Porto’s public health unit won the Gold Mastercard Award

Porto’s public health unit, “Unidade Local de Saúde de Santo António” just won the Gold Mastercard Award for Hospital Operational Excellence by the International Hospital Federation IHF Awards 2024.
Porto’s public health unit, “Unidade Local de Saúde de Santo António” presented the iBird project that won the Gold Award in the category Mastercard Award for Hospital Operational Excellence. This project integrates robotics with artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to transform health service delivery and academic education.

The Mastercard Award for Hospital Operational Excellence, that is an international award acknowledging measurable success in operational outcomes and efficiencies, recognizes the quality of Portugal's public health care. Porto’s Santo António Local Health Unit (ULS de Santo António) is a local health unit of Portugal’s National Health Service, and the Chairman of the Board of Directors is Paulo Jorge Barbosa Carvalho.

The Santo António Local Health Unit consists of the hospital units of the Hospital de Santo António, including the Integrated Ambulatory Surgery Center, the Maternal and Child Center of the North and the Hospital Magalhães Lemos. It also shares the Academic Center with the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Porto.

In the private sector, CUF Portugal won a Honourable mention under the Ashikaga-Nikken Excellence Award for Low-Carbon Healthcare for its project “Hospital Sterilization Center – a new paradigm for water sustainability”. The award recognizes hospitals that have made the most demonstrable progress in the last 12–18 months in key areas of sustainability strategy and implementation.

The ceremony took place in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) at the Windsor Convention & Expo Center in front of an audience of around 400 international hospital and healthcare executives. The Awards Ceremony was a highlight of the 47th World Hospital Congress, which gathered 1300 attendees from over 65 countries and territories.