The Berlin health tech start-up Thryve is right at the forefront of fighting the coronavirus crisis.

^{Friedrich Lämmel, CEO Thryve © Thryve}

"Digital clinical thermometer" for the whole country

There is no lack of data itself: "Already today, many users are collecting this valuable health data," says the CEO and founder of Thryve. The challenge is that different wear­ables have different sensors and therefore send different data. This is where the Berlin­ers come into play. "Thryve combines the data from wearables, blood glucose meters and many other sources in one integration and delivers a harmonised data stream from more than 300 sources and devices," says the former consultant. The data dona­tion app, for example, integrates Google Fit, Apple Health, Fitbit, Garmin, Withings and Polar; Samsung Health, Oura and Amazfit will be added in the next update. "In addi­tion, we are further enriching the data with numerous analyses and algorithms to enable healthcare providers to gain a better understanding of individual health status," adds Lämmel. "We call this AI an 'interpretation layer'. This shows a daily overall pic­ture of vital states and activities. It also "identifies changes characteristic of certain dis­eases, for example, and shows risk scores," he adds. For example, if pulse, heart rate variability, temperature or sleep phases change, an algorithm developed by Thryve can detect fever in wearable data. "Since fever is one of the symptoms of COVID-19, we realised that we could help with this technology," says Lämmel. "We wanted to reduce the number of unrecorded cases and build a digital clinical thermometer for the whole country." Since then, about 500,000 Germans have been using it and making their valu­able data available to fight the pandemic. The rigid data security standards guarantee that they can do this without any worries: the development of the Corona data dona­tion app was carried out strictly in accordance with data protection guidelines and in close cooperation with the data protection officer of the Robert Koch Institute. External data protection and data security experts are also involved in testing servers and inter­faces. "Without this special care, a project with the Robert Koch Institute would not have been possible at all," emphasises the former industry consultant and adds: "We are well aware of the great responsibility that health data entails.”

From Berlin to Australia, Finland and India

Prof. Dr. Dietrich Grönemeyer has certainly convinced the team. Together with entrepre­neur and TV juror Carsten Maschmeyer and digital health investor Min-Sung Sean Kim, the renowned doctor is one of the largest investors in the Fraunhofer spin-off. "Only with objective health data can we doctors obtain a holistic picture of the patient's health," he says. "And this is exactly where Thryve enables a huge leap for­ward." Customers such as Berlin's Charité hospital can confirm this: for years, the university hospital has relied on AI from Thryve to examine pulse and breathing detection via smartwatch in sleep medicine. CCN, a chain of clinics from the Netherlands specialising in cardiology, also uses the Berlin system for research into atrial fibrillation. "More than 50 customers from Finland to Australia are now using our technology," says Friedrich Lämmel happily. "Digital health applications are experiencing a huge boom all over the world, and our customer base is correspondingly broad. In May, Thryve announced a partnership with digital health pioneer GOQii. Its fitness trackers are intended to detect COVID-19 symptoms at an early stage using the Berlin technology.

Digital health epicentre Berlin

The fact that the eyes of the world are focused on the German capital is nothing new in itself: Berlin is considered an epicentre in the field of digital health. Private and pub­lic institutions can be found here, as well as the global players Bayer Pharma AG, Sanofi and Pfizer. Research institutions such as the Fraunhofer institutes FOKUS or HHI, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the TU Berlin are constantly making break­throughs in medicine by using digital therapies, artificial intelligence and image recogni­tion. In addition, there are more than ten accelerators and incubators such as Berlin Healthcare Hub by Pfizer, the Bundesverband Gesundheits-IT - bvitg e. V., Digital Health Factory and Vision Health Pioneers. They all engage in a lively exchange of ideas at meetings, bar camps, hackathons and industry events such as DMEA - Connect­ing Digital Health, Charité Entrepreneurship Summit; Frontiers Health or XPOMET©. Start-ups like Thryve also benefit from this lively environment. "Berlin sim­ply offers the necessary infrastructure that a fast-growing, internationally active com­pany needs," says Friedrich Lämmel, raving about the advantages of the location.

These will continue to pay off in the future. "The entire digital health industry has received an enormous growth spurt as a result of the Corona crisis," Thryve looks ahead optimistically: "We are certain that even after the crisis it will be perfectly normal to take care of your own health digitally. And if you want to establish a truly digital and proactive care system, you need access to data. And that is what we provide". It will be interesting to see which diseases Thryve will be fighting in the future with the powerful combination of data and AI.