“Digital Health and Data will increasingly be a central part of the Health universe”, said João Fonseca, a researcher at CINTESIS/Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP) and founder of MEDIDA, a spin-off of the University of Porto.

He was one of the participants in the Workshop on Knowledge Transfer as part of the Thematic Session on Health that took place this Tuesday, organized by the National Innovation Agency (ANI), with the support of CINTESIS and FMUP.

João Fonseca stressed the need to invest in translational research and chronic diseases, taking into account their current impact. “Of the 20 main causes of mortality, only four are not chronic diseases”, he stressed. For this reason, he says that it is necessary to change the paradigms and adapt the health services, which are still very “hospitalocentric”.

In addition, he defended a greater connection between the different stakeholders, a greater adaptation of innovation to needs and a greater knowledge about the effectiveness and safety of new technological solutions, as well as their economic and health value, with life data real.

This Workshop, moderated by Alexandre Almeida, also included Elísio Costa, from Porto4Ageing, Rui Sousa, from Stemmatters, and Joana Feijó, from Health Cluster Portugal.

This was followed by a “Thematic Focus Group Meeting” with space for presenting disruptive trends and technologies. Among them, we highlight the projects developed by CINTESIS, FMUP, and MEDIDA, namely InspirerMundi, AIRDOC, and the most recent Adherence, funded by the EIT Health, and Obscare, developed by VirtualCare, also a spin-off of the U.Porto born in CINTESIS and the FMUP.

The session was closed by António Soares, executive manager of CINTESIS.