Founder’s lens: Building sustainable HealthTech solutions

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The third online session of the EVOLVE2CARE Training Series for Innovators and Researchers took place on 17 July 2025, offering a grounded and insightful look into the entrepreneurial path of a HealthTech founder. Titled “Building a Sustainable HealthTech Business – A Founder’s Journey,” the session was led by Panagiotis Katsaounis, Medical Geneticist and CEO of Metabio, a company pioneering IT solutions for biobanks. 

The session formed part of the six-part EVOLVE2CARE series From User to Market – Faster Validation and Commercialisation for HealthTech Innovators and Researchers, which supports HealthTech innovators working in Transitional Care and Clinical Pathways to accelerate their journey from research to real-world impact.

Why biosamples matter — and Why managing them is hard

Biosamples are a cornerstone of biomedical research and power medical R&D excellence, supporting advancements in diagnostics, drug discovery, genetics and environment.

However, IT systems to manage biosamples and associated data are often inadequate and problematic for researchers; unreliable, leading to poor data harmonization across sources; and limited, failing to capture the historical dimension of biosample usage. As a result, valuable data remains underutilized or inaccessible. 

This challenge laid the groundwork for the creation of Metabio, a next-generation IT platform designed to modernize and integrate the full spectrum of biosample data. By offering real-time access, harmonized metadata, and GDPR/HIPAA-compliant tools, Metabio enables biobanks, researchers and the entire research ecosystem to unlock the true potential of the biosample collections.

Key highlights

Identifying the real value

The instructor described how Metabio emerged from direct experience in the lab, where data quality gaps and outdated biobank IT systems conflicted with cost and time constraints.

Building the business model

Participants were guided through Metabio’s evolution from an idea to a revenue-generating SaaS platform. 

A breakdown of real startup costs revealed a balanced allocation:

  • 35% for team and operations
  • 30% for R&D and clinical validation
  • 20% for sales and marketing
  • 15% for regulatory compliance

This financial transparency highlighted the importance of lean spending, focused prioritization, and resource-efficient scaling.

Practical advice for HealthTech founders

Panagiotis Katsaounis shared several turning points, including a major shift from offering physical infrastructure to delivering modular, interoperable software. He emphasized that being responsive to market feedback and recognizing internal limitations were critical to navigating early-stage uncertainty.

The session closed with a set of key takeaways aimed at helping other innovators design more viable and resilient ventures:

  • Prioritize Speed and Iteration: Avoid over-engineering early on. Launch MVPs quickly rather than chasing perfection.
  • Cultivate deep customer and patient empathy: True innovation starts with understanding. Invest time in interviews, shadowing, and co-creation.
  • Build resilience and a supportive network: Surround yourself with a core team that shares the long-term vision. Replace doubt with determination.

What’s next

The upcoming session “Unlocking IP Value: Protection, Collaboration & AI” on Thursday 24 July, 2025, at 15:00 CEST, will explore how to protect intellectual assets, manage innovation in collaborative environments, and navigate new IP challenges in the age of artificial intelligence.

Stay with us as we continue to equip innovators with the tools to build, scale, and sustain meaningful healthtech solutions—from user to market.

Register here

Applying Service Design in Living Labs: Webinar highlights

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The second session, titled “Designing Tailored Living Lab Services for Innovators”, which is part of the Living Labs Training Series, took place on 9 July 2025. It focused on designing structured, user-oriented services that enable Living Labs to better support innovators, accelerate experimentation, and ensure sustainable operations.

This six part training program is specifically crafted for Living Lab managers, researchers, and innovation professionals. It brings together top experts in service design and real-world practitioners from across Europe. The last webinar featured contributions from:

What is Service Design?

Francesca Sperandio opened the session by introducing the central question: “What is Service Design?” She explained that Service Design is about intentionally planning and organizing all the different touchpoints and interactions—from users and staff to platforms and operations—that collectively make up a service. 

  • Service Design is human-centered, evidence-based, and follows an iterative, collaborative process.
  • Living Labs, likewise, emphasize active user involvement, real-life experimentation, and co-creation.

Case Studies from the Thessaloniki Action for Health & Wellbeing Living Lab

In her turn, Despoina Petsani shared two concrete case studies from the Thessaloniki Action for Health & Wellbeing Living Lab, developed within the framework of the VITALISE project. VITALISE enables researchers from various disciplines to access European Living Lab infrastructures through Transnational Access.

These examples highlighted not only the innovative services developed—such as ASSURE, an AI tool for dysphagia detection, and HESTIA, a thermal monitoring system to support informal caregiving—but also the concrete resource needs involved in delivering them.

For each pilot, she presented a side-by-side comparison of time and personnel dedicated by internal and external teams. Internal refers to the Living Lab’s own staff, who are familiar with lab protocols, logistics, and stakeholder engagement, while external refers to visiting researchers granted access through the project.

The data showed needs for 170h/30d internal vs. 52h external for ASSURE project, and 121/28d internal vs. 14d external for HESTIA—demonstrating that effective Living Lab services require considerable coordination and time investment.

Structuring and Pricing Living Lab Services

Marta I. De Los Ríos White guided participants through a practical methodology for turning Living Lab activities into repeatable, well-defined services. 

The structured 5-step Servive Design Process included:

  1. Discover: the phase of immersion, where tools like interviews, observations, and self-documentation help capture real user needs and contextual insights.
  2. Define: a period of analysis—making sense of the findings, spotting patterns, and setting a clear design challenge.
  3. Develop: the creative core of the process, where ideas are generated, sketched, and prototyped through both visual and tactile methods.
  4. Deliver: this stage transforms ideas into action—pitching, role-playing, testing, gathering feedback, and capturing learnings.
  5. Evolve: a forward-looking stage focused on scaling, building partnerships, tracking impact, and celebrating even subtle change.

Do you know how to price your services?

To close, Marta I. De Los Ríos White presented three guiding steps for Living Labs ready to define the value of what they offer. First, she encouraged participants to assess the value their services provide to innovators, including the time saved, risk reduced, and unique benefits delivered. Next, she stressed the importance of understanding internal costs—factoring in people’s time and expertise, specialized tools, resources, and overhead. Finally, she highlighted the need to align pricing strategies with the Living Lab’s broader mission and funding model, ensuring financial sustainability while staying true to core objectives.

What’s next?

The next session for Living Labs, “Navigating Legal, Ethical & Regulatory Frameworks,” will take place on August 27, 2025, at 15:00 CEST, and will approach the ethical, legal and regulatory frameworks, explores the sector-specific compliance and engages with regulatory bodies.

Register here

Highlights from the 1st webinar for Living Labs

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The first session of “Trainings on Service Design for Living Labs”, held on June 25, 2025, successfully brought together 23 participants for an engaging and insightful webinar titled “The Role of Living Labs in the Innovation Ecosystem.” The session featured five distinguished speakers—Prof. Dr. Dimitri Schuurman,  Senior Research Strategist (ENoLL), Ingrid Adriaensen, Business Manager (LiCalab), Dr. Eva Kehayia (RehabMaLL), Clara G. García Blanch, Pilot Test Manager, (Suara), and Sofía Ballesteros Rodríguez, Social Worker (Fundación INTRAS)—and was facilitated by Marta I. De Los Rios White and Francesca Sperandio from ENoLL.

The discussion began with Prof. Schuurman, who situated Living Labs within broader innovation frameworks, tracing their evolution from the Triple Helix model (government, academia, industry) to the more inclusive Quadruple Helix, which incorporates civil society. He emphasized the strategic role of Living Labs in open innovation, particularly their contributions to value creation, co-creation, and real-life experimentation. He also introduced a framework for navigating complexity across strategic, tactical, and operational levels.

Building on this, he described the importance of anchoring Living Labs in a clear mission and vision—one that addresses long-term partnerships, user needs, and value creation—through an ecosystem-driven approach. Finally, he illustrated how Living Labs function in practice across three layers: multi-actor orchestration at the organizational level, multi-method and real-life experimentation at the project level, and active stakeholder engagement through co-creation and co-design at the activity level—underscoring their dual role in fostering open innovation and empowering user innovation.

Following this, each speaker presented a unique Living Lab case, offering practical insights into how these collaborative environments are driving user-centered innovation across diverse sectors.

Ingrid Adriaensen – LiCalab

Ingrid Adriaensen presented the Living and Care Lab (LiCalab) based in the Province of Antwerp, Belgium, embedded within Thomas More University of Applied Sciences. She explained how LiCalab supports companies in developing and validating care-related innovations by offering a strong user research infrastructure, including a panel of over 1,200 citizens and care professionals, and by leveraging collaborations with hospitals, municipalities, and international networks.

LiCalab focuses on care technology—including e-health, medtech, assistive and communication tools—and innovative models for collaboration in care settings, with a strong emphasis on sustainability, inclusion, and both digital and health literacy. A key example was the ‘Welgerust’ (Well Rested) project, a multi-actor initiative tackling sleep issues through a blended care approach. The solution combines the Moonbird device—which uses biofeedback to guide users through optimal breathing patterns—and tailored psychological support. The project, which targets both adults and children, caregivers, and a local hospital, illustrates how Living Labs can drive user-centered innovation from early-stage development to real-world testing.

 

Dr. Eva Kehayia – RehabMaLL

Dr. Eva Kehayia (CRIR – Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal) presented the Rehabilitation Living Lab (RehabMaLL), a pioneering initiative promoting full social participation and inclusion for people with disabilities. Situated in a public commercial mall in downtown Montreal, RehabMaLL offers a real-life environment where citizens, researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and community organizations come together to co-design and test socially inclusive innovations. Eva showcased the TeleRehab-GT platform, developed collaboratively with stroke survivors, caregivers, and health professionals to ensure that telerehabilitation tools align with users’ needs and values. The Living Lab fosters innovation through inclusive, interdisciplinary collaboration, combining real-world conditions with simulation spaces, and guided by the core principles of respect, equity, and user empowerment.

The RehabMaLL is a multi-tasking environment that enables users to engage in everyday activities (e.g., shopping, and social interaction) while testing assistive or rehabilitative technologies. This setup allows researchers to evaluate user experiences in dynamic, real-life contexts, increasing the relevance and applicability of innovation outcomes.

Clara G. García Blanch – Suara Social Digital Living Lab

Clara García Blanch presented the work of Suara’s Social Digital Living Lab, which promotes technological and service innovation within one of Spain’s largest social economy cooperatives. The Living Lab is grounded in four core values: a person-centered approach to care and innovation, digital inclusion as a means to reduce inequalities, co-creation with all stakeholders from the outset, and a strong commitment to continuous evaluation, learning, and adaptation.

She explained that Suara delivers a wide range of services tailored to individual needs across the life course—from early childhood to elderly care, including areas such as functional diversity, social inclusion, adult education, and justice.

A key focus of her presentation was the collaboration with Broomx, an immersive technology company. Through this partnership, Suara implements immersive and virtual reality experiences for mindfulness, cognitive stimulation, and recreational purposes in care settings. These interventions support core areas such as well-being, neurorehabilitation, and psychostimulation, particularly benefiting vulnerable or older populations.

Sofía Ballesteros Rodríguez – MINDLab

Sofía Ballesteros presented the work of Fundación INTRAS, a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting people with mental health conditions, cognitive impairments, and other vulnerabilities. At the core of INTRAS’ innovation strategy is MINDLab, its certified Living Lab and a member of ENoLL. MINDLab acts as a permanent co-creation space supporting innovators through close collaboration with users and professionals. Its intervention scope centres on people with mental health challenges and cognitive decline, and its main competencies include:

  • Cognitive intervention & rehabilitation through new technologies
  • Sensory Stimulation
  • Digital Health
  • Empowering personalized interventions
  • Co-design with users and public involvement
  • Dissemination, knowledge transfer & research networking
  • Digital learning, inclusion, and accessibility
  • Connected Care at home and Independent living solutions

Also, she introduced VIVEMAIS, a cross-border and transdisciplinary initiative funded by the European Union, which aims to promote the design, adoption, and use of assistive technologies (ATs). These technologies are essential tools that enhance the functional capabilities of individuals facing challenges in communication, mobility, memory, and learning.

The session set a solid foundation for the series, sparking meaningful dialogue and offering actionable insights for Living Labs committed to advancing user-centered innovation.

What’s next?

The next session for Living Labs, “Designing Tailored Living Lab Services for Innovators,” will take place on July 9, 2025, at 15:00 CEST, and will introduce service design principles while exploring how Living Labs can create customized services to better support innovators and their specific needs.

Register here

First webinar on supercharging innovation with LLMs & No-Code Tools

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On June 12, 2025, the EVOLVE2CARE project successfully kicked off the first session of its Training Series for HealthTech Innovators and Researchers titled “From Users to Market – Faster Validation and Commercialisation for HealthTech Innovators and Researchers”, introducing participants to cutting-edge strategies for accelerating innovation through Large Language Models (LLMs) and No-Code platforms for rapid prototyping.

Led by Metaxas Gamvrelis, Technical & Training Lead at Anthology Ventures, the session “Accelerating Innovation — Leveraging LLMs & No-Code for Rapid Prototyping” brought together over 15 healthcare innovators and researchers, and offered a practical and inspiring deep dive into how tools and No-Code platforms like ChatGPT, Landbot, Lovable, and Google Gemini can dramatically shorten the innovation lifecycle—from early ideation to real-world deployment.

Rethinking prototyping: From weeks to days

Metaxas Gamvrelis opened the session by contrasting the traditional approach to prototyping—often slow, costly, and resource-intensive—with today’s possibilities enabled by AI and automation. He introduced a streamlined 4-stage framework that demonstrated how LLMs and No-Code tools transform each step:

Stage 1: Idea to Prototype

AI-LLMs can accelerate product ideation and planning by:

  • Brainstorming product features and user stories
  • Drafting Product Requirement Documents (PRDs)
  • Generating user personas & customer journey maps
  • Summarizing market research

Stage 2: User testing

Feedback is fuel for innovation. With AI-powered support, innovators can:

  • Set up user tests quickly and with minimal resources
  • Gather diverse feedback from surveys, interviews, and chatbots
  • Perform initial analysis of results to identify key insights fast
  • Perform sentiment analysis and theme extraction

Stage 3: Iterate & Improve

Once initial feedback is collected, the real power of LLMs and No-Code tools emerges, enabling rapid iteration, continuous refinement, and smarter decision-making without starting from scratch.

  • LLMs help extract insights from user feedback, generate improvement suggestions, and update designs/requirements in real time.
  • Tools like Lovable and Figma support versioning and A/B testing, making iteration cycles faster, smarter, and more agile.

Stage 4: Deploy Rollout (MVP)

With minimal development time, MVPs can be launched using No-Code platforms such as Glide, Replit, and Retool.

LLMs assist by:

  • Generating product documentation
  • Drafting marketing copy, landing pages, FAQs
  • Creating onboarding flows (emails, chatbot scripts)
  • Even code snippets for future integrations

Living Labs reimagined: More agile than ever

In the next part of the session, the training and technical expert explored how this tech revolution aligns perfectly with the Living Lab methodology, a cornerstone of EVOLVE2CARE project. By combining co-creation, iteration, and real-life user involvement with the agility of LLMs and No-Code:

  • Prototypes can be created on-demand during co-design sprints
  • Feedback can be gathered in real-time through smart forms and bots
  • Iteration becomes virtually limitless within project timelines

“Living Labs are a huge gift,” he said, “because they help people check services before they’re fully developed. And now, they can do it faster, with less risk.”

To close the session, Metaxas Gamvrelis walked participants through real-time examples of how he uses ChatGPT in his own workflow. He emphasized the value of clear, well-structured prompts and shared one of his go-to techniques: “At the end of each prompt, I always ask: ‘Do you understand the task?’—it’s a small step that ensures accuracy. 

What’s next?

This first session set the tone for EVOLVE2CARE’s Training Series—equipping HealthTech innovators and researchers with practical tools to accelerate early-stage development using LLMs and No-Code platforms. The second session, “Design Thinking in Action — A Living Lab Approach to Healthtech Innovation,” is scheduled for Thursday, 19 June 2025 at 15:00 CEST.

Join us as we dive into the power of design thinking in real-life healthcare contexts. Led by Ioannis Poultourtzidis, Coordinator of the ThessAHALL Living Lab, the session will explore how co-creation, inclusivity, and user-centered design lead to more relevant, ethical, and effective innovations.

Register here

EVOLVE2CARE and GILL collaborate on gender-inclusive approach

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On March 29, 2025 EVOLVE2CARE joined forces with the experts from the GILL – Gendered Innovation Living Labs, Horizon Europe project, for a focused mini-webinar on future collaboration and the validation of social and gender Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

This targeted exchange brought together EVOLVE2CARE partners from AUTH Medical Physics & Digital Innovation Lab — Despoina Petsani and Konstantina Tsimpita — with GILL’s gender innovation experts to align efforts and perspectives on how to embed social responsiveness and gender inclusivity into KPI frameworks.

To clarify, the webinar explored how to structure KPIs that account for gender dynamics within innovation ecosystems. Key topics included measuring gender representation, assessing inclusivity in decision-making, and ensuring innovation addresses diverse societal needs

At EVOLVE2CARE, we are committed to strengthening collaboration between Living Labs and innovators in the context of Transitional Care — and this exchange with GILL represents a valuable step toward more inclusive, impactful outcomes, supported by AUTH’s academic expertise in advancing equitable and patient-centred healthcare solutions.