Disior Blog

Turku Biomaterials Days 2017

30/10/2017

Dr. Pekka Vallittu on stage

In Turku, our team took a deep dive to the world of biomaterials. “Interfaces and interphases”, the theme for Biomaterials Days 2017, turned out to be spot on for our one-day road trip. We set out to meet an international crowd of researchers developing implants and fill materials for dentistry and medical use.

Invited by Dr. Leila Perea-Lowery and Dr. Pekka Vallittu, we wanted to meet with the Turku bioscience community, and to discuss how mathematical modelling could be used to help in designing better dental implants and make improvements in dental care.

“Good things happen when two fields of science meet”, says Sakari Soini, our CTO. “It’s the best starting point for innovation. In Turku, we met with people who drive innovation in biomaterials and material interfaces. It was great to continue from there! I was delighted with the level of knowledge, enthusiasm and the ability to innovate with the conference audience.”

Sakari also pitched Disior in the “Entrepreneurship interface” slot.

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Female Founders' Pitch Night

16/10/2017

To celebrate the Women in Tech Week 2017, FiBAN (Finnish Business Angels Network) organized a Pitch Night for Female Founders. Anna-Maria was pitching Disior with ten other female-led companies at different stages of growth.

Gender diversity was the key theme for the night. But the “company diversity” was exciting, too. Apart from Slush and Arctic 15, this was one of the rare occasions, where we get to see pitches and presentation outside of Med Tech. A real eye-opener to see how to cover common in a room full of people, who all have different backgrounds and focus.

Keys to a good pitch? Drop the tech-talk. Crystallize the message. Tell a story… Easier said than done when you have the office tables piled with medical and mathematical research papers and Doctors of those same fields taking the chairs. For us, every week is a Women in Tech -week!

Before the pitches, Helleke Heikkinen from FiBAN gave an inspirational speech on the numbers of the Women in Startups. As there are no official records, it’s hard if not impossible to get the official numbers in Finland. And the US statistics were grim: only 5% of the owners in startups, and 7% of partners at top100 venture capital firms are women. It seems that Finland is doing better than that, and FiBAN is working on getting some numbers to back this. At Disior, we are fortunate to have both men and women as founders, owners and investors in the company.

Thank you Helleke and Pia Erkinheimo for putting up the event!

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October 2017
September 2017

New Home in Terkko Health Hub

9/10/2017

Our new Disior office is literally in the middle of everything. Looking out one window, you can see med students with books and laptops. Looking out the other one, taxis, ambulances and sometimes a helicopter bringing people in.
This is Terkko Health Hub, located in the ground floor of the Helsinki University Medical Library in Meilahti. The library sits between the Meilahti hospital buildings and Biomedicum, the main building for both academic research and the Faculty of Medicine Campus.

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October 2017
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Image: (c) Terkko Health Hub

As one of the first resident companies here, we were invited to the Terkko Health Hub Opening Party on 05 October, with Anna-Maria Henell, our CEO, as one of the speakers. The house decorated and packed full of people from academia to startups to Helsinki City and Team Finland people, it was great fun and great networking - just as the new library concept was planned to be.

With Harvard and MIT campuses as examples, the idea in Terkko Health Hub is to bring together the researchers, the startups, the clinicians and the students.

Anna-Maria on stage. (C) Veeti Haapsamo

In her speech, Anna-Maria told us about the life of a startup: "You keep hearing these fantastic success stories. They start with two men and an innovation, in a garage, somewhere in the sunny California. Things roll on with great speed, it’s straight-forward, and glamorous and great fun. The sweet success.

But the thing is, great innovation alone is not enough. Hard work is not enough. You need to get out of your garage and find the right people to work with. Because it’s all about the people. Only with the right people, you can create a product that is truly useful, truly meaningful.

Working in Med Tech, as an Engineer, you don’t make products to yourself, you make them for the doctors.

In Terkko, we have the right people, and the right combination, to make an impact. We have the students here – the future doctors, who will create the future ways of working. We have the researchers and the librarians, who have the data, the science. We have the fellow startups. Because Med Tech is very special. You need all the support, all the knowledge and experience and peer support from your fellow startups.

And most importantly, the clinicians are here – the doctors who practice medicine and are the true innovators. Their needs are the key drivers for us.

In Meilahti, we have all this in place. The building blocks for innovation is here. We love to be here today, to celebrate and tomorrow, to work hard with each and every one of you, to make innovation happen.”

Moments from the Terkko Health Hub opening party were captured by Photographer Veeti Haapsamo @ https://veeti.photos/

Winning in Vanajanlinna

1/10/2017

Disior was invited by Management Events to pitch in the Healthcare Influencers’ Forum in Vanajanlinna, Finland. The concept, a pitch competition with audience voting for winner, was a new add to the Industry Forum day concept.

Timo Lappi from Heltti, the event host, introduced the “Angel Investment Competition”. Each seminar guest was given a 10.000 Euro bill to invest to one of the three companies: Disior, Huoleti and RadFox, each pitching for 5 minutes.

The competition was also a playful introduction to the world of angel investments. Typically, an individual angel investment to an early-stage startup seed round would be in the 10 000 Euro ballpark.

Anna-Maria Henell did the pitching, and Disior won with 60% of all votes, or “investments”. Winning is always sweet, but what made this one special is, that the audience was the same we target in real life: top management and innovation leads from private and public hospitals, clinics and universities in Finland. There were more than hundred people present and they are the ones who decide on innovations and investments in this field.

The event was organized by Management Events on 27 September 2017. The next Management Events Healthcare Industry Forum will be held around the same time next year . We can warmly recommend the event to anyone, who wishes to meet the Who’s Who in Finnish healthcare business.

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October 2017
September 2017

Turku Biomaterials Days 2017

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Female Founders' Pitch Night

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New Home in Terkko Health Hub

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Winning in Vanajanlinna

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