The Innovation Day UB 2025, organized by the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with EIT Health, brought together more than 90 students and alumni so that, working in teams and through the methodology created by StartUB! and the Innovation Tool Kit, they could design solutions to current health dilemmas.
Three partners were responsible for setting the creativity of the participants in motion by proposing three challenges:
- Beiersdorf – Hansaplast: How can we raise awareness about proper wound care and encourage more people to use plasters in their daily lives?
- UB-FSM Chair on Spiritual Health and Humanization: How can we help young people strengthen their spiritual health to live with greater meaning, connection, and balance?
- Institut Català de la Salut (ICS): How can we engage citizens to make a more rational use of public healthcare services?
After a day full of emerging ideas and after listening to all the sketches that flourished from the minds of the 24 participating groups, 3 of them became finalists.
In third place, the team The Cross Cultured, winner of the challenge proposed by the UB-FSM Chair on Spiritual Health and Humanization, presented a proposal aimed at increasing awareness and education in spiritual health through strategic alliances, the integration of content in educational environments, and the development of an accessible platform, addressing this dimension from an innovative perspective applied to the healthcare field.
Novakai, winner of the Hansaplast (Beiersdorf) challenge, proposed the design of smart plasters with differentiated layers that, through color changes, allow the identification of the wound’s condition and alert to possible infections, thus facilitating better domestic care and more informed decision-making by the user.
The team INV8, winner of the challenge proposed by the Institut Català de la Salut (ICS) and of the Innovation Day UB 2025, presented a solution based on an AI-driven CRM add-on that classifies patients according to their risk of not attending medical appointments and sends personalized reminders, with the aim of promoting a more efficient and responsible use of public healthcare services.
From Barcelona to Paris
The winning team (composed of Juan Martin Villada Mahecha, Marcel Puigpey Burriel, Ramiro Cortavarria, and Francisco Brondo) was able to make the leap to participate in the EIT Health Career Path: From Students to Innovators in Paris, an educational event that is organized annually to connect emerging innovators at the European level. In the French capital, they had the opportunity to compete with the finalists of the I-DAY (coming from 22 different cities), as well as with graduates of the EIT Labelled Programmes.
In this edition, the representatives of the University of Barcelona put forward the challenge proposed by the Institut Català de la Salut on the rational use of public healthcare services.
Beyond the recognition obtained, the challenge addressed issues directly related to citizens. In this sense, initiatives such as the I-DAY or the EIT Health Career Path: From Students to Innovators are the ones that facilitate the testing of possible solutions in real contexts. These events were the ones that allowed the young students of the INV8 team to demonstrate their ability to intervene in complex problems from a highly innovative approach.