24. januar 2022

SUND Hub – New Year Greetings 2021

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Another year has passed in SUND Hub - the place where students make ideas a reality at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. With a wish for a happy new year, we are happy to share our update on what the year has brought.

The ideas thrived among the students in SUND Hub in 2021 where many exciting new initiatives, startups and projects were initiated. Students have been working to create better health in a wide variety of ways - for example fall by fall prevention for the elderly, new Virtual Reality solutions for health care communication or prevention of the harmful effects of alcohol with new biotech solutions. These ideas and many more rise from students' desires to make a difference for citizens, patients and healthcare professionals.

Even though SUND Hub was closed for physical attendance in parts of 2021, the activities surprisingly did not decline. The commitment and eagerness of the students was largely unchanged, and we have experienced a large influx of new entrepreneurs in our incubator program Health Innovators and the idea development program Challenge Track.

The year in numbers

With an inflow of 25 new teams, a total of 40 teams have worked on their own ideas and interventions in SUND Hub in 2021. It was also the year we welcomed team number 150 since SUND Hub was founded in 2015. Including the new and curious innovators from the Challenge Track Program, a total of 152 active students have been active in SUND Hub in 2021 – of which 60% are female innovators and entrepreneurs.

SUND Hub KPIs

An important part of our vision for SUND Hub is to ensure collaboration across disciplines. Therefore, we were happy to open the doors for students from various institutions. In addition to the 60 % students from UCPH students from AU, CBS, CPH Business School, DTU, KEA, KP, RUC, SDU, AAU and various international universities joined our programs.

They have worked on developing new innovations within a wide range of health solutions including medical equipment, digital health, pharmacy, biotech/pharma as well as development of NGOs within public health and sustainability. Many student teams achieved impressive milestones both within customer discovery, customer development, prototyping and user testing as well as fundraising. Read more about all SUND Hub's teams on SUND Hub's website.

Alumni teams: Pleaz (left) secured a 1-million-euro funding from Scale Capital immediately after leaving SUND Hub and Syncsense (right) raised more than 1.5 million DKK in soft funding in 2021.

Prevention and public health

It is inspiring to see how students work in vastly different industries and with diverse types of solutions. In 2021, we saw a large influx of students working on solutions such as prevention, health promotion and public health, which often include close collaboration with NGOs and public institutions. For example, some of the teams collaborated with organizations such as The Danish Cancer Society, The Municipality of Copenhagen, The Capital Region of Copenhagen, Holbæk Hospital and not to forget with researchers at the University of Copenhagen.

Margrethe Vestager trying Perspectives interactive screen that visualizes your future age as a smoker with objective: To prevent smoking among the youth.

CPHLabs - easy access to laboratories for students at KU

2021 also offered an exciting new collaboration, which created new opportunities for students working within biotech and pharma. SUND Hub has initiated a new partnership between Symbion, REBBLS and the University of Copenhagen with the aim of ensuring easier access to laboratories for students who create novel solutions within life science. With funding from The Danish Industry Foundation, we were able to open up CPHLabs in December – a community for life science startups centered around a shared laboratory located at Symbion. The goal is to ensure that students with ambitions to develop their first early proof-of-concept of ideas that require laboratory access – which is often the first and biggest barrier for biotech startups.

CPHLabs

If you are a student and need a laboratory place, contact Anna or Peter.

Get out of the building and talk to your customers

An important part of developing innovative solutions in the healthcare sector includes close interaction with multiple stakeholders: Customers, patients, organizations, and companies outside the university. The objective is to develop viable solutions that meet the users' needs.

Also, in 2021, all teams were invited to join TechBBQ – the largest fair for entrepreneurs in the Nordic region.

UVISA på TechBBQ — UVISA – a DTU/KU student team exchanging contact information with investment manager Lene Gerlach from Vækstfonden at TechBBQ. Lene visited SUND Hub later this in 2021.

To prepare our teams for the complex development process of healthcare innovation, SUND Hub has a strong focus on connecting the teams with domain experts, all of whom have committed to helping out free of charge. In 2021, we have expanded our network so that students can get even more qualified help - no matter how far they are in their development process and within a wide range of healthcare industries. Therefore, we are pleased to present this year's new experts: Ivanna Rosendal (Pharma), Christian Wittenkamp (Sales to and collaboration with municipalities), Lars Münter from the Committee for Health Information (Public Health) and Nordic Health Lab, who can help with access to tests at hospital clinics. See all our domain experts on our website.

Domain Expert Anne-Marie Hall — Domain expert Anne-Marie Hall often visits SUND Hub and, with more than 25 years of marketing experience from the healthcare industry, she can help frame the storytelling so that it resonates in the market.

The year to come – KU's new innovation center

We are happy that 2021 was also the year when UCPH started the development of a joint innovation center. We hope that SUND Hub in 2022 will move into new premises in Green Lighthouse and thereby, strengthen the collaboration across faculties even further.

The innovation center is being developed in a collaboration between the four innovation hubs at UCPH under the leadership of Marius Sylvestersen, and we look forward to scaling up on all fronts - including external collaborations, support to teachers and not least: Strengthen our support to students with the courage to work with own ideas while studying.

Marius Sylvestersen comes from a position as director of The Municipality of Copenhagen's Smart City program and will lead the development of KU's new innovation center. Photo: Mike Young.

Can I join with my ideas?

Are you a student, and do you want to work with your own idea, you can apply for the Health Innovators program before the 14th of February 2022. You are welcome to book a meeting with Anna or Peter if you want to hear more.

If you are interested in a collaboration with the new innovation center, you can contact Marius Sylvestersen at marius.sylvestersen@admin.ku.dk.

Finally, we give huge thanks to students, teachers, domain experts and partners for a fantastic 2021.

We look forward to a good collaboration in 2022.

Yours sincerely,

Anna & Peter

Innovation Consultants, SUND Hub

The year ended with a large Community Celebration for Changemakers on Campus South, where the UCPH entrepreneurs presented their ideas. Prizes were awarded in the categories: Growth, Impact, Pitch and Audience Award.