The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 2 (Apr 2014) | Page 43

Interview with Peter Ohnemus at dacadoo
AOK. America is the biggest market
for us. We work with a very large health
organisation, which has not been
announced yet, but is a very significant organisation with over 80 million
clients. We work with partners in Russia, we just signed a deal with a health
provider in Brazil, and we are also in
Australia. Last year we finished the year
with about 100,000 paying users which
make us ones of the largest mhealth
operators in the world, and I would say
that within the next 24 months we will
have over a million paying users alone
in the corporate world.”
The infrastructure behind dacadoo
is state-of-the-art, with the company
aiming to protect personal health data
with the strongest possible security
and encryption techniques. To this end
they have built their security protocols
from the ground up. Where many digital health providers have relatively weak
security infrastructure, Peter believes
that health data should be protected in
a similar manner to financial and banking data.
“You can hack any health app within
half an hour, trust me and get all the
data that you want and that is not the
business we want to be in. We did not
build security as an accident or afterwards said, ‘Oh we also need this’
we really designed dacadoo from the
ground up using our 25 years of deep
data experience. Hiring four of the
world’s leading professors we have a
very strong academic advisory board
challenging the Health Score every
quarter. It has cost us a fortune to do
everything but we have done it, in the
most professional way.”
“We have a huge data centre run on HP
blade servers so that we can calculate
everything in real time. That is based
in Switzerland, in a nuclear-safe data
centre, in the middle of the Alps. We
encrypt all data, we segregate all data,
meaning that the physical blood pressure of Mr. Smith is data segregated so
that if someone were to run into our
data centre and steal an HP server they

would come home with a server where
it would say 80-120, 90-130, but you
wouldn’t have a name from any individual because the affected blood pressure
would be segregated from the person’s
identity”.
“Your health data is one of the highest value assets that you have and I am
a big believer in privacy and providing
people with a level of privacy. If you
are sick or healthy I think your private
data is your private data. [Which is why]
we don’t do any advertising on the
platform, we don’t license any data to
anyone, it is solely used in anonymous
ways to improve the overall algorithm.”
For Peter the wider topic of mHealth is
one that is close to his heart and he is
regularly asked to provide commentary
on the state of the industry:
“For me, the definition of mHealth is:
That firstly, your health doesn’t become
static, and secondly that you can benchmark and track your health wherever
you are.”
“In today’s world, which is still the
analog world for most people, the first
place [for healthcare] is the doctor,
the second place is the hospital, and
the third place is your private home or
where you happen to be. And in today’s
world, if you go to the doctor you create expenses anywhere from $200 to
$500, or Euros, or if you go to the
hospital you create expenses per day,
which can be from $2,000 to $3,000, or
Euros, or more, per day in the hospital.
Now if we can provide a way to have
your healthcare follow you, where you
happen to be (meaning the third place)
and at the same time take out 50% of
the expense, then I think that we will
have a very successful industry.”
“There are two examples I can give:
Number one is for ECG. If you buy a
2/4/8-channel ECG in a hospital, that
equipment could very easily cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 dollars.
Today you can buy a 2-channel ECG
that you can attach to the cover of your

smartphone for just $100. Now [if you
can] take that down to less than $25
by having a Wi-Fi enabled patch that
you put next to your heart to get complete 24/7 observation of your heart,
then that for me is an incredible breakthrough.”
“Another example would be in skin
cancer areas, where I can take a picture
with my iPhone and upload it to the
doctor instead of going to the hospital
where they would need to take photos
and have specialist consultations. There
are now platforms, who have trained
dermatologists that will evaluate the
picture of your skin, and they will
charge something like 30 Euros instead
of the 300-400 Euros that you would
normally pay to visit the doctor.”
“These are just two concrete examples
where with very little pain you can gain
up to 90% savings. Going forward this
is just the beginning; being an entrepreneur I personally believe we have
seen nothing in mobile health! I think
mobile health means that it is with me
24 hours a day, wherever I want to be
and that it is convenient.”
The unique nature of the dacadoo
Health Score has meant that the company has won or been nominated for
a considerable number of industry
awards. In the UK the company have
produced the Nuffield Health Score as
a white label platform and this has now
been nominated for Health Innovation
of the Year 2014. The company have
also won the German Health Media
Award in 2013, the Swiss ICT Award,
and have recently been announced as
one of the winners of the Red Herring Top 100 Europe Awards 2014 as
well. These successes are likely t