The yearly EIT Health Innovation Day took place at BioM in Martinsried/Munich on November 8th. Students, postdocs and young professionals together with BioM mentors designed innovative product ideas and presented their work in a short pitch in front of a jury. The winning team will now get to travel to Paris to take part in the European EIT Health iDay Winners’ Event.
In November, all over Europe EIT Health i-days took place at more than 30 different universities and at BioM as cluster organization. The aim of the Innovation Days was to boost students' entrepreneurial spirit and kick-start European health innovation.
Three inspirational speakers gave an introduction into the challenge of the day "How to support patients suffering from neurological diseases with novel digital solutions?"
- “Dementia and neurological diseases – a growing burden for patients and society”, Dr. Stefan Simianer, Vice President and General Manager R&D, AbbVie
- "Novel digital solutions to support patients with neurological diseases”, Dr. Joachim Vogt, Director Search and Evaluation, Western Europe, AbbVie
- “Mindpax– a role model for bringing digital tools to neuroscience”, Dr. Daniel Novàk, Chief Data Officer and Co-Founder, Mindpax
Participants were assigned to teams and went together through a moderated "Design Thinking Process" and competed for Gold (journey to Paris to take part in the European EIT Health iDay Winners’ Event), Silver € 300 and Bronze € 200 Awards. All award-winning teams receive an extra half day of personal start-up coaching from BioM.
The Gold Award was assigned to Dr. Vanesa Fernandez (Junior Group Leader at TUM), Dr. Sonja Lacher (Postdoc at BioMedical Center LMU), Thomas Raab (Student at TUM) and Christina Schwarting (BioEntrepreneur Martinsried) for their well thought out idea of a “Caregivers App”.
The event was well received - participants particularly liked the intense discussion with expert BioM Mentors. Furthermore, they were amazed how it was possible to come up with good solutions for these big challenges in such a short time by being guided through a highly structured process.
“I had high expectations for the i-day organized by BioM, but to my surprise it exceeded my expectations. Seeing how the design thinking process was used and having all those resources available starting with the network, speakers, know-how, etc. had a really great impact on the participants. I am really confident things were only put in motion today, but more is to come”, said Mohammad Chehadé, Education Manager EIT Health Germany.
The next EIT Health BioEntrepreneur i-day 2020 is planned for November 2020 at BioM in Munich.