Invitation to the Scale-IT-Up Workshop 2027 in Valletta, Malta

How can digital health interventions be developed and scaled to meet both individual patient needs and the requirements of standard care?

Many digital health interventions (DHIs) demonstrate their potential in research studies but struggle to become part of everyday care. Scaling up requires interventions that respond to individual needs and integrate into clinical workflows, relationships, and communication.

Scale-IT-Up 2027 explores this challenge through two complementary fields: agentic digital therapeutics (agentic DTx) and digitally supported blended care. These form the starting point for the discussion; contributions from other areas of DHI development and scaling are expressly welcome.

Agentic DTx incorporate targeted AI capabilities into therapeutic software. By preserving context across interactions, utilizing tools, and communicating with patients, healthcare providers, and information systems, such systems could enable more personalized and integrated interventions. At the same time, their adaptive behavior raises questions regarding clinical evidence, reproducibility, safety, certification, and reimbursement.

Blended care combines digital and in-person elements within a cohesive care pathway. It extends support beyond individual appointments and recognizes healthcare providers as a user group whose workload, information needs, and decisions are central to successful implementation.

Both fields converge in the communication between patients and healthcare providers. Agentic DTx could support blended care pathways by preparing for consultations, following up between appointments, assisting with triage, and linking patient-generated data to clinical decisions. The workshop explores how these capabilities can support effective, safe, and scalable care.

We welcome scientific and practice-oriented contributions from all stages of development, including early concepts, study protocols, evaluations, case studies, and implementation experience reports.

Key Topics

Agent-based digital therapeutics

• Agent-based and conversational DTx in prevention, therapy, and rehabilitation, including therapeutic agents based on large language models.
• Personalization through context awareness, memory, just-in-time adaptive interventions, and digital twins.
• Evidence generation for adaptive therapeutics, including micro-randomized trials, SMART designs, real-world evidence, and continuous validation.
• Certification, regulation, and reimbursement, including the Medical Device Regulation, the EU AI Act, and DiGA pathways.
• Safety by Design, human oversight, escalation to healthcare providers, and post-market monitoring.
• Integration into care through prescribing processes, clinical oversight, and interoperability.
• Scaling from pilot projects to routine care while managing operating costs, capabilities, and safety across populations and settings.

Digitally Supported Blended Care

• Designing hybrid care pathways that combine digital and in-person care before, during, between, and after consultations.
• Dashboards, alerts, triage, and caseload management for healthcare providers.
• Stepped and Matched Care: determining the right mix for different patients and contexts.
• Therapeutic relationships and new roles, such as digital care navigators and health coaches.
• Frameworks, terminology, and reporting standards that enable the comparison of blended care approaches.
• Scaling care pathways across care networks while taking into account providers’ capacity and workload.

Communication in Care

• Agentic DTx as a mediator in communication between patients and healthcare providers.
• Clinical handoffs and data flows: what healthcare providers need to see, and when.
• Shared decision-making regarding care modality, intensity, and automation.
• Human-AI interaction, shared control, transparency, and trust.
• Maintaining effective communication as patient and case numbers grow.

Development and scaling of innovative DHIs

• Implementation research, real-world evaluation, and scale-up.
• Business models and reimbursement.
• Equity, health literacy, and digital inclusion.
• Transfer across settings, health systems, and countries.
• Ethics, safety, and trust.

Format and Target Audience

The planned full-day workshop will combine presentations of accepted papers in thematic sessions, a keynote address, and an interactive session or panel discussion.

We invite researchers from the fields of digital health, medical informatics, Business Information Systems, human-computer interaction, and applied AI; physicians, therapists, and other healthcare professionals; implementation researchers; developers, manufacturers, service providers, and payers; as well as experts in the regulation and certification of medical software.

Submission and Publication

We welcome full scientific papers, position papers, case studies, and best-practice reports on the workshop topics or on overarching issues related to the development and scaling of innovative DHIs.

Accepted papers will be published in a dedicated section of the BIOSTEC 2027 conference proceedings under an ISBN, with a DOI assigned by SCITEPRESS. The conference proceedings will be submitted for indexing in Scopus, Web of Science / Conference Proceedings Citation Index, DBLP, Semantic Scholar, and Google Scholar.

Guidelines for submission and publication can be found on the official workshop website.

Important Dates

Workshop Chairs

• Prof. Dr. Hannes Schlieter, Research Group Digital Health , TUD Dresden University of Technology, Germany
• Prof. Dr. Marcia Nißen, Institute for Health Sciences, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST); Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich; Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, School of Medicine, University of St. Gallen; Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich; Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Rebecca Scheel, Research Group Digital Health , TUD Dresden University of Technology, Germany

Program Committee

• Ahmad Ishqi Jabir, Singapore ETH Centre, Singapore
• Dr. Mia Jovanova, School of Medicine, University of St. Gallen & Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Prof. Dr. Jacqueline Mair, Singapore ETH Centre, Singapore; Centre for Behavioral and Implementation Science Interventions, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Dr. Rasita Vinay, Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (IBME) & Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care (IfIS), University of Zurich & Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Qiuhan Jin, School of Medicine, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
• Felix Moser, School of Medicine, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
• Rachel Robles, School of Medicine, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
• Sabra Melamed, School of Medicine, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
• Felix Reinsch, Research Group Digital Health , TUD Dresden University of Technology, Germany
• Akshaye Shenoi, Singapore ETH Centre, Singapore
• Dr. Jeannette Stark, Research Group Digital Health , TUD Dresden University of Technology, Germany
• Dr. Peggy Richter, Research Group Digital Health , TUD Dresden University of Technology, Germany