Innovating to improve therapeutic adherence: our challenge at the UNAV Hackathon

On 1 September, we took part in the hackathon organised in collaboration with the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Navarra (UNAV), an initiative involving first-year students from the Pharmacy and Nutrition degree programmes. The goal? To explore innovative solutions that help improve therapeutic adherence, one of the key challenges associated with chronic conditions.

Therapeutic adherence has a direct impact on the effectiveness of treatments, patient quality of life and the cost to the healthcare system. However, data suggest that only half of patients currently follow the prescribed treatment guidelines, which has negative consequences for both their health and the healthcare system.

Innovation was approached as a comprehensive process at this hackathon: identifying needs, pooling knowledge, proposing solutions, testing them and learning.

The hackathon challenge: an interdisciplinary, secure, viable and measurable solution

The challenge set for the students was to design an interdisciplinary solution to help a person with a chronic illness stick to their treatment plan on a day-to-day basis, taking into account factors such as medication, diet and lifestyle habits.

Proposals had to meet a series of criteria: they had to be person-centred, safe and supported by scientific evidence.

Furthermore, specific areas of focus were identified to guide the teams in their work: comprehension and literacy; routines and reminders; meal planning; monitoring and feedback; communication and coordination; and product, packaging or service design.

The winning solution

After assessing the proposals submitted by the various teams, the winning project was by ‘Las Cañas’ team, made up of Xavier, Julio, Álvaro, Enrique, Aitor and Ignacio.

Their proposal consisted of a smart necklace based on artificial intelligence, designed to help indicate which medication the patient should take and specifically for people in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.

Connecting talent and innovation

As part of our open innovation platform CinfaNext, initiatives such as this hackathon enable us to continue building closer ties with university talent and explore new ways of innovating in healthcare: by bringing together different disciplines, tackling real-world challenges and promoting solutions designed for people’s everyday lives.