DMEA Program Committees

Bernhard Breil is a medical informatics specialist and psychologist who has been teaching as a professor of health informatics at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences since 2013. Since January 2020, he has served as dean of the Department of Health Care. In his teaching, he focuses primarily on the medical informatics program and gives lectures on topics such as clinical IT systems, system integration, and IT project management.

In his research, Breil focuses on the socio-technical aspects at the interface between humans and IT, examining not only technical aspects but also their impact on people. Other research topics include the networking of medical information systems and the acceptance of eHealth applications. He is the author of national and international publications and a speaker at national and international conferences.

After completing my degree in business administration with a focus on healthcare institutions from 1981 to 1985, I began my professional career as an auditor at the accounting firm Treyde & Stephan in Hamburg. From 1988 to 1994, I served as Head of IT and held a position on the executive staff at the German Red Cross and Freimaurer Hospital in Hamburg-Rissen.

In 1994, I moved to Dataplan Software GmbH in St. Wolfgang, where I initially headed up product and project management. From 1998 to 2000, I served as Regional Manager South in the sales department of SMS Dataplan GmbH.

Over the next fifteen years, I held various roles in sales and business development at Siemens AG before joining Cerner Corporation in 2015. There, I was responsible for business development in Europe and Latin America until 2020. Starting in 2020, I served as Managing Director of CGM Clinical Europe GmbH before assuming the role of Area Vice President of Business Development for Hospital Information Systems at CGM in 2022.

In addition to my professional career, I have been actively involved in volunteer work with healthcare IT associations and initiatives for many years. From 2008 to 2011, I served as a board member of bvitg; from 2011 to 2014, I was its Chairman of the Board; and since 2020, I have once again been a member of the board. Since 2022, I have also been a board member of the E-Prescription Enthusiasts.

Jessica Hanneken is an attorney and manager in the Health Care Systems sector. She has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the ADAC Foundation since late 2023. Since early 2020, she has served on the Executive Board of BFS health finance GmbH as Vice President of Healthcare & Politics and is also a member of the Supervisory Board of the University Hospital Bonn. From 2012 to the end of 2019, she served as Deputy Director and Head of the Berlin Representative Office at Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank eG. Prior to that, from 2009 to the end of 2011, she worked as a liaison for parliamentary and government relations at the German Medical Association. Between 2006 and 2009, she worked in the legal department of the German Dental Association, where she was responsible for European and national health policy.

In addition, she is a co-author of the specialist legal commentary “Medical Law,” which includes a commentary on the Dental Services Act (editor: Prof. Prütting, Luchterhand Verlag). She also contributed as a co-author to the reference book “Innovative Healthcare and Market Access I and II,” in which she authored the chapters “Market Access for Digital Startup Products in the German Healthcare System” and “System Partnerships in Healthcare” (edited by Prof. M. Pfannstiel, Springer Verlag). Furthermore, she is a member of the association Spitzenfrauen Gesundheit.

Ansgar Jonietz holds a degree in computer science (University of Trier) and a master’s degree in public health (MPH, TU Dresden). As an independent IT consultant, he founded Netzmanufaktur GmbH in 2010 and has served as its managing director ever since. In January 2011, he co-founded the organization “Was hab’ ich?” (washabich.de), which advocates for patient-centered communication. Since January 2012, he has been a managing partner of the “Was hab’ ich?” non-profit GmbH.

In 2019, he co-founded the German Network for Health Literacy (Deutsches Netzwerk Gesundheitskompetenz e. V.) and has served as a board member there ever since. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the German Network of Health-Promoting Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities e. V. and a member of the advisory board of Triaphon gGmbH. Jonietz serves as a mentor at Hashtag Gesundheit e. V. as well as in the B. Braun Foundation’s mentoring program for emerging leaders in the healthcare industry, which he himself completed in 2014.

Jonietz is active in the startup scene and supports aspiring entrepreneurs and startups as a mentor, judge, and event organizer. He is an ambassador for dresden|exists, the startup service of Dresden’s universities and research institutions. He serves as a mentor and coach for the YETI entrepreneurship scholarship and for SINN, the future platform for social innovation in Saxony. Ansgar Jonietz has received numerous awards for his work at “Was hab’ ich?”, including “Manager of the Year,” “Innovator Under 35,” and “Social Innovator of the Year 2016.”

In 1987, Matthias Meierhofer founded Meierhofer EDV-Beratung—at a time when not every household had a computer and the internet for personal use was still several years away. Even then, his motivation was to bring about improvements for his clients and, by extension, for healthcare. As CEO of Meierhofer AG, which today employs nearly 400 people across nine locations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, this goal continues to drive him to this day. Matthias has also been active in the bvitg for decades and, since November 2023—having previously served as the association’s CFO—has held the role of CEO.

Sascha Raddatz most recently served as Head of the Politics & Communications Division at bvitg. While pursuing and after completing his studies in history and future and innovation studies, he held various positions in the German Bundestag. Sascha Raddatz was born in 1990 and lives in Berlin.

Dr. Ariel Dora Stern is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Digital Health, Economics, and Policy at the Hasso Plattner Institute and a full professor at the University of Potsdam. Prior to that, she was a faculty member at Harvard Business School for ten years. Her research focuses on technology management and innovation in healthcare. She uses methods from econometrics and data science to curate and analyze novel datasets. Her projects address regulation, strategy, and economics in healthcare, with a focus on new health technologies and care models. She has published extensively in leading journals in medicine, economics, and health policy, and her research has been cited by Bloomberg, the New York Times, National Public Radio, STAT News, the Handelsblatt, and the Tagesspiegel, among others.

Ariel earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University, where she served as a predoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the field of Health and Aging Economics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Dartmouth College, where she was a Presidential Scholar and a national collegiate champion in figure skating. From 2020 to 2021, Ariel served as Director of International Health Economics at the Health Innovation Hub, an independent think tank of the Federal Ministry of Health focused on digital transformation projects.

She is a member of the advisory board of the Peterson Health Technology Institute, the German Society for Digital Medicine, and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, and advises numerous healthcare startups.

Luisa Wasilewski is a published author, entrepreneur, and established expert in the digital health sector, offering insights into market and technology trends as well as business models and strategies for digital solutions in healthcare.

As the founder and CEO of the consulting boutique Pulsewave and the Future Health Academy, she guides healthcare companies through their digital, patient-centered transformation and evaluates investments in digital health startups. As an advisory board member, she supports several digital health startups with their market entry, and as a board member of bitkom’s e-Health Working Group, she also volunteers her time to address health policy issues.

Previously, Luisa spent over five years leading the innovation consulting firm Brainwave Hub as CEO, developed innovative business models at Heartbeat Labs, and supported companies in their digital transformation at Capgemini Consulting.

Georg Woditsch has headed the Digitalization Department at Alexianer GmbH since October 2021 and is responsible for developing strategies and tools to transform processes at the network’s healthcare facilities.

With over 20 years of experience in the healthcare sector, the graduate engineer (FH) in biomedical engineering and Master of Health Business Administration (MHBA) initially gained experience in hospital planning and as an executive assistant at a hospital. In 2008, he took on the task of establishing a group-wide medical technology service at Asklepios and later moved to IT, where he was responsible for leading the Clinical Systems Department. In 2018, he joined the University Hospital of Münster as head of the Clinical Systems Department within the IT division and, among other things, helped develop data architectures for clinical research as part of the HIGHMED Consortium’s Medical Informatics Initiative.

His focus has always been on the optimization and holistic view of clinical processes and data structures, and thus also on the interplay between medical technology, information technology, and communication. Furthermore, he advocates for digitalization both as a catalyst within healthcare providers and for intersectoral and, above all, regional collaboration.