Professionals from the Hospital Universitari Parc Taulí, in Sabadell, shared clinical needs identified in their daily work in healthcare with companies and startups from CataloniaBio & HealthTech. It was held on the afternoon of 2 November, in the Auditorium of the Hospital Parc Taulí. The conference is promoted by CataloniaBio & HealthTech and it had the collaboration of the Parc Taulí Institute for Research and Innovation (I3PT) and ITEMAS.

Lluís Blanch, Director of the I3PT and ITEMAS coordinator, and Javier Selva, CEO of CataloniaBio & HealthTech, welcomed the participants to the conference. Eduard Soler, head of the I3PT's Technology Transfer and Innovation Unit, then presented the innovation model in the health sector, reviewing the opportunities and types of collaborations they are working on.

Six professionals from Parc Taulí University Hospital, from different backgrounds and areas, presented their challenges and proposals to the audience. Jesús Cobo, specialist psychiatrist and researcher, identified unequal access to mental health treatment, discontinuity in this care for patients and some ideas on how to offer personalised psychiatric care. Next, Víctor Martínez-Glez, Director of the Centre of Genomic Medicine, raised challenges related to the connection of genetic data to clinical histories, the re-evaluation of clinical results and the use and access to mass data. Joan Perendreu, Director of the Diagnostic Imaging Service, presented opportunities to exploit medical imaging with new technologies in specific cases. In the surgical field, Alexis Luna, assistant of general surgery, raised challenges more related to robotics and the development of medical devices for surgery.

Anna Benavent, Director of Digital Strategy, also spoke from a less assistance-based perspective and more from the point of view of healthcare management, raising challenges in relation to digital transformation, such as the need to address interoperability and the unification of technological platforms, non-presential care and the IoT, and all the new technologies that can support decision-making. Still in the area of management, Francesc Luque, Director of Economic Services, raised challenges for improving general service processes to improve efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of the clinical activity.

At the conclusions, Laia Arnal, member of the board of CataloniaBio & HealthTech and director of Business Development at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), congratulated the professionals for the presentation of the challenges and for the great capacity and quantity they offered. In this sense, he highlighted the need for networking spaces such as Hospital Connection: "Hospitals have the knowledge and information about the challenges; companies know the market, have better access to it and often have more R&D capacity", which is why she pointed out the need to create consortiums.