Idana | Overview

In Germany, doctors have increasingly less time to examine patients. An important component of a professional examination is anamnesis. Anamnesis is a thorough conversation between physician and patient which records the patient’s medical history within the scope of a current illness. Information on previous illnesses, allergies, smoking behavior, eating habits and much more is determined to help explain the current condition.

In Germany, physicians have an average of only 8 minutes per appointment for the entire treatment of a patient. This short amount of time makes it nearly impossible to conduct appropriate and comprehensive anamnesis.

All this, although a diagnosis can be made only with anamnesis in 80% of all cases.

Beyond that, the reason for most misdiagnoses in approx. 56% of cases can be traced back to insufficient anamnesis.

The software Idana makes it possible to digitally gather the important information from anamnesis before the appointment for the first time. Idana primarily uses proprietary surveys that depict the different medical conditions of the patients.

These questionnaires contain specific questions for specific symptoms and are thus much more in depth than conventional forms used by physicians so far.

The patient can answer the questions either on a tablet in the doctor’s office or via smartphone or computer at home prior to the appointment. The doctor receives a confirmation once the patient has answered the questions and confirmed his or her data.

Idana saves the transferred data via end-to-end encryption in the cloud and thereby ensures that only the physician has access to the patient’s confidential data.

The doctor saves time by using Idana, has access to all relevant information from anamnesis prior to the conversation, and can thus allot more time for individualized consultation. The improved quality of the examination also leads to increased satisfaction among patients. After all, the doctor has more time to examine the symptoms and thus avoid misdiagnoses.

The founders received an EXIST founder stipend for the Idana software in 2016. Like its product, the team also reflects the combination of medicine and software: the founders include two physicians and one software developer with more than 10 years of experience.

Why equity crowdfunding?

Equity crowdfunding offers us an ideal combination of financing and open innovation through which Companists can contribute their ideas and join forces with us to conquer the market. This financing allows us to expand the operation of Idana and to further develop our product in order to establish solid traction for growth financing.

Idana is software for physicians, which surveys the patient’s anamnesis (medical history) digitally via tablet or smartphone prior to consultation with the patient. Afterward, Idana processes the patient’s data and presents them clearly as a structured report, which the doctor can save in the patient’s files directly.

Studies show that doctors can save up to 4 minutes per patient through simple digital anamnesis. Idana’s customizable and medically sound surveys can increase the potential for time saved.

A win-win situation: The additional information enables a more efficient diagnosis and therapy on behalf of the doctor, while patients feel more prepared for the consultation and can actively contribute to the success of the treatment.

Idana contains questionnaires with standardized questions and disease-specific questions (e.g. cardiovascular diseases). The doctor uses Idana’s application tool on the computer to select the appropriate survey, which can be modified as needed.

The patient answers the questions via the Idana app and confirms his or her data. The doctor can either provide a tablet for this purpose, or the patient can use his or her smartphone in the waiting room or at home.

The application tool and the app’s communication is end-to-end encrypted via the cloud. Only the doctor’s office can decode the patients’ data. Idana’s data protection concept was examined and approved by a specialized lawyer for IT security.

Idana can be used for specific diseases and specific events (for the first visit or a progress control). Our medical team partners with healthcare researchers and experienced physicians to develop a comprehensive set of proprietary (internally developed) questionnaires that comply with the highest international scientific and clinical standards.

The surveys are completed in the app without using a keyboard. This ensures not only perfect user friendliness, which is particularly important for older patients; it also enables automatic translation of the content into other languages. Idana thus facilitates gathering thorough and precise information from non-German-speaking patients, which has caused a lot of problems in clinical routine to date.

Idana makes telemedical surveying (meaning that the physician and the patient are not in the same location) of the patients possible: this facilitates process control and meets the prerequisite of improving medical care in Germany and especially in rural regions.

Idana is software as a service (SaaS) for physicians and hospitals which generates regular, usage-based revenue.

Users enjoy customer friendly billing per use that does not contain fixed costs: the customer (= physician) pays 50 cents (gross) per anamnesis survey. The price is derived from a comparison with digital education forms that the specialized publisher Thieme offers for 30-50 cents per questionnaire. This introductory price will be adjusted in accordance with expansion of contents and functions.

The homepage directly runs the desktop version for doctors’ computers and the corresponding app can be downloaded on the app store free of charge. The installation and registration is quick and requires little effort from the user.

Since Idana requires a tablet for use in the practice, we also offer an Idana starter set for €249 (gross). The starter set consists of a pre-configured 7” Android tablet, a stylus, and instructions for installation and operation (with a 14-day money-back guarantee). The starter set can be ordered on the homepage or with the app and is an easy way to integrate Idana in clinical routine quickly.

Next to direct sales, Idana will also be distributed by IT service providers and equipment suppliers for doctors’ practices on a commission basis (20% of revenue in the first year).

In 2019 we will develop an API (Application Programming Interface) for integration with already established medical software. This launches an additional, highly automated B2B2B distribution channel.

Next to key influencers in trade journals, our most important multipliers are university clinics and medical networks and associations. Presentations at trade fairs and congresses as well as high-quality content marketing via blog and SEO (search engine optimization) allow us to position ourselves on the market quickly.

We are working on certifying Idana as diagnostic medical product. This meets the prerequisite for the reimbursement of the use of our system by the health insurance companies.

The combination of medical and technical expertise makes Idana a qualitative, reliable, and efficient software solution with great user friendliness. Our familiarity with clinical routines and close contacts to healthcare and research institutions help us understand our customers’ wishes and needs exactly.

Idana is developed by doctors for doctors and contains proprietary questionnaires for a variety of symptoms that are digital and dynamic.

These questionnaires conform to current medical guidelines, are evidence-based, and provide particularly detailed medical history.

Since this kind of content does not exist yet, we create it and distinguish ourselves from most competitors who do not offer customized content for anamnesis in this manner. This development is complex and requires a great measure of medical expertise. The questionnaires and the source code are protected by copyright.

Idana was developed and optimized for the cloud as software as a service (SaaS) in order to minimize installation and maintenance costs. That way, customers can set up an account and start using Idana within minutes.

The confidential data is protected by an advanced security concept: they are encrypted end-to-end before each transmission. Opening this "data safe" requires the customer’s special password and an auxiliary key stored with Deutsche Telekom.

This safe – essentially anonymous data – is saved in the Google Cloud platform, which distinguishes itself through great reliability and scalability worldwide. Only the customer has the three pieces of information necessary to decode the data.

Although our competitors also offer their customers a central server as an alternative to on-site installation, they use their own hosting solution instead of a platform as a service (PaaS) cloud like the Google Cloud platform. This means that they have to solve a large number of tasks themselves, which the provider takes over for us automatically (performance scaling, encryption, backups, administration, software maintenance etc.).

Idana thus offers not only the highest reliability and performance; it is also efficiently scalable worldwide.

Even before the official release, we were able to initiate partnerships for several projects, which will start in Q1 2018, and we gained a pilot customer base, which primarily consists of medical networks.

The competence center Palliative Care, an association of five university clinics in Baden-Württemberg, plans to use Idana for the consistent measurement of its patients’ quality of life in spring 2018. The medical network Köln Süd with approx. 30 practices was won over for a pilot phase for Q1 2018 as well. We are in negotiations with two additional renowned medical networks.

A clinical study with Idana conducted by the urological department of the university clinic in Freiburg that will start in Q1 2018 promises a similar multiplying effect. In the study, our system is compared to other anamnesis methods in terms of time savings, quality of anamnesis, and usability.

In the area of direct sales, we have gained several registered doctors in the region as pilot customers to test run Idana. Q1 2018 will also see a project for automated recording of radiological anamnesis in partnership with the renowned university clinic in Bavaria and with a large medical device manufacturer.

We are currently negotiating partnerships and distribution cooperation with additional companies in the areas of soft and hardware as well as with medical publications.

Idana targets physicians, dentists, and stationary hospitals and ambulatory clinics for whom thorough anamnesis is essential (general medicine, internal medicine, neurology, psychiatry/psychosomatics, gynaecology, urology).

A primary focus is on doctors who treat many new patients (initial medical history in case of takeovers or branch offices) or who have a high volume of patients.

In the first target group are doctors with an affinity for technology (approx. 30-50 years old, online presence of the practice or online booking of appointments) who are interested in optimizing the routines of their practices.

Germany alone has around 380,000 active physicians (approx. 150,000 in the private sector, approx. 190,000 in hospitals and outpatient clinics, approx. 40,000 in dentist practices). The average doctor’s office treats 45 patients per day. Of these, one third is suitable for a digital survey according to conservative estimation.

This calculation results in an average gross revenue of €150/month/customer (15 patients daily x 20 days x €0.50 per survey). When considering our target group (see criteria listed above) we reach a market volume of 50,000 customers as of today (customers = physicians), which will increase to a potential of 100,000 customers in the upcoming years due to a generational shift and greater interest in digitalization. In the long term, we will make revenue of €200/month/customer through premium content.

The Idana version 1.0 is already in pilot operation and will be proactively marketed from January 2018 onward. 15 questionnaires for general anamnesis, 10 standardized questionnaires concerning pain, quality of life, and mental state, and 10 disease-specific questionnaires (focus: cardiovascular diseases) are already available, the majority are also offered in English.

In the course of time we will focus on the sale of Idana and on tapping into additional specialized fields. In the intermediate term, Idana will be upgraded as a system to assist in diagnosis, for which we are aiming toward a CE certification. The technological foundation for international expansion from 2019 onward is already set: we will translate existing content and adapt it to national guidelines to tap into the EU and the US market.

The founding team is supported by an advisory board from the areas of research, economics, and clinics. One of its members is Dr. Michael Lauk, founder and supervisor of various medical technology startups such as neuroloop GmbH and an expert in the field of e-health.

In addition, Idana receives financial support from a private business angel who works in the field of biotech/life science and also advises the Idana team.

Links to the articles:

• TelemedizinBW, 13.02.2017
• BioPro-Magazin, 02/2017
• Online-Magazin Uni Freiburg, 07.09.2017
• brandeins.de, 11/2017

Founders from left to right: Jérôme Meinke (managing engineer), Lilian Rettegi (medical management/sales), Dr. med. Lucas Spohn (managing director)

Tomes GmbH
Engesserstr. 4a
79108 Freiburg

Email: invest@idana.one
Homepage: www.idana.one
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TeamIdana/