WorldConnex: the birth of a startup

History teaches us that a good project does not necessarily arise in an impressive office, indeed. It is often the result of ideas arising from the impetus of the moment, or from a need, such as the resolution of a problem that is particularly significant for us.
And the birth of WaidX® is not an exception.
This ambitious project has distant origins, in Tanzania, and immediately sets an important goal: the reduction of the technological and knowledge gap in health and science fields.
Thanks to the hard work of years, in 2016 WorldConnex is founded and in 2017 becomes a high-tech startup, incubate in San Marino Innovation.
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And it is precisely at San Marino Innovation that we have told our story ...

The successfull story of the start up WorldConnex speaks of human sensitivity that is linked to the most advanced technology, with the desire to provide useful basic services in the most hidden and forgotten parts of the planet. Because what Matteo Botteghi, a young scientific researcher at the Center for Medical Physics (UniBO) and the Experimental Pathology Group (UNIVPM), faces in 2011 during his first health mission in Africa at the Bugando Medical Center hospital in Mwanza, Tanzania, it has something incredible.
The Bugando serves a population of 15 million people and there are no conditions to manage at best the nascent Department of Oncology nor there been the tools to communicate with health staff abroad. Any kind of telecommunications, even basic as a phone call, is unmanageable due to the poor quality of the connections and the operators are unable to pass the basic information to IRST, the linked cancer institute in Italy.
The situation takes a new turn when, in that same trip, Botteghi installs a VoIP telephony device, connected via the Internet to the telephone service of which he is responsible in Italy, allowing to call in HD at no cost. It is a turning point for the health system in the Mwanza oncology department: easier communications and faster diagnosis, with a service used for the first time on the Tanzanian Internet connection.
Thus the first core of the WaidX® project was born, a general-purpose telemedicine platform with a strong innovative character, aimed at reducing the technological and knowledge gap in health and science fields. In each development step the project has been implemented with particular attention to its impact on the activities of clinical doctors and researchers.
The pilot project continues until 2015, when it was officially launched with a conference held in Mwanza. After a year invested to develop the network of personal relationships, Botteghi and its collaborator Alessandro Paradiso decided to found the start up WorldConnex to develop WaidX® and bring it to the market.
In 2017 WaidX® establishes itself with applications in different parts of the world and the start up WorldConnex flows into the Techno Science Park Incubator San Marino Italia. Botteghi and his staff deploy three important pilot projects: a system of telepathology for the public health of Djibouti, a computerization and telemedicine project for a new 200-bed hospital in Ethiopia, and a third project aimed at tackling a an important challenge for TeleRadiotherapy involving the Presbyterian Hospital of New York and the National Center of Oncology in Armenia.
But Botteghi believes that all this represents only the beginning and has already prepared the next goal for WaidX®: the development of a remote control protocol for the treatment planning process in Radiotherapy.

credit @SanMarino Innovation