France was the setting for some intense sessions to find innovative solutions for improving the treatment of patients with cardiovascular risk

The Interuniversity Master’s in Health Data Science, coordinated by the URV, held the second edition of its summer school from 2 to 11 June. This year 61 students from three countries worked intensively to devise and evaluate innovative solutions for improving the management of patients at cardiovascular risk.

For the first time, the first two days of the summer school took place online and served to get everybody working on the challenge and to allow the presentation of different initiatives by stakeholders such as the Basque Health Cluster and the Health and Social Consortium of Catalonia, which presented its collaboration project with Lithuania, among others.

From the third day, the summer school continued on site at the European Scientific Institute (ESI-Archamps) in France, although those interested could also follow proceedings online. The students were accompanied by a group of professionals from twenty organisations (pharmaceutical companies, technology-based companies and start-ups, university professors, doctors, patient associations, etc.)..

The sessions consisted of classes in the morning and mentoring in the afternoon. During these mentoring sessions, specialists in innovation, entrepreneurship, communication, marketing and data science helped the students to define and specify their solutions, which they then had to pitch to an expert jury.

The health knowledge and innovation community of the EU’s European Institute of Innovation, EIT Health, funds the master’s degree, which is coordinated by the URV and involves several other Catalan universities and the Université Grenoble Alpes. Among the institutions collaborating in the project, and which provided expertise during the summer school, are Bioinformatics Barcelona, Amgen and Aizon, and the recently added Basque Health Cluster.