The Health Innovation Playground

Frederic Llordachs trained as a doctor and hasn't seen a patient since 2011 — a badly broken arm sent him to business school instead of the wards. What began as a "pet project" called Doctoralia became the most-visited health website in Spain, spread across Latin America, and merged in 2016 to form DocPlanner, now one of Europe's few digital health unicorns. Then he handed it ove...

Maria Ripol heads Open Innovation and Digital Transformation at Barcelona Health Hub, one of Europe's most active health innovation institutions, based inside the historic Hospital de Sant Pau. She didn't arrive there through a medical degree or a tech background, she came through international relations, public policy. In this episode we talk about what open innovation actually looks like...

Aline Noizet has been inside Barcelona's health tech ecosystem since the beginning, when wearables were just about counting steps and hospitals had no idea what digital health meant. Fifteen years later, she is one of the most connected people in the space, and in this episode she reflects on everything she has witnessed along the way. We talk about how the ecosystem was built and who built it...

Market access is the invisible bridge between a health technology being approved and a patient actually using it. In this episode of the Health Innovation Playground, we sit down with Chus Castillo — a biologist-turned-strategist with over 25 years at Roche, GSK, and Pfizer, now leading market access and pricing consulting at IGES Spain. We unpack what market access actually means day-to-day (hint...

Dr. Ana Sala, Head of Innovation at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, shares her unconventional journey from Allergy Specialist to Health tech founder to Institutional innovation leader. In this episode, Ana reveals why 90% of healthcare startups fail, the brutal truth about regulatory barriers in Europe, and why her anaphylaxis startup had to close despite proving the solution worked. She breaks down w...

Melina got Epigenetics and Nutrition together and Food is getting very personalized In this second part of my chat with Melina, we go deeper into nutrition and genetics and she gives us very nice tips on how to have a healthier life and eat better. Hope you enjoy listening.

Can we get personalized meal plans based our Genetics? In this episode of The Health Innovation Playground , we sit down with Melina Mauro , a nutritionist working at the fascinating intersection of genetics and nutrition. We have a nice chat about everything food and nutrition. We explore everything about how we eat: from the basics of eating well to the deep influence of culture on our choices....

Is the future of dentistry drill-free? Today, we are joined by Dr. Manjushree Bagri to discuss the transition from "Drill and Fill" to "Predict and Prevent." We dive deep into the technologies disrupting oral healthcare and the systemic issues causing dentist burnout. Key Topics Covered: AI in Diagnostics: How data visualization builds patient trust. 3D Printing: Moving from me...

Is Artificial Intelligence going to replace doctors? Or will it just replace the paperwork? In this episode of The Health Innovation Playground , we sit down with Alex Aísa , a Telecommunications Engineer and AI Expert at the Innovation Unit of Vall d'Hebron Hospital. We strip away the futuristic hype to talk about what is actually happening inside one of Barcelona’s biggest hospitals. Alex ex...

We often hear the word "Innovation" thrown around in healthcare. It’s on every hospital website and every startup pitch deck. But what does it actually mean? Is it just about cool gadgets, or is it a fundamental shift in how we treat patients? In our first official episode, we go straight to the source. We sit down with Josep Antoni Quiroga , a psychiatrist, the Head of the Psychiatry Un...

Welcome to The Health Innovation Playground . In this introductory episode, your hosts Yousef Ahmed (MD) and Tamila Ulan (Nurse) break down exactly who we are, why we left our clinical jobs, and why we are launching this podcast from the heart of Barcelona. Innovation in healthcare often feels like two different worlds speaking different languages: the boardroom and the clinic. We are here to brid...