Digital in Health

Indicating ways to improve patient-outcome was the main driver writing this book. Two years of research, structuring, collecting, and writing around the central subject of our days: digital. Similar to other spheres of our lives, digital has the power to change many aspects of healthcare and improve patient's lives. Not only tells the book about the obvious, but also points to many use-cases and innovative examples of digital in health. By definition, digital interconnects and integrates people and things. Maybe some of the players in healthcare find the idea of working across sectors harmful to their own business model? Digital in health in any case means leaving traditional comfort zones. Besides telling about the digital past and present, the book Digital in Health defines, conveys ideas, triggers concepts, and indicates digital business models and cases already existing. In contrast to what we encounter every day, digital concepts in healthcare are lagging far behind. The rest of the world has already advanced a lot further. After technology is available, the most important prerequisite for the development of digital in health evidently is the mindset of protagonists. Digital today is far more than a buzzword, after every one of us is regularly confronted with it. Today many are already depending on digital, reaching into every corner of our life. None of our today's lives could continue to function as it is, without leveraging and using all these digital tools and applications. Digital in Health wants to help pave the way for digital ideas, supporting the constant ambition to improve patient-outcome. Joining forces for the common goal of better care, the coauthors added most relevant and important views. Each from his own professional background. Many thanks to Salil Kallianpur, Gerd Luippold, Christian Milaster, and Anup Soans who contributed so greatly to the book, while living in India, Germany, and the United States of America.

More than 40 years ago, Hanno Wolfram started his professional life in the healthcare arena as a medical representative working for a research based pharmaceutical company. After 22 years in various managerial positions he stepped out of this industry after a number of international assignments being Area Manager Europe. In the more than 20 years following, he worked for the pharmaceutical industry in consulting, educational and change projects in more than 25 countries on all continents. This created a steep learning curve. Having met numerous C-suite and line managers it became clear that in the pharmaceutical industry many terms and buzzwords are used, without ever having been defined. Not a problem as such, but not having the identical understanding, meetings and discussions cannot bear fruits. This was the trigger to start writing. In 2016 his first textbook about Key Account Management in Pharma was published in English. Being familiar with digital tools himself was the basis for starting to investigate, collect, synthesize and write this book showing pathways into a different, yet breathtakingly different future, designed to create better healthcare putting the patient in the center.