IHK Vice President Klaus-Stefan Ruoff welcomed around 300 guests to the eHealth Congress Rhine-Main and Hesse at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Frankfurt am Main. Once again, the congress offered all participants a platform to discuss the major challenges of digitalization. This year, the focus of the congress was specifically on the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Enabling Benefits, Managing Risks

The enormous potential that AI brings to areas such as diagnostics and therapy is already evident in various pilot projects. Some of these were presented in the afternoon forums at the eHealth Congress, demonstrating how models based on a large amount of consolidated, reliable information can also be applied to other diseases. This aligns with what Thomas Ballast, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Techniker Krankenkasse, generally expects from AI technologies: “Those who care for patients should be supported quickly and easily with high-quality and relevant information so that the best possible individual treatment decision can be made. This is about access to the world’s medical knowledge in the form of data and information. With the help of AI, this knowledge can be compactly and precisely tailored to the respective health situation and made available,” says Ballast. He adds: “Even though AI, like any new technology, may entail risks, we should not forgo its potential benefits. The goal must be to make the risks manageable.”

AI in Healthcare: Education Is Essential

Managing these risks is part of the daily work of Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Müller-Wittig: “Risks associated with AI, such as ensuring cybersecurity, must always be taken into account in every product development process.” The Head of the Health and Care Competence Center at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD in Darmstadt represented the congress co-organizer IHK Hessen innovativ in the panel discussion. Fraunhofer IGD designs research projects in healthcare and develops concrete applications, such as a digital patient twin, that create added value for the healthcare industry. He emphasizes that new health applications incorporating AI software can improve therapies, without compromising data sovereignty. “Data can be processed anonymously and analyzed in cohorts without any possibility of tracing it back to individuals. In research projects, fundamental rights and democracy are upheld,” he clarifies. It is important to better inform the public about these research opportunities and to involve people more closely in new technologies. “We must work together to ensure that AI tools do not appear as a black box,” says Müller-Wittig.

Digital Twins in Healthcare

Dr.-Ing. Stefan Wesarg, Head of the “Visual Healthcare Technologies” Department at Fraunhofer IGD, presented the Fraunhofer flagship project MED²ICIN. The vision: the right prevention, diagnosis, and therapy at the click of a button. Digital twins are already common practice in many industries. Developing a digital patient model has the potential to fundamentally revolutionize the healthcare sector. Integrating digital innovations throughout the entire treatment chain not only improves patient care but also makes targeted and effective treatment more efficient—and therefore more cost-effective.