Dr. Julian Wichmann, Co-Founder of Bloomwell Group – Interview Series

While it’s admittedly exciting to watch the American cannabis industry expand every couple of years, it’s far from the only country that is in the process of legalizing cannabis. One notable country worth watching is Germany, a country of 83 million people and a powerful member of the European Union. And even more similarly to the American cannabis industry, the German industry also has established physicians and medical professionals who are joining the nation’s cannabis industry as well. One such physician who is now assisting cannabis patients to receive access to their medicines is Dr. Julian Wichmann, Co-Founder of Bloomwell Group.

So what initially caught your educational interest about studying medicine, and what were the most important courses you took while attending Goethe University Frankfurt?

I think I was always interested in health topics in general – how does the human body actually work? But growing up, my main hobby was actually tech, from video games to actually coding and even building full websites. When it was time to start thinking about what to study, tech and very early concepts of artificial intelligence in medicine became new topics and interested me. In actual medical school, for a long time I actually considered becoming a reconstructive surgeon and began my education and training in that field. I completed all my rotations in the U.S., which had a big impact on my future career and view of the world, especially the U.S. in comparison with Europe. So it’s safe to say that I was more interested in real life experience than courses.

Of all the medical fields and specialties, why did you choose radiology? And how has medical radiology technology and equipment evolved over the years since you first began studying medicine?

I somewhat stumbled over radiology actually towards the end of medical school. But it made complete sense since it was the perfect combination of tech and medicine for me. My main issue with medicine to this day is scalability. One doctor can usually only care for a single patient during a certain timeframe. Radiology is a highly optimized working environment, where you usually read multiple cases simultaneously. AI in radiology became a big topic during my residency. Interestingly, it’s widely adopted in the U.S. now but still scarcely used in Europe. I’m a big believer in structured data and AI algorithms being the key to improving patient care, hopefully in the near future.

While serving as Head of Computed Tomography Research, what went into overseeing and developing CT research, and also launching the Division of Experimental and Translational Imaging? I would imagine that the division did some groundbreaking research for those very vital technologies.

During residency, I think I truly found what I wanted to do: build organizations from the ground up, focus on project work with team members with clearly defined roles working together, and build innovative technical solutions to improve patient care which can actually be scaled. There was not a defined research group in that department, so I decided to found one together with some colleagues who were equally as motivated. It’s great to see that this is still very successful and active, even after I left the hospital in 2018.

Of the more than 150 published articles based upon the conducted research that you oversaw, what publications were those articles featured i,n and what subject matter was discussed in those articles?

We focused on a special type of computed tomography technique, which allowed us to extract more information from the images than is visible. This was a brand new technique and we therefore worked very closely together with the vendor of those systems, Siemens Healthineers. In those collaborations, I learned much more about how companies are organized and all the things required to build a successful business. You have to remember that medical doctors receive basically no training on business basics. It took some time to step out of that radiologist role and move more into a business job position.

I’m still intrigued by research projects, so I was excited to also co-author two scientific publications on medical cannabis in recent years: scientists from the Universitäts Klinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, which is also leading the official evaluation of Germany’s new cannabis law implemented in April 2024, used Bloomwell’s real world data to analyze the impact of medical cannabis for treating neuropathic pain and sleeping disorders. Another study about medical cannabis for treating chronic depression was also based on Bloomwell’s real world data and conducted with outstanding German psychiatry researchers from the LVR-Universitätsklinik Essen. Both studies showed that medical cannabis is safe, has rarely any serious side effects, but is very effective in reducing both symptoms of chronic pain as well as depression quickly and long-lasting.

So what inspired you to found and run the Bloomwell Group, and have you received any pushback from German authorities and/or lawmakers due to the company’s affiliation with cannabis?

While working as a radiologist, I had actually only by chance read a bit about the law that permitted medical cannabis treatment in Germany beginning in 2017. This treatment option was never mentioned in any course or book during med school. I met my fellow Bloomwell Group co-founder Niklas Kouparanis during a friend’s birthday party in Frankfurt. He was already a seasoned cannabis entrepreneur while I was looking to actually build something in healthcare that can scale. I became intrigued by the potential of medical cannabis because I had also been working on weekends as a general doctor occasionally and had seen many patients with chronic pain. It was always the same story: a plethora of different painkillers prescribed over a long time that resulted in many severe side effects.

The founding of Bloomwell in 2020 coinciding with an absurd scenario in Germany: a law passed three years ago had clearly allowed medical cannabis treatment in the country, but only a handful of doctors were actually treating patients that way. There was very little information online. So, it was extremely difficult for patients to find helpful information, and just as difficult to find doctors willing to prescribe medical cannabis. There were also very few pharmacies dispensing cannabis. Prices were not visible online and waiting time for delivery was usually two weeks. And of course, medical cannabis was still classified as a narcotic at this time. There was no digital prescription, everything was highly controlled and paper-based. We believed that many of these problems could be solved with a digital platform connecting patients, doctors and pharmacies.

There were obviously many legal obstacles. The biggest one was that most policy makers and regulators simply did not understand what Bloomwell was doing – or actually not doing. This required a lot of explaining and good lawyers. I think we are one of the most reviewed companies in Germany and that even includes myself as an individual person. It’s still somewhat bizarre, but a pleasant surprise, to see that this is now a standard model for patient access to medical cannabis treatment in Germany now with many companies active in this space. Back when we started in 2020, I think this was unthinkable for many. We had no competition at all for at least the first two years.

When it comes to the Bloomwell program, how does it assist both the German medical cannabis industry and its patients and prescribing physicians? And what gaps in service or proper technology for the German cannabis industry does the program solve?

Bloomwell was the very first telemedicine platform for medical cannabis in Germany, launching in 2020. Today we are the leading platform for medical cannabis with tens of thousands of patients each month. For patients, we have made the entire medical cannabis therapy process as seamless as online shopping. And for pharmacies, physicians and wholesalers, we have built an entire IT-infrastructure.

On our platform, patients can choose their doctors and treatments according to their conditions and they can transparently see in real time which particular pharmacies carry the cannabis products that their doctors prescribe and what the prices are. This is also completely app-based, which is rare in medicine. But we should not forget that outside of this digital access, many people are still struggling to find a doctor willing to – and with the expertise – to support their medical cannabis therapy journey. And many pharmacies still do not dispense cannabis. In fact, Bloomwell’s latest data set showed that half of all medical cannabis patients in Germany do not live within a 10-kilometer radius of a pharmacy location that can supply their treatment. So as stated, more work needs to be done to spread awareness and education.

How did your experience in medical radiology and software/AI development go into the design of the Bloomwell program, and how do you ensure that the Patient Data Protection Act and other similar medical data privacy laws are being implemented at all times?

We have implemented the highest IT and security standards. Every single patient needs to verify his or her identity in an online-ID check, which is also used by financial stakeholders. For our e-prescriptions we have implemented a solution together with D-Trust, the business-focused arm of Bundesdruckerei, which is responsible for printing German passports. For Bloomwell, data protection is crucial. This is also something we highly encourage every single company to focus on. The reputation of telemedicine in Germany depends on responsibility and the guarding of sensitive, private patient data.

How do you think this type of medical software/technology could evolve? And how do you think that the Bloomwell technology could be adapted to serve other countries/states/territories that are legalizing cannabis for either medical or recreational purposes?

In Germany, we have established a blueprint for contemporary cannabis regulation in an EU member state compliant with EU law. The good news is that our progressive policies are having a real impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Germany – we might even see a million cannabis patients, soon. Therefore, I’m optimistic that other EU countries will follow the German path within the next decade. And the Bloomwell platform is ready to guarantee that the scaling of medical cannabis access will be managed with reliable, trustworthy and secure processes. This is a special plant and it needs its own patient access approach.

Thank you for joining us, Dr. Wichmann! For more information on the Bloomwell platform, please visit its website.