RSU and RTU student team wins EIT Health i-Days health innovation event with a solution for children's palliative care

The EIT Health i-Days health innovation event for Latvian university students took place in Riga on 10 - 11 October, inspiring them to get involved in healthcare innovation and start-ups. The winning team, team Linky, are students from Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) and Riga Technical University (RTU) who have been looking for a solution to a challenge from the Children's Hospital to provide effective palliative care for children.

i-Days, or Innovation Days, is a health innovation event for university students and is organised by the health community of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT Health) and RSU. This year, for the first time, EIT Health i-Days took place as part of the PMNET Forum and the theme of the event was personalised or precision medicine - a new approach to treating and preventing disease that considers individuals’ genetic characteristics, living environment, and lifestyle, which is taking a step away from the notion that all medicines and methods fit everyone.

Seven student teams from RSU, RTU, the RTU Latvian Maritime Academy, and RTU Riga Business School participated in i-Days, including international students studying in Latvia. Three of the teams were formed onsite from participants who had applied individually.

Students could choose to tackle one of five challenges. The event partners – the Children's Clinical University Hospital and the biotech company Roche – proposed challenges such as improving communication about precision medicine, a tool for personalised care, a solution for effective paediatric palliative care, and digital lab data contribution to better health outcomes. Additionally, the Ministry of Economics presented a challenge of integrating digital health technologies and artificial intelligence into health systems.

Two teams each chose to tackle the Ministry's and Roche's challenges, one team tackled the Children's Hospital's challenge on a tool for personalised care, and two teams tackled the hospital's challenge on effective palliative care for children. The winning team Linky was made up of students from RSU and RTU, and they will represent Latvia at the i-Days European final in Budapest at the end of November: RSU medical students Adriano Fedele and Maro Domínguez-Moya, as well as RTU business student Burak Kahya, who specialises in game development. The RSU Business Incubator B-Space special prize - 15 mentoring hours - was awarded to the team Health Connect, made up of RSU medical students Parija Arabshoorabi, Zahraa Merchant, and Aysha M. Rafeeque.

‘I-Days is a short and intense competition where creativity is key and without full commitment it can be easy to lose focus and perspective. 

The main aim of this competition is to find solutions to real, pressing problems, so it should be approached with a focused and professional attitude, but above all - just be human and try to find a real solution that benefits people. 

We chose a challenge that allowed us to combine elements from all the tasks and within two days we created a functional solution that helps to solve the problems that Latvia faces in children's palliative care. The insight provided by mentors and medical staff helped us gain the perspective we needed, which was crucial to our success, and every lecture and consultation so far has had an invaluable impact,' says Maro Domínguez Moya from the winning team.

The students' ideas were evaluated by RSU Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs Dins Šmits, Roche Diagnostics Baltics Country Manager Latvia Thomas Hoefer, Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Health Artjoms Uršuļskis, Children's Hospital Chairman of the Board Valts Ābols and Chairwoman of patient organisation "ParSirdi.lv" Inese Mauriņa.

‘Every year, i-Days proves its value as a platform that helps to establish new and successful collaborations through innovation and a focus on development. The healthcare sector gains fresh perspectives and innovative solutions to current challenges. Moreover, aspiring professionals try their hand at finding solutions that matter to society and interact with some of the most talented and powerful minds in the field. We see that interdisciplinary collaboration is a real success factor - for the second year in a row, the winning team is made up of students from different majors, enabling to combine the strengths of different disciplines and skill sets,’ shares Līga Žūka, Director of the RSU Innovation Centre and Head of the EIT Health RIS Hub in Latvia, noting that the most popular types of solutions chosen by this year’s i-Days teams are different types of apps.

The participants behind the most successful idea will go on to the European final competition in Budapest on 28-29 November and will receive a prize of USD 2,000 in AWS credits from Amazon Web Services, the global sponsor of EIT Health i-Days. The total prize fund worth 3,000 EUR for the Riga i-Days winners to further develop their idea is provided by Roche.

All PMNET Forum sessions, including the i-Days pitching session and award ceremony, are available on the Forum's YouTube channel @PMNETforum.

About i-Days

i-Days offers students, residents and young professionals the opportunity to participate in the development of innovative healthcare ideas at various EIT Health events across Europe. During the events, participants gain in-depth insights into healthcare issues, learn about the latest innovations in the health sector and compete in teams to solve real-life problems. The winning i-Days team from each country wins the top prize - a ticket to the i-Days European Finals.

i-Days has been highly appreciated by health professionals, as valuable ideas have already been proposed in previous Latvian events, such as a patient card or digital app that provides personal data collection, solutions to prevent food poisoning, a virtual mobility assistant for exercise and physiotherapy, an app for breast cancer patients that enables patients to provide information about their treatment, etc.