The Swedish Embassy in Cairo has held a hybrid graduation ceremony for the Clinical Innovation Fellowships Program, which was launched in Egypt in April 2020.
The event was hosted by Per-Axel Frielingsdorf, Chargé d’affaires of Sweden in Egypt. The ceremony took place at the Swedish Residence in Zamalek in the presence of: Yasser Refaat, Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research; Hany Rashed, Deputy Chairperson of the General Healthcare Authority; Ayman Soliman, CEO of The Sovereign Fund of Egypt (TSFE); along with a group of investors and managers of the Swedish life sciences companies in Egypt, including AstraZeneca.
‘’Innovation is no longer a luxury, as it is crucial for transforming how we do business, how we communicate, educate, recreate and of course how we seek medical care,” said Frielingsdorf, “Sweden is looking forward to working with Egypt and to support its healthcare reforms and ambitions to become a regional centre of excellence.’’
As part of its collaboration between RISE Research Institute of Sweden and EIT Health, enpact brought the Clinical Innovation Fellowships for the first time to Egypt. Eight participants with backgrounds in Business, Medicine, Engineering, and Product Design were on brink of developing solutions based on tangible healthcare needs.
The programme included six weeks of deep clinical immersion at the Children’s Cancer Hospital Egypt 57357 (CCHE). Using a needs-based innovation process, the fellows validated and shortlisted around 20 challenges that face cancer patients in Egypt on different levels.
During the graduation ceremony, the fellows presented their solutions which are based on the challenges they identified in the course of their clinical immersion experience by generating patient-centric solution concepts with the aim of providing holistic healthcare service that adds value in the long run.
The Clinical Innovation Fellowship program manager at Research Institute of Sweden (RISE), representatives of EIT Health and the Swedish Trade and Invest Council (Business Sweden) joined the ceremony via video conference.
