Fundación Mapfre awards for social innovation
MJN-Seras (Spain) in the category of Health Improvement and digital technology, 4Uno (Mexico) in Insurtech and Scoobic (Spain) in the Insurance Innovation field, are the winners of the first edition of the Fundación Mapfre Awards for Social Innovation which have been awarded in Madrid.
Salva Gutiérrez from MJN-Seras, the first medical device capable to predict a epileptic seizure, stated: "To have won this prize is a very important recognition, because the projects that were presented all had great potential, and to know that ours won validates everything we are doing. MJN-Seras is currently in the final development phase, and in fact, it has been already launched, and we're beginning to talk to commercial partners. This Fundación Mapfre award will help us boost our activity in Germany and the UK, two of our strategic markets."
Miguel Duhalt from 4Uno, a financial platform to improve the life quality of housekeepers, said: "More than a prize, having won this award represents an investment in a very vulnerable group: housekeepers in Mexico and Latin America. It will allow us to develop a new product update that will feature new tools aimed at improving their lives and the lives of their families." Very soon, we'll be working with an innovation company to become even more efficient and find solutions to the problems facing this group due to the lack of financial products available to them, such as insurance solutions."
Finally, José María Gómez from Scoobic, a delivery sustainable vehicle that helps to save lives: "This award means a lot to us because it comes from Fundación Mapfre and a related insurance company that is firmly committed to road safety and mobility. Our idea is to develop a mobile application aiming at geolocating potential heart attack victims. It's free of charge and allows any citizen to send an alert to the nearest Scoobic, the operator of which can interrupt their deliveries to take a defibrillator to the required location. We believe this is the best investment we could possibly make. If it helps to save a single life, the effort involved in entering for this award, and for creating Scoobic, will all have been worth it."
This ceremony was opened by Antonio Huertas, chairman of Fundación Mapfre, who highlighted the tremendous success of the projects. "Today we have met the three winners but behind this there have been 500 innovative projects committed to society. These awards have found a way to promote talent together with a commitment to society. The success of this call strengthens our commitment to launch a second edition of these awards focusing on social causes in the following weeks. The ceremony was brought to a close by Ana Lima, Secretary of State for Social Services.
Designed to be a competition, focusing on three geographical regions, Brazil, the rest of Latin America and Europe, the goal of the Fundación Mapfre Awards for Social Innovation is to encourage more proposals which, through their special characteristics, contribute to solving and improving specific aspects of the world in which we live in the areas of health, mobility and insurance culture.
The call to present projects, launched at the end of 2017, received a total of 462 projects created by scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs and university and business school students in Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Italy, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom and Spain, among others.
Only 27 of them, the most innovative projects, were put forward in the three semifinals, held in Mexico City and Sao Paulo (July) and Madrid (September), and also received a mentoring programme to help boost the exposure of their projects.
Of the 27 semifinalists, the best nine projects have competed in the Grand Final, in Madrid, in front of a panel of experts in social innovation, who have chosen the projects with the greatest potential for social impact and those which are the most viable from a technical, economic and organisational point of view.
The jury highlighted the high quality of the projects, which provide innovative and effective solutions to some of the problems that exist in society in the different regions of the world.
Conchita Galdón, director of Social Innovation at IE, emphasised that "the three winners are perfect examples of the society we want to help build with these awards, a society in which technology and innovation is at the service of those who need it most".
The winners of each category have received an award of €30,000 to develop their projects