All those events!
It is time for a new Development Blog! This time it includes a “short” recap of the past month, which once again has been quite an eventful the least. During the past month we have been participating in various events and we have had the privilege to meet and learn from several people around the world.
Hackathon
Let’s start from HAVUJA HACK, which was organized by Business Center North Savo in 31.1-2.2. The idea of the event was to gather innovative technology enthusiasts to develop new solutions and work with various assignments. For us, the event was part of the HAVUJA-accelerator program, which we have been participating since October. During the event, we provided an assignment for the participants to work with a mock-up version of our software. We had the chance to meet and collaborate the whole weekend with two experts: Mika Mononen and Pertti Hätinen. They both have an entrepreneurial background and a wide experience from various fields from manufacturing and high-tech. For example, Mika’s company Solutionery provides consultation and both technological and commercial guidance for early innovations and start-up companies. See Solutionery’s webpages and read their blog post of the hackathon weekend: https://solutionery.com/news/startup-hackathon-in-kuopio-finland/
During the weekend, we received a lot of valuable feedback, especially, from the technological side of our innovation. We also had good discussions on how to build a profitable business. Most significantly, we met many inspiring people and made new friends and collaborators. Call that a successful weekend! You can see our team in action and hear thoughts from our business developer, Joona from this video (In Finnish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzVNgigcgr0. During the event, we got our first version of our mockup-version, which we have since been further developing. Now we can present our solution much better and based on initial feedback it has significantly helped people to understand our method and its benefits.
Our first public event!
The following day of the hackathon (3.3.2020), we already had the chance to meet various healthcare professionals and demonstrate our innovation to them. We attended the Findery Finland event at the Kuopio University Hospital, which was hosted by Kuopio Living Lab. The idea of the event was to invite companies to present their novel medical innovations and have meaningful conversations between companies and medical experts. Read more about the Findery Finland event from here (In Finnish): https://kuopiohealth.fi/findery-tapahtumassa-kysynta-ja-tarjonta-kohtasivat-toisensa/. The collaboration with Kuopio Living Lab will continue as we have already arranged a workshop with several well-known medical experts from the fields of orthopedics and physiotherapy. The idea is to gather their thoughts and comments of our innovation and have discussions of its value and suitability to their practices. We will share some of their feedback in the next post!
Algoa in America!
Couple days after Findery Finland, we began our trip to the Orthopedic Research Society’s annual conference held in Phoenix, Arizona. We participated in the annual Business Innovation Competition, where we were presenting our innovation together with other teams for example from the US, Canada, France and Japan. We made it to the Semi-Finals where we competed with a poster demonstrating our innovation and business model. Later, we pitched our project to groups of judges, which was truly a great experience! Our whole team was presenting our project and we got lots of support from other academics and collaborators from Europe and the US. Here is a picture of us after our pitch!
As you can see, we were quite happy with our performance! The poster was extremely good (once again, thank you Hathunters and Business Center North Savo) and the pitch went really well! Of course, there is always something to improve, but in general, it was an amazing experience. Even though we did not win the competition, we are extremely happy for the experience and proud of ourselves. We were able to disseminate our innovation and get valuable feedback. Most importantly, we made many connections with medical and business experts, academics and other startups. Altogether, the event was a great experience for us, and we would like to thank the organizers, especially Suzanne Tabbaa and Farshid Guilak for arranging the Business Innovation Competition!
Thank you HAVUA-accelerator!
Finally, February was also the last month of the HAVUJA-accelerator program. We had an ending ceremony where we had the chance to recap our progression since October. We were amazed how fast the time had gone by and it was so nice to see and comprehend how much our peers had progressed during the past months. New companies had been launched, first deals had been made, and some innovations had taken huge steps from ideas towards products. We are extremely happy to have met all the teams who attended the program and are extremely grateful for all the help we received from the organizers. Thankfully, it is not the end of our collaboration! During the ending ceremony some diplomas and awards were also given. Our project was awarded as the most promising of the year. We are extremely happy of the recognition, as it gives us confidence that the steps that we are taking are towards the right direction and the hard work we have been doing might lead to something that could benefit societies. Once again, thank you Business Center North Savo!
Prevention is the key!
Like many of us, the current situation with the coronavirus has greatly affected our plans. Many of the events we have been preparing for have been cancelled or postponed. We have been working remotely since last week and will continue to do so to prevent the disease from spreading. Sure, it’s not always nice, but as we know prevention might have a huge impact on someone’s life! At least, now we have a good opportunity to analyze the feedback we have been receiving and set the step marks for the future. We are having daily coffee sessions via skype and would love to invite you to join us! Send us a message and let’s have a chat!
We would also like to send our support to medical experts all over the world and send our thought to people affected by the virus. We wish you all stay safe and healthy! These are tough times, but together we overcome them!
Until next time! Stay healthy!
