Amazing conference experience: MWC Barcelona

It’s conference time!

It has been such a pleasure to attend the MWC Barcelona conference after a long break in taking part in physical conferences. Even though the pandemic has made it quite difficult to travel, enter the event and actively participate throughout the long days - hurting ears from wearing the mask at all times is a small price to pay for a great conference experience. Also, I still had my 10 minutes on the stage without a mask and it made a world of a difference. I must say that this conference yet again showed that nothing can beat a physical conference - so many inspiring speakers, great focus on health and wellbeing, countless lively face to face discussions and so many new connections and leads. So what were the highlights for our delegation this time?

It’s time to pitch!

Of course, the highlight for me was giving an overview of our mobile health platform at the Discovery Area Stage on Tuesday. Even though my presentation was at the same time as Elon Musk’s presentation, I am still so glad that so many came to listen my pitch on children’s health and wellbeing. We shouldn’t leave our future leaders behind and focus only on today’s leaders. The pitch went really well and was followed by a QA session. I was so glad to respond to the insightful questions by the jury. The jury included Daniel Moreno Martínez (Head of the innovation management process at Germans Trias i Pujol  Hospital), Natalia Olson-Urtecho (A serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience working with various entities with the aim to maximize innovative technologies for the greater good), Tim Juergens (Co-founder of Seedlink with an extensive history of working in the venture capital and private equity industry). I was especially glad to connect with the jury members during the dinner event after the pitch session. These contacts are incredibly valuable for us at this stage as we are scaling and growing. 

Insightful presentations

The Digital Health & Wellness Summit also took place as part of 4YFN & MWC. Most importantly, the summit emphasised the importance of mental health innovations. New technologies are emerging and it really shows the adaptive process that has occurred in mental health digital treatment during the pandemic. We need more mental health innovations and it is wonderful that here in Barcelona, there is also a Mental Health Cluster that we will now also join. It is important for us to contribute to the ecosystem and at the same time to truly be at the forefront of the sector. By the way, there are no other clusters in the world specifically targeted towards mental health.

Novartis Biome session on the very last day of the conference was also an insightful one. Novartis tries to lead the digital health sector and their Biome initiative works as a bridge to help their partners become an extension of their own teams, working with them as easily and productively as possible to jointly innovate and co-develop digital solutions at scale. They are taking on some of the biggest healthcare challenges and are committed to partnering with the best in the ecosystem to combine their deep scientific experience with the expertise of the tech world to develop – and crucially – scale digital solutions that improve and extend patients’ lives. We have now established contact with them and hopefully we can also contribute to that ecosystem and gain from the collaboration. As we all know, the healthcare industry is notoriously complicated – highly regulated and traditionally behind the curve in terms of digital disruption which is why collaboration is the key if we truly aim to change the world.

So much new knowledge and great connections

I would write a whole book if I would give an overview of all great sessions. But I have gained so much new startup knowledge ranging from fundraising to legal to growth information. All talks have been so insightful and truly looking in the future (as the conference title 4YFN also stands for - 4 years from now).

The exhibition area here was truly of the highest quality, so many great companies and corporations working towards changing the world. Digital Health Hub and EIT Health booth of course were the closest to my heart and I couldn’t keep away from the Mental Health Cluster of Barcelona’s booth. So much following up to do in the upcoming weeks. 

Such a great conference experience

We are so grateful to EIT Health for the opportunity for our delegation to attend the event and pitch! I will be leaving the conference with so much new knowledge and so many new connections. It has been perhaps even the best conference experience for me but maybe it’s the long break in physical conferences talking. But what I can definitely say is that I will be joining the event in 2022 as well, perhaps even as part of the showcase booth of Estonia.