Life Science Open Space 2018: Shaping the reality of Polish Life Science

On the picture: ScanBalt General Secretary Peter Frank during the opening of LSOS2018 “Maybe time for investors to be more aware of Polish Life Sciences”

Life Science Open Space 2018 is already behind us!

As every year, in the autumn, we had the real pleasure of organizing and participating in the event, the purpose of which is to promote cooperation for innovation for Health and Quality of Life. The LSOS formula enables all participants to actively participate and engage in individual meetings with other participants and to present themselves and their offer in three thematic sessions lasting con-sistently, including: MedTech, Digital Health, Active and healthy life, Nanotechnology, Drug development research , Cosmetology, Bioeconomy, Food, Healthy home and office, Innovative Hospital.

Every year, at LSOS, we promote practical cooperation between innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists and users of new solutions and technologies. That is why we propose five different categories of cooperation, each of which has a different character, but all have the same effect: we seek opportunities to establish contacts to meet practical needs – solve specific problems. These categories include Open Innovation, Demo / Premiere, Career, Challenge and StartUp. The category Demo / Premiere also involves the opportunity to see, touch and sometimes taste new innovative products on demonstration stands.

This year’s edition of LSOS18 brought equally 100 presentations in five different categories of co-operation in 13 thematic sessions, each of which had its own leader. In total, 400 people took part in the event!

However, not a record amount is important here. There are no casual people on LSOS. Here you can meet people genuinely focused on joint action – partners for the development of innovative projects and services, as well as enthusiasts and users of technology and innovation for health and quality of life. The event has a special character, emphasized by all those asked: there are no embellishments, barriers and limitations for those who want to do something in the area of health and quality of life. There is openness and readiness to act:

“I do not have to travel all over Poland to meet people with whom I could talk about possible cooperation in my field, which is medical diagnosis” – says one of the participants – “here are all those who are open and prepared for such a conversation “.

This is a huge and non-accidental value of LSOS – we plan and implement this event with just such an assumption – as many opportunities as possible to establish interdisciplinary cooperation in the field, which gives many opportunities to combine forces: innovation for health and quality of life.

As in previous years, we awarded prizes in 3 categories:

• The presentation of Tomasz Wilanowski from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw, was considered the Best, Most Convincing Presentation, entitled: “A genetic test detecting an increased risk of developing skin cancer”. This prize was awarded by the participants of our event.
• The prize for the Best Example of Practical Approach to the Open Innovation Concept, was awarded to Vladyslav Hubar from Boost Biotech Poland, for the presentation entitled “BioHack – bioinformatic hackathon”. The award was granted by the Klaster LifeScience Kraków foundation.
• The special award for the best StartUp, funded by Life Science Business Consulting, was awarded twice: to NanoThea SA, dealing with nano-particles for targeted prostate cancer brachytherapy and to MedApp SA, the creators of the CarnaLife® project – deep neural net-works in holographic images in Mixed Reality for Interventional Cardiology & Electrophysiol-ogy and telemedicine.

At the end – a cherry on the cake – session INSPIRATIONS’18.

You can find a lot of inspiration at # LSOS18, but the evening session is designed only to inspire with stories told by people who have already succeeded or are persistently striving for it, becoming an example for others. People with passion, vision and purpose of action, who shape the reality in which they find themselves and influence the environment in which we later find ourselves.

This year, we heard three beautiful stories: about how a small company from Krakow becomes the topic of the presentation of the President of Microsoft, which puts all its offices in the world at the company’s disposal; about how one can stubbornly strive for the goal of preparing a pig’s kidney to be able to develop a computer model of a human kidney, which then saves lives; and also about how the passion of dance and the choice of a life path at the age of six, makes it easier to realize yourself and infect others for the rest of your life.

The colours of the evening session were broadcast by swing music, performed by Tadeusz Leśniak and TRIOGENIC-FORTET and a dynamic show of Swing’s master pair – Agnieszka and Grzegorz Cherubińscy. This dance infestation could also be experienced on your own, when after the presentations there was a Charleston lesson, whose results exceeded our expectations. You can see the effect in the movie: http://bit.ly/Charleston_LSOS18

In addition to the winning presentations, success stories and music and dance, the catalyst of positive emotions and conversations was a glass of Polish wine served by Dom Wina in Kraków and a delicious catering prepared by FUSION OF TASTE.

Thanks to everyone! And today we invite you for the next edition of Life Science Open Space, in autumn 2019.

Abstracts, presentations and other documents from the event are available on the www.lifescienceopenspace.pl, on the Cluster website www.lifescience.pl and on the Cluster profile on FB https://www.facebook.com/lifescience.krakow/