OPENeHEALTH Parkinson has successfully reached its conclusion. This was an open innovation programme organised by the UOC, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, and GMV. Its aim was to develop a technological solution to improve the quality of life for Parkinson’s patients through collaboration between UOC students and other involved parties. This solution came in the form of an app to help people with Parkinson’s disease improve their mobility, state of mind and medicine management.

The open innovation program consisted of four phases

1. Defining the challenge

The challenge – defined by patients, medical and academic professionals – was to develop an app to help people with Parkinson’s disease improve their mobility, state of mind and medicine management.

2. Call for ideas

Using our online collaboration platform, 256 users worked in transdisciplinary teams on 32 innovative ideas.

3. Prototype co-creation

The four best ideas were developed into prototypes. 

4. App development

Parkinsons was chosen as the best prototype. With technological support from the OPENeHEALTH Parkinson program, the prototype was developed into the first version of the Parskinons App, which will improve Parkinson’s patients’ quality of life.

Parkinsons App

The Parkinsons App and the open innovation process was presented to Parkinson’s patients, Sant Pau medical staff, UOC R&I staff and GMV developers. Those involved in the process explained what they thought the OPENeHEALTH Parkinson programme achieved in the video.

Next steps

Hubbik presented the Parkinsons App at 4 Years From Now (4YFN) 2018, an event for tech start-ups held at the Mobile World Congress. Teresa Ferriz, initiator and coordinator of Parkinsons, on the project Parkinsons and Hubbik at 4YFN: “We had two objectives and surpassed them both: first, to publicize our project and give even more visibility to this strong connection between the UOC and Sant Pau Hospital; and second, to make ourselves known to future partners, in a global context. We’ve received feedback from hundreds of people with over 20 nationalities and this has given us a 360° view of our project. And we’ve felt empathy and support for our project and goals that has made us even more convinced we must keep on working together to find solutions to the global challenge that is Parkinson’s disease – the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the world.”

Have a look at the Parkinsons, the App, the team and how it all started here.