SIMET: Swiss & International Medical Excellence & Transformation

SIMET is being built as an operating system for medical innovation: an ecosystem where experts can develop new knowledge, structure it, and translate it into solutions that genuinely change clinical practice.

We focus on aligning experts, clinics, and partners around a single question: how do we turn medical expertise into robust, scalable instruments that improve care every day, not just in publications and pilots.

The context: a strong ecosystem with a weak translation layer

Switzerland is one of the most productive medtech hubs in the world, with a dense network of universities, specialized SMEs, and global manufacturers collaborating across the full value chain from research to market.

There is no lack of innovation. The problem is translation.

New medical knowledge is created faster than it is implemented.
Digital tools and pilots exist in silos and rarely scale beyond a department or single hospital.
Many initiatives stop at the poster, app prototype, or publication stage instead of becoming stable, everyday instruments in clinical workflows.

Translational centers, national funding programs, and infrastructure initiatives address parts of this problem by connecting research, clinics, and industry and by financing early stage projects.

What is still missing in many domains is a domain-specific, end-to-end structure that runs from:

Medical questions and expert communities
Through structured innovation programs and governance
Into concrete digital tools deployed across clinics, research, and routine care

SIMET is designed to fill that missing layer.

What SIMET is

SIMET stands for Swiss & International Medical Excellence & Transformation. It is not a single app or platform. It is an ecosystem and a set of programs that make medical innovation repeatable instead of one-off.

At its core, SIMET focuses on three foundations:

Building and managing multidisciplinary networks of key experts and opinion leaders
Providing structured access to clinics, medical societies, and healthcare system partners
Developing sustainable relationships with industry, research organizations, and foundations

The goal is straightforward: create a robust medical network that can generate, validate, and scale innovations in a coordinated way.

Around these foundations, SIMET is structured into four main components:

SIMET Innovation Program
A methodology and governance layer for safe, efficient clinical innovation.
SIMET Initiatives
Focused, clinically relevant projects with measurable impact.
Service Projects
The translation layer where expert knowledge becomes digital Expert Instruments.
Solutions & Infrastructure
The technical foundation that keeps everything secure, maintainable, and integrated.

The rest of this article walks through each component in detail.

SIMET Innovation Program

A structure for medical progress

Most hospitals and societies run innovation projects. Very few run an innovation program with a consistent operating model. SIMET starts by standardizing how clinical innovation is done.

Unified standards, quality, and compliance

Medical innovation is tightly constrained by regulation for good reasons. Clinical decision support tools and digital medical devices must meet expectations around safety, reliability, and transparency.

SIMET builds a unified layer of:

Standards and reference architectures
For expert knowledge representation, data structures, decision logic, and auditability.
Quality and compliance frameworks
Aligned with clinical guidelines and medical device regulations where relevant.
Documentation templates
So every initiative starts from a compliant baseline, not from an empty page.

The goal is not to add more bureaucracy. The point is to ensure that any tool reaching clinicians can withstand regulatory, ethical, and scientific scrutiny.

Clear processes and role models

SIMET projects do not rely on heroic individuals. Each initiative follows a defined lifecycle with clearly owned roles, for example:

Clinical lead (medical ownership and scientific validity)
Program lead (overall coordination and delivery)
Data and infrastructure lead (integration, security, performance)
Quality and compliance lead (risk management and documentation)

Processes are defined for each stage.

Scoping and prioritization
- Clarify the medical questions, target patient groups, and key decisions to be improved.
- Define expected impact, economic rationale, and adoption targets.
Design and modeling
- Structure expert knowledge into decision and data models.
- Define measurement and feedback loops from the start.
Implementation and integration
- Build or configure Expert Instruments.
- Integrate with existing clinical systems and workflows.
Clinical validation and rollout
- Run pilots with clearly defined KPIs and safety monitoring.
- Plan staged scaling, training, and adoption support.
Operations and continuous improvement
- Monitor performance, quality metrics, and user feedback.
- Govern updates and versioning of expert content and algorithms.

The result is a repeatable, quality-assured innovation process instead of a collection of unrelated pilots.

Operational program execution and monitoring

On top of frameworks and processes, SIMET provides operational governance:

Central monitoring of milestones, budgets, and risks across initiatives
Coordinated use of shared capabilities such as data platforms or integration teams
Joint reporting for partners, funders, and regulatory stakeholders

External service providers, from software vendors to CROs, are integrated into the SIMET structure instead of running on separate tracks. This reduces duplication and ensures that external work is aligned with the medical objectives and program standards.

SIMET Initiatives

From idea to measurable clinical impact

The Innovation Program defines the how. SIMET Initiatives are the what: concrete, clinically relevant projects that move the needle for defined patient groups.

Starting with the right questions

Too many digital health projects begin with a technology capability instead of a clinical problem. SIMET Initiatives are shaped around the opposite logic.

We start with:

Medical questions and KPIs
- Which decision needs to improve, for which patients, and at which step in the care pathway.
- Which indicators (clinical outcomes, process times, error rates, costs) will demonstrate that improvement.
Objectives, value, and scope
- Clinical objectives such as reduction in complications, improved diagnostic accuracy, or better adherence to guidelines.
- System objectives such as throughput, resource utilization, or reduction of avoidable variation.
- Clear boundaries: which sites, specialties, and data sources are included.
Suitable funding partners
- Matching initiatives with foundations, industry partners, public programs, or internal budgets.
- Aligning expectations on intellectual property, data access, and long term sustainability.

Weak ideas are discarded early. Effort is concentrated on initiatives that can produce measurable, clinically relevant change.

Implementing with structure, not improvisation

Once an initiative is defined, SIMET provides the coordination backbone required to execute it properly.

Initiative coordination and stakeholder management
- Connecting clinicians, societies, hospital management, and external partners.
- Keeping roles, responsibilities, and decision rights transparent.
Risk and interface management
- Identifying regulatory, clinical, and technical risks early.
- Managing interfaces between existing IT systems, new Expert Instruments, and data platforms.
Sustainable community structures
- Setting up communities of practice that own the clinical content, pathways, and models.
- Defining how new evidence or guideline updates propagate into tools and KPIs.

Each initiative must define success metrics upfront and report against them. That is what turns an interesting project into a clinically relevant initiative with measurable impact.

Service Projects

Expert knowledge becomes Expert Instruments

Evidence and guidelines alone do not help if they remain in PDFs and slide decks. The real impact in modern healthcare comes from tools that bring structured, patient specific recommendations into daily workflows.

SIMET uses Service Projects to translate expert knowledge into Expert Instruments: digital tools designed for everyday use in clinical practice.

From consensus to structured models

A typical Service Project follows a clear path.

Capture and structure expert knowledge
- Consolidate guidelines, pathway definitions, and expert panel input.
- Represent them using standardized structures such as decision trees, scoring systems, rules, or models.
Design structured data capture
- Define which data points are strictly necessary at each step.
- Create data models that are consistent across sites and compatible with existing records systems.
Configure the Expert Instrument
- Build interfaces that fit into real workflows instead of forcing clinicians to yet another portal.
- Implement logic that produces clear, interpretable outputs: recommendations, risk scores, triage proposals, or quality checks.
Integrate and validate
- Connect to existing systems for data input and for writing back results.
- Run technical tests and clinical validation before broader rollout.

Examples of Expert Instruments include:

Decision support tools that assist with diagnosis or therapy selection for a specific indication
Structured examination templates that guide data capture and automatically calculate risk scores
Quality dashboards that monitor guideline adherence, outcomes, and complications across sites

These tools can reduce errors, improve adherence to evidence based practice, and support more consistent care when implemented correctly. SIMET’s role is to make sure this translation from knowledge to tool happens safely and systematically, not as an afterthought.

Building and activating medical communities

No Expert Instrument is static. Every tool needs a community behind it.

Each Service Project therefore includes:

A defined expert group responsible for clinical content and logic
Training and enablement for users that focuses on real cases and workflows, not just generic feature tours
Clear channels for feedback, bug reports, and clinical questions

The outcome is not just software. It is a living instrument, owned by a community that continuously refines it as new data and evidence become available.

Solutions & Infrastructure

The technical foundation that makes it sustainable

Behind Expert Instruments and initiatives sits a technical stack that must meet clinical, regulatory, and operational demands. SIMET provides this through Solutions & Infrastructure.

SIMET Foundations & Solutions

SIMET offers a set of reusable building blocks:

Frameworks and libraries for building, configuring, and integrating Expert Instruments
Templates for clinical data models, decision logic, and audit trails
Tooling for content versioning, approvals, and deployment pipelines

This aligns with the idea that clinical knowledge artifacts should be managed like software: versioned, validated, and deployed in a controlled way, with traceability for every change.

Each new initiative reuses these foundation elements instead of developing everything from scratch.

Deployment where it needs to run

Health systems differ in terms of data residency, connectivity, and integration constraints. SIMET supports multiple deployment models:

On prem where data must remain inside the hospital infrastructure
Edge in environments where low latency and local processing are critical
Cloud when scalability, cross site analytics, and flexibility are priorities

Hybrid setups are supported as well, for example local inference combined with central model governance. Data sovereignty and performance are treated as design requirements, not afterthoughts.

Licenses for innovation, clinical routine, and research

Licensing is treated as a structural element of the ecosystem.

SIMET distinguishes between:

Innovation licenses for limited pilots and experiments
Routine care licenses with clear expectations on uptime, support, and liability
Research licenses that emphasize data access, analytical flexibility, and collaboration models

This separation allows initiatives to move from early experimentation to routine use without renegotiating the entire framework every time.

Continuous development and version maintenance

Medical knowledge changes. Tools that encode this knowledge must change with it.

SIMET sets up:

Continuous delivery pipelines for controlled updates of Expert Instruments
Version management that links each clinical decision to the exact logic and data version used
Change processes aligned with clinical governance, including rollout and rollback strategies

The result is a stable, medically oriented technology foundation that can evolve without breaking trust, quality, or compliance.

Why KOL networks still matter, but need to evolve

Key opinion leader (KOL) networks are a familiar concept in pharma and medtech. They have long been used to identify influential clinicians and researchers who shape practice, trials, and adoption.

Modern approaches extend this by using data driven methods and network analytics to identify not only well known global figures, but also the less visible local influencers who affect daily practice.

SIMET builds on these ideas but shifts the focus in three key ways:

From one directional influence to genuine co creation of clinical tools and initiatives
From single specialty focus to multidisciplinary networks that reflect real care pathways
From campaign driven engagement to ongoing community structures that own Expert Instruments and initiatives over time

In practice, that means SIMET KOL networks are defined not only by scientific output, but also by contribution to shared tools, governance, and measurable outcomes.

Looking ahead: toward a learning medical ecosystem

Clinical decision support and translational infrastructures are evolving. AI based systems are moving from static rules to models that learn from large scale clinical data. This changes how evidence is generated and applied in routine care.

SIMET is designed to be compatible with this direction:

Expert Instruments can combine rule based and AI based components, as long as they remain interpretable and governed.
Data generated by SIMET tools feeds back into research and quality improvement, closing the loop between practice and evidence.
The same infrastructure can support innovation projects, routine care, and real world evidence generation without duplicating effort.

The hardest problems in healthcare are rarely about having an algorithm. They are about aligning experts, clinics, systems, and regulators around a structured way of turning knowledge into action.

SIMET is designed to address that problem directly: an ecosystem where experts can develop new knowledge, structure it, and turn it into robust instruments that transform how medicine is delivered in practice.