Biopôle recently announced that Hôpital de La Tour is partnering with our Digital Health Hub. In this interview, Rodolphe Eurin, CEO of Hôpital de La Tour, explains their role in this collaboration and the outcomes they are hoping for. 

Why did Hôpital de La Tour decide to sponsor our Digital Health Hub?

Hôpital de La Tour has been a pioneer at a Swiss and European level, with innovative projects aiming to improve both medical outcomes and efficiency in healthcare. These initiatives continue to demonstrate how central digitalisation is for any innovation in healthcare. We want to be at the forefront of the discussions in this regard.

What is the value of sponsorship collaborations like the one between Hôpital de La Tour and Biopôle?

The value of a collaboration like this one is twofold: it provides a source of inspiration for innovative thinking at La Tour and it is an opportunity for Biopôle start-ups to access the clinical world through the most important private hospital in French-speaking Switzerland.

How do you integrate digital solutions to improve patient’s health? Please detail some examples.

Last year we completed the transition to digitalised patient files; this was a very important step for driving efficiency and starting to generate information, which we can use in analytics and actionable reports. We are also working on an application to drive patient engagement on the care pathway. It is proven that outcomes are better when patients are engaged. This also contributes to a great patient experience.

What advice do you have for start-ups joining the initiative?

My advice to start-ups is to go beyond listening to explicitly expressed needs. A lot of digital innovations come from an external perspective of how things could run better within healthcare. It’s important to understand the constraints faced by hospitals when launching new applications in an already very fragmented IT landscape.

What kind of collaboration opportunities do you offer to start-ups?

We will open doors to start-ups that can help La Tour become a better hospital, delivering better outcomes and a better patient experience. They will get to interact with all necessary functions, doctors and caregivers in a private hospital of optimal size (i.e. 170 beds, allowing human scale with large-enough patient volumes).

What are you most proud of in your own work?

Today, we are proud to be recognised internationally for our pioneering work in value-based healthcare (VBHC) and for winning the VBHC prize for the most advanced private hospital in Europe,  and for having been the only Swiss player invited to the ICHOM 2021 conference. And we are ambitious to achieve much more!