Patient Innovation wins Caixa Social Awards 2021

Patient Innovation wins Caixa Social Awards 2021

Patient Innovation (PI) was awarded the Caixa Social Award 2021 with the Patient Innovation for COVID-19 project. 

In this special edition in which the common denominator was "People's Protection", the 34 winning projects presented proposals in the following intervention areas: Health Care, Solidarity and Inclusion, and Employment Promotion, with national representation from the 13 districts: Azores, Aveiro, Beja, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Évora, Guarda, Leiria, Lisbon, Porto, Santarém and Setúbal. Although we got the news about this award in the beginning of 2021, it was only a couple of weeks ago that we received the award in a nice ceremony in Lisbon.

PI highlighted by UN as an example of SDG Good Practices

In June this year, Patient Innovation was highlighted by the United Nations as an example of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Good Practices. We are honored to be considered as one of the breakthroughs that are showing results and having a global impact. 

Our inclusion in the SDG Good Practices was justified by our contribution to two of the UN’s SDGs: #3 (Good health and Well-Being) and #9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). 

HOT OFF THE PRESS

Helena Canhão elected as Nova Medical School Dean

We are thrilled to announce that Professor Helena Canhão, the co-founder, co-leader, and Chief Medical Officer of Patient Innovation (among many other things) was elected as the new Dean of NOVA Medical School - Faculdade de Ciências Médicas of the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa for the period Jan 2022 - Dec 2025. Many congratulations to Helena and we wish all the best to Nova Medical School.

The 2021 Patient Innovation Bootcamp

The 2021 Patient Innovation Bootcamp supported by EIT Health took place from July to November in Lisbon, Copenhagen, and Barcelona (online) and hosted 24 participants from 11 countries. The Patient Innovation Bootcamp is aimed at supporting innovators (patients, informal caregivers, and collaborators) to implement and scale up the innovative solutions they developed to help them cope with a need imposed by their health condition.  In the 2021 edition, 11 teams were selected and brought solutions ranging from digital health solutions to medical devices, for diseases and health conditions ranging from cancer, skin diseases, or cardiomyopathies. 

The President of CBS Nikolaj Malchow-Møller, the Dean of NovaSBE Daniel Traça, and Eric von Hippel (MIT Sloan) were speakers at the opening of the bootcamp. 

3 weeks of intensive work with 2 in-person weeks

This year, due to a lot of COVID restrictions being lifted, it was possible to host two of the three working weeks in person. The first week of the Bootcamp was hosted in Lisbon, at the Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE) campus, where the teams got the opportunity to meet each other and network face-to-face with the incredible panel of mentors, speakers, and experts. This first week was focused on the developing and validation aspects and was organized by Patient Innovation in partnership with Nova SBE, Nova Medical School, and Glintt.

The following week of hands-on work took place online “in Barcelona” with our partners IESE Business School and Biocat, that supported the teams in designing their business plan.

The final week in-person happened in Copenhagen at Copenhagen Business School’s campus, organized by our partners Copenhagen Business School (activity leader) and University of Copenhagen, where they focused on helping the teams to consolidate, implement and diffuse their projects.

Demo day 2021 (and the winner is….)

On the last day of the Bootcamp Week in Copenhagen, we held a pitch competition at Copenhagen Business School, where the 11 teams got the opportunity to present their pitch, after working on it over the last couple of weeks.

Amethyst Care, Daiprox, Fada Medical, Glooma, Leav – Quit Smarter, Legit Health, Motus, Oppioo, PeerCare, Skinlync, SumMed presented their projects to the CBS Master in Innovation in Health Care (IHC) students who selected the winning pitch. Even if all teams had excellent pitches, Fada Medical from Ireland was the winner of the Demo Day.

EIT Health Bootcamp Tour 2021

All the teams from the bootcamps supported by EIT Health had the chance to participate in the online EIT Health Bootcamp Tour. During these 2 weeks, they would learn about different topics that were not addressed during the bootcamps. The teams also had the chance to participate in a contest to win a 7500€ voucher that would allow them to connect with a pre-selected network of User Validation Labs to test and validate their ideas. We are very happy that two Patient Innovation Bootcamp 2021 Alumni teams, Fada Medical and Skinlync, were 2 out of the 4 teams selected to win the ULab vouchers.

The 2022 Patient Innovation Bootcamp

We are very happy to announce that EIT Health has approved the proposal for sponsorship of a third edition of the Patient Innovation Bootcamp, and applications will open at the beginning of 2022. This third edition will take place in 2022 and will follow the same general guidelines of the first editions with Copenhagen Business School, Nova SBE, Nova Medical School, IESE Business School, Biocat, Glintt, and Denmark's Technical University as main partners.

Internships

Over this last year, Patient Innovation had the pleasure of welcoming some students as part of their internships.  Diogo Nunes, a third year Biomedical Engineering student from Universidade do Minho, joined our team for 2 months through his ANEEB (Associação Nacional de Estudantes de Engenheria Biomédica) internship. During these 2 months, Diogo helped find and write new solutions for our website, as well as updating the Patient Innovation platform back office. 

Carolina Bento and Maria João Caldeira joined our team for 2 weeks as part of the Ciência Viva No Laboratório 2021 internship – ‘Revolutionizing Health: Discovering Patient-Created Solutions - Patient Innovation’. They were challenged to create their own solutions which they summarized on a poster and on a 5 min pitch presentation.

Carolina and Maria João recently came in second place in the Ciência Viva no Laboratório Awards by ATG (All Time GABBAs) from a report they made about the impact the internship had in their lives.

Later this year, we will also welcome Miguel Anjos and Rafaela Gomes, student interns from PIATI (Student Integration Program for Students in Research Work), an initiative promoted by AEFCM (Associação de Estudantes da NOVA Medical School). The student will spend a short period of 2 weeks with the Patient Innovation team and learn how to update our platform back office and perform a study based on 50 different solutions, which will be presented in a poster. 

End of Patient2Entrepreneur project

This year we also finished our Patient2Entrepreneur (P2E) project founded by FCT - Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation. P2E is a consortium that involves Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Nova Medical School, Nova School of Business and Economics, Luz Saúde, and Orange Bird. The consortium started out this project back in 2017 and ended this year. This research project relied on the Patient Innovation platform and on all partners and aimed to empower patients by valuing innovation and promoting entrepreneurship.

Platform Statistics

The Patient Innovation team wishes safe and happy Holidays to all, with hopes for a brighter New Year!

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