«Manoa offers a simple, effective and scientifically proven method to perform important blood pressure self-monitoring at home correctly and regularly and also to share it with the doctor.»
— Prof. Dr. med. Florian P. Limbourg
Chatbot-driven health support programs
In the second article of the series, we spotlight a patient-centred health support program that combines medical knowledge, behavioural psychology and chatbots to foster therapy adherence, retention and engagement. This Digital Coaching Platform is developed by Pathmate Technologies, an innovative startup from the Center for Digital Health Interventions of ETH. Within the academy, they collaborated with IBM Switzerland to integrate generative AI into their platform.
The article series “Better health monitoring for patient empowerment” puts the spotlight on the Digital Health Academy 2024 cohort, highlighting their innovative solutions and their ongoing collaborations with digitalswitzerland members. Each article features one of the scaleups chosen to participate in the second edition of the academy.
Pathmate Technologies
The Challenge
In healthcare, self-management and patient empowerment need to gain importance. With the rising costs of lifestyle-related diseases, there are significant opportunities in prevention, improving adjustable behaviours and therapy adherence. However, currently, there is still a huge gap between what is possible through effective preventive and therapeutic measures and what is actually done, especially in vulnerable patient populations. This is also due to the significant know-how and resources needed in developing and maintaining effective patient-centred health support programs.
The Solution
Pathmate Technologies has created a Digital Coaching Platform that enables the efficient development and evaluation of digital coaching solutions. Their aim is to provide automated and personalised one-to-one health coaching by informing, motivating, and guiding health or therapy-specific actions in everyday life. The technology combines medical knowledge, behavioural psychology, and usage to create chatbot-driven health support programs that foster engagement, retention, and therapy adherence.
Using the platform, Pathmate built Manoa, a digital coach that empowers individuals to better manage their blood pressure and reduce cardiovascular risks. This solution is certified as a medical device and is reimbursed by 12 health insurances in Switzerland and Germany. It is the first app ever to be certified by the German Hypertension League.
Impact on the Patient
Digital coach Manoa prevents and treats cardiovascular risks. It has a track record of over 30,000 satisfied users. Clinical studies show that blood pressure control significantly improves with the use of Manoa being compared to standard medical care.
Testimonials
«The app is a good support in everyday life: it reminds me to measure and record my blood pressure and to change my “unhealthy habits”. Although I work in the health sector, I still get a lot of new information. I think that’s great. And last but not least, with the help of the app, I now feel like I can actively influence my blood pressure levels.»
— Patient review
Team
Pathmate has its roots in the Center for Digital Health Interventions of ETH Zurich and University of St. Gallen. It is a team of health psychologists, computer scientists, and data scientists with the mission to empower companies to create patient-centric digital health programs in record time.
Collaboration & Partnerships
The Digital Coaching Platform is provided to health platforms, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, MedTech firms, public health organisations, and research institutions to create digital coach-driven health journeys. Using the platform as a base, more than 20 coaches have been developed for use in areas such as chronic diseases, mental health, diet, chronic pain, diabetes, and asthma. Pathmate seeks opportunities and partners to further integrate Manoa into a robust ecosystem of relevant players such as health insurers, doctors, and pharmacies.
Future Vision for Healthcare
Pathmate’s future vision for healthcare is to help people take their health into their own hands, enabling them to live long and healthy lives. Once patients have control over their data along with the motivation, information, and tools to act, healthcare will be more about proactive and preventative action rather than reactive and therapy-based ones.
Spotlight on collaboration with IBM
Goal of the Collaboration
The goal of the collaboration between Pathmate and IBM Switzerland was to integrate generative AI into Pathmate’s Digital Coaching Platform to enable more personalised patient support using the power of watsonx, IBMs Large Language Model (LLM) platform.
The Collaboration Value
The collaboration provides value to Pathmate’s offering in two dimensions:
Enhanced Functionality of the Digital Coaching Platform: Research institutions and other partners of the Digital Coaching Platform can add LLM-powered functionalities and chatbot interactions to their health support journeys.
Manoa CoachAI+ Integration: A specific integration for the Manoa app, CoachAI+, offers personalised support through a LLM trained specifically on medical and psychological content. It provides regular interactive coaching sessions that learn from the user’s behaviour and adjusts recommendations accordingly. CoachAI+ delivers individual guidance on behavioural patterns and fine-tuned strategies, routines, and habits that help increase adherence to the recommended therapy.
Roadmap and Achievements
During the 6-month collaboration of Pathmate Technologies and the Client Engineering Team of IBM Switzerland, they discussed and evaluated several opportunities regarding the use of LLMs. Based on these discussions, they drafted detailed concepts for the Manoa CoachAI+ use case, which was ultimately implemented and refined over several development sprints.
The module was successfully implemented and evaluated with several test users. In addition, Pathmate gained significant knowledge about integrating and optimising LLMs for patient coaching which will be an asset to further develop their minimum viable product.
An insightful collaboration
This project was made possible with the support of digitalswitzerland and the IBM Client Engineering Team, who provided Pathmate with unique knowledge, guidance, and development support.
About the Organisations
Pathmate Technologies: https://www.pathmate.tech/
IBM Client Engineering: https://www.ibm.com/client-engineering
About the Digital Health Academy
In collaboration with Swiss Healthcare Startups, digitalswitzerland launched the second edition of the Digital Health Academy, a 6-month cohort based programme for AI-driven digital health scaleups that enable patients to better understand and monitor their health. AllesHealth, CNS Therapy, Exploris Health, mobile health and Pathmate were part of the 2024 cohort and, through this academy, were positioned as thought leaders in the digital health space. As part of the programme, they joined a collaborative workshop with the programme’s partners, were mentored by experts, benefited from in-depth workshops and took part in a panel discussion on health monitoring at our partner Swiss Healthcare Startups’s ecosystem event, Digital Health Day in Zurich.
Want to know more? Check out last year’s publication “The Swiss healthcare system: entering a new digital era”, on the state of innovation in digital health in Switzerland.
Curious about to learn more about the first article, read all about Exploris Health and their collaboration with Swiss Post and Post Sanela in “Better health monitoring for patient empowerment | Part 1: AI-based coronary artery disease risk test”.