At the end of June, we celebrated the success of 32 teams who presented their innovative solutions for some of the most pressing smart health and digitalization challenges Europe faces in 2021. After the 48 hours long hacking marathon TOP 12 teams were chosen and offered to enter an intensive 3-month long The Data 4 Healthy Recovery Acceleration Programme, full of interesting workshops, one-on-one coaching sessions with industry experts and technical mentors, and a unique chance to develop initial prototypes into a working product or service.
To accelerate the commercialization of the smart health solutions and prepare for the Demo Day, the teams were provided with personalized, dedicated support to develop their solutions to the next level and implement them.
The TOP 12 teams of the Data 4 Healthy Recovery Hackathon Accelerator are:
The programme featured constant mentoring by lead, design, technical and on-demand mentors, and 2 high-intensity training sprints over the 3 months. The teams started their acceleration at the end of June.
Sprint 1 - Shape and Build was a three-week-long intensive training period and included three workshops:
Customer Discovery and Insight for Product Development by Amid Moradganjeh, product designer – formerly at Google, IDEO, Microsoft
Value proposition design, understanding customer insights - setting up tests by renowned and experienced mentor Joao Rei, co-founder, growth and strategy officer at eID Easy
VC thinking meets start-up business model by Yrjö Ojasaar, an investment partner at Change Ventures
Thiago Sampaio, the team leader at Cell Culture Simulator, commented: "Through Data 4 Healthy Recovery, we realized how important it is to have a niche product that scales to multiple customers. We realized that by properly identifying customer problems, our product has a better chance of success. Product focus is extremely important not only to accelerate our development but also to communicate and realize the vision with our team, which is 100% composed of representatives from many countries."
The first sprint ended with a Public Talk No. 1 delivered by an accomplished industry expert Daren Wilson, General Manager at Roche Slovakia. He discussed the topic of collaboration between corporations and start-ups in healthcare and had an hour-long exclusive Q&A session with the teams.
Sprint 2 - Build & Launch continued with the developing and building of the product/service, but the objective was also to help teams think through their financial aspects to have a successful launch.
UI / UX, product design by a highly experienced UI / UX designer and award-winning product designer and team lead, Helen Kokk
Startup-up financial management and funding attraction by Eva Šimeková, CEO & Associate Partner at CIVITTA Slovakia and Iurii-Volodymyr Blavt, Associate Partner at CIVITTA Ukraine
Startup marketing 101 with Marelle Ellen, CMO at Promoty.
FastScaling - growth strategies for a startup with Patrick Flesner, a growth capital investor and a partner at the investment firm LeadX Capital Partners.
Pitching workshop with Gleb Maltsev, pitching guru and co-founder of Fundwise, a founder-to-investor pitching platform. Gleb will also be giving one-to-one mentoring to prepare the teams to pitch at the Demo Day.
Slavomir Semov, CEO at Healthatics commented: “We have been working on our solution since Dec 2020 and the Data 4 Healthy Recovery Accelerator has been instrumental in developing our Value Proposition and Business model. With the great support and help from our mentors, we are proud to say that we now have a clear ambition and a plan on how to achieve it.”
The Public Talk No. 2 was added into Sprint 2 to showcase for the teams and wider audience the importance of having a strategic product-market fit and business model. On the 9th of September, the CEO of Dermtest Priit Kruus will give an inspiring speech and cover the topic of how to build a healthcare business based on his experiences.
The final public showcase of the accelerator, the 'Demo Day', will be on 22 September, where the teams will get a chance to present their innovative smart health solution to investors, industry experts and the general public.
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What to expect during Demo Day?
Good luck to all the teams and see you at the Demo Day!
The acceleration programme is organized by the European Commission and supported by CIVITTA and Garage48.