Gilead and Esade launch VISIONARIUM, an innovation hub for accelerating healthcare research and entrepreneurship

Thursday, March 16, 2023. Gilead and Esade have launched the VISIONARIUM hub, a project that accelerates innovation, research, and entrepreneurship in healthcare. The aim is to foster disruptive projects that offer solutions to current healthcare challenges, as well as creating positive change that improves society through the generation of knowledge and transformative science.

VISIONARIUM will focus this year on innovation in HIV, a pandemic that since its emergence four decades ago has killed more than 40 million people and continues to pose huge social and health challenges. 

Gilead will invest €180,000 for three winning projects that offer solutions in the following areas: prevention, diagnosis, and referral; living with HIV; and quality of care for HIV. 

As well as financial support, project managers will participate in a mentoring program to help launch their idea or project. The mentoring program is led by experts in innovation and entrepreneurship from the Esade Entrepreneurship Institute – a VISIONARIUM hub partner.

Gilead aims to ‘make the impossible possible’ and find solutions to the needs of people with HIV, as well as boosting the entrepreneurial ecosystem and economic development in Spain.

María Río, Vice-President and General Manager of Gilead Spain, explains: ‘VISIONARIUM promotes innovation for patients suffering from serious diseases. This project seeks to inspire and encourage initiatives that offer society, and patients in particular, solutions that are far beyond their expectations. In this first year, we are focusing on those suffering from HIV. VISIONARIUM is part of our drive to make the impossible possible and create a healthier world’. 

Xavier Mendoza, Director General of Esade, said: ‘we are working to bring significant change to society by focusing on innovation, entrepreneurship, and social commitment. VISIONARIUM will have a highly positive impact through the development of disruptive solutions that improve the health of people affected by HIV’.

The launch was also attended by Teresa Riesgo, Secretary General for Innovation at the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, who said: ‘we are deeply committed to innovation, research, and development. Two key publics for collaboration and communication are companies and scientific organizations. If we want innovation to have a very positive impact on people then it must spring from deep scientific and technological knowledge’.

An external expert committee advises VISIONARIUM and will be the jury for selecting the winners of the first wave of the 2023 program. The committee includes: Mercedes Balcells-Camps, Principal Research Scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and co-founder and director of the MIT-Spain Program (and who chairs the committee); Candela Calle, General Director of the San Francisco de Asís Foundation and member of the board of directors of the Spanish Society of Healthcare Managers (SEDISA); Manel Peiró, lecturer at the Esade Department of People and Organization Management and Director of the Institute for Healthcare Management at EsadeGov; Jorge Garrido, Executive Director of Apoyo Positivo and an expert in managing and leading patient associations; Adrià Curran: specialist in infectious diseases at the Hospital Vall d'Hebron; and Jesús Troya, specialist in internal medicine at the Hospital Universitario Infanta Leonor. 

The project has also received scientific sponsorship from the Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC) and its AIDS study group (GESIDA), the Spanish AIDS Research Network (RIS), and the State Coordinator for HIV and AIDS (CESIDA).