‘Diligens’ at Top of Europe in Digital Health. Wins the Novartis Digital Health Innovation Award

The Cypriot ‘Diligens’ team managed to stand out among 41 countries in the context of the annual youth EXPO during GEN-E 2022 festival.

Gen-E is the largest Entrepreneurship event in Europe, a celebration of entrepreneurship and the achievements of European youth. Thousands of European students, aged 15 and over, present their pioneering business ideas online and live. The Gen-E Festival also combines two annual European Entrepreneurship Competitions for the winners of the JA Student Business and JA Start-Up program from 41 countries.

The EXPO was held online with virtual stands where visitors could visit the teams, see their product or service and chat with the contestants. A distinguished jury selected 7 groups out of the 13 teams for a team interview in the category of Health Innovation and ‘Diligens’ was among them.

The ‘Novartis Digital Health Innovation Award’ is designed to honor innovative digital solutions in response to the most pressing health challenges for citizens and patients today.

The criteria that the product or service had to meet were:

1. Innovation in healthcare. To what extent does a new solution have the potential to transform the health ecosystem.
2. Impact on society: What is the business’ potential for significant social impact and engagement of the broader community? (Individual, community, systemic)
3. Use of technology: To what extent has the team used innovative technology and co-creativity while adhering to Medical Guidelines, GDPR, security, privacy, data flow rules and regulations?
4. Alignment with UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: Is the solution aligned with specific UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Targets?

Diligens provides a software in which histopathologists input biopsy images, and with the use of a Machine Learning model, carcinogenic areas of the images will be presented and outlined. The software aims to assist professionals with the identification, quantification, and qualitative analysis of tissue samples. Diligens’ goal is to reduce the process of biopsies, therefore as a result, we achieve a better outcome for professionals and patients.

Multiculturalism and interdisciplinarity have proven their potential as the ‘Diligens’ team consists of people from two nationalities (Cyprus, France), three Universities (University of Cyprus, University of Nicosia and UCLAN) and four different disciplines.

The team members are Michalis Piponidis, PhD Computer Engineering, Panagiotis Tsokkos, BA Business Administration, Panagiotis Aristodimou, PhD Computer Engineering, Liranne Bitton, MD Medicine and Alexandros Dimitriou, PhD Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering.

The team was supported by Professor Dr. Daina Nikolaou and the mentors Dr. Kyriakos Kyriakou from the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics and Thomas Anastasiades from Novartis.

We are proud of this exceptional distinction of our team, for the useful results but also for the huge effort they made in parallel with the demanding program of their studies.

The team was created as part of the Beyond Pre-Accelerator programme.  Beyond Pre-Accelerator aims to bring innovative solutions to healthcare challenges, and specifically in the field of cancer. The programme is a bridge between entrepreneurship training programmes implemented in universities and specialized Incubators and Accelerators. Essentially, students of all levels (Bachelor, Master, PhD) and various academic backgrounds (Medicine, IT, Business, Engineering and other) create multidisciplinary teams and are guided to develop their own business ideas in the field of health, up to the creation of a minimum viable product.

The programme is implemented by Junior Achievement Cyprus with the kind sponsorship of Novartis Oncology Cyprus and with the support of eight partners / organizations: The Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics, the Karaiskakio Foundation, the Cyprus Oncology Society, the Cyprus’ Patients Associations Federation, IDEA, Cocoon Creations, Cyprus Seeds and the CYENS Center of Excellence. The programme was implemented for the first time in Cyprus aiming to offer students solutions for Prevention, Early Diagnosis and Treatment, Psychosocial Support, Rehabilitation and Palliative Care Incidents and Cancer Archive and Cancer Research.

JA Cyprus is a member of JA Worlwide, the biggest Non-Profit Organisation in the world that promotes the development of entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness in youth. For more information you can visit www.jacyprus.org or contact us at 97-715909.