That's my takeaway from the workshop session at the EIT Health Alumni Summit held in Lodz, Poland earlier this month. Indeed, pursuing one's goals becomes manageable when you're receiving support from people you trust. Like in an air combat mission, the lead pilot needs a wing-person - someone to guard his/her blind-spots and ready to support his/her next, often daring, maneuvers.
Straight from the last European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Alumni board meeting for 2018 hosted at the EIT Health headquarters in Munich, I travelled to Lodz as an EIT Climate-KIC alumni community representive to the 1st EIT Health Alumni Summit. As an additional privilege of being part of the EIT Alumni network, I got the chance to attend the 3rd edition of the annual EIT Health Summit. Both events, hosted at the Medical University of Lodz, celebrated the tremendous efforts of EIT Health's network of best-in-class healthcare innnovators in delivering solutions to enable European citizens to live longer, healthier lives.
At the EIT Health Alumni Summit, Alumni & Communications Manager Miriam Irle and EIT Impact Officer for Entrepreneurship and Business Creation Laurent Roux delivered the welcoming remarks. Miriam reported on the steady growth of the EIT Health Alumni community in terms of membership since their foundation in 2017. This gave them the impetus to intensify their efforts in providing job offers, mentoring activities and workshops to aspiring entrepreneurs, and developing an attractive platform for Startups to promote their businesses and touch base with potential partners within the healthcare sector and beyond.
Later that day, Miriam presented the EIT Health Alumni board members, and gave a recap of their activities in 2018 which focused on enhancing the wider EIT Health community by bringing into contact their members to the different initiatives of EIT Health Campus, Innovation Projects, and the business creation program EIT Health Accelerator, among others. She also announced the appointment of Miguel Amador as the incoming President of the EIT Health Alumni board.
On the other hand, Laurent introduced the EIT Alumni as a community for all graduates and alumni of the EIT Knowledge Innovation Communities (KICs), which so far includes those of EIT Climate, EIT Digital, EIT Health, EIT InnoEnergy, and EIT Raw Materials, making it an interdisciplinary and multicultural network of networks where every member can learn from each other, and potentially form multi-skilled teams to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.
The Summit participants also learned about the EIT Alumni flagship activities namely the EIT Alumni Startup Days, a hackathon style event held several times a year where participating alumni from different KICs challenge themselves to co-design solutions to societal challenges, and the EIT Alumni CONNECT which serves as an annual meetup event where members can partner and co-create on projects and collaborate on how to further strengthen the community.
Committed to empower the community members, the EIT Alumni likewise supports Women@EIT events in championing women entrepreneurship, and promotes EIT Alumni Ambassadors who actively participate in European events where they can form external partnerships and network for increased visibility.
Using tools from positive psychology, team-building activities were facilitated for the rest of the afternoon by Yunel Founder & Managing Partner Kerstin Humberg. The ice-breakers were so entertaining that in no time, us participants have created circles of friends. For instance, the speed dating style session gave us the opportunity to discover our partner's motivation and expectation to join the Summit. By the way, we definitely enjoyed the coffee breaks in between, a smörgåsbord of delish Polish snacks.
At some point during the group exercises, Kerstin highlighted the significance of being a wing-person to one another. It resonated with me. Be it in building a startup and pursuing professional success or when it comes to our personal endeavors, we tend to be more and achieve more with trusted friends and allies around. Now imagine we belong to a community full of wing-people. We've got nothing to lose. Only endless possibilities.
I felt the same way when I attended the Climate-KIC Heroes' Reunion in Vienna last November.
For the next workshop, the participants were divided into groups and were tasked to brainstorm and visualize what constitutes a healthy city of the future. Oh what fun it is, knowing that we were in a safe place to discuss ideas, not to mention the diversity of talents in the room, we're able to come up with innovative ideas for our vision boards.
I came to the Summit with my personal advocacy, which is climate action. So I envision a healthy city as a climate-resilient city, where healthcare management is responsive to the changing climate. While I believe that we still have time to limit climate change catasthropes, small and poor countries in the Pacific such as mine have long been affected by climate change disproportionately. Definitely closer to home.
The Philippines was listed as the No. 1 country most affected by climate change in the 2015 Global Climate Risk Index. The most glaring health issues relating to extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change are the prevalence of Dengue, Thyphoid, Cholera, and Malaria epidemics during seasons of higher temperatures while more women are endangered and killed, even at a younger age, when impacted by natural hazards such as droughts, storms, and floods (Climate Change and the Philippines: Executive Brief, 2018).
Hopefully, as we collect and analyze climate and health data, more targeted developmental and humanitarian assistance can be extended to the most affected areas of the world. How much more if we do our part? Well, how about having wing-countries?
Inspiring StartUpers turned friends
Every now and then, we meet insipiring personalities who catch our attention. But when these amazeballs are likewise gifted with entrepreneurial aptitude as much as they are change agents, too, I'm so happy to have formed new friendships with them. Watch out as they progress to greater heights!
Connecting Virtual Reality and Neurosciences for Phobia Treatment
Biomedical engineers Rita Maçorano and Francisca Canais, CEOs & Co-founders of NeVARo
"NeVARo’s solution is based on virtual exposure therapy. The Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality visualization platforms enable an immersive and controled exposure to the object or situation of fear. The personalized headband monitors the patients vital signals (through EEG). Through signal processing and Artificial Intelligence algorithms, the interface cloud-based platform translates the headband’s outputs to anxiety levels, allowing a real-time and automatic control of the VR/AR game."
R&D for therapeutics targeting disease-coupled orphan receptors
Experimental medical science and experimental dementia researcher Stefan Broselid, Chief Science Officer & Co-founder of ReceptorPharma
"ReceptorPharma aims to develop new Alzheimer's drugs through a completely new pathway, mechanism and drug target. Our approach will lead to a new class of small molecule γ-secretase modulators (GSMs) without effect on Notch processing, thus circumventing one of the major obstacles that prior GSMs have been unable to overcome."
Higher efficiency of laboratory work
Biotechnologist Ruben Hovsepyan, CEO & Founder of MMR Ltd. His team is the winner of the best idea at StartUp Lab Lodz 2018
The MMR team promotes a new laboratory device, able to substantially speed up tedious laboratory tasks.
Sanitation and Hygiene
Medical University of Lodz student Michał Symulewicz's pitch for his automatic hand disinfector prototype caught the attention of the jury at the Off Stage Summit 2018 and bagged a cash prize to finance his project.
Medical expertise and strategic consulting in health projects
Public Health Strategist Lucas Perez, Co-Founder of Health My Project
"More and more projects related to health and autonomy are being created in France and internationally. However, project promoters often have very little medical knowledge and sometimes a blurred vision of the medical device market. Therefore, these shortcomings may present a risk for the commercial and social sustainability of the various projects carried by individuals, companies or public bodies. Based on this, Health My Project has created a community of health professionals and strategic experts working to challenge , scientifically credibility and give commercial visibility to submitted projects."
Thank you all for this wonderful opportunity. Happy New Year!
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