (FI), PhD Student, Department of Nursing Science, University of Turku

Patients’ rights have relevance in ethical and high-quality digital healthcare. This talk provides insight to patients’ information- and knowledge-related rights and their importance in the digital healthcare.

15:25 – 16:00 Digital Health Students Pitches – Part II

• SleepyHead – Improving Well-Being and Mental Health by Targeting Sleep in Young Adults With a Digital Gamified Solution
  Michaela Hüfken, Jung Luciano
  + Team: Thomas Barron, Adriana Jukic, Iva Kopic, Sandra Seda, St Pölten UAS
  Empathetic, educational, and empowering.
  That’s SleepyHead. From the melting pot of behavioral change theory, science-backed sleep therapy, and gamification, SleepyHead delivers the ultimate digital sleep solution. In this session, you’ll get to learn, explore and dive deep into the rewarding world of gamified sleep education. Simply put, anyone interested in sleeping better should attend, especially those looking to build digital therapeutics and well-being solutions. Don’t you want to be a SleepyHead?
• Applications of inertial sensors in the training of fall-prevention in the elderly
  Liza Shchasnovich, Dept. of Medical Engineering, UAS Upper Austria
  Inertial sensors are reasonably affordable, and can be used to make health-related training more interactive and efficient. Here we show the challenges and opportunities that arise in a practical application which is becoming more and more important in our aging society: fall prevention.
• WEscape – An Immersive Educational Video Game to Strengthen Interprofessional Relationships
  Sophie Kutschi, Mona Azz
  + Team: Merry Bakuns, Sonia Markose, Victoria Pichler, Thomas Tippl, St Pölten UAS
  To ensure patient safety and care, interprofessional cooperation between health professionals is a must. However, often students of different health majors don’t get in touch with each other. Therefore, they are unsure how to act efficiently as a team once they’re in their respective work environments. This leads to a significant reduction in patient safety and the all-around quality of care. Our team has been working on a solution that shall captivate students’ minds. Our escape room-based computer game challenges each player to team up with other players of different professions, solving puzzles and therefore strengthening knowledge as well as soft skills such as communication and teamwork. Let’s learn and work together!

16:00 – Open Networking