Marina Sánchez, a 6th-year medical student who is developing a smart bra with sensors to detect breast cancer.
The project UBRA has received the Banco Santander Explorer Entrepreneurship Promotion Award in 2022 and has been a finalist in the Isabel P. Trabal Innovative Ideas Award, from the Caja de Ingenieros Foundation, in 2021. “At UBRA we are still in a initial phase of development and researchand we still have a long way to go,” explains Sánchez in an interview with Medical Writing.
Right now the company is in an initial phase, in which it tests, investigates sensors and advances in validation and integration of knowledge. “We’re going to start validating different prototypes that we’ve created, we’ve tested a few things that work and we want to test different pathologies associated with women,” Sánchez details.
Sanchez (1993) has the Degree in Speech Therapy by the University of Valencia and three masters: Interuniversity Communication and Language Disorders, another NeuroLinguistic Programming and educational innovation and one Practitioner Neurolinguistic Programming and Coaching. In 2017 he began studying Medicine, following coming to Barcelona to play in a First Division water polo team, taking a master’s degree and starting a Psychology thesis at the Ramon Llull University on pathological identity and the influence of internal and external language on illness.
Why study Medicine?
“I entered Medicine at a later age, with higher level of consciousness compared to 18 years old,” Sánchez begins by recounting the decision to immerse himself in this career. “He had worked in biotech companies and always I had wanted to do something different“, he adds. And that course was born UBRA, along with Peláez, whose curriculum stands out for his knowledge in entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership.
Sánchez’s path is not usual in Medicine and she herself assures that “it is difficult to accept disruptive ideas in the medical field”. So much so, that he considers that “Innovation is not generally inculcated in medical schools”. Sánchez assures that he misses innovation in the degree and proposes that Medicine students might start working on current problems with projects and thus help assistants and doctors to solve challenges through innovation.
Regarding the Medicine career, the founder of UBRA considers that “personal development is very important. I perceive that there are many medical students who have mental illnesses and it is something that we should change. We should be influencers of health, not disease“.
For this reason, he also defends that the work on emotional management be included in the academic plan, since it would change the basis of the doctors of the future. “There is a lot of burnout in attending physicians who work, doctors who are not comfortable, medicated colleagues who need professional help from psychiatrists or psychologists”. In this sense, Sánchez maintains that she has been able to take it in a different way following “doing a lot of complementary training to reach a personal point of having been able to complement work, training and learning. I believe that training in the development of emotional intelligence should be mandatory“, he concludes.
Although it may contain statements, data or notes from health institutions or professionals, the information contained in Medical Writing is edited and prepared by journalists. We recommend the reader that any questions related to health be consulted with a health professional.
