In vitro fertilization, COPD and bipolar disorder, focus of 2019 d·Health Barcelona projects
<p>The sixth graduating class of the biodesign program promoted by Biocat presents its solutions at the graduation ceremony</p>
In vitro fertilization, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Bipolar Disorder are the focus of the projects from the sixth Design Health Barcelona fellowship program (d·HEALTH Barcelona), the biodesign program promoted by Biocat and inspired by Stanford Biodesign to develop future leaders and entrepreneurs in healthcare innovation.
The 2019 d·HEALTH Barcelona fellows presented their projects for the first time in public at the graduation ceremony for the sixth edition of the program, held at the Movistar Center in Barcelona. These projects are the result of nine months of training, including a two-month clinical immersion at Hospital Clinic, Vall d’Hebron and Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol to identify unmet clinical needs.
This year, the d·HEALTH Barcelona fellows identified more than 950 unmet clinical needs during their time at these hospitals, approximately 65% of which are potential business opportunities and 35% possibilities to improve the hospitals.
Each team chose one of these needs to address with an innovative solution. So, the fellows who did their clinical immersion at Germans Trias i Pujol, which has joined the program for the first time this year, designed a new method to diagnose COPD at primary healthcare centers. The fellows that studied the needs at Hospital Clinic presented a minimally invasive way of detecting the window of implantation in women following In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) cycles to increase the success of the procedure. At Vall d’Hebron, the fellows developed a digital platform to monitor and identify early signs of relapse in patients with bipolar disorder.
At the graduation ceremony, the fellows received feedback from a panel of judges featuring Frédéric Tétard, Global Head of Pharmacovigilance IT Service at Boehringer Ingelheim; Irene Sánchez, Business Creation Manager at EIT Health Spain, and Yaakov Nahmias, Director of the Israeli BioDesign Medical Innovation program. Nahmias has also been the keynote speaker of the event and has presented some success stories of innovative startups emerging from the Israeli biodiversity program. Finally, Montserrat Delgado, Education Manager of EIT Health Spain, has presented the main European health consortium.
Biocat seeks graduates and PhDs in life sciences, engineering, business and design for d·HEALTH Barcelona 2020
Biocat has open the selection for students of its seventh Design Health Barcelona (d·HEALTH Barcelona) edition, a postgraduate program to develop innovators and entrepreneurs in the healthcare sector, with starting date in January, 2020. The 95% of the previous editions participants have found a job in the healthcare sector and 48% of them started their own business project.
Following the Stanford biodesign methodology, participants experience a full cycle of innovation. The fellows divide into multidisciplinary teams with graduates in science, design, engineering and business, and do a two-month clinical immersion in top hospitals in Barcelona to detect real unmet clinical needs on site that can be the basis for creating new products or services.
Throughout the program, participants experience a full innovation cycle, from identifying the business idea to designing and prototyping a viable solution and searching for funding. At the same time, they take on valuable knowledge in medicine, business development, design thinking and creative leadership skills from over 70 international professors from Stanford, Kaos Pilot and companies in Silicon Valley, among others.
More information about Design Health Barcelona (d·HEALTH Barcelona)