Dear Sir/Madam,
Beyond Pre-Accelerator Demo Day was organised on the 30th of April 2022 by Junior Achievement Cyprus with great success. 25 students representing various Universities and disciplines have presented their innovative ideas in the field of Digital Health. With this letter, we would like to congratulate the students of your department who succeeded in completing the programme.
Beyond Pre-Accelerator builds a bridge between purely educational programmes delivered to universities and more advanced accelerators and incubators. It aims to give students the opportunity to work on finding innovative solutions to healthcare challenges, while experiencing building their own company. During the programme participants go through the entire entrepreneurial process, from generating business ideas to creating an MVP (minimum viable product).
This academic year (2021 – 2022) the programme specifically focused on challenges oncology faces. Based on the Cyprus National Strategy for Cancer Control, students worked on driving innovations and improving:
- Prevention
- Early Diagnosis
- Treatment / Rehabilitation
- Psychological Support / Reintegration / Palliative Care
- Cases Reports / Data Collection & Analysis / Research Methods
Beyond Pre-Accelerator started in November, when students from various academic disciplines and levels of study came together in a 2-Day bootcamp. Thirteen multidisciplinary teams were created then and started brainstorming innovative ideas. In February six teams were selected to continue in the programme, which was completed on the 30th of April 2022 with the Demo Day, an event where teams pitched their ideas looking for opportunities.
At the link below you can find the press release with more information about the Demo Day.
Congratulations on the well-deserved success of the students of your department who managed to complete the programme. Those were:
- Loukas Papalazarou
- Konstantinos Larkou
- Andreas Naoum
- Andreas Yiorkatzis
The above students are members of the team HPF. The team aims to improve the daily lives of end-stage cancer patients and support the effort for a more personalized medical care through designing two innovative tools. First, the Reliefant application, which enables a patient to record daily the levels, the character, and the localization of their pain as well as the side effects they may experience. The second tool is opio-pop, a product in lollipop form that detects opiorphin levels in the patients’ saliva. Opiorphin is a new pain biomarker and will therefore contribute to its more objective perspective. Opiorphin levels will be send from the device to the application for health professionals to see.
Figure 1: Members of the team HPF presenting at the Demo Day
Beyond Pre-Accelerator is organized by Junior Achievement Cyprus, sponsored by Novartis Oncology Cyprus and supported by eight stakeholders: The Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics, Karaiskakio Foundation, Cyprus Oncology Society, Cyprus Federation of Patients’ Associations, Cocoon Creations, IDEA Innovation Centre, Cyprus Seeds and CYENS Centre of Excellence.
The programme was implemented for the first time in Cyprus and it will be implemented again the next academic year (2022 – 2023). In the case that you want to find out more on the implementation process please let us know. We can arrange a meeting at your convenience.
Warm regards,
Antigoni Komodiki
CEO, JA Cyprus