Researcher Alba Roca was one of the awardees in the first edition of the Innomed Awards for innovation in health, during the pitching session in which she presented the Guttmann Cognitest project. The jury highlighted the quality of all the business ideas presented, among which was also the Non-Stroke project by Roger Bragulat, a physical therapist at the Guttmann Institute.
Researcher Alba Roca was one of the awardees in the first edition of the Innomed Awards for innovation in health, during the pitching session in which she presented the Guttmann Cognitest project. The jury highlighted the quality of all the business ideas presented, among which was also the Non-Stroke project by Roger Bragulat, a physical therapist at the Guttmann Institute.
The event took place yesterday, June 13, at the Can Ruti Campus. Roca and Bragulat competed alongside 13 other biomedical projects from the campus's affiliated institutions: the Maresme Health Consortium (CSdM), Germans Trias Hospital (HUGTiP), the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute (IJC), IrsiCaixa and the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP). In total, 5 projects have been awarded, each of which will receive a service valued at 5,000 euros from the companies sponsoring the program: BHV Partners, Genesis Biomed, Inveniam Group, Ingecal, and ZBM Patents & Trademarks.
Guttmann Cognitest is based on the idea that 75% of dementias worldwide go undiagnosed due to a lack of diagnostic resources. Since changes in the brain begin decades before the first symptoms appear, detecting them early could promote a slower progression of the disease and yield enormous savings of economic resources on a global scale. Guttmann Cognitest is a self-administered digital cognitive assessment tool that enables remote, large-scale cognitive evaluation, as it does not depend on the availability of facilities or healthcare personnel. It consists of 7 tasks designed by neuropsychologists and based on cognitive paradigms, and has already been validated in healthy populations, older adults, and people with acquired brain injury. The tool has demonstrated over 90% diagnostic accuracy across all population groups, as well as a usability score of 87.7/100. This demonstrates the good perception and ease of use, even for the elderly population, a crucial fact considering that advanced age is the primary risk factor for the development of dementias.
The prize money from Innomed will be used for the next steps of the business idea, which include developing an intellectual property and regulatory strategy, establishing a business model, and finally, creating the spin-off.
Health Innovation Hub
The event reaffirmed the commitment to collaboration among the main healthcare and research centers of the Can Ruti Campus and its potential as a health innovation hub. The five award-winning projects were:
Market Study and Business Model Awards:
SNIPer: Ana Piqueras Hinojo (HUGTiP) – Inveniam Award
Design and Development of New Cell Therapies for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Laura Belver (IJC) – BHV Partners
Guttmann Cognitest: Alba Roca (Guttmann Institute) – Genesis Biomed
Clinical Regulatory Study Award:
Thyromet - Mireia Jordà (IGTP)
Patentability Study Award:
Towards a highly immunogenic vaccine platform for pancreatic cancer - Carmen Aguilar (IrsiCaixa)
The Innomed Awards served as the closing event of the Innomed program, which began earlier this year with the support of ITEMAS, the Carlos III Health Institute's platform for supporting R+D+I in Biomedicine and Health Sciences. The initiative was launched with the goal of transforming innovation in health and is structured around three pillars: fostering an innovation culture, project incubation, and public-private collaboration. The project leads selected by the participating institutions have received six months of training and workshops to valorize and implement innovative projects, covering topics such as the market and business model, the regulation of medical devices and drugs, and the technology transfer process.