InnoStars community focused on fighting back COVID-19

EIT Health InnoStars together with Partners and a broader community in emerging Europe is actively involved in the initiatives aimed at responding to the challenges caused by COVID-19.

The coronavirus got beyond the public health capacity globally. It immediately started to change how the world does innovations. InnoStars community quickly picked up the gauntlet and contributed to the EIT Health “Make Connections” platform – a dedicated online space where EIT Health experts started to facilitate pan-regional partnerships. 30% of submissions – both “asks” and “offers” – came from the progressing regions represented by InnoStars and EIT RIS, mostly from Italy, Hungary, Poland and Portugal. The first “matches” also started to arrive.

“I don’t remember a situation when our whole community was focused so deeply on a single topic. We immediately proved that we are able to set up pan-regional consortia to tackle COVID-19 within a couple of days, organising funding, mentors and whole environment to work on this problem. This is the most sustainable way of creating innovations”, said Balazs Furjes, Managing Director EIT Health InnoStars.

Together we are stronger

EIT Health Partners in Italy, Hungary, Poland and Portugal (countries within the InnoStars Cluster) such as Medical University of Lodz, Glintt, the University of Naples Federico II, Synlab or GE Healthcare are currently working on solutions to support our joint fight against the coronavirus. Here are some of the initiatives:

WHO adopts Portuguese tool developed by Glintt

Global Intelligent Technologies (Glintt) / Portugal / In order to establish a global tool for planning needs to respond to the coronavirus disease, Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators (APAH) and Glintt, a multinational healthcare IT company, developed together, the Adaptt Surge Planning Support Tool which was adopted by World Health Organisation (WHO).

You’ve got a question. They’ve got a game – IPN raises awareness by playing

Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN) / Portugal / in collaboration with Mindflow – a start-up supported by the institute has created a learning video game about the coronavirus to raise awareness around COVID-19, inform the population about this problem, and reduce the number of misleading issues surrounding the disease.

Diagnostic laboratory as a new gold

The Medical University of Lodz / Poland / in response to the pandemic and the limited number of diagnostic laboratories has opened a virologic laboratory together with the Central Clinical Hospital, the Polish Academy of Sciences and other institutions to analyse and test the virus. What’s more, the project developed by the Medical University of Lodz and MSTech – Ultrasonographic Lung Simulator – was granted in the EIT Health Rapid Response Call.

Strategic therapeutic programme by Celon Pharma

Celon Pharma / Poland / is working on its strategic therapeutic programme against COVID-19. The initiative is divided into two phases – the first one is focused on testing already the existing and approved treatments. The second stage consists in the development of an innovative drug that would show even greater therapeutic potential in inhibiting the evolution of SARS-Cov-2 virus.

Comarch HealthNote assess the risk of infection

Comarch Healthcare / Poland / together with doctors has created an online health booklet that allows you to collect complete and share current medical records directly in a mobile application and make them available to doctors. Due to the pandemic, the new feature was added to assess the risk of being infected by the coronavirus.

GE Healthcare addresses COVID-19

GE Healthcare / Hungary / is actively engaging to address the COVID-19 crisis. The direct actions which have been taken since the beginning of the pandemic are as follows: providing personal protective equipment as well as increasing remote diagnostic and repair capabilities.

Italian university works on a supercomputer

The University of Naples Federico II / Italy / together with other seventeen institutions across Europe (including EIT Health Partners such as Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, KU Leuven or KTH) is working on a private-public initiative aiming at identifying molecules capable of targeting the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and developing an effective tool for countering future pandemics.

Synlab supporting Italian regions

Synlab Italia together with Lombardy Region and Tuscany Region is working in order to initiate diagnostic tests of the disease by providing molecular analysis and tampons in situations that are critical to the level of resources.

InnoStars was also a supporting partner of the pan-Europan #EUvsVirus hackathon, organised by the European Commission and of StartupSafari Budapest where we co-organised a panel discussion about how key players of the European healthcare innovation ecosystem can contribute to the fight against COVID-19 and also presented startups from our Community and their innovative ideas to tackle the COVID-19 challenges.