The Award recognizes Patient Entrepreneurs demonstrating outstanding innovations which advance solutions in the prevention, management or care of cancer

Lyfebulb-Helsinn Award 2020

MONACO, PRINCIPALITY OF MONACO, AND NEW YORK, NY, USA, August 29th, 2019: Helsinn, a Swiss pharmaceutical group focused on building quality cancer care, announced that it will partner with Lyfebulb, a patient-empowerment platform that connects patients with industry to support user-driven innovation, to host their third annual Innovation Summit and Award in Oncology.

The Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Summit will be held at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on January 29th and 30th, 2020, culminating in the announcement of the 2020 Award winner on January 30th, during the 14th Monaco Biennale of Oncology.

The Summit is open to Patient Entrepreneurs building groundbreaking companies to advance the prevention, diagnosis, management or care of cancer. Patient Entrepreneurs include cancer patients, cancer survivors, or those having a close relative or loved one with cancer.

All candidates are invited to submit applications through the Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Summit & Award website, where more information regarding eligibility and key criteria is available. Submissions may be made between September 16th and November 17th, 2019.

Riccardo Braglia, Helsinn Group Vice Chairman and CEO, commented: “Cancer patients and their real life experience are at the heart of what the Helsinn Group does. We are strongly committed to supporting inspired Patient Entrepreneurs who have a unique insight into products and solutions which can bring respect and integrity to the patient community and quality solutions to the challenges they face.”

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Helsinn again to help accelerate solutions that patients have identified as much needed into the marketplace,” said Dr Karin Hehenberger, CEO and Founder of Lyfebulb. “Getting this group of select Patient Entrepreneurs together not only increases their exposure, but also fosters a unique collaboration between innovators with a shared mission of serving patients’ unmet needs.”

About the Helsinn Group

Helsinn is a privately-owned pharmaceutical group with an extensive portfolio of marketed cancer care products and a robust drug development pipeline. Since 1976, Helsinn has been improving the everyday lives of patients, guided by core family values of respect, integrity and quality. The Group works across pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices and nutritional supplements and has expertise in research, development, manufacture and the commercialization of therapeutic and supportive care products for cancer, pain and inflammation and gastroenterology. In 2016, Helsinn created the Helsinn Investment Fund to support early-stage investment opportunities in areas of unmet patient need. The company is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, with operating subsidiaries in Switzerland, Ireland, the U.S., Monaco and China, as well as a product presence in approximately 190 countries globally.

To learn more about Helsinn Group please visit www.helsinn.com

About Helsinn Investment Fund S.A., SICAR

The Helsinn Investment Fund is focused on investments in areas of high unmet patient need. Backed by the Helsinn Group, and guided by Helsinn’s core values of quality, integrity and respect, Helsinn Investment Fund aims to help companies with innovative technologies to transform new ideas into commercial solutions with the potential to impact health-related quality of life of patients.

Drawing on Helsinn’s over 40 years of investment into research and development and commercial expertise, the investment fund selects companies with technologies in a range of areas including cancer therapeutics and diagnostics, cancer supportive care, metabolic and gastrointestinal disorders, and dermatology conditions.

For more information, visit www.helsinninvestmentfund.com

About Helsinn International Services sarl

Helsinn International Services sarl is the Helsinn subsidiary which provides a range of advisory services and strategic activities to the Group and its specific companies. In particular, it acts as the advisory company to Helsinn Investment Fund.

About Lyfebulb

Lyfebulb is a chronic disease-focused, patient empowerment platform that connects patients and industry to support user-driven innovation. Grounded with its strong foundation in diabetes, the company has expanded disease states covered into cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, mental illness and migraine.

See www.lyfebulb.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Lyfebulb LinkedIn, and Karin Hehenberger LinkedIn.

For more information:

Helsinn Group Media Contact
Paola Bonvicini
Group Head of Communication
Lugano, Switzerland
Tel: +41 (0) 91 985 21 21
Info-hhc@helsinn.com

For more information, please visit www.helsinn.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Vimeo.

Lyfebulb Media Contact:

Karin Hehenberger, MD, PhD
CEO & Founder, Lyfebulb
Phone: + 1 917-575-0210
Email: karin@lyfebulb.com

Managing a chronic illness is challenging, whether it is your own or a loved one’s. Starting and running a business also poses unique challenges. If you struggle with a chronic illness, have started a business, or want to start a business, this blog series can help guide you. “Inside the Patient Entrepreneur’s Mind” offers key insights into chronic disease and mission-driven entrepreneurship by some of the most innovative patient entrepreneurs in the world. 

John Wilcox is the CEO & Co-Founder of Diatech Diabetic Technologies, Inc. 

As a patient entrepreneur, can you describe your personal experience with diabetes from diagnosis through your current daily management and how this experience drove you to innovate the space? 

In 2005, I was diagnosed on my ninth birthday. I figured the only way to come out on top was to make it a positive experience. Growing up, I really identified with the disease and now use it as an opportunity to empathize with others with chronic disease. I wanted to go to medical school, and still might, but this opportunity came up in college to develop intellectual property—what is SmartFusion today.

I took on the business full-time post college graduation of May 2019. My diagnosis gives me a leg up on how to develop technology to help diabetes patients. As a collective community, we can appreciate when someone with a disease can relate to us and effectively create change. My condition is something that I can share and allows me to connect to people and understand how other people are struggling—it is one of the best gifts that I could ever ask for. I don’t know what I would do with my career without this diagnosis because it has turned into a passion to help others and a lesson on how to make the best of situations.

What makes SmartFusion unique and how does it meet an unmet need of the diabetes community?

SmartFusion is a new infusion set that can more accurately tell you if insulin delivery is actually getting into your body. SmartFusion is unique in the fact that it helps patients understand if they are getting insulin.  Insulin pumps on the market right now are not really meeting the standard of being able to tell patient users if their insulin delivery is effectively working. We noticed the issue of infusion set insulin delivery failures where pumps can have issues with insulin delivery efficacy.

Personally, I have had issues going into DKA because of insulin mis-delivery.  I went to an endocrinologist in college who blamed me for poor A1C control rather than it being a technology/pump failure. I want to provide technology that can deliver alerts before hyperglycemia because it happened to me and it is very dangerous. Fixing this unmet need of pump reliability can take one thing off the list of what patients and caregivers go through regarding issues with diabetes care.

Are there any other unmet needs of the diabetes community that you think take priority in working to address? How are patient entrepreneurs well-suited to meet these needs? 

In the future, I would love to focus on software for pumps. There has been great work on hardware that is safe and effective for patients with diabetes but a real gamechanger could be software that pairs any type of CGM with any type of pump. The diabetes “hacker” community is already pairing their own CGMs with pumps but are not following standards of the industry.

Additionally, there is a lot that needs to be addressed in education, especially how to learn to effectively use diabetes technology for parents of children with the disease.

Where do you draw your inspiration and motivation from to keep forging ahead as an entrepreneur in the healthcare industry?

 My inspiration and motivation comes from talking to people who have the condition. I want to make sure the diabetes community is affected and impacted in a positive way. Stories from patients about issues with diabetes care like insulin mis-delivery keep me up at night.

Lastly, what do you do for fun to manage the stress of running a business as both a person with t1d and an entrepreneur? Do you have any similar advice on work-life-disease management balance to others out there thinking of starting a business to meet an unmet need of a chronic disease patient community?

I love to run whenever I can and I find it a very clearing activity. My goal is to John Wilcox 5k racerun the Boston marathon for the JDRF. In terms of advice for other patient entrepreneurs, we have a disease that can help connect us to other people that have the same chronic illness. However, each patient story is unique so taking the time to recognize that is important. For example, my parents helped me get appropriate care at a young age by providing insurance coverage. How dare I compare my journey to patients I meet now, who are in their twenties, who are still without coverage to get insulin. In a nutshell, know that your story is unique and craft a connection to fellow patients based on that fact.

 

 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MS SOCIETY| 07 SEPTEMBER 2018

Technology is so embedded in our everyday lives that I’d challenge anyone to go more than a couple of minutes without using something digital.

 

But what is the future for digital when it comes to helping people with MS? When I was diagnosed ten years ago, I ended up feeling very disengaged from the healthcare system. Now I wonder whether digital solutions could have helped me have a better experience.

How technology helps me with my MS

I use technology for many things relating to my MS and the biggest emphasis is on information and knowledge. When I was diagnosed with MS, I gathered enough literature to fill a bookshelf.

Now, the majority of my information needs are met digitally. I have access to a wider variety of digital information, via the internet, smart devices and patient portals. I’m more informed and can make shared decisions with my healthcare team. The next step is that I want to be able to more easily share my health records with all my doctors, because I’m not just my MS.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW TRISHNA USES TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT THE MANAGEMENT OF HER MS! 

 

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