Digital Health is what our heart is beating for. Through the I4H program we enabled 30 people health innovators to use designerly behaviors to transform their ideas and make them future-ready. As a group of 8 facilitators consisting of academic experts, business professionals and the most outstanding trail-blazers, we were able to lead three out of six teams into an additional founding round to pursue their project.

A special thanks goes out to the SPARK Berlin community namely Craig Garner, Abigail Garner, Jesse LaMerre and Olga Arbach. It was a blast co-designing this program together with you. Starting with the first drafts, getting the funding and delivering a kick-ass innovation journey. Beyond that their were incredible coaches involved combining the best of analytical, creative, visual and critical thinking.

At that time, Fuenfwerken was represented through 5Wx new ventures, a boutique incubator to bring entrepreneurial drive to start-up and industry projects. Further we have hosted the whole series of events at our very own innovation space in Berlin.

Before getting our hands dirty, we had to filter the right candidates out of many great applications. Our very own Chair of the Advisory Board Prof. Carl Frech supported the Foundation Charité as jury member. Once we had figured out, who the six teams are, we started program planning.

The first bootcamp focused on the ability of the inventors to let their idea flourish through external expert input. So we paired each inventor with domain experts in the fields of Design, Business and Engineering. It was amazing to see how each team was able to move from an invention to a team with shared purpose and mindset.

In the second bootcamp we sharpened the entrepreneurial mindest of each team. So we let them look at the market space. To do so we invited external speaker with an impeccable track record in starting business in the science industry. Finally each team was able to position themselves in their respective market and fine-tune their invention towards that.

Eventually every team was able to co-create with potential patients in the third bootcamp. This led to another round of major insights, reflections and pivots in their idea.

In the final pitch the Foundation Charité with an expert jury decided on whom to carry forward to the next funding stage. In particular funds were provided for:

“Patient empowerment through automated digital education of gynaecological patients on the course of treatment”
Dr. med. Jessica Olschewski, Charité

“TimeTeller: A non-invasive method for the molecular and computational characterization of the internal biological clock in humans”
PD Dr. Angela Moreira Borralho Relogio, Charité

“OGGLUEDER – closure of defects in congenital heart diseases by means of gluing”
Dr. med. Boris Schmitt, Charité

Read more at www.stiftung-charite.de

The support consists of the competitive award of Inventors for Health grants of up to EUR 100,000.00 each for the release of up to half of the inventor’s own position for a maximum of 18 months and the provision of project resources.

In addition, an Inventors for Health incubator has been developed specifically for the program, which provides intensive training in preparation for a possible application for an Inventors for Health grant and then supports the selected Inventors for Health in further developing their promising ideas through workshops and mentoring. The Inventors for Health incubator is initiated and implemented by the Berlin Institute for Health Research (SPARK Berlin) as a cooperation partner of the Charité Foundation.

The Charité Foundation supports the Inventors for Health program with funds from its Private Excellence Initiative Johanna Quandt.