DoctorBox: Another step towards telemedicine

A digital health record and corona warning app in one

Preparing companies for the second wave of infections? A Berlin-based company is providing a remedy. The two founders of Doctorbox, orthopaedist and trauma surgeon Dr. Oliver Miltner and CEO IEG of Investment Banking Group, gave the guests an insight into their start-up.

With the DoctorBox, anyone can use their smartphone to collect all personal health data such as MRI images, medication, laboratory values, doctor's letters or pain diaries. Of course, this is done in compliance with the highest German data security standards, assures orthopaedic and trauma surgeon Miltner. The significant advantage is that the DoctorBox app enables flexible provision and efficient integration of all health data - always in your pocket on your smartphone. This provision enables the user to optimize medical care with the help of ideal organization and structure of the relevant data. But that's not all. DoctorBox has long been able to do what the German government's coronavirus warning app can do.

What once helped supermarkets to find out which routes customers take, which shelves they linger in front of and which shelves they reach into first has now been repurposed to reconstruct the meeting points of people infected with the coronavirus. The Bluetooth transmitters - known as beacons in technical jargon - are installed in the chosen location. The number of beacons required depends on the size of the building. A so-called contact diary then registers whether the user of the DoctorBox app has walked past a beacon and can therefore track the interfaces of people infected with the coronavirus. If the public health department reports that an infected person has been in a place equipped with a beacon, the restaurant or store in question forwards this to DoctorBox. After a comparison on their server using the contact books, all registered persons are notified so that they can be tested.

 This may cause an outcry among data protectionists in Germany, but the two founders confirm that there is no data transparency whatsoever. As a user, you have the choice of storing the data either locally on your smartphone or on a high-security server on German soil.

 The company was founded in 2016 and the pharmacy service provider Noventi Health SE has been one of its shareholders since last fall.