Innovation

Our Innovation Department identifies and translates research capable of providing equitable solutions to public health needs, in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2019, we consolidated our “Open Innovation Project Valuation Flow” with the identification, development and exploitation strategy for new treatments, point-of-care diagnostics and e-health. These projects include new antibiotics to fight microbial resistance, which received the 2019 award for the best start-up initiative from Barcelona Activa; new biomarkers for malaria diagnosis and clinical follow-up of Chagas disease; and new screening approaches for migrant populations. In 2019, the Senior Executive Programme for Global Health Innovation Management (SEP GHIM) was successfully launched on three continents and the postgraduate summer school programme Energising Global Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ENERGHY), led by ISGlobal within a European consortium, was developed. Both projects are funded by EIT Health.

Moreover, fuelled by the European Open Science Policy, the Innovation Department consolidated in 2019 its Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in Healthcare and Health Research line of work in several ways. First, the H2020-InSPIRES project, coordinated by ISGlobal, initiated two new participatory processes and developed an Open Impact Evaluation Platform, the first of its kind, which captures processes and outcomes of multi-stakeholder participatory dynamics. Second, a new project to promote health with and for society—the ”la Caixa” Living Lab for Health—was funded by our main trustee, with the goal of reinforcing our capacity to support the participation of multiple stakeholders. The aim is to open up the research process from the outset, including the definition of research questions, thereby increasing the social impact of our work. Finally, the PPI team works closely on several projects with the Patient Experience Forum of Hospital Clínic, especially on the topic of PPI coordination and evaluation. In this context, the CALMA, SHEBUCAR and CaixaImpulse projects, on which both centres collaborate, were renewed with a second year of funding by EIT Health.