For many years, the Health Executives Day (HED), organized by adesso SE and adesso insurance solutions GmbH has been the industry event where players in the healthcare sector exchange and discuss trends and developments and introduced new ideas for the further development of the dual healthcare system. After Corona had shown the "red card" to an in-person event like this in 2020, there was a premiere in 2021 – and it was called: FlasHED – the digital expert talk on trends in healthcare. And it exceeded expectations in terms of the number of participants, positive feedback and media coverage in German trade media.
"The customer in focus – better healthcare through innovative networking" or "ePA: lame duck or cornerstone of healthcare digitization?" were among the topics discussed by incisive experts, including Dr. Thilo Schumacher, member of the board of AXA Konzern AG and Jens Dommel, Head of Healthcare EMEA, Amazon Web Services. The event sketched out how statutory health insurance and private health insurance will have to act in the future in order to survive the growing competition of the digital health insurance world. In addition, Dr. Thorsten Vogel and Martin Gödecke showed in detail which way the electronic patient file (ePA) will go in the future, with the participation of adesso. In the context of the discussion around the progress of the ePA, the participants stuck to the image of the "lame duck" and did not want to agree with the negative connotation. After all, they said, every duck is lame at the beginning of its life and must first learn to fly. Accordingly, the ePA is also undergoing an evolution and is about to "take wing".
Cooperation and uniform data standards
"We need to cooperate more as private health insurance companies," demanded Dr. Thilo Schumacher, which received the whole-hearted agreement from Christian Hälker, Managing Director of the PKV Association, who clearly argued for more cooperation between insurance companies, because isolation also makes no sense in relation to tech giants such as Amazon. An important prerequisite for successful cooperation is a uniform data standard. In Germany, this is the responsibility of Gematik, the operating company for the telematics infrastructure in the healthcare sector. Private health insurers have been back on board since April 2020. In addition to standardization, the willingness of insurers to embrace the concept of cooperation and no longer rely on their own solutions is an important prerequisite. "The claim must be: I have a small piece of the big pie and not: I have a big piece of nothing," postulated Schumacher.
Oliver von Ameln, Managing Director at adesso insurance solutions, is convinced that "data helps people stay healthy" and also argued for a cooperative mindset and pioneering spirit that would allow the forces of the many smaller private health insurers to be combined. In the opinion of Justus Lücke, the numerous start-ups in the healthcare sector offer a great opportunity to build up an ecosystem. The managing director of Versicherungsforen Leipzig felt that insurers should cooperate respectively with the start-ups that offer solutions to the various problems of the insured. Even if the implementation is anything but easy, health tech offers "a huge opportunity" for innovation.
All in all, the experts agreed that the challenges facing the healthcare system in the future are immense. A rethinking, perhaps even a new way of thinking, is necessary; the costs of "health" must be reduced, ideally by keeping people healthy. The big tech players in particular are leading the way in service orientation and digitalization. Accordingly, the challenges should be seen as an opportunity for reorientation. Private health insurers can transform themselves from payers to health care partners and thus secure their important role in the dual health care system in the long term.
"The FlasHED was a success across the board. This was confirmed by the number of participants and the great feedback from all sides," said Oliver von Ameln, Managing Director of adesso insurance solutions, who was very pleased about the premiere. "The aim of this format was to provide impetus for the further development of our healthcare system and to continue to think about the role of private health insurance in it. We succeeded very well thanks to our excellent guests."
FlasHED as initial spark for a digital content and communication hub
With the HED, which was held for the first time as a hybrid event, adesso insurance solutions also took the opportunity to create something completely new: "The challenge was to create a virtual environment in which the participants felt as if they were at a face-to-face event," explains Melanie Hoppen, Head of Marketing and Communications at adesso insurance solutions. "Parallel to the event, together with our implementation partner Neyroo, we succeeded in launching a virtual campus that will continue to serve as a platform for events, content, networking and communication in the future." This hub will now be successively enriched with content and will then be available as a virtual base to provide customers, partners and interested parties with a deep insight into trends and developments relating to software solutions in the insurance industry.