Lack of accessibility is a core challenge in healthcare. At Digital Tech Summit, Omhu and LEO Innovation Lab are coming together to show how we’re building a digital shortcut that brings the 121 day average waiting time for a dermatologist down to less than 2.

Have you ever had a rash? An itch? Or experienced any other issue with your skin?

Chances are that you have -  or will. Skin diseases are among the most common medical conditions but in Denmark, we have less than 100 dermatologists to serve a population of 5+ million. As a result, the road from first symptom to recovery can take years - but it doesn’t have to.

The evolution in smartphone technology has created an opportune gateway to accessible, specialist care. At Digital Tech Summit, the health tech companies Omhu and LEO Innovation Lab will demonstrate how.

A dermatology clinic in your pocket

One of the ways to alleviate the lack of accessibility is with telemedicine. After 5 years of research and development, it’s Omhu’s ambition to build a healthcare model that facilitates access to quality care remotely and timely. Omhu Care is the first step on the way - an app where you fill out a medical questionnaire and take photos of your skin problems to receive an assessment by a remote team of dermatologists. The idea is to turn your smartphone into a portable clinic. Same expertise as a physical consultation but in an accessible, digital packaging, ready for download. And instead of 121 days, you only have to wait up to 48 hours for a result and treatment plan.

With the existence of more than 3000 skin conditions, dermatology is a field that could benefit from a digital helping hand to improve diagnostic accuracy with artificial intelligence.
Imagine being able to identify skin conditions with a smartphone camera - at Digital Tech Summit, you won’t have to. Omhu will be showcasing solutions that bring the eyes of a dermatologist to your smartphone using convolutional neural networks.

Despite the immense potential of AI in healthcare, there’s a catch to address: the need for explainability. If we are to trust algorithms to make decisions for us - and our health - we need to understand the reasoning behind a particular diagnosis.

To crack this challenge, Omhu is bringing researchers, engineers, and doctors together to build explainable datasets for skin diagnosis and thereby more reliable, trustworthy solutions - meet some of them at the summit.

We need a new roadmap for healthcare

It’s no secret that health systems are under pressure, and that health tech has the potential to free up resources by doing some of the heavy lifting.  
Realising this potential requires inviting new players into the mixer to shake up a conservative sector and build more pathways for people to get access to the care they need. The secret sauce is start-ups with agility, innovative thinking, and risk-taking being some of the core ingredients - qualities you’re not likely to find among the pharmaceutical mastodons that have very little wiggle room for taking on the risks of challenging the status quo.

It was based on this acknowledgement that LEO Innovation Lab was established in 2015 - to create a space outside the very set confines of the pharma industry to explore what digital health has to offer.

Today, the innovation lab has a successful portfolio of spin outs and start-up investments - including Omhu. At Digital Tech Summit, LEO Innovation Lab will talk more about the importance of venture building to bring established companies and start-ups closer together, ultimately to the benefit of patients.

Meet us at Digital Tech Summit
Stop by our booth (#8) right by the entrance for a chat, and be one of the first to take the machine learning models Omhu is developing for a spin.
If you want to look more under the hood of building digital solutions for healthcare, some of the Omhu researchers and doctors are hosting three tech talks in the conference center on Tuesday between 13:00 and 15:00.

If you’re into venture building, CEO of LEO Innovation Lab, Anne Fleischer, will also take the stage at the closing on Wednesday at 16:15.
Check out the programme for more details.

About Omhu

Omhu is an independent healthtech company established by LEO Innovation Lab in 2020 to rethink dermatology from a new perspective.
Combining science and technology, our focus areas include teledermatology and the use of artificial intelligence to diagnose, manage, and treat skin conditions. We’re working towards a world where everybody has access to a dermatologist when they need it most.

About LEO Innovation Lab
LEO Innovation Lab is an independent unit, established by LEO Pharma as part of a long-term strategic decision to focus on patient needs.
We nurture companies to lead the digital health revolution with the single goal of improving the quality of life for people living with chronic skin conditions.