“For the coming host departments, we have been keen on collaborating with departments who are facing significant changes to overcome the challenges of the future”, says Rose Marie Henrichsen from BioMedical Design.

Departments that want to meet the challenges of tomorrow

The coming cohort can look forward to spending their Clinical Immersion at three cardiometabolic departments in Central Denmark Region and Region Zealand.
“Since we have an increasing elderly population and will have more multimorbid patients, we have sought departments that demographically and within speciality fits this agenda”, explains Rose Marie Henrichsen who is in charge of the hospital partnership-work at BioMedical Design.
“We are therefore very pleased to announce Cardiology, Nephrology and Endocrinology at North Zealand Hospital, Cardiology at Regional Hospital Viborg and Cardiology at Aarhus University hospital as our coming host departments for 2025-2026”, she continues.

External eyes on hospital work

Every year the BioMedical Design fellows go to observe daily work routines at the regional hospitals. It’s a special and intense part of the fellowship year, where fellows with a background as health professionals can discover their usual work environment from a completely new angle and, for those with other professional backgrounds, it might be their first ‘inside job’ in a hospital setting.

Innovation Challenge 2025 for the Host Hospitals

Each host hospital might have specific challenges they would like the fellows to look into. For the fellowship year 2025-2026 you can read the different Innovation Challenges here.

Numerous needs

The observations of daily work routines and patient treatments lead to sometimes hundreds of needs, that are noted down, categorized, scrutinized, validated at other hospitals, and in the end filtered. At the end of the three months long Clinical Immersion fellows end up with only a few needs that are fit to be solved with a digital or physical solution, which also has the potential to be commercialized.

I am Andreas

I am a medical doctor with a Ph.D. and a diverse background encompassing several specialties, including emergency medicine, psychiatry, otolaryngology, and general practice. My primary motivation as a medical doctor has always been to help people in need and make a meaningful difference in their lives. Throughout my career I realised, that while direct patient care is profoundly rewarding it is also constrained by time, resources, and systemic inefficiencies. These limitations restrict the number of patients I can assist on a daily basis.

This realization sparked my interest in innovation and design thinking as a way to address broader healthcare challenges. By developing new solutions, technologies, or processes, I can potentially impact thousands, if not millions, of lives.

What’s in it for me?

BioMedical Design offers a unique opportunity to bridge my clinical expertise with innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, allowing me to create solutions that can transform healthcare delivery and leave a lasting legacy.

I applied to this program because I believe it equips participants with the tools, methodologies, and network needed, to drive meaningful change.

The positive side of being a passive observer

Coming from a clinical background where immediate decision-making and active intervention are the norms, it was initially a challenge to step back and adopt the role of an observer. My instinct as a medical professional is always to help, to fix, and to act. However, this observational role offered a rare and invaluable opportunity to gain a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the hospital environment.

By watching processes unfold, I was able to see patterns, inefficiencies, and interactions that aren’t always apparent, when you’re focused on solving individual cases. Instead of reacting to situations, I found myself asking deeper questions such as, “Why is this done this way?” and “Is there a better, more efficient, or safer way, to achieve this?” This shift in perspective enabled me to identify potential areas for improvement that might otherwise be overlooked during routine clinical work. It was an enlightening experience that helped me appreciate the power of stepping back, observing critically, and identifying opportunities, for systemic change.

Seeing things from a different angle

Before this experience, my understanding of hospital workflows was largely shaped by my own role as a clinician. Shadowing staff in various roles — from nurses, doctors and technicians to administrative personnel— gave me a much richer and more nuanced perspective on how the ward operates. I came to appreciate the complexity and interdependence of different tasks and roles within the hospital ecosystem.

A shared understanding helps

What struck me most was how each profession has its own set of responsibilities, challenges, and workflows, which are often not fully visible to others. This lack of transparency can sometimes lead to misunderstandings or inefficiencies. When we visualized these processes through diagrams and shared them with the staff, many were surprised by the insights gained. It helped create a shared understanding and highlighted opportunities for improved collaboration and communication. This experience underscored the importance of seeing healthcare delivery as a team effort where every role is vital to the overall functioning of the ward.

During our two months of observation in the cardiology and endocrinology departments, we documented several hundred observations and issues. These ranged from seemingly minor inconveniences to more significant systemic challenges. Some of these issues were specific to the specialties we observed, while others reflected broader problems seen across healthcare settings, such as workflow inefficiencies, communication gaps, and patient safety concerns.

A need is an opportunity to improve

From these observations, we identified close to 100 specific healthcare needs. These needs encompass a wide range of areas, including patient care quality, workflow optimization, resource management, and challenges faced by healthcare providers. Each identified need represents an opportunity for improvement and innovation. Our goal is to systematically analyze and prioritize these needs based on their impact and feasibility, ensuring that we address the most pressing and transformative opportunities.

Moving forward, we are currently focused on addressing a specific, local need within the host department while simultaneously validating and refining the other identified needs. By engaging with healthcare professionals and stakeholders, we aim to better understand the underlying causes and potential solutions for each challenge.

Killing our darlings

By week 5, we plan to narrow our list down to 2-3 validated needs that show the greatest potential for impact. This validation process involves conducting interviews, analyzing data, and ensuring that the needs we focus on are both significant and solvable. Once we finalize these top needs, we will move into the next phase: selecting one need to develop into a viable solution. This will involve brainstorming, prototyping, and testing potential solutions to ensure they are both effective and implementable within real healthcare settings.

The most profound experience in my learning journey has been witnessing the power and potential of interdisciplinary collaboration. In clinical practice, healthcare professionals often work within their specialized silos. In the BioMedical Design program, I have had the opportunity to work closely with experts from diverse fields, such as engineering, design, business, and technology.

This collaboration has shown me that combining different perspectives, skills, and ways of thinking can lead to innovative solutions that no single discipline could achieve on its own. For example, a clinical problem that might seem insurmountable can be approached in a completely new way when viewed through the lens of an engineer or designer. This cross-disciplinary approach has deepened my appreciation for teamwork and highlighted how innovation thrives at the intersection of different fields. I’m eager to continue leveraging these collaborative experiences to create impactful healthcare solutions.

As the philosophy of the BMD Programme is the interdisciplinary teamwork that allows for both a 360 degree look of a clinical need as well as a qualified evaluation of solutions, we were a bit concerned about the overlapping backgrounds of our team members and which competences we would be missing to bring real improvements to healthcare. Nonetheless, we quickly realised that the interpersonal relationships and the distribution of various roles and responsibilities was a much stronger driver for group success than the experiences we each brought with us.  

A little more than a month after forming our group, a large task was approaching. We had to do a pitch on the needs and solutions we were working on to gain feedback from the BMD staff and advisors. At this point we were still working on four different needs and we had the opportunity to go to Aalborg to explore one of them in detail. We put ourselves in the position of the patients by participating as test persons in a trial, working to improve the diagnosis of opportunistic infections in the lungs. 

Participating in the test took a lot of time and although it meant we had little time to do the presentation, we learned how valuable it was to really engage in the needs we worked on. We realised that we were a strong team with great executive skills that could quite quickly do a high quality presentation and allow time for other tasks. Our personal and professional competences complement each other really well and from this point on we knew that team Phoenix were going to go far.  

Too many needs, too many solutions

Initially, we worked on four different needs, all in different clinical fields. This was a bit complicated, as we all were so eager to learn and wanted to participate in meetings, ideation sessions and take on even more clinical validation to better qualify the most promising solution. We liked bringing our different competencies into play, but also found it difficult to balance the deep immersion that you need in a specific area to develop promising solutions with keeping all four needs open and trying to weigh them against each other. Therefore, we finally chose to focus solely on one concept. And funny enough, it was probably the concept we all had the best gut-feeling about all along.  

Focus, get out and accelerate 

Focusing on our favourite solution, we really professionalised our team. It was around this time that we also took on specific responsibility areas and were able to accelerate our journey. In the process we have been in contact with researchers and key opinion leaders in Denmark, UK, US and Australia, we have visited multiple departments to gain direct user-feedback, and examined the procurement and manufacturing pathways, as well as investigated relevant investors and advisors, that are essential for bringing our product to market.  

The greatest gain, besides founding the team, is getting to know the rest of the fantastic 21/22 BMD cohort.

BMD is more than just an exceptional postgraduate programme. It is an amazing chance to create new strong bonds with likeminded people in a crazy inspiring environment. Participating in the BMD programme really has been an outstanding experience for the four of us. Following the programme, Rasmus will start a new position as an innovation consultant at Rigshospitalet and Mette will start her medical specialisation. Tore and Marcus will devote full time to our project and have support from Rasmus and Mette, who will participate part-time. We are so excited about the journey that we take on together and feel so fortunate to have spent 10 months of personal and professional development with our fantastic co-fellows.  

Despite being 1) an engineer; 2) a man; and 3) having zero professional medical experience, this week I began observations in a gynaecology and obstetrics department.

Four weeks ago, I became a Fellow on the Novo Nordisk Foundation BioMedical Design Fellowship. Since the start of the programme, I - and the seventeen other fellows - have received a thorough introduction to the many facets of value creation within healthcare.

We’ve covered most of Denmark for a range of workshops and seminars on a variety of topics including need statements, health economics, MedTech innovation, the Danish healthcare system and more.

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In between we’ve met and spoken with numerous experts and advisors; been onboarded at our clinical hosts; and even found the time to get to know each other.

The ultimate objective of the programme is to produce impactful healthcare innovations, built on a foundation of in-clinic observations, the first ‘proper’ phase of the programme (Clinical Immersion).

The central aspect of needs-based innovation is what initially drew me to the programme. All too often, and speaking from painful prior experience,  this problem-identifying step is rushed, or ignored completely.

This emphasis on problem finding, combined with a cohort of skilled fellows, and the potential of our solutions to create a meaningful impact made joining the programme a no-brainer.

After the completion of the immersion phase, our focus will shift to solution creation and commercial development, where needs identified in-clinic are developed into refined solutions and prototypes.

Although my background in technology research and development appears better suited to the latter stages of the programme, the boot camp stage has me feeling ready to get started.

I feel prepared, but also a little apprehensive. I understand the expectations of a fellow on the programme, but I have no idea what I am going to experience.

What am I going to see? How will I be received by patients? What is it like observing a birth? Will I uncover any unmet needs? Will they be any good?

Time, as we have been told on many occasions so far, to lean into the process.

When our group constellation, Team InnoPatient, was announced, we all had a lot of questions and wondered why the BioMedical Design program had placed us together, but it turned out that they had seen something in our group dynamic that we hadn’t. Since all three of us had been used to working independently in previous work, we naturally spent some time finding each other and learning how we could make the best use of each others’ resources.  

Our group process has really been characterized by giving each other space, and listening to each other. This led us to have a group dynamic where we worked together on every task for a long time. We kind of had a fear of missing out on some of the learnings. We finally addressed this at one of our monthly ambition meetings and decided that we should try to assign areas of responsibility. Even though we all strongly agreed this was the best strategy, it was kind of hard for us to adapt, however in the end we did manage to assign areas of responsibility.  

Go on a road trip you want – get out of the building you must

The process of working on a solution 

Exploring the solution was a long and iterative process with a lot of ideation sessions with different external actors and stakeholders. We started the process with both physical and online ideation sessions, where we invited relevant professionals from the group’s network for “quick and dirty” ideation sessions. From the sessions, we brought the best ideas out to healthcare professionals at Aalborg Hospital to get feedback on what they thought would best fit into their practice. From this, one final idea for a solution was selected to work further on.  

In the group, we worked internally on prototypes with experiments on how the solution should both look-like and work-like. In this phase, we had a lot of hands-on experience with sewing, molding our own test materials, 3D modeling, and sound testing with different materials. In an iterative process, we received feedback from health professionals and sound experts on the further development of the look, shape, and function of the solution.  

One of the things that our group, in particular, learned was that when you get that occasional concern from stakeholders or bad comments, it doesn’t mean that everything is lost or you didn’t do well. It just means that you need to correct your direction and take their concerns into your design of the solution.  

Ups and downs

We encountered a lack of willingness to pay for our solution, even though it was a well documented problem that needed a solution. The lack of willingness to pay zapped some of the group’s spirit and we uncovered some of the other needs we had observed, but decided to return to the neonatal need and soldiered on as we believed, we were in the right to fight for the silent patient’s sleep and well-being.  

What is our current situation?

We have currently given the knowledge and rights to the BioMedical Design program, who will hopefully be able to find others who want to complete the project. 

Example of different working process 

An example of these differences was the process of preparing our two project pitches. In our first pitch we got started a bit too late (according to Maria) and ended up working until 4 am the night before (over zoom and not having time to practice) the pitch. Second time we tried turning the process around and prepared our slide in good time (maybe TOO good time for Zohaib) and spend the last 2 days practicing. In both cases we ended up with a good result, and Kristine learnt a lot about how both ways have benefits, while Maria and Zohaib had to admit that there are different ways reaching a goal.   

Working with needs and solutions

In our group we have worked with 3 different needs, and many different solutions for each need. We are probably the group with the most pivots and we have cast aside a solution to pursue one of our other ideas more than 3 times. This has been highly challenging and very fruitful for our learning process. We have been highly aware not to fall in love with a solution until we validated with the users and completed thorough desk-top research and tried our best to be aware of what we saw and heard in the clinic. Therefore, we also continued to visit the clinic until the very last month of the program and kept finding new experts and new knowledge to ad to our solution space. Doing a pivot and discharging an idea or solution can be frightening when you are in a time limited program like the BMD, however, to control this process Pernille (our team mentor) taught us to park our ideas, instead of killing them. A trick we are very thankful for as our final solution spent 2 months in the parking zone until we realised the twist that was needed to develop it into the product we have today.  

Status of the CareFold project

The status of our project is that we have decide to continue working on our product. Kristine will be working full time doing product development after the summer holiday and Maria and Zohaib will support the project while working their regular jobs. Going further, we agreed to lean in and trust each other.