Put together the best team, think globally and keep the ‘customer' in focus. This was the mantra when researchers, students and representatives from foundations and the biotech industry got together and turned Friday 27 September into an innovative melting pot at Health’s annual Medical Innovation Day. See video from the day.

2019.10.03 | Lise Wendel Eriksen og Jann Zeiss Thiele

Teamwork, innovation, network and entrepreneurship. Medical Innovation Day had it all when researchers, students, foundations, and the life-science industry together changed health challenges to specific solutions. Photo: Lise Wendel Eriksen, Health Communication.

A steady stream of prototypes, post-its and project ideas flowed back and forth between the lecture theatres at Aarhus University Hospital as researchers and Master’s- and PhD students from two of the university’s faculties, together with representatives from some of the major players in the healthcare industry, turned words like ‘innovation’ and ‘interdisciplinarity’ into action. Together they developed solution proposals for some of tomorrow’s healthcare challenges, and they tested ideas that can turn health science into cool cash. Held for the third time, Health’s Medical Innovation Day was established to give entrepreneurship a push in the right direction and to create valuable relations between the university and employers.

Think big – together with others

Bo Frølund, scientific officer at Innovation Fund Denmark, opened the day with a short presentation. He explained that Innovation Fund Denmark primarily looks at the team and not the individual when they award funding: “It’s a question of having the best team with different competences and also preferably with international collaborative partners. We’re ready to take risks. And you should be too,” underlined Bo Frølund and referred to some of the major active ’calls’ which Innovation Fund Denmark has at the moment. At the same time, he encouraged the researchers to take advantage of the fact that Innovation Fund Denmark’s headquarters are now placed in Aarhus... “our door is always open, drop by.”

Mikael Ørum, founder and partner in Pentac Partners, was the day’s keynote speaker and he also struck a blow for teamwork. Investors invest in people, and sometimes in good technology, as he said. Mikael Ørum comes from the world of finance, but changed track and now has an impressive portfolio of biotech entrepreneurship. He used his presentation to share knowledge and experience from his twenty-five years in the biotech industry, and he urged researchers to think globally from the start, ensure that projects are scalable and always to keep the 'customer' in focus when developing their business.

Watch video from this year’s Medical Innovation Day

Shoe soles with inbuilt pressure measurement

The Medical Innovation Day is arranged around two tracks; 'Challenge Track' and 'Innovative Ideas Track'. In the ‘Challenge Track’, six teams of ambitious Master’s- and PhD students competed to solve challenges from the life science industry, which this year were posed by Roche, Zealand Pharma and BalancAir.

On the ‘Innovative Ideas Track’, nine selected researchers from Health and two from ST presented their research projects and the ideas they gave rise to in front of an assessment panel, which in turn gave them feedback and sparring and asked critical questions. This year the panel comprised Giles Dudley from the BioInnovation Institute, Mikael Ørum from Ventac Partners and Paul Brian Little from the Lundbeck Foundation Emerge.

During the course of the day, the field on each track was reduced before ending with two finalists who then pitched their ideas in front of a packed lecture theatre. An audience vote decided the winners from the two tracks. Once again, Associate Professor Karin Lykke-Hartmann from the Department of Biomedicine won the best innovative idea category with the project 'NOTIFY: Novel approach to Improve Treatment in Infertility’, which aims to increase the success rate in fertility treatment and to make the process itself easier.

First place on the challenge track went to one of the student teams who had solved a case challenge from the pharmaceutical company Roche about the Haemophilia A disease. The talented students came up with a shoe sole and sock with built-in censors that could register pressure and temperature increases and thereby help predict microbleeding in the patients’ joints.

Next year's Medical Innovation Day is already being planned and the event will be held at the beginning of October 2020.