Note: The opening segment (Nathalie Preiswerk’s introduction of the mini-series) was not captured in the auto-transcription. The transcript picks up with Frederik’s introduction of Christian.

Frederik: Today on the show I have with me Christian, and Christian is a really interesting fellow. Christian is a serial founder in healthcare. He has a background in robotics and oncology. He’s a man with many different interests, including two companies that I find interesting enough to bring on the show. One is called myoncare and the other one is called Convien. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Christian.

Christian: Thank you so much for having me.

Frederik: We met the first time at the Community of Practice where I was enthralled by a presentation. I really appreciated the angle and the hands-on decarbonisation case you brought in with Convien. But before we dive into the thick of it, I would love to know, Christian, what do you like to do when you’re not busy decarbonising healthcare?

Christian: I do a lot of sports. I like to swim a bit and, unfortunately I also like to travel, so that’s not so much for decarbonising. But I’m trying to use the means of travel that are mostly decarbonising. Travelling, seeing the world on the one side, and doing sports is basically what we’re doing. Spending time with the family. My boys are already grown, they’re studying in different countries, so I’m not seeing them so often.

Frederik: Oh, they flew away.

Christian: They are, we’re empty nesters basically. One’s in Madrid and the other one is in Berlin. And we live in Munich.

Frederik: Can you tell us about Convien and how that can contribute to decarbonising clinical trials?

Christian: Maybe I’ll start with how I got the idea for Convien. My first company was sold to a bigger organisation, and I was in a role that was more global. I was asked to join a meeting in Beijing, and I was wondering why Beijing would be the best place to host that meeting. That was in 2010. The idea was to compare Beijing with Barcelona — Barcelona was about 35% cheaper for 27 people coming from all over the world. It took us about three days to do the calculation manually. We wanted to do that algorithmically, and that’s why we created Convien.

Frederik: So it’s actually a relatively old case.

Christian: Yeah, it’s very old. Also mathematically it’s an old case. It’s an optimisation.

Frederik: Your slides look so fresh. I’m a bit surprised that the company has existed for so long.

Christian: Thank you. We took the dust off.

Frederik: One of the hypotheses at the Community of Practice was that if you can lower cost, oftentimes you will also decrease the carbon footprint. Did you start making a comparison of the cost saving and the CO2e saving?

Christian: That came up naturally when speaking with companies. This was co-developed a little bit with Siemens — they are one of our biggest customers. They brought in people from ESG who were interested in carbon footprint reduction. We looked at three aspects: ticket and hotel costs; travel time multiplied with cost per hour of the person; and carbon footprint. We found that the most carbon-neutral places to meet are often the most productive too. We can take out roughly 30–35% of cost and 40% of carbon. Meetings are about 50% of the spend for mobility in most international organisations. That’s where we can make the biggest impact.

Frederik: If we envision the use case for clinical trials — travel for investigator meetings, site management meetings, and patients travelling to a specific site — it’s a heavy driver for both cost and carbon. Have you done any thinking about how this applies?

Christian: Investigator meetings, for example — you can use Convien to find the most optimal meeting place for those investigators to meet. It depends on flight availability, hotel costs, whether there’s a big event in the city. We also thought of using it to optimise study site locations once you know where the patients are — but that’s a more advanced idea.

Frederik: So that’s your dream. Thanks a lot for telling us about Convien. The second case is myoncare — a care orchestration platform. Can you tell us about it?

Christian: myoncare is an agnostic care coordination platform, classified in Europe as MDR IIa. The purpose is to create patient journeys, triage patients, prioritise them for interventions, and provide decision support. In between two doctor’s visits, nobody looks after the patient — the patient’s pretty much invisible. We use data points collected between those visits to paint a clinical image for the doctor. We break up the “interval medicine” where you see a patient every six months and anything can happen in between. We fill up that void with wearable data and conditional questions. For example: if weight continues to grow for a CKD patient beyond a threshold, we ask questions. If those answers indicate risk, we immediately escalate to the doctor.

Frederik: Let’s say we have Christina who’s suffering from CKD stage four. What would the use case look like for her?

Christian: We can start at the screening programme — anywhere from a QR code in a newspaper to Instagram — bringing people onto a small screening pathway. Then we continue with a diagnostic staging programme involving doctors. Once a diagnosis is confirmed, we go to managing that disease digitally. For Christina, we paint a clinical image for her doctor 24/7. We monitor blood pressure and other indicators, and if thresholds are exceeded, we flag that immediately.

Frederik: A monitoring device is deployed with Christina, and myoncare communicates with that device, the MD, and the hospitals.

Christian: Yes. And we ask symptom questions too: how does the urine look? Any shortness of breath? We put together symptom severity indexes defined by clinical guidelines. As of a certain value, the patient goes to the GP or is escalated to a nephrologist.

Frederik: Christina also has an app on her phone?

Christian: Yes. The patient interface is an app connecting with around 500 different wearables: blood sugar measurement, scales, blood pressure devices, Apple Watch, and so on. For healthcare professionals — GPs, nephrologists, oncologists, cardiologists — it’s a web interface where they can see all their patients and how they are performing.

Frederik: And how does this relate to clinical trials?

Christian: We can run clinical trials the same way — it’s a trial protocol rather than a disease management programme. You can use it for decentralising trials. If a university hospital in Munich is the main study site but patients are all over Germany or Europe, they don’t have to travel to Munich for blood work or scans — they can go to a local doctor. This is how we help reduce carbon footprint by not having patients travel to the main site for things that can be done locally.

Frederik: And bring-your-own-device — since myoncare connects to 500 wearables, could that also contribute?

Christian: Exactly. People already have devices; we connect to data they may have collected over many years. We use the International Patient Summary: family anamnesis, comorbidities, lab values over time, medication history. We can do an eligibility check at the very beginning, in a decentralised way. We can also provide medical-grade devices like Withings (MDR IIa approved) where we need more reliable data.

Frederik: So in summary, myoncare allows healthcare professionals and patients to collect and handle more data to support decision-making and monitoring. In a clinical trial setting, this could enable decentralisation by connecting patients to a localised network of care providers for blood work or scans, rather than travelling to a central site.

Christian: Yes. We also do broader care orchestration — for example, connecting a nephrology centre with associated cardiologists, neurologists, and others across different locations. Everything is predefined along a pathway: who needs to do what, when, and what happens when a certain condition arises. If a GFR value is too low, the GP acts. If it’s even lower, the nephrologist comes in automatically. If there’s beginning polyuria, the urologist steps in. All done instantly in our system, because everyone is connected interdisciplinarily, even internationally. No waiting for referrals or appointments.

Frederik: So you’re also helping remove inefficiencies in how care is currently delivered. That’s super cool, Christian. Thanks a lot for coming on and telling us about this. Thank you for sharing these two cases with us — we’ll include links in the show notes. And for all our listeners, thank you so much for listening. Please remember to subscribe and share the episode — rating the show helps us reach a wider audience. We really deeply appreciate it.

Christian: Thank you, Frederik, for having me. Take care. All the best.