Seven European startups have been selected to co-create innovative and patient-centric solutions with four Latvian medical institutions under the country’s first public health innovation pilot program “Open Health Labs“. The program is part of a broader innovation promotion strategy meant to facilitate open innovations in the public health sector.
“It is important that medical institutions gradually become more digitalized and therefore also provide patients with higher quality services. The program and challenges set forward for the startups were defined with an aim to introduce the latest technologies in Latvian health institutions, thus, providing patients with a world-class experience,” says Āris Kasparāns, Director of the National Health Service of the Republic of Latvia.
The new program attracted almost 80 startup applications from different parts of the world. After a thorough evaluation, the best seven are now part of the program.
Pauls Stradins Clinical University Hospital has been paired with U.K.-based startup BuzzStreets to develop a visitor and employee-friendly navigation system. The same institution has also put forward another challenge to tackle. Together with Portuguese startup Bloq.it they are now working on a convenient system for depositing, storing and retrieving patients’ personal belongings during their hospital stay.
Riga Psychiatric and Narcology Centre is currently developing a digital platform for online inpatient consultations with Latvian startup Medon.
Jelgava City Hospital has been paired with Dutch startup Inicare to create a tool for continuous monitoring of the health conditions of inpatients. However, on a digital tool for monitoring patients’ movements and location, they are working with Israel-based startup IntraPosition.
Meanwhile, Daugavpils Regional Hospital is working with U.K. startup Resilio and Luxembourg-based startup Dynaccurate to create a digital platform for automated recording, supervision, and analysis of prescribed and applied therapy and monitoring of the condition of the patients undergoing oncology treatment.
“The healthcare sector is one of the four business sectors with the largest investment in R&D globally. In Europe, around 20% of total R&D investments could be attributed to the healthcare sector alone in 2021. This indicates a great potential to find solutions directly through innovation processes, and we are happy to see that Latvia and the healthcare sector, in particular, is setting an example for innovation at the European level,” says Marija Ručevska, the Managing Partner at Helve.
The innovation pilot program “Open Health Labs” was launched by the National Health Service of the Republic of Latvia in cooperation with the innovation management company “Helve“. The unique program is meant to promote innovations in Latvian public health sector and involves four state and regional-level medical institutions. The program’s DEMO day is scheduled for December 7, 2022, giving the participants an intensive sixteen-week work period before presenting their innovative solutions to experienced open innovation and medical technology experts.
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