"Health Check" from Xund is designed to identify health risks

The Austrian start-up Xund develops software in the healthcare sector that is based on natural language processing methods. The software focuses on symptom analysis and disease diagnosis. According to the start-up, Handelskrankenkasse (Hkk) is the first health insurance company to provide the digital prevention tool "Health Check" on its website, which is designed to identify health risks at an early stage.

The tool combines and analyzes various parameters such as lifestyle, medication intake, family history and previous illnesses for an individual health assessment. Users can fill out a questionnaire which, in addition to a result, also provides recommendations for action if required. Users must provide their email address for the Health Check so that "any requests for access or deletion of data" can be processed. Xund provides further information in its privacy policy.

Structured risk assessment

According to Xund, the Health Check, which is approved as a Class I medical device, is based on a rule-based decision-making model that derives evidence-based risk profiles from scientific literature and clinical guidelines. The relevant risk factors are weighted and combined into an individual risk score for various health issues.

All updates to the model are carried out under medical supervision and in accordance with the regulatory requirements of a certified medical device. One of the major challenges here is proving clinical relevance and reliability. According to Xund, all models are continuously checked by experts using real-world data from the "UK Biobank ", which contains data from half a million people. In the long term, the start-up plans to expand the Health Check and is also hoping to obtain "high-quality data" from the European Health Data Space (EHDS), which recently came into force.

SmED since 2020

A similar, already established service in this area comes from the Swiss company In4medicine AG –, the Swiss Medical Assessment System (SMASS). A spin-off in Germany is the"Structured Medical Initial Assessment in Germany" (SmED), which is approved as a Class IIb medical device according to the Central Institute of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. Since 2020, the service has been used by the medical on-call service under 116117, with around 4.4 million callers having taken advantage of the advice. SmED has also been online as a chatbot on the on-call service website since the end of 2021. SmED is also used by some hospitals such as the University Hospital Halle an der Saale as a "digital health guide".

(mack)