21st-Century Solutions in Medicine

Health industry startups and SMEs could present and introduce themselves at what is called SmartHealth Meetup, hosted by University of Debrecen Technology and Knowledge Transfer Center on November 16 at Nagyerdei Víztorony during the course of Startup Week.

At the first SmartHealth Meetup, participants had a chance to gain profound insight into the operation of university startups and to learn about business incubators that support the market implementation of innovative ideas. In his welcoming address, Center Director Tamás Bene emphasized that he and his colleagues would like to make this forum a regular opportunity for anyone who is involved or interested in health industry innovation to promote themselves and/or their findings.

One of the innovations highlighted at the event was the application InSimu, which had represented Hungary at Microsoft’s worldwide contest earlier this year, developed by medical and IT students of the University of Debrecen to prompt and facilitate complex diagnostic thinking and strategies.

Programmer Tamás Katona recalled how, from an opinion poll that they had taken with the participation of medical students at the University of Debrecen, it turned out that the latter had been very much satisfied with the theoretical side of their program but they had thought they would need more help and support in patient-doctor relations and in establishing diagnoses. InSimu now makes it possible for them to give specific diagnoses related to concrete illnesses and to practice reaching hypothetical ones. This application is the only one of its kind available in the market today, and its beta testing process is scheduled to start at the University of Debrecen in 2017.

What is already available and downloadable to all and any platforms however, is the program called RF Anatomy. This latter has been accessed by more than twenty thousand users worldwide, which means that, by now, the application that was created at the University of Debrecen has been downloaded to smart devices in a hundred and forty countries altogether.

Medical students in Debrecen had simply wished to come up with a program that would be of the same quality as the contents of so many expensive anatomy textbooks but not necessarily beyond the pockets of the average student. Their product, whose top markets currently are in the USA, Brazil, Russia, and the UK, is designed to be complemented next year: it is going to focus not just on efficient acquisition of knowledge regarding human anatomy but is also expected to accompany students as a useful tool and a complex system of information throughout their entire six-year-long medical program.

Audiences at SmartHealth Meetup could also familiarize themselves with the method called Prelife, developed to treat human infertility in order to ameliorate the proportion of infertile couples participating in test tube baby or IVF programs with a chance of success (currently, but one-fourth of as many as one hundred and fifty thousand couples in Hungary only).

Bálint László Bálint, Head of Laboratory at Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine of the University of Debrecen, outlined the procedure that can be used to explore the condition of the endometrium through methods of molecular biology and improve the efficiency ratio of embryo implantation with the help of the information gained. He and his colleagues have developed an examination based upon a principle in molecular biology with which the doctor conducting in vitro fertilization can personalize the implantation protocol.

He wished to underline that their revolutionary idea, which had been put forward originally at the University of Debrecen, was designed to be implemented in a way that it could be completed in any laboratory. At present, the project is in the research phase, with the relevant data currently under analysis also in the laboratories of the University of Debrecen.
 

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