NEW YORK – GreekTech Talks #08 Biotech, Healthcare and Life Sciences Panel was held on April 28 and featured Co-Founder and Executive Director at Intelligencia.ai Vangelis Vergetis, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Miroculus Fay Christodoulou, Chief Medical Officer at Neurogene Effie Albanis, Founder and CSO at RTsafe Evangelos Pappas, and Co-Founder at Tendertec Afroditi Konidari. Founder and CEO at Stealth Startup Kimon Angelidis was scheduled to appear but could not attend.

The discussion was moderated by Senior Biotech and Lifesciences Strategy Advisor Steven Stavrou and Founder of Women in STEM Lina Ntokou.

Stavrou gave the welcoming remarks and introduced each of the panelists who shared their personal experiences in Biotech, Healthcare and Life Sciences and offered insights into their journey with their various companies. From the developments in technology making healthcare more accessible to more people to insights into raising funds for start-up companies, the fascinating discussion highlighted the ways in which the gifted panelists are making their mark in their respective fields.

The speakers also noted the ways in which doing business in Greece have changed from just a few years ago and how more and more programs are available to bring investors and start-ups together and tax benefits for investors. While things have improved, there is still room for more to be done to encourage investment and innovation.

Fay Christodoulou, founder and CSO at Miroculus spoke about how the company develops tools that facilitate high quality, advanced scientific research.

Founder & CSO at RTsafe Evangelos Pappas, from the field of radiation oncology, started his company during the financial crisis, aiming to address the issue of quality assurance in radiotherapy.

Chief Medical Officer at Neurogene Effie Albanis noted that her company is U.S. based and offered her advice to anyone interested in gene therapy. Dr. Albanis has more than 10 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience, serving in roles of increasing responsibility at Novartis, Pharmasset, and Intercept Pharmaceuticals. Deeply motivated by a desire to improve patient care, she spoke about watching patients die as they waited for liver transplants which led to her work on the cure for hepatitis C and on gene therapy for other diseases.

Vangelis Vergetis, co-founder and Executive Director at Intelligencia.ai, spoke about helping to bring novel therapies to patients faster and more efficiently by applying Data Science to drug development.

Tendertec co-founder Afroditi Konidari spoke about the company’s efforts developing technology for remote monitoring of patients. She mentioned witnessing her own parents’ struggle with her aging grandparents and how healthcare delivery could be more personalized. Attracting talent to companies in Greece was another issue Konidari pointed out later in the discussion, adding that the quality of life is the best kept secret about working in Greece. She noted that people from the UK are coming in because of the quality of life.

The video of the event is available on the Greek Tech YouTube channel: