Today the website www.sinergia.lh.cat for the dissemination of research and innovation in health is launched, a virtual space that gathers informative activities and audiovisual content that aim to bring the work carried out in the institutions of the Bellvitge’s research, assistance and teaching ecosystem to the entire population.
This new website will allow to celebrate, in virtual format, the L’Hospitalet Health Research and Innovation Festival, within the strategic project L’Hospitalet, innovative health ecosystem (PECT, co-financed with ERDF funds), which began in 2019 in the gardens and facilities of the Duran i Reynals Hospital. To adapt to the health situation caused by Covid-19, the festival takes a step forward and becomes a digital event that can reach a much wider and more diverse audience. The institutions that lead Sinergia are the L’Hospitalet City Council and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL).
Within the new website, visitors will be able to experience day-to-day research closely by participating in the IDIescape, an escape room that challenges participants to find, in one hour, the cure for a highly contagious viral infection by using, among others, the CRISPR technique, experiments related to stem cells, and from preclinical to clinical trials. The IDIescape, created on the occasion of the first edition of Sinergia, has been fully adapted to the virtual environment. On the other hand, the website, in the Experimenta section, also offers two scientific workshops, on cancer research and neuroscience, designed to be done with the family and from home.
To enter the most innovative facilities of Bellvitge, Sinergia offers 360º virtual tours of four facilities: the scientific-technical services of IDIBELL, the robotic pharmacy of the Catalan Institute of Oncology, a hybrid operating room of the Bellvitge University Hospital and, finally, a dental operating room of the Josep Finestres Foundation (University of Barcelona). In addition, to bring together the research work carried out by the four IDIBELL research areas, new audiovisual content has been produced with the participation of protagonists of the cutting-edge research carried out in the campus. In this sense, users will be able to undertake four different itineraries, with contents that refer to each of the research areas.
In the context of Sinergia, the 3rd edition of the Stand-up Science audiovisual scientific communication project, promoted by the L’Hospitalet City Council within the framework of the PECT project, together with IDIBELL and Torre Barrina, is also premiered. The protagonists of Stand-up Science are young researchers from IDIBELL, who explain their work in “youtuber” format, and are aimed above all at a young audience. The site also includes a set of videos on IDIBELL’s research achievements in its fifteen-year history, and a section showing works that link science and art, such as those made thanks to the Fem Tándem LH project, which is carried out by IDIBELL togehter with the Bellvitge Institute.
On November 28, and through the Sinergia website, there will be a virtual open day with talks by leading Bellvitge researchers. Structured in three blocks – Innovation tapas, Quinaciència! and saL’Hut Fair, will bring to the public the research that, among others, is carried out in the field of Covid-19, the manipulation of human embryos, cancer and diseases such as ALS, Alzheimer’s and diabetes .
For the city mayor, Núria Marín, the new Sinergia portal is “a virtual window that brings us closer to science and research, one of the main economic engines of the city. With the consolidation of the Bellvitge biomedical cluster, L’Hospitalet will become one of the European capitals of biomedicine. For this reason, we work to attract companies and funding for the scientific world, which generate new vocations and jobs. This project is a good example of how we do things in L’Hospitalet: joining efforts, with institutional dialogue, broad view and consensus.”
In the words of the director of IDIBELL, Dr. Gabriel Capellá, “research, innovation and society are the mainstays on which we work every day to improve the quality of life of citizens. The contents of Sinergia give us the opportunity to bring this search for excellence to a diverse audience, which we hope will be very large.”
With the collaboration of:
