Carla Salgado, Director of the Diego González Rivas Foundation, made the case at the University of Vigo on Tuesday, September 22, that multidisciplinary teams are one of the great keys to healthcare innovation.
She was speaking on a women in STEM round table at the second Biomedical Engineering Conference, alongside Bibiana Rodiño, founder of Beta Implants, cardiologist Elisa Blanco and Esther Saavedra of NTT DATA, in a session moderated by lecturer Xanel Vecino.
A lawyer by training, Salgado explained that innovation is not only about inventing a technology, but about making sure it reaches the people who need it. That idea has been at the heart of the Foundation’s work ever since Doctor Diego González Rivas began taking the Uniportal VATS technique to more than 140 countries.
Behind every surgical mission there are doctors and surgeons, and there are also people handling logistics, funding, permits, communications and international coordination. “There are so many professions and profiles working to turn a healthcare innovation into something genuinely useful”, she said.
The Foundation does far more than deliver medical aid. It brings knowledge, technology and surgical capacity to hospitals with limited resources, where no single discipline can meet the challenge on its own.
The engineer needs to understand the clinical problem, the doctor needs someone who can turn that need into a solution, and management makes sure every piece fits.
To the future biomedical engineers filling the room, she offered one piece of advice. “Don’t think only about the degree you’re going to earn. Think about the problems you’ll be able to solve with what you’re learning”.
Salgado also called for more female role models for girls and young women, and argued that women should be able to lead “without feeling they have to ask permission to occupy certain spaces”.
Real progress, she concluded, will come when a young woman who wants to study engineering, medicine or technology simply thinks, “This is what I want to do. I’m going to give it a try”. It is an attitude the Foundation sums up in its motto, “Impossible is nothing”.
