Transmural Biotech and Hospital Clínic, winners of the third MIHealth Innovation Awards

A non-invasive and rapid foetal lung maturity test, a new automatic imaging system for diagnosing haematological diseases and the new nursing management model from the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona were the three winning projects in the MIHealth Innovation Awards 2014, with which Fira de Barcelona’s forum on healthcare innovation and management recognises the innovative spirit of healthcare professionals. The awards were presented this afternoon at the close of MIHealth Forum.

In the first category, Knowledge, the company Transmural Biotech won the award for the QuantusFLM a new non-invasive test that can give reliable, fast results ¿in about 10 minutes¿ which predicts the level of foetal lung maturity. This innovation is a vast improvement in this type of test since, until now, it was only possible to do by prior amniocentesis, an invasive procedure that is risky for the pregnancy.

The award for the Technology category went to the CellSimatic project developed jointly by the Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC) and Hospital Clínic of Barcelona for the automatic diagnosis of haematological diseases by means of high-resolution microscopic images. CellSimatic allows doctors to classify automatically all types of blood cells from a sample, identifying cells, the pathologies of which correspond to diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma.

The final award for Organisation was won by an innovative nursing organisation model, developed internally by Hospital Clínic of Barcelona and the centre’s nursing professionals. The new model called Hospital Clínic Care Model is a based on a multi-disciplinary approach geared towards covering the needs of patients through the central figure of the nurse and in which the patients themselves are involved in making the decisions about their processes.

Prevention, key element in the future
One of the concepts that came up the most during the conferences was the need to implement disease anticipation and prevention policies that guarantee better health for the population. The challenges tackled during the Mihealth Forum, which raise a scenario with budgetary reductions, demographic growth¿and the consequent pressure on welfare¿ and an increase in chronic conditions due to the ageing of the population, have to be faced with a strategy that minimises acute episodes. In order to achieve this, it will be necessary to combine strategies to increase efficiency in processes, quickly integrate new, high-impact technologies and change the focus of the systems.

The third edition of the two-day forum brought around 700 professional visitors to the Palacio de Congresos from the fields of medicine, healthcare management, politics and industry.

Barcelona, 21st May 2014