Bellvitge Hospital collaborates with d·HEALTH Barcelona to train healthcare entrepreneurs
<p>A group of fellows will identify unmet needs that can become business opportunities</p>
The 7th edition of Design Health Barcelona (d·HEALTH Barcelona) is kicking off in January. This program is promoted by Biocat to train future healthcare innovators and entrepreneurs. New this year, one of the teams will do their clinical immersion at Bellvitge Hospital. For eight weeks, the fellows, in collaboration with their tutors at the hospital, will choose one of the needs to develop into a business project and compile a report for the hospital with the areas for improvement they detected during their immersion.
Following the Stanford biodesign methodology, participants 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.
“For us, and for everyone who uses our services, d·HEALTH Barcelona is an unbeatable opportunity to identify needs that could be met through creative thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship,” highlights Dr. Encarna Grifell, head of Strategy and Innovation at Bellvitge University Hospital. “We're very happy to welcome the d·HEALTH Barcelona team to Bellvitge Hospital and to work with them to try to solve healthcare problems and improve patient experience through innovative solutions that also give them a chance to carry out a business project,” adds Grifell.
Bellvitge Hospital is joining the list of hospitals participating in the d·HEALTH Barcelona program, which also includes Hospital Clinic, Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, Institut Guttmann, Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus and Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital.
Open call
Over the first six years of d·HEALTH Barcelona, fellows identified 5,970 unmet clinical needs, 65% of which had the possibility of being turned directly into business opportunities, 5% were associated with scientific discoveries and 30% were opportunities for improvement that the hospitals can implement.
Over these six years, 62 fellows from various disciplines have participated in d·HEALTH Barcelona: 95% have found a job in the healthcare sector and 30% are working on their own business project. Some start-ups that have been created based on needs detected by fellows during the program include MOWOOT, Loop Dx and I-Ophthalmology.
d·HEALTH Barcelona is part of the Innovation Fellowships program of EIT Health, the main European consortium in health, which gives fellows opportunities for international mobility with other programs and to be part of the extensive European EIT Alumni network after finishing the program.
More information about Design Health Barcelona (d·HEALTH Barcelona)