Last week I had the opportunity to attend the MIHealth held in Barcelona, where I heard great communicators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries explaining innovative projects in our industry.
Of all the papers I was able to attend, I highlight the following:
Ron S. Dembo: Ron is the founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a company that uses participation and prizes to promote social change and positive behavior. Previously he founded the startup Algorithmics, making it grow to become the largest business risk software company in the world.
In his speech, Ron explained how people control elements of our environment to unimaginable extremes, such as automobiles, wherein with issues such as our health, that control barely exists, and is even in the hands of a system with large deficiencies and much room for improvement.
Ron explained the need for a change must start with people, engaging in their health even more, and he proposed mechanisms or ways to encourage this involvement.
GOODCoins is his proposal for this change to happen, rewarding people for incorporating healthy lifestyles habits, such as walking for half an hour every day, saving electricity or sharing healthy eating tips with friends and family.
Bertalan Mesko: Futuristic doctor, Bertalan works to incorporate disruptive technologies into medicine, helping medical professionals and students to make use of these efficient and safe tools, and e-educating patients about how to become equal partners with their caregivers.
Very interesting as Bertalan explained and showed the usefulness of many devices such as a fork that monitors us throughout our meal, identifying whether the rate at which we eat is right or not, if we do it too fast. Or a device that helps us control our heart rate continuously, facilitating monitoring through our Smartphone and many other devices currently available.
These and many other devices can help us to monitor different aspects of our lives that have a negative or positive impact on our health. I enjoyed seeing the relationship between what Ron Dembo explained as Bertalan showed us what you can achieve day to day.
Ana Maiques: Ana is co-founder of Starlab, a research and innovation company based in Barcelona. She is currently leading Neuroelectrics a spinoff dedicated to developing tools for monitoring and brain stimulation. IESE Nominated her as one of the most influential entrepreneurs under 40 in Spain.
Ana’s speech was fascinating; a mother 
and leader of an innovative company founded in Barcelona which is currently selling its products in more than 30 countries worldwide.
The top selling product is the Starstim ® Neuroelectrics, a transcranial stimulator with multichannel wireless stream. Among many other functions, it’s being used in the study of epileptic seizures in children, and helping to restore brain activity after suffering severe brain damage. Currently it’s being used in children hospitals like San Joan de Deu in Barcelona, and Boston Children’s Hospital, among many other places worldwide.
A quote from the presentation which says a lot about Ana as a person:
«The motivation of an entrepreneur is achieving a big social impact, rather than earning lots of money»
Jorge Juan Fernandez Garcia: Jorge is Director of Health 2.0 in the Hospital Sant Joan de Deu, the largest children hospital in Spain and one of the five best in Europe. It is also responsible for «The Liquid Hospital «, an initiative that spans more than 20 projects that seek to radically transform health care. In addition, this feature combines with the Academic Board of Moebio BioCat program.
As with the others, listening to Jorge Juan is a gift to the ears, one of the leaders in our industry with the ability to discover, analyze and point where are the trends pointing out in the future. But he is not only able to light up or show where the opportunities are, but also helps us to understand through his presentations that it is also possible to achieve it.
Jorge identified opportunities for different actors within our sector, healthcare centers, the telephone operators, the pharmacy industry, public administration, etc … An example is the process of implementing new technologies in our industry. He highlighted the opportunity the fact that despite being highly evolved, we are not finding the balance between these innovations and their applicability in the care processes, capitalizing on their investments, and ultimately its consolidation within the health system, making the high expectations we have raised become true and effective.
Although not discussed in his work in Moebio, it is a clear example of how Jorge has constructed, with the BioCat team, and launched a program preparing future entrepreneurs in the health sector, applying the Stanford methodology, but adapted to our situation here in Spain.
Finally, I want to thank all of them for their contributions and for all that I have learned during these two days listening.
Salud Significativa / Meaningful Health 