A call for innovation to meet the daily needs of people with disabilities e support all caregivers that support them. The contest Make to Care was born in 2016 as part of the Maker Faire Rome. And this year he crosses the finish line of the seventh edition, promoting the technological progress in the healthcare sector. Among the over 40 projects submitted through the Maker Faire Rome call for makers in the “Health & Wellbeing” section, six finalists have been selected and will be presented during the event on Saturday 8 October from 16.10 to 16.30, online and from the official profiles of the event.
In the first six editions of Make to Care from 2016 to 2021, over 500 projects participated in the contest, with 50 finalists and 12 winners. Among these, the project developed by Nicolò Vallana, Luca Fermi and Edoardo Puceawarded in 2019 the title of Standard bearers of the Republic by President Sergio Mattarella, for an innovative solution for the treatment of dorsopathies designed for one of their classmates during the last year at a technical institute.
The winners of the 2022 contest will be announced on November 30th during the awards ceremony, the program of which is being defined. For them, the opportunity to live an educational experience in Israel, which is focusing a lot on social innovation. The agenda of the visit will be built in collaboration with the Israeli Embassy in Rome.
Over the years Make To Care has shown the potential and ingenuity of a large community of innovators, made up of individuals who do not belong to the institutional world of care and research, who have developed ideas and prototypes of products and services with a focus on health. starting from their own needs or those of the people they care for. A process of creation and design that has often involved the same patients and people with disabilities.
From these experiences a structured reflection in Italy on the ‘Patient-Driven Innovation’that means patient- and caregiver-driven innovation, to promote such practices and foster a constructive debate in terms of health policies. Thanks to the scientific partnership of Polifactorythe maker-space of the Politecnico di Milano, and with the support of Polytechnic Foundation of Milan, two reports were also produced in 2017 and 2019, available on the initiative’s website. The Make to Care ecosystem is constantly mapped by Polifactory through the online platform designhealthcareinnovation.it.
Among the partners of the initiative, there are ART-ER, Emilia-Romagna Consortium Society for innovation, attractiveness and internationalization; Venture Factory and Arrow Electronics Italia, respectively Investing Partners and Technology Platform Partners, who provide support and advice to the projects in competition, also evaluating their scalability; Bugnion SpA and the Institute of Management of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa who make their skills available for the benefit of winners and finalists. From this year, Make to Care also sees the collaboration of the National Innovation Award, which promotes the initiative in the academic field.