The Athena Award 2021

Purpose and goal:

The 2021 Athens Prize was awarded on 22 October to Joint Academy, a digital tool for the treatment of osteoarthritis physiotherapy. It has its origins in the National Board of Health and Welfare´s national guidelines, which recommend supervised training and education as a way of preventing and delaying the need to replace hip and knee joints in osteoarthritis patients.

Behind Joint Academy and the research associated with the business, are a number of actors, including Lund University, LU Innovation, University of Nottingham, Capio Ortopedi, Aleris, Euro Accident and Apoteket AB. Expected results and effects:

The purpose of the Athena Prize is to acknowledge clinical research and innovation that takes place in collaboration between healthcare, academia and industry and gives a positive results in the form of: * Benefit for healthcare and patients * High scientific quality * A new method, product or technology has been developed or

improved.

This year´s winner fulfills all these purposes. Joint Academy has initiated collaboration with healthcare, academic and business actors to make it easier for patients to receive education about and treatment of their illness, and to conduct good science Approach and implementation:

The announcement of the Athena Prize was held in April 2021 and took place through articles in Dagens Medicin, press releases and information distribution to target groups in healthcare, research institutions, regions, authorities and incubators. This year, we received about 20 nominations in the first application round, of which seven were selected to proceed to the next step in the assessment process. Of these seven, a winner was chosen at the jury meeting in September.

On October 22, the winner was presented at a webinar on precision medicine organized by Dagens Medicin Agenda.