Manuel Padrão and Francisco Martins, creators of the “first smart platform for continuous mental health support”, called “Cozecare”, have just won first prize in SpinUM – the University of Minho Business Ideas Competition. Second prize goes to Eduardo Silva, Guilherme Santos and Pedro Ferreira Borges, for the innovation “SEIVA”, which proposes battery-free thermal sensors for the early detection of forest fires and overheating of infrastructure.
The final of the 15th edition of SpinUM took place in the B1 auditorium on the Gualtar campus in Braga and was organised by TecMinho, awarding €5,870 in cash prizes and training and business start-up support services. The jury consisted of Céu Filipe, Director of Innovation at the Portuguese Business Association; João Henriques, partner at IBERIS Capital; Raúl Fangueiro, Vice-Rector for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Knowledge Transfer at UMinho; and Rute Sousa, angel investor at COREangels Porto. The session also featured presentations of the projects “Axios Care”, “Benno AI”, “Dermaleaf Cosmetics” and “FermentAtelier”. The initiative was funded by the TecMinho Incubation Hub, supported by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) and the European NextGenerationEU programme.
Transforming the care journey
“Cozecare” has the potential to revolutionise the entire mental health care journey by addressing issues of discontinuity and clinical inefficiency, through continuous patient support, automation for therapists and predictive risk management for organisations,” explains Manuel Padrão, who holds a degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from EEUM, where he also conducted research at the Algoritmi Centre. The platform will integrate several interfaces in parallel. For example, for therapists and clinics, it simplifies clinical records, monitors progress and reduces administrative tasks, amongst other things. For patients, it provides intelligent communication with therapists, regular check-ins, personalised exercises or video calls.
This project has already been tested in 350 follow-up sessions, involving 20 psychologists and 15,000 minutes of therapy. “Cozecare” is incubated in Lisbon, has received several awards from the F6S innovation portal and participates in acceleration programmes run by NVIDIA, Startup Braga, TecMinho, Factory Lisboa and Apollo Junitec. One in eight Portuguese people live with mental health issues, most without adequate support and facing months-long waiting lists for appointments, whilst professionals are overwhelmed with tasks. Mental health costs €5.3 billion a year in Portugal, according to the Portuguese Psychologists’ Association, and €1 trillion worldwide, according to the UN.
Flagship competition
Every year, SpinUM recognises business ideas with high potential for innovation and market success, linked to any scientific field at UMinho. Several of the projects have subsequently won some of the leading national and international innovation awards. SpinUM has, for this reason too, attracted growing attention from investors. Vice-Rector Raúl Fangueiro emphasises the strategic importance of entrepreneurship within the university and the creation of the UMinho Seed space on the Azurém campus in Guimarães, reinforcing the commitment to new innovative business initiatives.
The winning ideas from previous editions of SpinUM were, in order: “iSurgical3D” (correction of pectus excavatum), “NanoBiodelivery” (controlled release of cancer therapies), “euPA” (GPS-based health and emergency monitoring), “BMLab” (a model for optimising new drugs), “Nanopaint” (inks for printing electronic sensors), “medQuizz” (app that creates and marks exams), “Light Distortion Analyser” (predictor of pre-surgery eye complications), “GenSYS” (software for mass production of differentiated products), “Lipidomix” (services for quantifying and analysing lipids), “TopoSEM” (recreates 3D surfaces 10,000 times thinner than a hair), “beWOODful” (technology combining wood treatment and staining), “Karion Therapeutics” (a promising molecule for treating kidney cancer), “Screen4Health” (accelerates the selection of drugs for rare diseases) and “PhotoUP” (microalgae for converting biogas), most of these projects being led by members of the academic community at the UMinho School of Engineering.
The School of Engineering congratulates its alumnus Manuel Padrão and wishes Cozecare every success!
SOURCE: UMinho
