ZHAW Digital Health Lab
The ZHAW Digital Health Lab brings together experts from the fields of biomedicine, health, technology and business, who together create innovations for digitisation in healthcare.

Vision & Mission
We believe that digital health has tremendous potential to enhance the well-being of everyone in our population. In aiming to make healthcare more accurate, personalized, and preventive, digital health focuses on the individual.
We face the challenges of digitalization in the healthcare sector by developing solutions for healthcare innovations. Through its broad base within ZHAW, the ZHAW Digital Health Lab combines the expertise of specialized research groups in technology, healthcare, and business. This forms a unique breeding ground for digital health solutions throughout Switzerland.
We aim to be a leading, internationally recognized Swiss competence center in digital health. To achieve this, we rely on interdisciplinary cooperation and scientific exchange between our members. We work closely with service providers, industry representatives, health insurance companies, policy-makers, and other research partners to facilitate research, innovation, and technology transfer.
Our vision
The ZHAW Digital Health Lab creates innovations for the healthcare sector that focus on people. We improve health care and promote technology transfer between science, industry and society.
Our mission
As a competence network, we work together with our partners to develop solutions to current challenges in the healthcare sector. In doing so, we exploit the potential of our interdisciplinary approach. We rely on result-oriented cooperation with our network and are valued as a competent partner.
Would you like to be informed about current news, studies and publications, events and current projects in the field of Digital Health?
Who we are
The ZHAW Digital Health Lab is a virtual, interdepartmental organization of Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) comprising several departments and institutes. It brings together a variety of digital health activities and combines the competence fields of technology, healthcare, and business within ZHAW.
Board & Associates
The ZHAW Digital Health Lab was established in 2018 and is managed by a 6-member board of directors. The board meets regularly with its associates to discuss the latest digital health topics. More information about the Board and the Associates can be found here.
Members
The members of the ZHAW Digital Health Lab are currently organizational units of the ZHAW. All members have significant potential and the intention to advance the lab and its goals. More information about the members can be found here.
Digital Health Events
1. Digital Health Lab Webinar - 5.10.2022: Probabilistic Modeling for Medicine by Georg Spinner (ZHAW)
2. Digital Health Lab Webinar - 9.11.2022: Connected Health Tools as Driver of the Digital Transformation in Healthcare by Jens Krauss (CSEM)
3. Digital Health Lab Webinar - 16.11.2022: What is Public Trust in Health Data Use? by Felix Gille (UZH)
4. Digital Health Lab Webinar - 23.11.2022: Promoting the Internet of Humans with Hearing Instruments by Anne Thielen (Sonova)
5. Digital Health Lab Webinar - 7.12.2022: Explainability models for the early detection of Alzheimer’s by Christoph Friedrich (FH Dortmund)
Digital Health Lab Day
24.08.2023: Reserve the date and be part of the Digital Health Lab Day next year!
In keynotes, workshops, poster presentations and start-up pitches as well as other formats, the developments and specific applications of digital solutions for the healthcare sector will be presented and discussed using impressive showcases.
4. Digital Health Lab Day - Smart Healthcare & Digital Innovation
3. Digital Health Lab Day - Implementing Digital Health Innovations
2. Digital Health Lab Day - Digital Citizen-based Medicine
Save the date 24.08.2023
Projects
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Building a global bridge in health professions
Motivation/Rational Given the rapid change in the health care capacity and demand land-scape globally, looking at international collaboration for health professional education is key to success to meet future challenges nurses and midwives will be confronted with. The School of Health Sciences ZHAW has engaged in ...
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OSR4H – Open Set Recognition for Hematology
Development of a Proof of Concept for visual Open Set Recognition (OSR) algorithms applied to a Hematology task, the classification of white blood cells.
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AC3T – AI powered CBCT for improved Combination Cancer Therapy
The project enables a novel, combined, adaptive cancer therapy combining tumor treating field and radiation therapy due to significantly improved static (3D) and time-resolved (4D) low dose Cone Beam Computer Tomography images based on artificial intelligence image reconstruction algorithms. ...
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AUTODIDACT – Automated Video Data Annotation to Empower the ICU Cockpit Platform for Clinical Decision Support
Monitoring diverse sensor signals of patients in intensive care can be key to detect potentially fatal emergencies. But in order to perform the monitoring automatically, the monitoring system has to know what is currently happening to the patient: if the patient is for example currently being moved by medical staff, ...
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Deep Brain Vessel Profiler
The architecture of the supplying brain blood vessels is believed to impact the occurrence and severity of common cerebrovascular diseases such as ischemic strokes or intracranial aneurysms. In this project, we study methods to efficiently quantify the variability in human cerebral vasculature and how this ...
Publications
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Juchler, Norman; Schilling, Sabine; Bijlenga, Philippe; Rüfenacht, Daniel; Kurtcuoglu, Vartan; Hirsch, Sven,
2019.
Identification of clinically relevant characteristics of intracranial aneurysm morphology [poster].
In:
1. Digital Health Lab Day (Life in Numbers 5), Wädenswil, 3. October 2019.
ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.
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Scheidegger, Stephan; Fellermann, Harold,
2019.
Optimizing radiation therapy treatments by exploring tumour ecosystem dynamics in-silico [paper].
In:
Fellermann, Harold; Bacardit, Jaume; Goñi-Moreno, Ángel; Füchslin, Rudolf M., eds.,
Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2019.
International Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE), Newcastle, United Kingdom, 29 July - 2 August 2019.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
pp. 236-242.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00167
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Hirsch, Sven; Juchler, Norman,
2019.
In:
1. Digital Health Lab Day (Life in Numbers 5), Wädenswil, 3. October 2019.
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Bertel, Diotima; Teles, Soraia; Strohmeier, Flora; Vieira-Marques, Pedro; Schmitter, Paul; Ruscher, Stefan H.; Paúl, Constança; Kofler, Andrea Ch.,
2019.
The best of both worlds : combining digital and human AAL advisory services for older adults [paper].
In:
Bamidis, Panagiotis D.; Ziefle, Martina; Maciaszek, Leszek A., eds.,
Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health.
4th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health (ICT4AWE), Funchal, Portugal, 22-23 March 2018.
Heidelberg:
Springer.
pp. 66-82.
Communications in Computer and Information Science ; 982.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15736-4_4
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Färber, Andri; Zigan, Nicole; Dolata, Mateusz; Stalder, Philipp; Koppitz, Andrea Luise; Schwabe, Gerhard,
2019.
In:
Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Grand Wailea HI, USA, 8-11 January 2019.
Honolulu:
University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
pp. 4125-4134.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2019.500
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Baur, Kilian; Rohrbach, Nina; Hermsdörfer, Joachim; Riener, Robert; Klamroth-Marganska, Verena,
2019.
Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.
16(1).
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-019-0547-3
Contact
Would you like to know more about the ZHAW Digital Health Lab? Alternatively, would you like to join us in creating healthcare innovations? Contact us at digitalhealthlab@zhaw.ch.