Lausanne / Zurich 7th October 2021 The Swiss-based pioneers in healthcare innovation, Sleepiz which provides a Medical Grade Respiration Monitor and Pryv, the health data, privacy and consent management solution provider announced today a strategic collaboration to foster hospital remote monitoring adoption at ease.

Covid-19 crisis put the spotlight on the digital roadmap of any hospital institution. The use of digital tools for improving outpatient care is growing faster than ever. At the rise of the expected 4th Covid-19 wave the healthcare systems are exponentially investing in adopting telehealth solutions and providing remote care as a secure and trusted alternative of traditional care. Reasons for telehealth investments by hospitals are multiple. Telehealth solutions allow hospitals to ease the burden on nurses and doctors while being able to cater to more patients and even focusing on the patients most in need through better triage. Although there are already a number of remote care technologies, adoption for hospitals remains challenging as most of them are not approved medical devices, lack privacy compliance and thus cannot be integrated in the heavily regulated processes the healthcare system has put in place.

To address this challenge and ensure a smooth workflow for physicians, caregivers and patients Sleepiz, the only medical grade (CE approved) contactless monitor and Pryv, a Swiss leader in privacy and patient data management solution provider, join efforts to bring a solution which not only meet the requirements of interoperability, easy and timely integration with the existing EHR, but delivers a ready-to-be-used platform for establishing trustful online communication with the patient. Sleepiz is the first healthcare company in Switzerland with ISO 277701 and ISO 27001 with certification of their system for data privacy and information security.

Pryv.io is a privacy-centric middleware, used as a robust data management foundation to develop risk-controlled mHealth, eHealth, and InsurTech applications with confidence and in respect to IT and regulatory requirements. The solution is used to manage large and diverse streams of data coming from external platforms, wearable devices, EHR/EMR and health record systems.

This partnership will help hospitals move towards digitizing their infrastructure and integrating homecare monitoring seamlessly into their ecosystem.

About Sleepiz:

Sleepiz AG (Ltd.) is a Zürich based startup with a mission to provide patient-centric disease management through seamless integration of contactless monitoring into people’s homes. Sleepiz leverages the power of sleep insights with a device that is simply placed next to the bed. The device operates in a non-contact fashion and measures movements originating from heart contractions and breathing patterns, as well as body motions with medical grade accuracy.

While currently focusing on respiratory illnesses, Sleepiz aims to improve people’s lives by creating the future of healthcare. By making use of wireless millimeter wave technology, sensor fusion and artificial intelligence, in the future Sleepiz will not only be able to diagnose sleep disorders but also perform long-term monitoring. Thereby, the progression of chronic diseases will be monitored to allow faster intervention and better treatment.

Sleepiz is touching lives without touching.

www.sleepiz.com

About Pryv

Pryv provides privacy software for data-driven healthcare innovation and patient’s data governance. Our purpose-built backend helps organizations manage personal and health data from creation to use, sharing and disposal. We accelerate time to market, cut IT development costs and speed up connectivity to all data sources. Pryv addresses the enhanced citizen’s right under GDPR and turns privacy compliance into a competitive advantage. The solution is available in open-source and under licensing agreement. For more information, please visit

pryv.gihub.io/www

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2451/paper-08.pdf

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Unify Health aims to be an app that is always accessible, no matter whether it is night or day that provides cancer patients a toolkit of tailored advice and information with the ability to locate community pharmacists with training on the management of cancer symptoms. Confidentiality is central to development of trust between patient and healthcare professionals. Ensuring privacy can help promote more effective communication and promote public confidence in the platform.

“The Pryv solution allowed us to underpin our application with a secure and compliant platform for data storage bringing the application to market more rapidly than had that element been developed bespoke. Regulatory compliance in terms of personal data was at the heart of what we were trying to achieve here. All personal data collected within the app is managed via the Pryv.io patient data governance software and no patient data leaves the relevant territories (i.e. UK patient data stays in the UK, EU patient data stays in the EU). Pryv comes with must-have consent and auditing tools to keep the platform compliant with existing and forthcoming regulations.Their team were always on hand to support us through the onboarding and implementation stages of the project.” said Alex Williams, Head of Digital at Swordfish Advertising.

About Unify Health: Unify Health has been devised by experts from the healthcare industry working with hospitals,
community pharmacists, clinicians, nurses, patient groups and charities to make support and advice more readily available to cancer patients. It provides a toolkit of tailored advice and information, plus a map to connect them with nearby local community pharmacists. Unify Health is available on both the Android and Apple app stores.

Pryv SA (Switzerland): Pryv makes essential software for personal and health data-driven innovation. Our purpose-built middleware helps organizations manage personal data from creation to use, sharing and disposal. We accelerate time to market, cut IT development costs and speed up connectivity to all data sources. Pryv addresses the enhanced citizen’s right under GDPR and turns privacy compliance into a competitive advantage. For more information, please visit pryv.gihub.io/www

Swordfish Advertising: Swordfish Advertising is a fully integrated pharmaceutical and veterinary healthcare marketing and communications agency. Swordfish has undertaken all the development work of the Unify Health app.

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The strong need for digital solutions to collect real-world data from patients motivated Magnes’ team to deliver on a novel solution for monitoring patients. Magnes’ solution will allow personalized medication and treatments based on real-world data in addition to enabling healthcare professionals to monitor patients remotely at ease. Embedding the privacy-by-design Pryv.io solution, Magnes combines user-friendly operation -literally, patients just wear the shoes- and accurate gait data collection anywhere with confidence.

Neuro-degenerative diseases are becoming a burden for the healthcare systems with the aging population worldwide. Today most available medications and treatments have limited success in stopping disease progression and enabling full recovery for neuro-degenerative diseases. Personalization of medication and its dosage is extremely important for therapies to work effectively.  Reliable, unbiased data collection from patients in their day-to-day environment is crucial in disease management.

Today clinicians rely on self-reports to gain insight into what a person is doing in daily life. The assumption that patients’ activity at the clinic is comparable to the at-home activity may not be realistic. The current high-end solutions in the market for analyzing gait are complex systems installed in clinics (camera-based systems, pressure sensitive walkways) that take a long time for patient preparation and for analyzing data. Even if they offer a good assessment of the patient, they are not practical for continuous monitoring of patients. Furthermore, being in a laboratory setting and under the observation of clinicians biases patients and the gait parameters can diverge from the typical ones. So far, no commercial system has been designed for monitoring the progress of patients, especially at home.

“The well-known “White Coat Syndrome” that makes your blood pressure higher in front of a doctor applies to a wide range of measurements. With Magnes’ solution, patients can not only enjoy the comfort of their home, but also provide accurate and genuine health data.” says Pierre-Mikael Legris, CEO at Pryv SA

Most of the existing wearable devices collecting activity data or gait data from individuals work well on healthy individuals but they fail to detect clinically relevant gait parameters from patients of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s patients, who have atypical gait.

“Pryv allowed us to build a platform within days, which is transparent and compatible with all data privacy regulations. Our platform gives patients full control over their data while complying with GDPR and medical data management regulations. It gives both our clinical partners and patients confidence to use our solution without any hesitation. With its various data integration possibilities, Pryv software will allow us to easily scale up our business in different fields and geographies.” Magnes CEO Dr. Olgac Ergeneman says.

Using sensors embedded in sneaker-like shoes and proprietary AI empowered algorithms allow Magnes to collect objective clinical-grade data during daily activities. Magnes has validated their solution with gold standard measurement systems and demonstrated the clinical usage at leading neurological clinics. Some of the algorithms run on the shoes to enable real-time processing for personalized therapy and can provide immediate haptic stimulation to the patient to improve patients’ mobility and quality of life. Magnes’ solution is first targeted at patients of neurological and movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia, and incomplete spinal cord injury.

Unique in its offering, Magnes offers a continuous monitoring solution for patients to collect data during their daily life activities without requiring patient preparation and doctor’s visit. It has the potential to change patients’ life quality by improving their mobility with the AI-powered haptic feedback technology.

About Magnes:  Magnes AG is a technology spinoff from the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab of ETH Zurich. Magnes developed a continuous monitoring solution for patients of neurological disorders. Magnes solution enables collection of real-world data from patients. Magnes developed AI-powered algorithms to provide personalized gait analysis and it can provide immediate haptic feedback to patients for improving their mobility. For more information, please visit www.magnes.ch

About Pryv: Pryv provides privacy software for data-driven healthcare innovation and patient’s data governance. Our purpose-built backend helps organizations manage personal data from creation to use, sharing and disposal. We accelerate time to market, cut IT development costs and speed up connectivity to all data sources. Pryv addresses the enhanced citizen’s right under GDPR and turns privacy compliance into a competitive advantage. The solution is available in open-source and under licensing agreement. For more information, please visit pryv.gihub.io/www

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From reactive to proactive heart health: Inspired by consumer wearable devices, RealWorld4Clinic, set about creating a wearable that could collect data suitable for drug approval trials and guide interventions in heart failure management.

Heart failure is responsible for five per cent of emergency hospital stays and two per cent of national health expenditure within Europe. Furthermore, COVID-19 pandemic has represented a clinical challenge in patients with heart failure. It’s widely accepted that real-world data is vital for diagnosing heart failure early. Yet, clinical research and heart failure management still buy in data, limiting the predictive power of clinical trials.

By diagnosing heart failure aggravation from 30 days before an emergency event occurs, RealWorld4Clinic will halve the number of days patients spend in a hospital, while reducing hospital costs.

RealWorld4Clinic will achieve its ambitions through the market launch of SentinHealth‘s MyHeartSentinel – a coin-sized medical device anchored to the fundus of the stomach in immediate proximity to the heart and the lungs or, optionally, implanted subcutaneously in the chest area.  Equipped with multiple sensors MyHeartSentinel shall acquire a wide array of real-world cardio-respiratory health data. Via SentinHealth’s gateway and regulated through Pryv eHealth data privacy-preserving patient’s data management backend will be deployed on a cloud infrastructure. 

In addition to co-creating the wearable MyHeartSentinel product, EIT Health will help resolve the ethical, legal and social issues involved with buying and using AI to maximise heart health data. 

In clinical research, AI-powered analytics shall reveal information on the real-world safety and tolerability of an investigational medicinal product or device. This is forecasted to add value to the decision making of pharma on the continuation of its clinical development. In outpatient cardiology, AI-powered analytics shall reveal real-world information on the pre-symptomatic progression of heart failure. This is forecasted to prevent heart failure decompensation while reducing the number of outpatient visits and days spent in the hospital.

About RealWorld4Clinic: RealWorld4Clinic is a new pan-European project aiming at bringing real-world data to pivotal clinical research and outpatient cardiology care. The EU-funded project is part of the innovation portfolio curated by the EIT Health knowledge and innovation community. 

MyHeartSentinel is just the beginning. Supported by EIT Health, the RealWorld4Clinic consortium is committed to transforming the standard of care from reactive to proactive heart health management. By diagnosing heart failure aggravation from 30 days before an emergency event occurs, RealWorld4Clinic will halve the number of days patients spend in a hospital, while reducing hospital costs.

RealWorld4Clinic is part of the innovation project portfolio curated by EIT Health. EIT Health is funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union

https://eithealth.eu/project/realworld4clinic/

About Pryv: Pryv developed personal and health data lifecycle middleware (e-Health backend) for empowering developers create compliant and scalable health data-driven products. Our purpose-built middleware helps organizations manage personal and patients data from creation to use, sharing and disposal. We accelerate time to market, cut IT development costs and speed up connectivity to all data sources. Pryv addresses the enhanced citizen’s right under GDPR and turns privacy compliance into a competitive advantage. For more information, please visit pryv.gihub.io/www

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EREBOTS enable the configuration and deployment of personalized chatbots to support users in multi-topic and multi-campaign behavioral change programs with full respect to data privacy. Conversational agents coaching people fighting chronic diseases, addictions, and other health issues, leading to decreased life quality are among EREBOTS applications. 

Healthcare and eHealth systems are facing the strain of a significant demand for user (patient) empowerment—implying the need for new logics, architectures, dynamics, and interfaces 

Siri, Alexa and Cortana are among the best known intelligent systems that  have the ability to assist humans through multimodal interactions, including text, buttons, vocal, video, and gesture-based communication. Although such virtual assistants heavily rely on vocal interactions, sometimes more discrete and asynchronous chat-like communications are still preferred. Chatbots are an example of intelligent systems relying on interactions mostly menu/text-based. Anywhere/anytime availability, immediate response, confidentiality, social acceptance, and massive scalability are among the factors contributing to the increasing and an effective adoption of chatbots in a wide range of domains, particularly for motivational such as for social network campaigns and support, customer management, eHealth and assisted-living scenarios. In the healthcare domain, chatbots leveraging on tailored support and social aspects can be of great support to foster behavioural change, monitoring of chronic health conditions and primary care to name a few. 

However, most of the modern chatbots rely on state machines (implementing conversational rules) and one-fits-all approaches, neglecting personalization, data-stream privacy management, multi-topic management/interconnection, and multimodal interactions. This leads to significant limitations in inadequate personalization, lack of real-time monitoring, reporting and customization for medical personnel, lack of mechanisms to integrate communities of chatbots, limited knowledge sharing capabilities, and the impossibility of seamlessly deploying multi-domain campaigns within the same framework.  These limitations are linked to the predominantly rigid architectures proposed in most existing approaches. Most chatbot solutions rely on monolithic and centralized data management strategies, making it hard to comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR, Swiss DPA. The sensitive nature of data collected through chatbot interactions makes it necessary to shift the control of personal data towards the users themselves, empowering them in the process.  EREBOTS uses an instance of Pryv to persist the user’s chat history and all personal data. Employing Pryv, users gain exclusive control of their data, thus being able to revoke the consent at any point, disabling EREBOT access to it, and, if necessary, fully removing any stored piece of information.

Meet EREBOTS:

• Multi-scenario agent-based chatbot framework: In EREBOTS, it is possible to combine several context-dependent behaviors that can be encapsulated in dedicated story lines, which can be modeled as isolated or interconnected scenarios. These behaviors are enacted by a network of user agents, doctor agents, and orchestrated through gateway agents.
• User personalization: User agents build a model of the user profile, his/her preferences, history, goals, and aggregated information. With this model, the user agents are able to tailor behaviors and provide a personalized experience.
• Healthcare personnel control and monitoring: Medical doctors and healthcare providers have the possibility of defining possible goals, configure self-assessment interactions, or customize the types of activities proposed to patients/participants. Moreover, they can monitor users’ profiles with detailed analytics describing their behaviors and aggregated trends.
• Privacy and ethics compliance: In EREBOTS, all the sensitive/personal information are solely under the control of the user, who can make any decisions concerning storage and sharing of her information. Through the Pryv.io platform integrated into EREBOTS, users may configure fine-grained access control or even entirely remove their data if they decide so.
• Multi-campaign implementation and testing: EREBOTS has been employed and tested in scenarios such as smoking cessation and balance enhancement exercises (physical rehabilitation) for older adults during social confinement (due to COVID-19 restrictions).

EREBOTS proves that assistive agents can interact with each other in the back-end: 

• opening the door to knowledge sharing for campaign-related investigations

• Allowing medical personnel to access real-time aggregated and personal information of the individuals participating in a given campaign
• Enabling multimodel knowledge representation which can be enabled for simultaneous campaign executions, 
• Fine-tuning data-/action-driven personalization strategies
• Allowing users to be monitored via direct feedback collection
• (Re)defining online therapies and campaigns story lines
• By using the the data schema defined as Pryv streams typically serialized in JSON and possibly exposed using semantically rich representations (e.g., HL7 FHIR—ongoing work in EREBOTS); 
• Proposing (pro)active mechanisms that  can be tailored to a specific case study
• Storing users’ data in a stream-based privacy-compliant system solely managed by the user.

Source: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/10/6/666/htm

About the eHealth unit of the Institute Information Systems HES-SO Valais-Wallis

The eHealth unit is part of the Institute of Information Systems of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO). Based in Sierre (Valais, Switzerland), the eHealth unit undertakes applied research in close collaboration with public or private companies and institutions. It has gained solid experience with complex interdisciplinary projects related to digital health, at national and international levels. The eHealth unit has for instance invested many research efforts in the development of sensor-based mHealth applications for chronic diseases (e.g. diabetes type 1 and 2). Furthermore, the unit has developed expertise in health record data interchange and the usage of standards (HL7, FHIR), as well as the development of privacy and anonymity preserving algorithms for health data exchange (Nano-Tera.ch ISyPeM2 project). It is also working on blockchain-based healthcare data management and on a prototype of a framework for managing and sharing EMR data for cancer patient care. It is investing many efforts in personalized health support, such as for coaching in physiotherapy, or smoking cessation programs run on social networks with chatbot supports.

About Pryv

Pryv makes essential software for data-driven healthcare innovation. Our purpose-built middleware helps organizations manage personal data from creation to use, sharing and disposal. We accelerate time to market, cut IT development costs and speed up connectivity to all data sources. Pryv addresses the enhanced citizen’s right under GDPR and turns privacy compliance into a competitive advantage. For more information: https://pryv.github.io/www

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Rheumatic conditions are a problem that affects a great percentage of the world’s population, with a particular incidence in the elderly, since these diseases tend to increase with age. The time gap between medical appointments makes it difficult to monitor patients’ symptoms and experiences. COTIDIANA supports data collection at home, in a more holistic and efficient approach, through self-report by the patient (signs, symptoms, quality of life), and also by passive sensing which enable the analysis of information such as manual dexterity, gait, physical activity level and sociability patterns (indicative of well-being and mental health).  

The COTIDIANA solution will include a smartphone app for patients and a web portal, that will be accessed by health professionals and that will display data since the previous visit to the clinician. Data collection will contribute to people’s medical care and drug trials. For the platform development, 130 people will be included in 3 clinical trials, which are planned for 2022 in Austria and in Portugal. 

Pryv.io eHealth backend is used for the patient consent, the data collection, structure, sharing and storage, the integration with eCRF form and other clinical and hospital systems, as well as the foundation on which the COTIDIANA mobile and web-interfaces will be developed. The privacy-by-design and distributed data storage, alongside with the consent management and auditing capabilities of the Pryv.io eHealth backend will allow to achieve full compliance with GDPR, Swiss DPA, the specific ethical, clinical data and data protection regulations within the partnering and clinical institutions in Portugal, Austria and across Europe and will greatly facilitate complying with MDD and SaMD certification process. 

Starting in April 2021, the COTIDIANA is a 28-month project, financed by the AAL programme which involves 6 international partners: Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Definition12 AG, Mag. Andreas Raffeiner GmbH, Medizinische Universität Wien, and Pryv SA.  

The Pryv.io eHealth backend is available in open-source and under licensing agreement.  

https://pryv.github.io/www/open-pryv/ 

https://github.com/pryv/open-pryv.io 

https://pryv.github.io/ 

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The Paradox of TeleMedicine in Pandemia – beyond the buzzword, an (un)expected reality

To speed-up the development of telemedicine solutions, Dreamix, a partner of Pryv, is developing an OEM modular communication tool which is to be offered to software and hardware companies. Developed on the basis of Pryv.io, the solution would enable secure, instant communication and sensitive data transfers, following highest privacy standards and ensuring full control over the provided information.

Privacy-by-design, embedded consent management, easy data integration, guaranteed data safety, allowing patients to remain aware of how their data is handled following the Swiss DPA, GDPR, HIPAA and other health and personal data protection regulations,  this patient-doctor communication layer will greatly simplify and support the development efforts of clinics, software and hardware healthcare providers which would like to offer trustful, secure, digital communication between doctors and patients.

Request demo of the modular OEM telemedicine communication tool for clinics, software and hardware healthcare providers.

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In its first year of operation, the association UniRares has developed a paper version of the PSPR in order to help patients take an active role in their medical care, as they are often the best-placed to know their own disease, for better or worse.

This summary document aims at gathering and structuring all the different medical information that has been built over time, and should be presented to physicians during consultations. It can also serve as a reminder for the patient on the questions that he would want to ask during a medical consultation, and helps the isolated patient to gather on one single document the medical history, the identity card of the patient, the symptoms, the medical journey, the successful or unsuccessful drugs, the analysis results and the positive or rejected diagnoses. The “patient support personal record” can also be a tool for patients to set and prepare questions for the medical specialist in order to set short-term, mid-term and long-term goals together.

When the paper version of the PSPR was finally released in summer 2019, the question of the digital version arose.

From paper to digital:  UniRares, LivingLab and the HES-SO Valais Wallis take the digital PSPR project forward.

As you may have seen in the newspapers, the electronic patient record (EPR) is being led by hospitals from the Swiss Romandie under the name of “CARA”, in particular by HUG and CHUV. CARA is expected to launch and to become publicly available this year. It will greatly facilitate the relationship among health care professionals, and will provide a continuous access to everyone to its medical record. All this in a legal clear framework, and within a validated and common exchange protocol. This is a huge step for us, as patients.

In spring 2020, thanks to a working partnership between LivingLab and the HES-SO Valais Wallis, the digital PSPR project has been taken forward.

Yannick Mermod – a final-year student from the section “Information System”, supervised by Dr. Prof. Michael Ignaz Schumacher and Benjamin Nanchen – Living Lab Manager, has chosen to work on a Web Application for the PSPR as part of his Bachelor thesis, and to make it more extensive than the EPR. More extensive, as the amount of data for patients suffering from rare diseases is more important than for other patients.

A patient suffering from a rare disease needs solutions adapted and designed accordingly to his own needs and specificities. His life is filled with administrative paperwork required by his health condition, over-complicated and absurd insurance pathways and countless medical appointments.

Usability and Privacy-centricity are the key components to  design a complete and up-to-date medical record, easy to be used on a daily use.

UniRares is convinced that the rare disease patient must have a complete and up-to-date medical record to facilitate its daily use. His data must be at the same time secure and easy to share.

As part of his Bachelor work, Yannick has analyzed the needs of UniRares and has selected the platform PrYv (pryv.gihub.io/www) to meet the requirements in terms of data storage. Mr. Pierre-Mikael Legris – PrYv co-founder, has demonstrated a high interest for this project, and has contributed to the project by sharing his knowledge of the platform and helping Yannick in designing the right data model.

The very first Web Application of the “patient support personal record” – UniRares is ready to be launched. 

It is thanks to these enriching encounters and the close collaboration between the different partners of the PSPR that Yannick Bachelor’s work has given rise to the Beta version in web format of the “personal patient assistance file” – UniRares. In order to make it available to its members, the next step will be to obtain support and funding to finance the improvement of the technology, as well as the hosting of the application and associated data, while guaranteeing privacy and confidentiality.

UniRares knows that patients suffering from rare diseases or without diagnoses are the weakest. Hence its wish to develop a mentoring program between UniRares members to set up and run this “patient support personal record”, while benefiting from each other’s experience.

This idea of mutual help is the DNA of the association.

Mélanie Gillard Almeida Oliveira                                    David Pecoraro

Unirares Vice-president                                                     UniRares President

Dr. Michael Ignaz Schumacher

 Professor                               

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Level up: light on the legal and ethical aspects of using gamification in mental mhealth apps

Mental Health has been seen as the “cancer of tomorrow”. The pandemic further strengthened the suppressive force turning this prediction into a reality. As for their part, researchers even show that there is an unprecedented increase in stress, anxiety and depression. And in the blink of an eye, tomorrow suddenly became today. 

In the context of mental illness, there is no “risk group” as it can hit us all – our children, co-workers, family members. The damages and consequences are long-term, life-threatening and life-changing. So, not a surprise, among other digital health applications accelerated during the pandemic, a number of mental health applications got their momentum to deliver on their promise: a click away to mental health and well-being. Is the promise delivered? While there is a robust growth of mental mhealth apps offerings, their usage seems to remain inconsistent.

Do people trust mental mhealth apps? Maybe “not”.

Trust is the very first principle that allows for engaging users in sharing enough data so that they can be given help. Yet today, people may be skeptical to engage with an app that keeps track of their mental health data and rightly so. For these apps to work then, trust needs to be won first. Nevertheless, trust itself isn’t enough – people need to put in the work to get better. This requires consistency and the right amount of motivation to do so.

Do people use mental mhealth apps with consistency? Maybe “not”.

Consistency is key for progress. The problem is: keeping users motivated and consistent while being tied up to their homes, forced into quarantine and limited to zero family reunions or social activities is not a piece of cake. To keep them going, you need them to want to engage with your app, just like they would when choosing to play a video game: because it is fun, not seen as an obligation, and it might even fill them with motivation and a positive mindset… 

So what if winning over mental health could become as entertaining as playing a video game? 

Encouraging consistency in using mental mhealth applications through gamification has become a trend among digital health innovators. 

“Games with purpose”: Embedding gamification into mental health applications

Gamification is used as a tool for influencing behavior modification in many health applications. 

Due to the game elements introduced in the app, users are enticed to be more engaged in their own recovery, which makes it a formidable tool against mental health disorders. When used in this context, it can further help the users develop healthy habits that can reduce stress, anxiety or depression, such as exercising regularly or following treatment instructions.

Video game makers have banded together to promote gaming as a healthy means of physical distancing and social connection amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

One of the reasons it has become so popular in mental mhealth apps is that smartphones are excellent delivery vehicles for gamification in healthcare: easy collection of precious personal data like geolocation, inbuilt accelerometers to monitor activity and external sensors that can capture vital signs such as heart rate and blood pressure are just a few to mention.

Hence, not surprisingly, while the pandemic has inflicted income declines on many industries, video games and digital health are not among them. Nowadays, combining the two might even be the best shape for providing help to the ones who need it the most, “stay at home”-compliant. So is it checkmate? Maybe not. One thing is for sure, embedding gamification in mental mhealth apps does not come that easy.

(spoiler alert: privacy is calling!)

Legal aspects and ethical considerations of using gamification in mental health applications

If mental mhealth apps may feel like a funny game to the users, for the one who designs it, the app is nonetheless a digital therapeutic and personal data collecting tool which needs to comply with a number of regulatory requirements.

For personal data collection, privacy and data protection regulations such as the GDPR, CCPA or any relevant national Data Protection Act (DPA) depending on the business and users locations will have to be addressed. As regards to health data, more specific requirements may have to be added to the list, like the HDS Certification required for health data hosting in France. And if the app is recognized as a medical grade solution within the EU, the new EU MDR might even come into play. On a brighter note, if targeting the german market, you might also consider applying for your app to be prescribed as a treatment and reimbursed by insurance companies. 

Parallel to this, the “influencing the behavior of your users”-part of gamification is not to be taken lightly. Alongside the legal aspects cited above, ethical considerations should be given:

1. Design for Trust:
   • It’s simple: if your users don’t trust you, they won’t provide you with their most sensitive, personal information about their mental health and state. Neither will they feel comfortable enough to use your app with consistency. You need trust for your app to work, so build your app around it – design it for trust.
   • It is not about turning your dev team into the new lawyers to be. But embedding privacy in all aspects of your mental mhealth app so it is trustworthy, lawful, and so that your users know what it is done with their data at every step of the way.
   • Little tip about that: enhancing trust requires rethinking consent.

• Avoid Dark Patterns, unless For Good: 

1. • Be mindful of the impact you have on users’ choices and their behaviour. While it is one thing to motivate your users through games and a user-friendly interface, it is another to get consent over addiction. Even through games, rightfully ask for consent and don’t let the prospect of a quick profit blind you. 
   • Alas, recent studies show that despite the recent upsurge in privacy and data protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA, PIPEDA…), companies still have a hard time going against their own business interests. So is it game over?
   • Maybe not! Take it to the next level: use Dark Patterns for Good.

• Digital Ethics

1. • Respect the moral principles – don’t take the game too far. While gamification can help, it can also have devastating impacts on users, such as inducing depression and crushing attention span. Be careful not to get carried away while “playing the game” and rely on digital ethics to build “games with purpose”.
   • Establish norms dedicated to ensure that the autonomy and dignity of users is respected. It is not all on your development team to understand what “ethics” and “privacy” means technically. Provide them with the tools to implement it “rightly”.
   • Lastly, allow your users to shape the debate and make informed choices.

#tip: Walk the talk and keep on your promises to build long-term engagement.

Play hard, play fair. Respect the rules with Pryv

Stay focused on your core expertise and value proposition and let us turn compliance into your competitive advantage.

Pryv.io is designed to facilitate developers creating privacy-centric digital health applications. Our Swiss-made Personal Data & Privacy Management Software is a ready-to-use middleware specifically designed for personal data and consent management. It comes with must-have consent and auditing tools to keep you compliant with existing and forthcoming regulations.

Our ultimate purpose is to remove barriers to data-driven healthcare innovation by helping digital health innovators rigorously manage personal data and build effective, lawful, patient-centric applications respectful of privacy and seamless digital experiences, faster, at a lower cost and right the first time.

Yours,

Stephanie & Evelina

Additional sources:

• https://mental.jmir.org/2019/6/e13717/
• https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/mental-health-apps-superbetter-happify-gamification-techniques-2019-10
• https://uxdesign.cc/the-benefits-of-gamification-for-mental-health-656f9e4cbcce

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Lausanne, Switzerland / Gosselies, Belgium – October, 2020 The Swiss leading provider of privacy and personal data management software, Pryv, was selected by The European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) Inventor Award winner of 2017, the Belgium provider of daily home cardiac monitoring solution, HeartKinetics, to embed granular patient consent management and ensure data privacy compliance with existing and forthcoming regulations.

Being one of the companies incubated at ESA BIC Belgium,  based on over 10 years of research on astronaut cardiac function and its deconditioning in microgravity, HeartKinetics drives a real change for more than 121 million people living with cardiovascular disease (CVD) by turning frequent hospital visits for cardiac monitoring into a thing of the past. Instead, thanks to the advances made in the smartphone motion sensors and over 10 years of space research, patients can be diagnosed quickly or monitored remotely when they are discharged from the hospital. OKCARDIO in particular provides over six vitals parameters including breathing rate, heart rate and heart rate variability as well as exclusive cardiac strength and kinetic energy as signs of the mechanical and hemodynamic function.

“For the cardiologist, it is essential to assess both the heart’s rhythm function, and the mechanical function, which is usually done with echocardiography and lengthy examinations. Although there are many wearables for rhythm assessment, there is no such solution for the mechanical function assessment of the heart. Being able to provide a complete overview of the cardiac function with a simple smartphone is ground-breaking. Using Pryv.io technology, we can ingest different types of high frequency data streams concurrently and efficiently, without compromising on privacy and security.“ – says Pierre-François Migeotte, CEO at HeartKinetics.

HeartKinetics presents two solutions, the OKCARDIO^TM smartphone app that measures myocardial activity through the smartphone’s motion sensors, accelerometers and gyroscopes, which, when placed on the chest, can record myocardial contraction efforts and rhythm. The second one, “the KINO^TM” portable device, is a medical device made of two units, one of which is placed on the chest and the other on the lower back. After an initial calibration by a cardiologist, patients can take measurements at home in less than two minutes and transmit them for diagnosis via a smartphone or tablet. This provides an accurate assessment of both mechanical and electrical myocardial functions, together with hemodynamic parameters.  Based on the patient’s consent, captured and managed by Pryv.io technology,  KINO can frequently share information about a patient’s cardiac health status with their healthcare teams  which is essential for the management of heart failure.

“People living with cardiovascular disease have been among those affected the most during the pandemic. It became clear that there is an urgent need to bring remote monitoring solutions for performing cardiac function tests at home. HeartKinetics addresses such a need with an easy-to-use, breakthrough, scientific-proven technology, already tested and validated, that makes remote heart monitoring possible in a quick and efficient way, from the comfort of the patient’s home. In addition, patients can easily communicate with their physicians and share their data confidently among medical teams with full respect of the data privacy.” says Pierre-Mikael Legris, CEO at Pryv SA.

Preserving privacy in remote health is not a miracle, but the way to be: Pryv.io’s privacy by design technology provides a robust, secure and consent-based backend solution that is designed to prove this. Moreover, the Pryv and HeartKinetics collaboration confirms that it is possible to empower doctors and patients with a deep respect for the confidentiality of the data.

The combination of HeartKinetics health innovation and Pryv.io privacy technology brings light to a critical issue in a time of emerging need. It provides a sustainable, pandemic-proof healthcare solution that is aligned with stringent data privacy requirements.

The KINO device has already been used in clinical trials in the Netherlands Germany and Belgium. OKCARDIO is in its final stage of clinical validations and will be available in 2021.

Learn more about the Privacy-Preserving Home Cardiac Monitoring Solution by visiting www.heartkinetics.com & www.okcardio.com

About HeartKinetics

HeartKinetics builds the cardiac remote monitoring solutions for the smart hospitals of the future. Based on motion sensors our solutions deliver parameters that would usually require an echocardiography. With OKCARDIO and KINO, the patients data are instantly under the eyes of their specialist who can confidently base their diagnostic on objective and proven clinical data. For more information, please visit www.heartkinetics.com & www.okcardio.com

About Pryv

Pryv makes essential software for data-driven healthcare innovation. Our purpose-built middleware helps organizations manage personal data from creation to use, sharing and disposal. We accelerate time to market, cut IT development costs and speed up connectivity to all data sources. Pryv addresses the enhanced citizen’s right under GDPR and turns privacy compliance into a competitive advantage. For more information, please visit pryv.gihub.io/www

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Medisanté and Pryv join forces to combine the best of both worlds, thus making Remote Patient Monitoring simple and scalable while ensuring GDPR compliance out-of-the-box.

Lausanne/Lucerne, Switzerland, March 19th, 2020 – The Swiss leading provider of privacy and personal data management software, Pryv SA, and Medisanté Group AG, the world’s leading provider of direct-to-cloud medical IoT infrastructure, announced a strategic collaboration.

A simple and secure solution for remote monitoring of patients at home is ready to be implemented by any home-care service and healthcare facility, globally. The platform addresses the imperatives across the continuum of care: focusing on delivering seamless user experience, reliable health-metrics, and establishing a patient-to-care team relationship, without compromising on data privacy and digital ethics.

 ”Today, more than ever, remote access to care is nothing less than an indispensable service. We are thrilled to be able to work with Medisanté products, which have been proven in delivering the unbeatable strength of accessibility, connectivity, and usability.” says Pierre-Mikael Legris, CEO at Pryv. “Leveraging on Medisanté’s zero-touch medical IoT infrastructure, we are determined to ushering remote patient monitoring and telecare where it is needed the most, to anyone, at any time”

Strengthening the adoption of innovative digital health solutions relies on two main pillars: usability and trust. The personal patient data is critical and highly sensitive- thus, undoubtedly, security and privacy are at the core of designing reliable medical-grade digital solutions. GDPR, MDR, national-specific regulations and reimbursement plans set up high entry barriers for medical IoT and digital healthcare providers, leaving them no choice but to comply. The regulations make it clear: « consent should be explicitly and freely given». Moreover, any system provider should be able to offer an opt-out option at any given time.

“Our strategic partnership with Pryv offers a major added value to care organizations and CROs using our solution for Remote Patient Monitoring, as it allows them to guarantee data privacy. It also gives them top-grade tools to manage explicit consent to share patient data with the various stakeholders, such as health insurances in countries where reimbursement of RPM is dependent of a minimal number of measurements performed by the patient each month.” – Gilles Lunzenfichter, CEO and Co-founder of Medisanté

Harnessing the power of medical IoT devices allows keeping track of patients’ health outside of the healthcare premises, drastically decreasing costs, optimizing resources and most importantly significantly improving the well-being and comfort of patients.

Facilitating the care teams’ daily operations while scaling up telemonitoring to millions of chronic and elderly patients is a reality now. Not tomorrow, but today. Book a demo.

Powered by Medisanté & Pryv. 

ABOUT

About Medisanté: https://www.medisante-group.com/

Medisanté is headquartered in Switzerland and is an innovation champion in the Personal Connected Health Alliance where it chairs the direct-to-cloud workgroup. Its global direct-to-cloud medical IoT infrastructure radically simplifies the integration of Patient Generated Health Data into clinical systems. It combines the best of global tech for anonymous device data with the best of healthcare privacy for sensitive patient data. By abstracting hardware complexity and diversity in the home of the patient, Medisanté allows Remote Patient Monitoring to scale anywhere in the world. Its cellular devices and cloud-based hub – ELIOT Hub – abstract physicians from the complexity of devices and allow them to focus on achieving better medical outcomes for remote patients within their existing clinical systems. It also allows bio-medical engineers to manage remotely the device fleet across multiple types of devices as they would normally do within the hospital.

About Pryv:  pryv.gihub.io/www

Pryv makes health personal data processing as secure and trustworthy as online banking. We help organizations manage personal data from creation through use and sharing, as well as address the enhanced data subject rights under GDPR such as transparency, portability, and right-to-be-forgotten. Our solution, pryv.io, is an extensible personal data lifecycle management platform specifically engineered to empower developers to rapidly create and scale breakthrough GDPR and HIPAA compliant products, services, and experiences. The software has been developed to accommodate rapid integration. It comes with turnkey IoT connectivity, a secure storage vault, fine-grained consent management, and comprehensive auditing capability that radically cut IT development costs and accelerate time-to-benefit while addressing the most stringent data protection requirements.

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Dr. Damian Meli, Project lead at umana, said: “This partnership represents a further step in umana’s journey to building the most user-centric patient-doctor communication tool to be integrated with the Swiss Electronic Health Record system. Comprehensive data protection and compliance with data management regulations are essential to our development. We chose Pryv because they share our belief that the confidentiality and privacy of our users is a top priority. The integration of the pryv.io software is designed to meet the increasing demands from patients and regulating authorities for more transparent and trustworthy methods for the management of personal data.”

Pierre-Mikael Legris, CEO and co-founder of Pryv SA, said: “We are proud to have been chosen by umana. It shows that they are committed to the increasing value of digitized content in healthcare. By working with some of the world’s eHealth pioneers, like umana, Pyrv can accumulate reliable industry experience which we can deploy in our development and agile operating model. Not only has umana demonstrated that they value each patient, but they are also interested in building a relationship based on trust with them, which will surely foster more efficient digital communication between patients and healthcare providers.”   

Pryv’s privacy-by-design approach promotes privacy and data protection compliance to guide patients’ data security decisions throughout their experience with a tool such as umana. As healthcare organizations increasingly integrate personal data into their services and processes, they continuously encounter the challenges of compliance and the chances of a breach of private data. Unfortunately, the defense mechanisms are often added on to existing structures as an after-thought, or in some cases, ignored altogether despite the fact that they should be embedded into the foundation of the system.

As an eHealth platform, umana aims to connect service providers, such as doctors or pharmacists, with their patients. The solution will allow for appointment booking, direct messaging, medication plans and, in the future, Swiss EPD – all regulated via one access point. For patients, umana will allow them to book appointments and share vital parameters and personal information with doctors through web and smartphone applications. Thanks to Pryv, this transparent exchange of private information will be compliant with GDPR and Swiss DPA regulations.

About umana

umana is a new Swiss health platform that offers products and services for patients and doctors. As an international team of family doctors and engineers, we have used our expertise and creativity to reduce and optimize the wait time before a patient meets with their healthcare provider. The booking tool can be easily integrated into any practice and makes consultations more streamlined and more pleasant for patients. At umana, we harness the power of digitalization to create comprehensive, relevant and personalized health services.

www.umana.ch 1 min video of umana

About Pryv

Pryv makes health personal data processing as secure and trustworthy as online banking. We help organizations manage personal data from creation through use and sharing, as well as address the enhanced data subject rights under GDPR such as transparency, portability and right-to-be-forgotten.  Our solution, pryv.io is an extensible personal data lifecycle management platform specifically engineered to empower developers to rapidly create and scale breakthrough GDPR and HIPAA compliant products, services and experiences. The software has been developed to accommodate rapid integration. It comes with turnkey IoT connectivity, a secure storage vault, fine-grained consent management and comprehensive auditing capability that radically cut IT development costs and accelerate time-to-benefit while addressing the most stringent data protection requirements.

pryv.gihub.io/www

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“High BloodPressure is a silent killer, it doesn’t hurt and  you do not feel it, until it is too late” says Dr. Thomas Guggi, Project and Technical Lead at Riva Digital.

At Pryv, we are honoured to support Riva Digital initiative at its mission to increase the health literacy of the Swiss society by providing a solid data management foundation to enable data collection, structure, storage and sharing.

The oBPM app is collaboratively developed by Pryv, CSEM, Altran within digitalswitzerland initiative.

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Lausanne, June. 15, 2018 — Pryv, the leading provider of privacy and personal data management software, announces that it has signed a partnership agreement with Altran, the leader in Engineering and R&D services empowering the next generation of healthcare evolution.

This partnership puts the patients at the heart of MedTech innovation and protects their privacy complying the most stringent data regulations with Altran acting as an end-to-end R&D engineering partner developing smart, patient-centric and compliant medical devices. Pryv brings trust, transparency and control over the use of sensitive medical data.

“Medtech companies operate in one of world’s most regulated environments, and scrutiny and complexity are only increasing” says Andreas Kuhn, CTO at Altran Switzerland. “Pryv extends our regulatory expertise with a rigorous data protection capability that accelerate time to compliance and enable privacy-preserving design from the outset of product development”

Altran and Pryv teamed up to enable Riva Digital, a Swiss eHealth initiative tackling the problem of hypertension in Switzerland.

The initiative encourages citizens to maintain healthy lifestyle behaviors and instantly keep tab on their blood pressure level right from their smartphone.

The medical-grade monitoring app builds on a breakthrough optical blood pressure monitoring method from the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), App development and integration from Altran and rigorous privacy and personal data management capability from Pryv. 

Riva digital bets that one year from now 100,000 people will have demonstrably lowered their blood pressure.

Pryv helps organisations manage personal data from creation, to use, to sharing and enhanced rights such as portability and right-to-be-forgotten. Packaged for rapid integration, the software solution comes with a secure storage vault, encryption protocols, fine-grained consent management and comprehensive auditing capability that radically cut IT development costs and accelerate time-to-benefit while addressing most stringent data protection requirements.

Altran ranks as the undisputed global leader in Engineering and R&D services (ER&D), following its acquisition of Aricent. The company offers clients an unmatched value proposition to address their transformation and innovation needs. Altran works alongside its clients, from initial concept through industrialization, to invent the products and services of tomorrow. For over 30 years, the company has provided expertise in aerospace, automotive, defense, energy, finance, life sciences, railway and telecommunications The Altran Group generated revenues of €2.9 billion in 2017, with some 45,000 employees in more than 30 countries.

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Pryv.io helps organizations manage personal and health data from creation, to storage, use and sharing.

Our software comes with:

• A secure storage vault
• Dynamic consent management
• Complete auditing capability

We:

• manage personal data from creation, to use, to sharing, archival and deletion.
• enable response to current and forthcoming privacy and data protection regulations
• accelerate time to market and reduce development cost of innovation

So customer can:

• stay focused on their core business and innovation course
• create value on top of a solid foundation of privacy and data protection
• turn compliance investments into a differentiating advantage.

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