How do you turn a great health technology idea into a viable business?
Forty researchers, PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and innovators from across Europe gathered on IESE’s Barcelona campus to find out this summer.
Supported by entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and coaches, they took creative ideas from their research and learned how to transform them into products, services and policies with the goal of driving change in healthcare. A selected set of participants’ business plans were then presented to and reviewed by an expert audience.
EIT Summer School
The event in Barcelona was the second and final session of the EIT Health Summer School, and follows on the heels of a week in Trinity College Dublin in early July.
EIT Health is a European healthcare initiative, one of the largest of its kind worldwide, which aims to promote scalable and sustainable healthcare. In 2016, the initiative is set to incubate approximately 80 new business ideas, rising to 140 by 2018. It also aims to create 70 start-ups per year with 1,000,000 students taking part in an educational online programme by 2018.
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One of the experts taking part in the summer school was Prof. Magda Rosenmöller, senior lecturer in Production, Technology and Operations Management at IESE’s Center for Research in Healthcare Innovation Management (CHRIM).
Innovation in healthcare does more than improve the quality of life of users of Europe’s healthcare systems – it is an increasingly important driver of job creation, she believes.
"Healthcare is huge – and innovation in healthcare matters," says Rosenmöller. "The transformation of services and how they are delivered has direct implications for an increasingly knowledge-based economy. IESE’s research is at the forefront of developing and facilitating new products and services in fields such as ehealth and telemedicine."
The Summer School was based around real industry projects from the medical, health and technology sectors. Participants engaged in activities designed to help them adopt the practical skills they will need for successful innovation. As well as discussing current healthcare industry issues, they also studied the language of business and the basis of entrepreneurship as they learned to develop business plans, manage projects and seek funding.
"It’s a chance for participants to acquire the entrepreneurial skills they need to turn their ideas into viable business projects," states Rosenmöller.
The EIT Summer School was organized by IESE and Trinity College Dublin in partnership with Imperial College, Biocat, Uppsala and Ghent University.