The Chair of Digital Health Interventions researches and teaches on the question of how health measures can be enforced with the help of digital means. This requires a direct cooperation between the medical and technical sciences.
On the 1st of August 2022, Tobias Kowatsch was appointed Associate Professor for Digital Health Interventions at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich. In addition, he became a member of the Directorate of the School of Medicine at the University of St.Gallen. Since 2013 Dr Kowatsch has been the scientific director of the Centre for Digital Health Intervention (CDHI), a joint initiative of the Department of Management, Technology and Economics at ETH Zurich, the Institute of Technology Management at the University of St.Gallen and, newly from August 2022, also of the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care and the HSG School of Medicine. Furthermore, since 2015, Dr Kowatsch has also been the scientific director of the CSS Health Lab, a collaboration with the Swiss health insurance company CSS.
Professor Kowatsch teaches and conducts research in the field of digital therapeutics (DTx) at the inter-face of medicine, technology and management. He pursues the following strategic goals:
1. develop evidence-based DTx for the prevention and management of non-communicable diseases and mental illness.
2. develop digital biomarkers for the prevention of critical health conditions.
3. facilitate access to health services for vulnerable populations and minorities.
These objektives will be achieved through:
1. national and international research projects in collaboration with academia, patient organizations, and other public and private healthcare organizations (research).
2. teaching courses in the field of digital therapeutics, digital biomarkers and digital clinical trials (e.g. Joint Medical Master JMM-HSG/UZH) (teaching & continuing education)
3. establishment of a globally scalable DTx design & trial service (service)
4. establishment of an accelerator programme for DTx (start-up funding)