Patient Innovation is a Portuguese non-for-profit association and an online platform, developed with the goal to promote the sharing of innovative solutions created by patients and caregivers in order to cope with limitations associated with the health condition that they face. Today, the platform has a portfolio of more than 1200 innovations and it is used by 120 thousand users worldwide, which is reflected in more than 1 million visits per year.

In the current COVID-19 pandemic, Patient Innovation has already identified more than 50 solutions evaluated as viable and safe, from which 45 have already been published in the website created for this purpose – https://patient-innovation.com/condition/covid-19 –, and the number keeps rising everyday.

This initiative is supported by NOVA Medical School, NOVA School of Business and Economics and Cátedra Gulbenkian-NovaSBE for the Impact Economy.

These solutions were developed by common citizens, including healthcare professional, startups and companies too. The solutions are focused in different topics as medical tools (e.g. ventilators and protective masks), community initiatives organized by volunteers to cope with difficulties associated with social isolating (e.g. delivery of groceries and medication to high risk groups), and services offered by big companies or institutions (e.g. robots to connect with family members in nursing homes).

In qualitative terms, the novel solutions direct or indirectly related with ventilators prevail, for which we have already published solutions from Portugal, Spain, Ireland, USA, Canada and other countries.

There are also many solutions related with new challenges associated with hygiene. For example, students from a primary school in the south of Taiwan created a robot with Lego pieces to automatically distribute hand disinfectant, so the children can clean their hands without touching the bottle, and thus reducing the risk of infection. In USA, a former homeless, understanding the problems that thousand of homeless people will face related with keeping a proper hygiene (e.g. by washing their hands frequently), he created a network of washing hand stations for these citizens.

Here are a few examples of solutions already published:

• 

  Figura 1 - Catarina Santos, gestora da plataforma Patient Innovation, a imprimir máscaras 3D do seu quarto

• 

  Figura 2 - OpenLung, prototipo de ventilador criado na Irlanda (https://patient-innovation.com/post/3235)

• 

  Figura 3- Prototipo de ventilador criado em Barcelona (https://patient-innovation.com/post/3190)

• 

  Figura 4 - Dra. Charlene Babcock que concebeu um modo inovador de ligar vários doentes ao mesmo ventilador (https://patient-innovation.com/post/3166)

• 

  Figura 5 - Alunos de uma escola primária no sul de Taiwan criaram um robô em peças Lego que distribui automaticamente desinfetante para as mãos (https://patient-innovation.com/post/3175)

• 

  Figura 6 - Liam, da Invisible Hands, desinfeta a sacola de compras antes de entregá-la a Carol Sterling, de 80 anos, no seu apartamento em Nova York (https://patient-innovation.com/post/3165)

• 

  Figura 7 - Suporte de abertura de porta impresso em 3D para evitar contacto directo com as mãos (https://patient-innovation.com/post/2986)

Find more HERE!

Follow Patient Innovation project on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter!

This project is supported by: