Innovation in hospitals is key: Europe’s market-leading hospital network
Innovation in hospitals is key: Europe’s market-leading hospital network
Fresenius Helios is Europe’s leading private network of hospitals and outpatient clinics and is continuously expanding its role. Every year, about 26 million patients choose Helios for their medical treatment. With Helios in Germany and Quirónsalud in Spain, the group operates about 140 hospitals and more than 350 medical care centers. Many of our clinics in Spain and Germany are ranked among the best and receive top marks from patients.
Throughout 2024, Fresenius Helios has continuously expanded its role as Europe's leading private health care provider, advancing therapies and care on many levels: through high-quality and innovative treatments.
2024 success stories:
Driving medical excellence across clinics
Fresenius Helios demonstrates on a broad scale what medical progress looks like: In 2024, Forbes España business magazine named seven Quirónsalud hospitals among the 25 leading healthcare centers in Spain with Jiménez Díaz Foundation University Hospital ranked number 1. More than 700 facilities were examined. This award was among others justified by its clinical research, technological innovations, leading medical staff, and diverse range of services. The latest technologies for example include magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) to treat deep brain regions in movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease or essential tremor.
At Helios in Germany, we continue to advance medical progress with the expansion of the medical excellence clusters. This approach involves specializing and pooling medical services in one location driving treatment volume and increasing quality. Fostering this innovative strength and commitment was also one of the key topics of Helios clinical congress in Berlin, where about 1,700 employees from various locations and hierarchical levels discussed solutions in healthcare.
Promising breast cancer study
Fresenius Helios is very successful in conducting clinical studies on innovative treatment approaches. One important area is oncology: Around 13 out of 100 women develop breast cancer in the course of their lives. A long-term clinical trial involving 1,500 breast cancer patients at Fresenius Helios in Germany was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study revealed that “antibody-drug conjugates”, which target cancer cells with precision, significantly improved treatment outcomes. Impressively, nine out of ten patients with an aggressive form of breast cancer were still alive after eight years.
Advancing digital solutions and AI
Our colleagues at Quirónsalud in Spain are pioneering digital solutions with the self-developed ecosystem “Casiopea”. Quirónsalud has created a fully digitally networked and integrated healthcare system that supports and improves the patient journey in hospital and beyond. The “digital hospital” is already a reality. With Casiopea, all processes relating to treatment are fully controlled. The system is aimed at both patients and medical staff and makes all data centrally available to everyone in one place. This allows to direct patient flows correctly from the outset, prevent unnecessary waiting times. Inpatients use the app for example to check, track the current course of treatment in real time, access documentation and to communicate with their doctors. They, in turn, plan the entire treatment, share findings, assign surgery appointments, and create the medication plan. This fully integrated process control with Casiopea, its many years of use in the care of millions of patients is unique in Europe. Today, seven million people use the Casiopea digital patient portal!
AI applications, both self-designed and customized, are increasingly integrated into routine practices across hospitals in Spain and Germany. A recent pilot project added the “Scribe” application to Casiopea, which automates the transcription, interpretation, data entry and creation of a doctor’s letter by “ambient listening” during doctor-patient conversations. AI strongly enhances understanding of procedures and documentation. Most people are familiar with the scenario of medical visits: sitting in front of the doctor who types into their computer, almost glancing at the patient while talking. This is where AI steps in records the doctor-patient conversation and organizes it into a readable format. Both patient and doctor can review the written record together, improving the quality of the interaction and allowing for a more focused and engaging conversation. This innovation enhances consultation quality and saves time. After six months, more than 1,600 doctors are already using the system, which has been used for more than 112,000 consultations. The goal is to have more than 8,000 doctors using the system in the first months of 2025, which corresponds to 60 percent of the company’s doctors.
New facilities in Germany and Spain
With the opening of the Helios HSK clinic in Wiesbaden, Germany, we have built one of the most modern hospitals in Germany for patient care treating more than 175,000 patients every year. With this investment we send a signal: for excellent medical care! In Spain, we have opened a new Quirónsalud hospital in Zaragoza, offering over 30 medical specialties and state-of-the-art technologies!
Fostering innovation and research
At the heart of “Rejuvenate” – the next phase of our #FutureFresenius transformation – are innovation, research and development, and the use of state-of-the-art technologies to improve patient care. Digitally supported business processes, an ecosystem for healthcare data, and a strong innovation culture within the company are just a few points we will focus on in 2025 and beyond.