Bridging Frontiers: Startup Creasphere’s Encounter with the Swiss Innovation Landscape at Expo
The inaugural Startup Creasphere Meets Swiss Innovation Ecosystem event, held in Uptown Basel on February 7, 2024, marked a significant milestone in digital health innovation. It aimed to foster discussions on digital health and third-party collaborations, bringing together stakeholders from various corporations and startups to explore strategic approaches to innovation.
Key Highlights
Diverse Panel Discussions
The event commenced with opening remarks by Dr. Jochen Hurlebaus (Roche), Dr. Thomas Staehelin (uptownBasel), and Dr. Xenia Schmahl (Plug and Play) setting the stage for insightful discussions.
A keynote speech by Nimrod Vax (Co-Founder, Head of Product, BigID) shedding light on the journey to unicorn status, inspiring the audience with BigID’s success story.
The subsequent Panel discussions, moderated by Joel Schoppig (Pitango), delved into strategic approaches to innovation, featuring industry experts from Roche with Dr. Martin Puchwein, Head of Corporate Strategy, NEOM with Jordan Sellman, Head of Health Partnerships Innovation and Commercialization, and Bayer with Benoit Tyl, IEG Medical Advisor for Integrated Care Cardiology. They outlined the importance of startups within their innovation frameworks, emphasizing the agility and fresh perspectives they bring to the table.
The panelists discussed the significant value of startup collaborations in driving novel solutions and accelerating the pace of innovation. They shared best practices for defining and aligning innovation goals, highlighting the importance of striking a balance between ambitious vision and practical execution. Addressing the challenge of managing diverse mindsets and securing buy-in from stakeholders, the panelists stressed the need for effective communication, transparency, and alignment of objectives.
Swiss Health Innovation Showcases
After a networking break, the event resumed with a showcase of the Swiss health innovation ecosystem. First, a panel discussion featured three of the top Swiss innovation hubs represented by Diana Hardie, CEO at SwissHealthcareStartups, Pierre-Jean Wipff, Vice President at Biopôle, and Julie Risse, CEO at Sitem-insel. Later, their most promising startups had the opportunity to pitch their solutions on the main stage. These startups included RetinAI, Testmate, Impli, and Pipra.
Pilot Projects
Neurology: Neurophet (South Korea): Neurophet has developed an AI-based brain MRI segmentation technology to precisely measure the structural information of each brain region.
Telemedicine: Eyr (Norway) aims to make health accessible for everyone, giving people better access to health and insight into their own health data. It provides video consultations with doctors and other telehealth services to employees in businesses through insurance agreements as well as direct sales to patients.
Self-testing: PocDoc (UK) is a digital health platform that allows anyone to test themselves for a range of major diseases or conditions via a finger-prick test, and receive a full health assessment that puts those results in context.
Ophthalmology: PeriVision (Switzerland) combines AI algorithms, virtual reality and cloud computing to build the next generation systems to test visual function. PeriVision improves workflow efficiency and provides deeper clinical insight into eye diseases.
Patient-centered health data: Sync.MD (US) provides patients with superior mobile technology to collect, store, and share their personal health information. Sync.MD utilises enhanced, patented security methods and encryption protocols to ensure data is protected.
Population health: Verto (Canada) has developed a Digital Twin Platform for health that uses smart integrations to stitch data from multiple health data sources to create a truly interoperable technology to bring every patient to their best possible health outcome.
Breakout Sessions
Parallel sessions offered deep dives into corporate innovation strategies, startup dynamics, data privacy, quantum computing, and market access, providing attendees with valuable insights into emerging trends and technologies.
The event came to an end with the announcement of Verto as the best Pilot Showcase winner.
The next Startup Creasphere Expo Day is set to take place in Munich on June 4, followed by the Health.tech event on June 5 and 6. This underscores Startup Creasphere’s dedication to propelling digital health innovation globally.
As Startup Creasphere continues to expand its reach and impact, it remains at the forefront of catalyzing innovation and transforming the future of healthcare.