Ideas for heart attack victims and China links at bioventure hackathon at Cambridge Judge Business School
From better methods of diagnosing heart attacks outside the hospital to bridging international gaps in healthcare, the ideas came thick and fast at a bioventure hackathon weekend at the Cambridge Judge Business School.
Post-doc researchers, life science entrepreneurs and innovators came together to develop and pitch ideas to a great panel of judges that included Dr Mene Pangalos, of AstraZeneca, John Lee, Cambridge-based CFO of chip and software firm DisplayLink Corp, and Simon Waters of insurance firm Aviva Health UK.
The 68 participants began their work on Friday evening with some ice breakers and idea generation sessions. They worked into the small hours on both Friday and Saturday nights to develop their ideas, which were aided by development and coaching sessions with mentors from AstraZeneca. There was also a start-ups helpdesk, with help available from a panel of four successful company founders.
Hanadi Jabado, executive director of the Entrepreneurship Centre at the Cambridge Judge Business School, energised participants from the start along with Stephen Parkes, head of partnerships.
The mentors were drawn from AstraZeneca, its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune, and from Deep Science Ventures, a London-based company builder studio for scientists and engineers.
By Sunday evening many of the ideas were highly developed but the entrepreneurs received challenging questions and observations from the judges.
“Keep pushing those ideas,” Mene Pangalos told the two winning teams, Little Kicks and X-chip. He also commented on the innovative thinking shown by participants of the weekend, adding: “This is why AstraZeneca made the decision to move to Cambridge.”
One idea pitched featured a solution for bridging the gap between the UK and China for medical treatments for cancer.
Another idea that caught the attention of the judges looked at the 85 per cent of heart pain admissions to A&E that turn out to be unrelated to a cardiac arrest and suggested a new way of diagnosing a heart attack out of hospital.
