The digitization of health system of the Valencian Community it is closer to being a reality. Distrito Digital has promoted the Distrito e-Health program to create the largest public-private digital health ecosystem in Spain, made up of a network of startups and innovation centers located in the region.
The presentation of this initiative took place on November 9 at the headquarters of the Digital District, the largest innovation hub in the Valencian Community, with the participation of Ana Barceló, Minister of Universal Health and Public Health; Carolina Pascual, Minister of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society, and Juan Ignacio Torregrosa, General Director for the Advancement of the Digital Society. To this support from the public administrations have been added the interventions of Antonio Rodes, general director of the Society of Thematic Projects of the Valencian Community (SPTCV) and CEO of Digital District, and of Francisco Estevan, co-founder and CEO of Innsomnia, promoter of other important e-Health projects in Spain and Latin America.
The conference also featured a specific block to present concrete success stories in digital health, arising from this model of collaboration between public administration and technology startups. In this space, the founders of companies such as iNuba, Avamed Sinergy, Movsa or Radar Salud shared their experience, exposing how their respective projects have allowed innovation in fields such as personalized nutrition, surgical planning, group monitoring and the patient experience. at the hospital, respectively.
“The District e-Health initiative seeks to help us in the digital transformation of the health sector in the Valencian Community, with public and private cooperation as an engine of innovation for the search for solutions and evolution of both the information systems and the own care provision. The Department proposes some first challenges to startups in this line, in which we hope they can contribute all their talent “said Ana Barceló, Minister of Universal Health and Public Health.
The development of this program will materialize in the launch of a series of ‘challenges’ or challenges for participating startups in the field of public health. These challenges are established taking into account the strategic lines of the Valencian health institutions, which in this first edition of the program have focused on innovation in primary care, preventive medicine, the best care for dependent patients or the implementation of telemedicine for improve care in remote and rural areas.
In total, there will be more than thirty fields related to health that will be opened to the ecosystem of technology startups, scaleups and SMEs brought together by Innsomnia, which will also be in charge of monitoring, mentoring and coordinating the testing of the selected projects.
More than 2,500 startups to improve primary care
With the participation period just opened, and waiting for an important group of emerging companies to join the program, the innovative base of Distrito e-Health has already become the most powerful in Spain, as explained by Francisco Estevan, co-founder and Innsomnia CEO: “More than 2,500 startups focused on eHealth will be invited to participate in this initiative. The initial trend was to focus the challenges on the hospitals, but the Ministry helped us broaden the vision and asked us to focus on primary care. This is essential, given that primary care currently accounts for 80% of the first medical visits, and we have already seen its key role as an initial containment barrier during the pandemic ”.
“This entrepreneurial ecosystem has established itself as a powerful and highly committed network from which we work to respond to the demand for innovation. Knowledge transfer in the health sector has become essential, as has been demonstrated during the pandemic. For this reason, Distrito e-Health was born and developed in absolute coordination and commitment with the Ministry of Health, and during the entire program it will be interacting with different actors of the health system. We intend to be an innovation that does not remain only in a bubble, but that penetrates the productive fabric “, said Antonio Rodes, general director of SPTCV and CEO of Distrito Digital
District e-Health will keep open the deadline for the receipt of projects until next December 24, date on which the technical evaluation phase will begin. Already in January 2022, the final selection of startups will be made public and the acceleration processes of the pilot projects will begin, whose presentation is scheduled for the middle of next year.
