Digital Health to touch: Christian Dierks is the lecturer for the module „Ethics, Legal and Compliance in Digital Health“ at the Hasso Plattner Institute
Which ethical and legal issues do digital health companies need to consider? And which regulatory system applies for Data, Devices, Diagnostics and Drugs - described as 4D Medicine? These and similar questions are addressed in the module "Ethics, Legal and Compliance in Digital Health" as part of the Master Program "Digital Health" at the joint Digital Engineering Faculty of the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) and the University of Potsdam (UP). The Lecturer of the module is Prof. Dr. med. Dr. jur. Christian Dierks from the Innovation Consultancy Dierks+Company. The interdisciplinary Master Program taught in the English language is aimed at medical and computer science students who want to work as highly qualified experts in the health sector at the interface between IT, computer science and medicine.
The interactive kick-off workshop for the module took place at the end of April. After a brief introduction to the topic, Christian Dierks and his team from Dierks+Company introduced the participants to the innovative working methods they would use. Among other things, the participants worked in breakout sessions on personas and a patient journey and used design thinking methods.
By using a concrete case study "Implandata", the Dierks+Company team illustrated the interfaces of 4D medicine to the participants and showed which added value Digital Health creates and which ethical and legal questions and compliance aspects have to be considered. Implandata Ophthalmic Products GmbH (IOP), a medical technology company based in Hanover, Germany, has developed a novel system that enables the continuous measurement of intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients. In this way, the disease can be monitored and the patients can be protected from blindness. This novel diagnostic tool can be used telemedically, so that frequent visits to the doctor are no longer absolutely necessary. The CEO of Implandata, Max G. Ostermeier, was present himself and demonstrated the product, a sensor for continuous measurement of intraocular pressure as well as a device for reading out the data - digital health to touch, so to speak.
The next session took place the day after on the topics of Data - GDPR and Data Security. In the course of the semester, 3 further sessions on Compliance, Devices and Artificial Intelligence will follow. More about the Digital Health course at HPI and the module can be found here on the HPI website.
Dierks+Company is the Innovation Consultancy for Healthcare and Life Sciences in Berlin. It supports the development and establishment of products and services in 4D-medicine (Drugs, Devices, Diagnostics and Data). The lawyers and the consultancy team merge legal-medical competence with strategic consulting and support in the implementation. This way it helps German and international companies to overcome regulatory barriers and place products in Germany as a key market. HELIX HUB is the headquarter of Dierks+Company and at the same time a co-working space. On 3.300 m² it has a lot of room for synergies with clients, startups and companies in the field of health care.
