Accompanied by Minister Jokin Bildarratz, Minister of Health Gotzone Sagardui was at Tknika to learn about the innovation and research projects being developed in the field of Vocational Education in the Basque Country.

The Minister of Health, Gotzone Sagardui, together with the Minister of Education, Jokin Bildarratz, and the Deputy Minister of Vocational Education, Jorge Arévalo, were at Tknika on March 13, at the Basque Vocational Education Innovation and Applied Research Center, in Renteria. In the field of health, he heard about the numerous projects being developed in the Basque Vocational Education, from the center's managers.

During this visit, in addition to getting to know the facilities of the center, the close and fruitful cooperation between Basque Vocational Education and Basque health organizations and agents, among others Osakidetz and BIOEF (Innovation+Research+Health Basque Foundation), was revealed. This is evidenced by the involvement shown by the Vocational Training Centers of the Basque Country in the most critical moments of the Covid-19 pandemic to design and manufacture masks that were so necessary and scarce, always with the cooperation of the health authorities. Also, as part of the RIS3 Euskadi Strategy of the Science, Technology and Innovation Plan, Tknika participates in the health pilot.

The focus of the Minister of Health's visit was, in particular, the Department of Bioscience and Sustainability in Technology. Fields that are worked on in local laboratories are bioprinting, personalized health, food innovation, printing of personalized medicines or the application of immersion technologies in training in the health field.

In the Food Biotechnology laboratory - this was one of the facilities visited - Tknika develops projects in the field of food innovation, creating innovative food formats focused on the context of a new age. New technologies, as they could see in that laboratory, offer the possibility of printing food with a variety of textures or colors, for people with a pathology, for example, for people with dysphagia (difficulty swallowing). In this technical department, steps are also being taken to add new features to various foods, for example, to add a higher protein value to foods with a variety of protein bases, beyond meat (meat cultivated in the laboratory, foods with an insect base...). Or new types of flour, gluten-free, such as acorn flour. Depending on the health status, they are new functional foods that respond to the diverse nutritional needs of people.

Bioprinting

In Tknika's Cell Biology laboratory, printing has taken a big step forward, and what until recently we thought was a future event, is already here. This technology is used to work on bioprinting projects, that is, to print human skin or cartilage. A cell sample is taken from the patient's organism - so that the person does not reject it later - it is cultivated and reproduced in an incubator. Thanks to bioprinting technology, these cells remain alive even after passing through the printer cartridge. The biological tissue obtained in this way can be grafted to the same person, for example, to heal burns and ulcers. In the future, the development of this technique will also offer the possibility of creating organs.

In this field of personalized health, Tknika also uses bioprinting to make pharmaceutical products; it prints tablets or tablets with a dose of medicine adapted to each patient's organism and to each stage of the disease. In other words, we are talking about making personalized medicines.

Without neglecting the field of health, and with regard to the training of the required professional profiles, Tknika and Basque Vocational Education are also working to design the specialization programs required by companies in the sector, as has been done with the companies Viralgen or Bayer. Professionals are trained according to their needs, for specific fields, for example, gene therapy or PCR techniques.

In fact, more and more companies are asking for Vocational Education profiles, Health care professions, to meet their needs for technical workers: clinical laboratories, biomedical laboratories, environmental health companies, dietetics or health emergencies, for example.
In this regard, as Minister Sagardui reminded, "there are more and more fields of science and technology that play an important role in medicine, adding new professional profiles".

Smart home

Sagardui has also been the minister of Smart Adapted Housing in Tknica. They have imagined a smart home, and its philosophy and purpose can be summarized as follows: the humanization of technology. Today, technologies have become essential to respond to one of the most important challenges facing the Basque Country, that is, society to respond to aging.

This space puts technology at the service of people, their well-being and health, wherever and at home. In the spaces of this house (kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom...), various elements have been installed, such as smart furniture, floors with sensors - to detect possible falls - Artificial Intelligence systems, home automation systems or Irisbond technology. With the latter, a person can control a tablet or computer with just the movement of the eyes, and through it, at the same time, interact with the environment: turn off or on the lights, open the doors, lower the blinds and so on, thanks to the software that monitors and manages the home.

As well as serving people with special needs, Basque Vocational Education also puts technology at the service of students' health training. It does so using virtual environments and immersive technologies.