The speaker introduced the XHub platform, which embeds innovation hubs directly into hospitals and connects them with academia. The goal is to overcome the fragmentation of Slovakia’s innovation infrastructure by creating a shared structure that collects, manages, and develops both research and applied projects. The program is already running in several hospitals and offers support from prioritizing ideas through POC to business development and capital.
What XHub is and how it works
XHub inserts an internal innovation hub into the hospital and sets up processes even before the institution has its own know-how. The team helps collect and prioritize ideas and research, validate POC, do business development, and coach physicians in creating their own projects. From the outside, it attracts startups, tests them in practice, and brokers capital as needed. The goal is to turn scattered activities into a managed portfolio with a clear trajectory toward a product.
The XHub architecture has twelve sections: from research centers, clinical research and trials, through big data labs to biobanks, with a central innovation center. Its core is the “xbrain” composed of four parts: innovation, technologies, research, and administration. The emphasis on innovation over research is intended to prevent research from becoming self-contained without real-world impact. Each partner hospital has its own xbrain with the same “DNA,” so the nodes understand each other and can collaborate.
From idea to product and ‘version 1’
The workflow is simple: a project enters the innovation component, where it is framed and receives questions directed toward technologies and research. The answers are turned into a clear plan that shapes a product or a workable project. The outputs are then distributed to other nodes of the network to validate them, scale them, and share experiences. In this way, shared capacity grows without duplication.
The speaker emphasized that the country does not have to have everything right away: there is a “version 1” in which you start with the available elements and add the rest gradually. The architecture also serves as a map and methodology that shows what to build next and how to connect it. Even this approach leads to the consolidation of efforts and a faster translation of applied science into practice. The result is better support for projects, accelerators, and international collaboration. The lecture ended with a call for hospitals and academic institutions to join the collective effort to modernize Slovak healthcare.
