GMV makes the final of the Pfizer Foundation’s e-DEA Health 2020 Challenge
The technology multinational GMV has come up with an idea for cutting down the rare-disease diagnosis time by up to 30%; this new system has now made it to the final of Pfizer Foundation’s fourth «e-DEA Health 2020 Challenge». This year’s challenge was maximum optimization of the rare-disease diagnosis process, and the jury has now shortlisted GMV as one of the three finalists.
In the words of Javier Téllez, GMV’s Health Innovation manager, the solution submitted to e-Dea Health 2020 “applies Artificial Intelligence techniques like natural language processing (NLP) to extract symptoms and other evidence from medical records and unstructured data”. This technology, he goes on, “not only allows us to cut the diagnosis time by 30% but also identifies, within health organization’s medical records, those persons suffering from undiagnosed or misdiagnosed rare diseases”.
Fundación Pfizer’s mission is to drive science, technology and innovation and help bring it closer to society, thereby coming up with a response to system needs in benefit of the population’s health and welfare. This commitment takes the practical form of initiatives like e-Dea Health, now being held for the 4th time. Sergio Rodríguez, the foundation’s president puts it this way: “initiatives like e-Dea Health Salud engender projects that help to meet the needs of patients and the health system as a whole”. Furthermore, he adds «this fourth challenge is dealing with a crucial theme: the diagnosis of rare diseases. It is estimated that between 6 and 8% of the world’s population is currently suffering from one rare disease or another and the average diagnosis time stands at five years”.
Final Phase
Together with another two shortlisted finalists GMV has just taken part in a Design Sprint to gain a better understanding of system needs and tweak its proposal to suit, before sending it back up to the jury, which will soon announce the winner. Fundación Pfizer will also offer guidance to these finalist projects so they can turn their participation in e-Dea Health 2020 to the best possible account. Fundación Pfizer thereby ups the profile of the innovation ecosystem, inviting innovators to take part in its own events and events held by others and showcase their ideas.
As GMV’s Innovation Manager has pointed out, this experience has helped the firm to improve its project. “The vision and experience of our mentor has helped us to rule out possible development ideas that would not in fact have raised the potential impact either in clinicians’ work or results for patients”. Téllez highlights the key role of their mentor during the Design Sprint: “checking out our idea to bring out its weak points and strengths and broaden the range of the final product”. He also expressed his satisfaction at “reaching the final in such a fiercely competitive challenge involving such skilled medical professionals. This represents a resounding recognition of our work”.
GMV’s project has reached the final together with a microfluidic chip designed by the Galician startup B-Flow to provide early detection of pediatric glioma metastasis, while the Valencia firm IDEA Ingeniería has drawn up an 3D human body atlas of patients from around the world, thereby finding digital twins to improve diagnoses.
The winning project will then be eligible to take part in the immersion program being organized in Boston from 11 to 22 January 2021 by Richi Entrepreneurs of Richi Childhood Cancer Foundation, to work with this initiative’s professionals on the task of shortening the rare-disease diagnosis process. In this way they will all be able to develop their strategies jointly to build up the necessary project-development expertise. The winner will also receive a 1500-euro grant to continue developing their initiatives. Additionally, Fundación Pfizer will be offering finalist projects a mentorship of up to 4 months, depending on the shortlisted projects and their specific needs.