Futurize launches new innovation program across APAC focused on Digital Health
In partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim, “Fuel Asia” is set to launch its first cohort on November 17th, 2022, bringing together leading universities across APAC to integrate digital health solutions for patients to understand, identify and monitor their health conditions.
Findings from a new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report strongly suggest that entrepreneurship must become a mainstay if Asia’s youth bulge is to bring collective benefit to the region. Asia’s 18-34-year-olds have one of the highest start-up rates in the world, with around 40% creating jobs for others. Coupled with the need to make healthcare systems more resilient and digitally empowered, technology is a key enabler to decentralize healthcare as we know it and create room for innovative startup ideas.
Fuel Asia will bring together university students, alumni, and mentors to ideate, develop and test solutions that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health & Well-Being. The program virtually brings together hundreds of students and recent alumni from universities across APAC for an entrepreneurship bootcamp and innovation challenge. Participants form multi-disciplinary teams, receive industry insights, mentorship, and hands-on training through workshops to generate solutions for early-stage business ventures. In the end, teams pitch their ideas to a panel of judges and are awarded prizes and opportunities to advance their businesses and careers.
Asia Pacific poised to become a driving force in Digital Health
Asia is ready for further progress in the HealthTech space for a number of reasons. The region, which suffers from a shortage of healthcare professionals and infrastructure, is expected to have around 400 million people aged 65 or older by 2025. This highlights the need for innovative delivery methods that can effectively address the upcoming boom in demand for healthcare services. Advanced technologies, a growing population, and new policies will change the way we enable and consume healthcare in the future. Now is the time to converge all these factors together and make them part of our daily lives - invisible, accurate, and data protected. Disease areas such as Heart failure, Chronic Kidney disease (CKD), Diabetes, and also Mental Disorders (Schizophrenia, Depression) are highly dependent on lifestyle and the environment. Devices outside of traditional healthcare channels to monitor early signs of these diseases with digital biomarkers (voice, smell, eye gaze, digital phenotyping, etc.) are on the rise that can be leveraged in everyday environments to support the healthcare system and provide increased access to healthcare. The program seeks to discover creative ways to use new technology & device concepts to help patients prevent these diseases, follow their medical treatment plans or build new lifestyle habits to change and live healthier.
“Fuel Asia is a great opportunity for us to explore ideas across regions and collaborate with creative talents. At BI X, we are pioneering for Digital Health and I am very much looking forward to seeing lots of interesting ideas”
This program marks Futurize global expansion into APAC and gives the next generation of entrepreneurs a platform to connect, learn and ideate. Moritz Gripp, Chief Operating Officer at Futurize, believe that “the region has tremendous potential to be at the forefront of student-entrepreneurship and digital solutions to tackle the burden on healthcare systems in the years ahead.”
Read more about the program here and how to get involved. Futurize works with global businesses & universities that hold the key to driving youth skill development by supporting programs like Fuel Asia. In return, they are able to gain a competitive edge that can get new products/services to market faster, align their sustainability agenda, hire and retain quality talent, enhance brand awareness, and increase stakeholder and governmental engagements.
The program is co-funded by Bristol Myers Squibb.
