News

"Currently, 24 DiGAs are listed in the directory. For some, that's a sobering number; for others, it's just the beginning of a promising development. At Pfizer, we see great potential in the adoption of DiGAs and think DiGAs will be an integral part of care in the future," Alipiev said. 

Why are DiGAs so slow to develop? 

The legal basis for DiGAs was already established in November 2019 with the Digital Care Act. But why do DiGAs still hardly play a role in the everyday lives of patients and physicians? Ekaterina Alipiev sees one of the reasons in the lack of experience in the approval and marketing of medical devices: "Currently, many startups are working on the development of new DiGAs. They are able to act quickly and agilely and usually have a high level of IT expertise. However, they often lack experience in medical device approval or commercialization," Alipiev said. However, DiGA approval applications are complex.  

Win-win: startegic cooperations between Pfizer and startups  

This is where cooperation between Pfizer and startups comes in handy: "Pfizer benefits from the startups' innovative ideas and agile structure. In return, the Pfizer team supports the founders with advice and provides infrastructure or access to target groups. "  

The team around Ekaterina Alipiev at the Pfizer Healtcare Hub Berlin and Pfizer's experts from Market Access and Medical support DiGA manufacturers with their expertise, experience and a broad network in all challenges around the market launch of a DiGA: for example, in the approval process, in the development of market approval or pricing strategies.

More about our services for DiGA startups

On Monday, Dr. Hans Zebner participated in a panel discussion on innovations in Green & Sustainable Manufacturing at the Manufacturing themed session at the Zwick/Roell AG Innovation Center in Ulm: Where to start everywhere in the various sectors and why is it worthwhile to fully exploit this potential much more consistently? Despite all the optimism, here in Germany we need to be much faster in implementing them. 

The second day of the event started with tech breakfasts: at the Tech Breakfast "Competitiveness through collaboration: How companies across industries collaborate in the innovation process", Peter Neske, together with Fatma Karatay from TransnetBW GmbH and Christian Bell as host of iteratec GmbH Stuttgart, presented the results of a year-long Blue Ocean working group at bwcon on whether and how innovations can be measured. Peter Neske also discussed sustainability and digital trends with former CyberOne Award winners in the "Green, Digital & Life Science" panel.

Today, the last day of the event, Peter Neske, together with Claudia Roth, Vetter GmbH, will lead through the Medicine themed session at the newly opened CUBEX ONE in Mannheim, where the focus will be on DiGAs, among others: How can DiGAs find their place in everyday patient care? In addition, innovations from the life science sector will be presented by exciting speakers using various examples. It's worth a visit: The event starts at 2 p.m. live in Mannheim, and there will also be a livestream.

To address the challenges associated with vaccines, Pfizer is looking for innovative approaches and solutions and has launched the Vaccines Global Innovation Challenge.  

Innovative solutions are sought in two areas: 

1. Information and education: New ways are being sought to educate physicians and patients about the importance, risks and benefits of vaccines, as well as to communicate vaccine recommendations in a straightforward manner. 
2. Access and administration: The goal here is to identify new ways for patients to access recommended vaccines, either through new channels (for example e-prescriptions) or through delivery/administration.

Applications will be accepted through September 24th, 2021. Finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their solution during the Frontiers Health conference on Nov. 11-12, 2021. 

How promising is my business idea? How do I get access to innovation ecosystems? How to convince financiers? The two-day Entrepreneurship School, which takes place every year as part of the CyberOne Award, is designed to help young founders by taking their first steps toward a successful high-tech company. Pfizer is a gold sponsor of the CyberOne Award and Peter Neske from the Hub Freiburg opened the event with a keynote in which he used concrete case studies to show how profitable a cooperation between startups and corporates can be for both sides. 

Afterwards, the teams pitched their ideas in front of an audience and received advice on their business planning in individual coaching sessions. In addition to technical input on the business idea, on marketing, financing and funding opportunities, the exchange with the entrepreneurs, coaches and experts is a great benefit for the participants: "The reflection rounds with the coaches helped us a lot to question our business plan," is the conclusion of Christoph Sauerborn from the Stuttgart-based company i-flow GmbH, which has developed a technology for simple data management for factory sites. "The time spent with CyberOne participants was also very inspiring. A constructive event in a relaxed atmosphere!"