The international World Cafes brought the participants’ ideas and vision into the design process and allows them to gain valuable insight into all facets of the collective solution. One of these cafe sessions covered the challenge on how to achieve universal health coverage: What are the biggest challenges and how should these be overcome? Yuan Liu (President of Chinese Ageing Well Association) and Khama Rogo (Head of Health in Africa Initiative, World Bank) moderated the dialogue addressing smart solutions that benefit universal health coverage. Other World Cafes discussed topics such as ‘’Developments in Value-Based Health Care’’, what needs to be taken into account in international efforts to create more value in healthcare and spur informed decision making? ‘’Creating a Healthy City’’ considered feeding the city, greening the city, healthy living, smart cities it all encompasses the context, lifestyle and health infrastructure in an urban surrounding.

The day ended with keynote John Mattison (Chief Medical Information Officer and Assistant Medical Director for Kaiser Permanente) who led the design and implementation of the largest integrated electronic health record in the US and leads various national programmes including virtual care. He focuses on transforming care delivery with information technology through the convergence of exponential technologies and data liquidity. Addressing the challenge, he said: ‘What can we learn from Kaiser Permanente’s Integrated Health Care Model? How can we solve pressing issues in healthcare on a large scale by using exponential technologies?’ Exponential technologies like 3D printing, Robotics, Blockchain, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality have a huge impact on healthcare.

Looking back at a vibrant third edition, WoHC offered all participants a day full of inspiring sessions, networking, knowledge sharing, and the chance to foster meaningful international partnerships. See you next time on 26 of September 2019.

Find out more about the last edition here.

The United States (US) investment tour is part of the programme and took place from 25 to 31 October 2018 and was jointly organised by Marianne van der Steen (Maastricht University), Health~Holland, Hyphen Projects, and Oost NL. Nine companies participated in this pressure-cooker programme to prepare them for scaling up their ventures, obtaining international investments, and global product launch.

During the preparation session, the participants benefitted from the expertise of experienced mentors in one-on-one coaching sessions to fine-tune their business plan and prepare them for their trip to the US. Furthermore, they had the opportunity to learn from inspiring talks and panels from seasoned serial entrepreneurs and business developers, who are together responsible for a combined life sciences deal value of over €3.1 billion (including Dezima Pharma, AM-Pharma and uniQure).

On Thursday 25 October, the kick-off of the US Tour took place in Orange County, California, with a launchpad pitch panel organised by JC Ruffalo of OCTANe and a mentoring panel organised by Luis Vasque of UC Irvine Applied Innovation. On Friday and Saturday, the companies visited San Diego, where they were welcomed at JLabs (Johnson & Johnson Innovation) and NuVasive and on Sunday the companies pitched in front of a panel of experienced (serial) entrepreneurs. Over the next two days, the companies visited MTIF, the leading conference in Medical Technology and Life Sciences in California. On the last day, the ventures travelled to Arizona, where they were hosted by Siebe van de Zee, Honorary Consul of the Netherlands and pitched in front of a diverse panel of investors, entrepreneurs and corporates.

Following the trip to the US, the organising team is working on the next event: Global Investor Forum on 13 and 14 February in Rotterdam. This event facilitates private capital matches with promising investment-ready biomed and healthcare startups, scaleups and tech transfer opportunities. The forum creates a powerful network of leading biomed entrepreneurs, formal and informal investors, physician key-opinion leaders and innovation executives to enable the next step of biomed and healthcare ventures.