EIT Health InnoStars holds innovation road show

Innovation Open House lets partners host information events in Hungary, Poland, Italy and Portugal

During the month of June, EIT Health Innostars has co-organized together with GE Healthcare and local partners at Budapest (Hungary), Lodz (Poland), Naples (Italy), Coimbra (Portugal) and Lisbon (Portugal) a roadshow on business creation and education. Local partners hosted the road show in their facilities and co-organized the local events In order to make this project successful. Several altruistic expert speakers have travelled around Europe in order to promote the successful divulgation of Campus and Accelerator.

Overall more than 300 persons have registered on the EIT health roadshow, making this event a great success.

The highlights of the local events were:

• Budapest (Hungary), Co-organized by GE Healthcare

This event took place on 8 June and was co-organized by GE Healthcare. Local hero speakers have performed inspiring speeches on entrepreneurship. On special note, Mr Joerg Bauer, President GE Hungary, provided the closing speech and opened the doors for future collaborations.

• Lodz (Poland), Co-organized by Medical University of Lodz

On 14 June this event took place at the Medical University of Lodz and several local heroes were invited to share their experiences with the audience. The event was opened by Kamil Kipiel, CEO of Medical Simulation Technologies, who gave us an important lesson how to achieve startup success in medicine. He was followed by Jakub Musiałek, the CEO of Pixel Technology, the biggest radiology software provider in Poland shared his experiences in building UnitDoseOne, an automatic hospital pharmacy. Jacek Chrzanowski, the Founder of the One /One Lab design studio closed the event with the speech “One Of One – unique and unpredictable circumstances of startup creation”.

• Naples (Italy), co-organized by Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” and IIT Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

This event took place on 16 June at Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” and the official opening was performed by Prof. Paolo A. Netti, CRIB Scientific Director and Professor of Bioengineering, Prof. Salvatore Panico, EIT Campania Delegate and Professor of Internal Medicine at UNINA and Dr. Chiara Maiorino, Technology Transfer Coordinator at Città della Scienza. After that, Dr. Federica Cariati from One4Two, introduced her Innostars award company to the audience and her revolutionary product in development that aims to revolutionize fertility diagnostics. The day was closed by a fantastic talk from Open Biomedica Innitiative, a global non profit initiative created to support the traditional Biomedical field and focused to collaboratively design, develop and distribute open source, low cost and 3D printable Health and Accessibility Supports.

• Coimbra (Portugal) Co-organized by Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN) and University of Coimbra (UC)

The Coimbra innovation open house took place on 29 June and the event was joint opened by Antonio Cunha the adjunct director of IPN and Jorge Figueira the TTO director of UC. They were followed by Prof. João Malva from UC that explained the value of Campus in EIT health and the power of networking in European projects. After the expert pitches and Q&A session, the event was closed by Dr. Carlos Boto, the CEO from doDOC where he explained how this multiple award winning company and GoEurope winner, has grown in the recent years and how it benefited from EIT health. This company has developed a method to reduce paperwork during drug development and consequently, of reducing associate time and costs.

• Lisbon (Portugal) Co-organized by Universidade de Lisboa (UL)

The Lisbon open house was held on 30 June and it opened with a speech on Europe and entrepreneurism by Prof Rogerio Gaspar the pro-Rector of UL. This was followed by Heart Genetics, a company that developed “solutions in a box”, including genetic tests and computational tools designed to support clinical diagnosis and the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, pharmacogenetics and nutrition. Goncalo Antunes, the IT director, has explained to the audience how receiving an EIT health GoEurope award and undertaking the GoGlobal USA program favored the development and strategy of the company. The closing local hero was, Prof. Carlos Salema from Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), that explained how the consolidation of multiple independent research institutes into a unified IT resulted in a burst of relevant innovation, including health related technology.

The programs presented during the open house:

During all the local events, the experts successfully presented their programs at the audience of students, researchers, senior academics and individuals with a strong interest in entrepeneurship. In addition, the program experts have directly engaged the audience in a personalized Q&A session where doubts about the programs were clarified.

• Starship/Fellowship

StarShip is an InnoStars Innovation Fellowship Programme that enable PhD students from InnoStars regions to enjoy benefits of the innovation potential of EIT Health Partners by rolling out a well-structured, practice-oriented programme to educate young talents and integrate them into EIT Health projects. Innovation Fellowships constitute a training programme based on a well-defined process for needs-driven innovation called BioDesign. This approach involves the education of many students and professionals in needs-driven innovation. The experts for Starship/Fellowship where Daniel Mogefors (KTH), Mikolaj Gurdala (EIT Health) and Adam Sebestyen (EIT Health)

• Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab)

EIT Health Starter Labs (E-Labs) are creative physical centers that provide opportunities for finding solutions to challenges in the society within the mission of EIT Health, i.e. with a focus on healthy living and active ageing. E-Labs offer educational experience by connecting the knowledge triangle of businesses, researchers and innovators with students, so they can master the craft of entrepreneurship and innovation through real-life cases. The E-lab experts were Aneta Andrzejczyk in Budapest, Lodz and Naples and Julia Skrzypkowska for Coimbra and Lisbon.

• Bootcamp/LaunchLab

LaunchLab is a unique two-month pressure cooker that allows aspiring entrepreneurs from all over Europe to discover the business potential of their health-tech ideas. The programme helps participants to explore and validate their ideas, market potential and business model – and to launch in markets all over Europe. The experts for campus Bootcamp/LaunchLab were Puck van de Bovenkamp (TU Delft), Nils Beers (Yes! Delft), Sagar Boers (Yes! Delft) and Pepijn Duijvestein (Yes! Delft).

• Venture lab

EIT Health VentureLab offers 16-week-long acceleration programmes for candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset, who want to develop their personal and team business competencies and simultaneously explore and develop their ambitious health-related business ideas. Weekly training sessions, business coaching, expert coaching, an international network, and a Quality Management System, will help you show stakeholders that you are a reliable entrepreneurial partner.
VentureLab Weekend is a 3-day-long event, where aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if their startup ideas are viable, through workshops, pitch training and intensive coaching. The weekend also shows you and us if EIT Health VentureLab is something for you. Venture lab was introduced by Prof. Aard Groen in Budapest and Akos Wetters in Lodz, Budapest, Coimbra and Lisbon.

• GoGlobal

Go Global is an internationalization program for European companies who want to expand their business globally to increase growth. Companies will learn about the challenges of entering another market in what it takes in terms of regulation, patents, reimbursement, legal, marketing/sales and financing matters.The companies participating will get a big network of competent people that can help them in their internationalization journey. The participants will meet people and companies that have worked in these markets before and been successful. The program was presented by Nuno Viegas from EIT Health.

For more details about the open house on innovation road show, please click here