Audi partners with digital health incubator to tone up startups and drivers

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AUDI AG becomes founding partner in Berlin’s “Flying Health Incubator”. The center supports startups that develop digital innovations in the healthcare sector. With its involvement, #audi is accelerating to develop “automotive health” as new business area – dedicated to enhance customer’s health and fitness while driving. With #audi Fit Driver, the brand is already testing innovative services and functionalities in this field.

“More than ever, health and fitness are becoming top priorities in our daily life. With the fully connected car, we are creating the time and space to respond to this need also while driving,” says Dietmar Voggenreiter, Board Member for Sales and Marketing at AUDI AG. “Automotive health is an outstanding example of the many opportunities that digitalization opens up for us.”

In the Flying Health Incubator, AUDI AG is entering into dialog with decision-makers from the startup scene and from the healthcare industry. Together, the partners will strive to identify trends, technical solutions and business models in the digital health market at an early stage. The incubator scouts startups with innovative concepts in this sector and assists them over multiple years. The focus of the cooperation for #audi is on new approaches to monitoring fitness and health and their integration into the brand’s ongoing development projects.

Audi Fit Driver is intended to allow drivers to arrive at their destinations in a more relaxed and healthy state than when they get into the car. With this, the system is also contributing to road safety. It is currently being used in first concept cars. The car’s sensors work together with a wearable – such as a smartwatch – to monitor the driver’s vital signs. The car’s systems respond accordingly to invigorate, relax or protect the driver: for example, with a seat massage, appropriate air conditioning and interior lighting, adaptive infotainment, or in a later development phase, with a piloted emergency stop.

The Flying Health Incubator helps startups develop their digital business strategies, from research to quality management and to project controlling. Within this framework, #audi employees will also be working alongside entrepreneurs from the digital health market. Along with a network of scientists, IT experts, investors and mentors, the incubator offers participants a research site at Berlin’s Trauma Hospital (Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin).