4YFN - Interview with Hospital del Mar

Barcelona Health Hub will shine again at 4YFN 2024, the startup business platform at the Mobile World Congress. The BHH Stand will take the center stage at the Digital Health Area, where you can connect with influential leaders, visionary investors, and the brightest minds in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

One of the companies you can meet at 4YFN is BHH member Hospital del Mar Barcelona. The Hospital del Mar is a contemporary medical facility that provides treatment for medium to high-complexity medical conditions. It is a well-established hospital with a strong history of serving the city of Barcelona, having developed and expanded alongside the city itself.

Joan Gibert, AI Development Lead of Hospital del Mar, is happy to share their expectations for this next edition of 4YFN.

• Joan, thank you for joining the BHH Stand at the upcoming edition of 4YFN. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us about Hospital del Mar?

I'm Dr. Joan Gibert, AI Development Leader at Hospital del Mar. There, I lead two transformative efforts. Firstly, I coordinate endeavours with our molecular lab for helping on determining and harmonizing different omic technologies crucial for disease advancement. Simultaneously, I lead the development of AI models, trying to integrate the different sources of information coming from our routine work (clinical notes, medical images and molecular data) in order to train useful AI models. My work at Hospital del Mar is reshaping healthcare practices to focus on a more precise and personalized healthcare.

Hospital del Mar is part of the Consorci Mar Parc de Salut de Barcelona which established in 2010 through the collaborative efforts of the Government of Catalonia and the Barcelona City Council. Functioning as a consortium, its primary objective is to uphold the quality of the public healthcare network. Distinguished by its diverse portfolio, the Consorci Mar Parc de Salut de Barcelona emerges as a comprehensive healthcare organization, addressing acute diseases, mental health, and primary care. Key facilities include the Hospital del Mar, the Hospital de la Esperança, the Centre Forum, and the Centre Dr Emili Mira. The Peracamps Centre extends low-complexity emergency services, while cutting-edge research flourishes through Hospital del Mar Research Institute. Prioritizing education and training, the Consorci Mar Parc de Salut de Barcelona collaborates with universities for innovative programs, solidifying its position as the exclusive health park in Barcelona with a comprehensive market perspective and seamless integration of education.

Excited to share insights at the 4YFN 2024 here in the Mobile World Congress, unveiling the synergy between molecular profiles and AI, offering glimpses into the future of personalized healthcare. Thank you for having me.

• Can you elaborate about what’s new at Hospital del Mar these days?

Hospital del Mar is currently expanding its hospitalization settings. In 2017 finalized the first phase of the hospital extension, which included the extension of Emergencies, Day Hospital, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Surgery, among others. In the beginning of 2024 the opening of a new building of 83,500 m2 is expected, which will include a new critical care ward with increased capacity, a new maternity and child area, expanded hospitalization bed capacity, a new ophthalmology institute, a digitalized Pathology service, an expansion and robotization of the Pharmacy service, a new area of endoscopy and diagnostic cabinets for all specialties and an integrated emergency care area. Moreover, a third phase of the expansion is expected to be executed before 2030.

Alongside with these expansions, the Hospital has been working on a digital transformation plan to be executed before 2030. This plan includes the implementation of a new data ecosystem where the data generated by different hospital systems and devices are integrated and stored, to facilitate their analysis and visualization to obtain valuable information for patient management and hospital management. The hospital also foresees to implement a command centre that will centralize the monitoring and management of hospital workflows, allowing more efficient coordination and a quick response to changing situations. Finally, the “Smart Room” is an initiative that seeks to transform the patient experience and the efficiency of care during the hospitalization through technology. The design of this proposal implies a deep understanding of how digital solutions can be effectively integrated into the hospital environment to improve both health care and patient comfort.

Furthermore, the Hospital is capitalizing on its robust data ecosystem to create value, while ensuring focus on security, privacy, and confidentiality. Our foray into secondary data utilization started several years ago with the creation of a structural digital twin (IMASIS-2), which includes records for over 1.6 million patients, 8 million diagnoses, 17 million visits, 65 million drug administrations, and 240 million laboratory test registries. Continuously expanding, this digital twin has empowered us to undertake projects that were previously inconceivable. In this sense, we stand among the first partners enrolled in the DARWIN EU® network, led by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), aiming to generate real-world evidence for scientific evaluations and regulatory decision-making.

Also, as a selected centre for the Catalan precision oncology program, we are making a great effort harmonizing and integrating molecular information into our databases, in order to enhance patient management. Thus, our deployment of a private instance of the cBioPortal platform allows clinicians to explore, visualize, and analyse clinical and molecular data for oncology and soon, haematology patients, offering a comprehensive perspective and facilitating patient comparisons with cohorts such as the Cancer Genome Atlas Program (TCGA).

Crucially, this wealth of clinical and molecular information, coupled with our medical images databases, serves as the foundation for developing cutting-edge AI solutions. These solutions not only aid in patient management but also alleviate the workload of our clinicians. Ready for deployment are solutions like secondary or tertiary readers in radiology and pathology, helping on diverse clinical assessments. Simultaneously, tools like entity extraction, report summarization, and hospital readmission predictors are undergoing intensive development. And this is only the beginning of an initiative that is part of Hospital del Mar's coordinated efforts to promote precision medicine in routine hospital practices.

• This is your first time at the BHH Stand in the Digital Health Area of 4YFN. Could you share why you decided to join Barcelona Health Hub this year?

Although we participated in previous events of 4YFN, we are eager to present our projects and look for new collaborations through our participation in the BHH Stand. We want to share some of the projects we are working on with the objective of finding new spaces of collaborations with the healthcare industry, investors, other healthcare institutions and universities and healthcare research organizations. Being part of the BHH Stand is a good opportunity to be in a space that brings together different organizations interested in healthcare innovation.

• It’s still a few weeks away, but what are you excited about at the upcoming 4YFN conference? What can we expect from your stand?

I’m excited about the upcoming 4YFN conference because it’s a great opportunity to discover the latest innovations and trends in the health sector, to connect with other professionals and experts, and to learn from the best practices and experiences.

I’m especially interested in the digital health program, where I hope to find solutions and ideas that can improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare. I’m also a startup geek, so I am eagerly anticipating the 4YFN awards, where I anticipate witnessing the unveiling of the most creative and disruptive projects in the field. I think 4YFN is the place to be for any health professional who wants to keep up with the changing needs and expectations of the patients.

In our booth you will be able to get to know the different strategic areas in which the Hospital del Mar is working. We will be happy to share some of the projects we are developing.

If you’re interested in meeting Hospital del Mar Barcelona, don’t hesitate to visit the Barcelona Health Hub Stand in Hall 8 during the whole week from February 26th-29th. Mark your agenda for the upcoming edition of 4YFN and meet them!

More information here.