HealthTechAsia brings you live coverage of DigiHealthDayS 2025 – proud to serve as a media sponsor.

Hosted by the European Campus Rottal-Inn (ECRI), the international campus of the Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT), DigiHealthDayS has become a globally recognised forum for advancing education, research, innovation, and collaboration in digital health. The theme for 2025 is “Global Digital Health – today, tomorrow, and beyond,” reflecting the event’s commitment to exploring how emerging technologies are reshaping healthcare across borders.

Day 2

Pathways for Global Digital Health 2030

In her keynote, Isabelle Zablit Schmitz of Numeum, France, reflected on the potential for digital health to reshape healthcare across Europe. She highlighted the scale of the challenge, noting that Europe has roughly 450 million citizens, 18 million health professionals, around 15,000 hospitals, and 10,000 private clinics.

Fragmentation and a lack of interoperability remain major obstacles, with the maturity of digital health varying widely between countries. She emphasised that large countries cannot be managed like smaller ones and that health has only recently been recognised as a key building block of the European Union.

Schmitz underlined the critical role of AI in creating a European-scale framework for the secondary use of data, ensuring continuity of care, and breaking down silos. She stressed the need for governance at local, national, and European levels and for closer collaboration between governments and industry.

With a sense of urgency, she called for large-scale AI implementation to improve equality of access to care. Looking ahead, she expressed optimism that within five years Europe could achieve a digital health “blossoming,” providing practical solutions to continuity of care and realising the potential of AI across the continent.

In his keynote, Prof. Rajendra Pratap Gupta of ISfTeH and Health Parliament, India, reflected on the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare.

He described AI as a phenomenal opportunity, outlining five levels of AI deployment. The first level, conversational AI such as chatbots, helps reduce costs and improve communication. The second, reasoning AI, can think and respond independently, though it carries risks like hallucinations.

The third level, autonomous AI or agents, has already demonstrated its ability to manage clinicians’ workloads, particularly in specialties such as radiology, where high-quality clinical AI may replace some human roles while new medical specialties emerge.

Prof. Gupta expressed particular excitement about the fourth level, innovating AI, which he predicts will radically change medicine within three years.

This level will allow care to focus on the person rather than just the disease, leveraging quantum computing to create new clinical pathways, drugs, and medical devices. The fifth level, organizational AI, could render traditional electronic medical records obsolete, shifting healthcare from precision medicine to predictive medicine.

He envisions a golden age of medicine, where hospitals focus primarily on surgeries, and patient-centric care evolves into a broader, more holistic approach.

Prof. Gupta highlighted the speed and accuracy of current sensor technologies, noting that the future of AI-driven healthcare is already unfolding, promising enormous opportunities for both patients and providers.

Opening & WHO Collaborating Centre Launch

Prof. Georgi Chaltikyan, Founder and Head of DigiHealthDay, highlighted in an AI avatar address that digital health is evolving at an unprecedented pace, with advances happening weekly or even daily. He emphasised that artificial intelligence has become the key driver of this progress, noting that there is no meaningful digital health without AI.

In this context, he announced the launch of a German collaboration centre on digital health at the European Campus Rottal-Inn (DIT-ECRI) at the Deggendorf Institute of Technology.

Chaltikyan also described practical initiatives aimed at strengthening the digital health workforce, including training in interoperability standards through the XIA programme. He highlighted efforts to introduce immersive assistance in oncology, helping turn complex medical decisions into collaborative care.

Additionally, he spoke about the expansion of the MDH Alliance (Master of Digital Health Alliance), positioning it as the digital health equivalent of a Master of Public Health, to further educate and prepare professionals for the evolving landscape.

Judith Gerlach, Bavarian Health Minister, emphasised in a video address that digitalisation has become an integral part of our daily lives. In healthcare, it not only simplifies everyday treatments and routines but also helps address the shortage of skilled workers, enabling more tailored diagnoses and personalised treatments.

She highlighted the importance of international partnerships that incorporate local insights into practical solutions. Notably, the WHO has recognised the European Campus Rottal-Inn (DIT-ECRI) at the Deggendorf Institute of Technology in Germany as the country’s collaboration centre for digital health.

Gerlach stressed that for digitalisation to succeed, especially in healthcare and prevention, people must actively engage with and embrace these technological advances.

Day 1

Digital Literacy: Empowering Care through Digital Skills

Birgit Bauer (Data Saves Lives, Germany) highlighted that while digital tools are increasingly embedded in healthcare, many people use them with little awareness of how they actually work. From wearables to AI-driven apps, patients often engage with technology daily without truly understanding it — raising the question of whether we are using digital tools in the right way. True digital literacy, she argued, is not just about technical know-how, but about awareness, responsibility, and trust.

Digital transformation, Bauer warned, fails when people are left behind. Transparency and trust are essential if innovation is to be meaningful. “If people don’t understand digital health, they will never believe in it,” she said. To build confidence, it’s vital to connect patients, citizens, professionals, and policymakers — to listen before teaching or developing. Building bridges rather than bubbles or silos ensures that innovation serves everyone. Patients, she concluded, must be part of the design, discussion, and decision-making process — and take active responsibility for their own health.

Panel: Accelerating Interoperability Competence through Innovation

Hosted by Prof. Anne Moen (University of Oslo, Norway) and Simon Lewerence (ISCTE, Portugal), the panel featured:

– Dr. Outi Ahonen (Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Finland)
– Dr. Lars Lindsköld (EFMI, Sweden)
– Prof. Ricardo Correia (University of Porto, Portugal)
– Catherine Chronaki (HL7 Foundation, Belgium)

Key insights

Prof. Ricardo Correia painted a stark picture of fragmentation: “Average hospitals in Portugal have more than 25 clinical databases—those are just the ones IT knows about.” His message was clear: data must be separated from software. “The software dies after 10 years. Interoperability gives us access to data—and that’s the part that matters.”

He also called out startup culture: “They want to conquer the world but don’t know how their product survives inside a complex ecosystem.” And he urged students to support their professors: “The way you’re learning—AI—is strange to them.”

Dr. Outi Ahonen spotlighted microlearning through XiA courses, offering a scalable model for upskilling health professionals.

Dr. Lars Lindsköld offered a vivid metaphor: “We live in our verticals, safe in our silos. Now the horizontal part is coming—digitalisation—and it pulls up trees.”

Catherine Chronaki called the European Digital Health Space (EDHS) a “monumental opportunity.” Her vision: “We want to give you your data back—in a form you can use to create innovation.” She described combining lab data with wearables to improve her own performance as a human. “Every generation reinvents standards,” she said. “This is a grassroots initiative to help Europe catch up.”

Keynote: AI Operating Systems for Agentic Automation in Medicine

Bart de Witte took the stage to highlight a quiet revolution already underway: decentralisation is not a future concept—it’s happening now, and it’s poised to empower healthcare in unprecedented ways.

Tracing the movement back to CERN, Bart described how open platforms emerged from a culture of decentralised collaboration. He recalled Meta’s release of LLaMA, and how within two weeks, the community had built a desktop version. “Georgui started a movement,” he said.

He introduced the Tiny Recursive Model TRM, a 7M-parameter model from Samsung using recursive reasoning that outperforms DeepSeek and Gemini 2.5 Pro in agentic tasks. But the real breakthrough came just two days ago: a model trained in Paris with only 300M parameters, using synthetic data, and requiring 50x less training time than larger models. “It’s competitive,” Bart said. “And it’s smaller than a PDF. It runs on your phone.”

“We’re one year away from living room GPUs,” he added. “This is a blessing for healthcare—especially in underserved areas. It protects privacy and gives users control.”

He closed with a call to action: “In the Trump era, it’s too dangerous not to act. We are Europeans—we must prioritise data privacy.”

Opening Remarks: A day of vision, urgency, and resilience

The day began with opening statements from Prof. Rajendra Pratap Gupta (Founder, Health Parliament, India) and Dr. Lars Lindsköld (President, EFMI, Sweden).

Prof. Gupta acknowledged the absence of Prof. Dr. Georgi Chaltikyan, who was unable to attend due to an accident. Despite this, his influence was felt: “Look at what a visionary like Georgi does. An institutional event has become a global event. He helped set up the system even though he is unwell.”

Prof. Gupta reflected on the evolution of digital health through three phases: first dismissed as a gimmick, then criticised for being too slow, and now accelerating rapidly. “You are lucky to be in this tumultuous time,” he said. “Mobility, networking, and adventure will define you as professionals.”

Dr. Lindsköld emphasised the need for thoughtful digitalisation: “We are professionals trained to fix things. The world says we should fix differently now—but I don’t believe much in doing this without care.”