Prof. Dr. Alfred Angerer, Head of the Health Care Management Unit, ZHAW and Deputy Head of the ZHAW Digital Health Lab

Sina Berger, Research Associate, Management in Healthcare, ZHAW

Insights from the Digital Health Report 2025/26: How are key players progressing in their transformation? (EN)

Prof. Dr. Alfred Angerer

Smarter Health Research through AI (EN)

Prof. Dr. Viktor von Wyl,
Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich

Robots and Humans (EN)

Prof. Dr. Yulia Sandamirskaya,
Head of Cognitive Computing in Life Sciences Unit, ZHAW

Smart but stressed? How to support mental wellbeing in a changing and increasingly digital environment. (EN)

Eva Richterich
Founder and CEO gomental.health, Vice Chairperson Ricola Group

Insights from the Digital Health Report 2025/26: How are key players progressing in their transformation? (EN)
Prof. Dr. Alfred Angerer, Head of the Health Care Management Unit, ZHAW and Deputy Head of the ZHAW Digital Health Lab

The findings of the latest Digital Health report are being presented for the first time. This year’s edition focuses on assessing the digital maturity of six key players in the Swiss healthcare system: pharmacies, medical practices, home care services (Spitex), health insurers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. The presentation explores where each stands on their digital transformation journey, what employees think about these changes, and what we—as citizens—expect from them. The session concludes with forward-looking forecasts on the future development of digital health in Switzerland.

Smarter Health Research through AI (EN)
Prof. Dr. Viktor von Wyl, Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich

Large Language Models (LLM) hold significant promise for making health research more efficient, personalized, and less burdensome. However, deploying these tools without a clear understanding of their challenges, benefits, and limitations poses real risks. This presentation will explore speech-to-text applications in health surveys, a Public Health Expert recommender system, and community-based recommendations for aligning LLM use with core principles of health research. Drawing from these three real-world examples, it offers practice-based insights on when LLMs are an appropriate tool—and how to manage expectations around its impact.

Robots and Humans (EN)
Prof. Dr. Yulia Sandamirskaya, Head of Cognitive Computing in Life Sciences Unit, ZHAW

In the past decades, robotics researchers focused on bringing robots from industrial cells to human-centered environments, such as hospitals or elderly care facilities. This led to innovations in robot control, introducing soft robots with force sensing and electronic skin, self-localization and mapping technologies, cognitive architectures, social and developmental robotics. In many cases, researchers draw inspiration from biological nervous systems that control behavior of animals and humans. Today, mechanically complex humanoid robots can be built. What will it take to control them in a safe, effective, and intuitive way? In this talk we will explore the span of technologies between neuroscience and AI that fuel modern robot software development.
 

Smart but stressed? How to Support Mental Wellbeing in a Changing and Increasingly Digital Environment. (EN)
Eva Richterich, Founder and CEO gomental.health, Vice Chairperson Ricola Group

A smart organization leverages technology to increase efficiency and effectiveness, freeing up time of employees at all levels for more human work. However, the path to this goal involves changing habits learning new things, and dealing with potentially more workload on top of already full schedules – from C-level executives to apprentices. This keynote explores how we can bring people along on this journey and maintain mental wellbeing during constraint times – ultimately retaining apprentices and employees and sustaining team performance.