“People don’t believe it’s possible to stay in Portugal and be successful, but I was born in Guarda, studied in Aveiro and employ a thousand people”
Born in July 1984, in Guarda. It was there that he grew up with his parents and older brother. At the age of eight, an accident changed the family’s dynamics and life. The brother was 10 years old when he was run over and his parents were divided between Coimbra – where he was hospitalized – and Guarda.
“In the first six months they tried to understand if he would survive, in the following six months if there was any possibility of rehabilitation or if he would remain in a vegetative state,†he says.
Jose Fernandes
He was an introverted child and this did not change with age. For this podcast she brought a ninja turtle, Donatello-“the shyest oneâ€. It’s a childhood memory, of the DVDs she watched with her brother.
His childhood was marked by the tragedy that happened to his brother and by the parents’ struggle to recover their son. “Now that I am a father, I understand even more the love that my parents had and committed to his recovery. My brother is now able to have a social life and be minimally independent, thanks to my parents. Without them he would be dependent for the rest of his life,” he confesses.
Jose Fernandes
Rita Carmo, member of the board of directors of Centro CIVISA, admits that in the near future seismic activity will continue to be recorded on the island of Terceira
Jose Fernandes
He realized the difficulties that his parents had in intensively rehabilitating his brother and from his childhood trauma he made it a life mission.
He was always a good student, but he had “little interest” in school. He graduated in Electronic Engineering and during his doctorate he was invited to be a professor of Technology, Electronics and Programming at the University of Maia. The focus was always on health and while teaching he was waiting for the “first investment†in the first patent he had invented: a physiotherapy solution based on Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Therapist.
“I was raised with an American mentality. The United States is successful because it has a spirit that everything is possible and everyone accepts risk. There, failure is a CV, in Portugal and Europe it is a registration,” he admits.
Jose Fernandes
Matilde Fieschi
He founded Sword Health and its objective is to free two billion people from pain. He has already invented around 34 patents and is the author of more than 40 scientific articles.
VirgÃlio Bento is a guest on the new episode of Geração 80. In this conversation led by Francisco Pedro Balsemão, he puts his shyness aside and talks about his childhood, marked by his brother’s accident, and how he arrived to the top 50 of the main CEOs of health technology companies, distinguished in 2023.
“People don’t believe it is possible to be born in Portugal, stay here and be successful. The limitation is in our heads. I was born in Guarda, I studied in Aveiro, I have a global company that employs a thousand people and I’m in Portoâ€, he concluded. Listen to the interview here.
Jose Fernandes
Free and dreamy, the 80s in Portugal were marked by the consolidation of democracy and an opening to the world driven by accession to the EEC. These were years of great creativity, the impact of which continues today. Despite the mustaches, the wads and the perms, did the 80s give the world the best harvest ever? In this podcast, we give voice to a series of Portuguese people born in that brilliant decade, in a return to the future guided by Francisco Pedro Balsemão, born in 1980.
