AI with Purpose: How AI Can Help Care Reach Further

At healthhub, we work every day with startups building the future of health, and more and more of them are turning to AI to do it. From supporting patients at home to detecting problems before they become serious, AI is quickly becoming one of the most powerful tools for making healthcare more proactive, accessible and human.

But powerful tools need a clear direction. AI can be used simply to make businesses more efficient, or it can be used to create solutions that improve people's lives and wellbeing. That was the idea behind AI with Purpose, an Innovation Day on 22 September at AIhub by Unicorn Factory Lisboa, bringing together startups from healthhub, greenhub and Engineers Hub.

A technology that is changing fast

AI is evolving faster than ever, and the question of what it is being built for has never been more urgent. In recent weeks, even the leaders of the world's biggest AI labs have called for a more careful pace, with Anthropic's Dario Amodei urging companies to slow capabilities development and receiving backing from OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk. For us, the message is clear: as the technology accelerates, so does the responsibility to point it towards the challenges that matter most, and few matter more than our health.

An Innovation Day for Lisbon AI Week

As part of Lisbon AI Week, the event focused on how AI-powered solutions are shaping real societal impact, from health to urban innovation and sustainability. More than 120 participants joined us for an afternoon of talks, showcases and conversations.

Urban Track: AI for resilient cities

The day opened with an Urban Track led by our colleagues at greenhub and Engineers Hub, exploring how AI can help us rethink the systems that shape everyday life. Pedro Fernandes, Machine Learning Lead at TEKEVER spoke on Technology in Service of Resilience, showing how AI can support emergency response from wildfires to search and rescue, and Francisco Pais de Sousa, co-founder of L.ai - Holistic Waste Management followed with Rethinking Waste, Rethinking Value. Manie, Constructer.ai and AiTecServ closed the track with showcases of AI making cities and shared systems work better for people and the planet.

Health Track: AI for better care

For the healthhub community, the Health Track was the heart of the day. It asked a simple but powerful question: what if AI could help healthcare reach people earlier, more often and where it matters most?

We opened the track by launching the healthhub Open Innovation Program under the banner Show Up Before the Problem Does, a new way of tackling real prevention challenges together with the ecosystem. Prevention is where some of the biggest gains in health lie, and we believe it is also where startups and established players can achieve the most by working together.

Pedro Maurício, Portugal Accounting Executive at Tucuvi, then spoke on Extending the Reach of Care, exploring how technology can take care beyond traditional settings while keeping human needs at the centre. As health systems face growing pressure, solutions that extend support to patients wherever they are are no longer a future vision but a present need.

Usawa Care, UpSpeech and Simpl.care closed the track by showing how AI can help health systems care for more people, more effectively.

Closing and Networking Sunset

Having explored what AI can do for our health and our cities today, the day closed by looking further ahead. Rodrigo Fernandes, Co-founder of Augusta Labs, delivered the closing keynote, Beyond Today: AI's Long-Term Impact on Society. For Rodrigo, the real challenge is not to stop innovation, but to make sure AI does not increase the risk of global threats such as biological attacks, a concern that speaks directly to the health community. He argues that progress must be matched by more "prevention, control, international cooperation and political preparedness."

The day ended with our Networking Showcase Sunset on the rooftop. Over food and drinks, participants visited the startup booths, where Typeble, BloodFlow and Lampsy joined the startups from the showcases, met the founders behind the solutions and saw AI with a purpose in action as the sun went down over Lisbon.

Thank you

A heartfelt thank you to our speakers, to the startups who shared their work, and to everyone who joined us. The future of health will be shaped by the choices founders make about what to build and why, and at healthhub we are proud to support the ones who choose purpose.

Want to be part of the next conversation? Follow the healthhub by Unicorn Factory Lisboa calendar on Luma and stay tuned for upcoming healthhub events.