Virtual Care - once sci-fi, now reality in Europe

Virtual Care has evolved from pilot projects to standard practice in leading US health systems, addressing capacity, workforce, and specialist access challenges. Lucerne Cantonal Hospital is Europe’s first hospital group to scale this model, utilizing two-way video streaming, AI-supported monitoring, controllable cameras, and virtual clinical teams to enhance patient safety and expertise across complex geographies.

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust is next in line for a Virtual Care transformation. Danish company Pontem Data as implementation partner, together with leading US technology provider NESA, has enabled these first Virtual Care transformations in Europe.

Professor Katrin Hoffmann discusses key lessons and the transformative potential of data-driven, smart Virtual Care hospitals for improved quality, financial sustainability, and patient experience in Europe.

Speaker

Prof. Dr. med. Katrin Hoffmann, MBA, former Chief Medical Officer and Executive Board Member of the Luzerner Kantonsspital Group, one of Switzerland’s largest multi-site university teaching and research hospital networks, where she led the group-wide medical strategy and drove digital, structural and virtual care innovation across the continuum of care. A board-certified visceral and transplant surgeon with more than 20 years’ experience at leading European university hospitals, she combines deep clinical expertise with C‑suite responsibility for healthcare strategy, M&A integration, quality, patient safety, and value-based performance in complex health systems.

Her work focuses on building data- and AI-enabled health ecosystems that connect hospital, outpatient and home-based care, leveraging smart hospital concepts, virtual care models and precision medicine to create scalable, patient-centric solutions. As an advisor to digital health and medtech companies in Europe and the US, and through her academic roles and international research profile with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, she bridges providers, industry and academia to translate innovation into measurable impact on outcomes, experience and efficiency.

Read about Katrin Hoffman on LinkedIn