Open innovation between startups, corporations at heart of Health.Pioneers in Vienna

Open Innovation, the power of collaboration between startups and larger organizations, will be a key theme at this year’s Health.Pioneers conference in Vienna on October 10.

With Open Innovation at the heart of the event’s philosophy, Health.Pioneers is bringing together innovators and decision-makers from the pharma, biotech, insurance and public health sectors at the Vienna BioCenter on October 10.

On the startup front, organizers have already finalised a number of the 50 seed-stage entrepreneurs they’ve invited to the event. These include Finnish smart pill tracker solution Popit and Hungarian innovators Healcloud. The latter brings two innovative software solutions to the table. One provides actionable insights from electronic health records through big data analytics, while the other is a real-world evidence tool that helps cut the duration of clinical research.

Oncology startups will include CytoSwitch and MicroQuin. The former has a targeted chemotherapeutics solution currently in pre-clinical development, with promising in vivo data. MicroQuin is at a similar stage, working on a cell-penetrating peptide that conjugates with existing chemo- therapeutics to selectively target cancer cells.

Highlights from the first Health.Pioneers event last year in Amsterdam in the video below.

As part of Health.Pioneers’ commitment to Series A startups, it’s also inviting 20 of the more advanced enterprises. They won’t be taking part in the pitching contest, but they will take part in workshops, office hours and networking sessions dedicated exclusively to their stage of development. They’ll also be considered as speakers.

The line-up of both speakers and startups is now taking shape. At this year’s edition, headlined Catalyzing Innovation: from prevention to personalized treatment, all the talks and startup pitches will take place on a single stage.

Speakers include:

• Urška Sršen, Co-Founder at Bellabeat, will talk about how a greater focus on beautifully-designed health tracking products for women can be used to bring more attention and understanding to the topic of their health.
• Sameer Trikha, Co-Founder and CMO at Visulytix, will demonstrate the fascinating diagnosive power of his company’s AI-powered software, which can help detect a range of diseases through analysis of the retina. The technology can already offer clinical decision support for the detection of diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, as well as early insights into Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
  
• Melanie Matheu, Co-Founder and CEO at Prellis Biologics, will deliver a keynote on laser-based tech that can create functional human tissues and organs, with applications including organ transplants, drug discovery and toxicology testing.
  
• Balder Onarheim, Co-Founder and CEO at PlatoScience, will be demonstrating how neurostimulation can make individuals more creative and productive.
• Chris Edson, Co-Founder and CEO at OurPath, will give insights into the company’s experiences of working with the National Health Service in the UK and the international pharma corporation Roche.
• Olivier Heyning, Co-Founder and CEO at LUMICKS, will speak about the startup’s recent collaboration with AstraZeneca and the University of Cambridge to form the first ever Center of Excellence for Dynamic Single-Molecule Analysis for Accelerated Drug Discovery and Biology.
  

The second edition of Health.Pioneers is back to showcase digital and exponential medical technologies that impact and transform the individual and public health cycle. Open innovation is the strongest catalyzing force in healthcare, and hence, the event brings together decision-makers and innovators from the pharma, biotech, insurance and public health sectors to explore new ways to collaborate and pioneer.