Rita Miguel is the Head of the Marketing, Communications and Citizenship Division at IBM Portugal and spoke with the Newsletter team to explain the brand's connection to the ENT project, led by Professor Óscar Dias.

size="10"

I would like to ask you about the real link that IBM will have to the project.

Rita Miguel: IBM's approach to Corporate Citizenship is aligned with our values, empowering the impact that we can and want to have as a global company, reflecting our business strategy, our investment in innovative technologies, continuous transformation and sustainable change. In that context, IBM focuses its commitment on the communities, programs and initiatives it develops, on specific social issues, such as education, economic development, healthcare, the environment, culture, areas where we apply IBM's technology and talent to the resolution of real problems.
It was in this regard that, in 2010, IBM launched the Impact Grants program, which provides free consulting solutions and services, and free access to IBM technology for institutions, schools and non-profit organisations, in order to improve their technological and leadership skills, as well as their IT (Information Technologies) infrastructure. The diversity of these solutions and services makes it possible for IBM to respond and attend to the constant and various needs of the educational and non-profit sector.
And it is precisely through one of the solutions created by IBM, the "Technology Roadmap", that we are supporting the project developed by the Faculty of Medicine. More specifically, and based on previously collected information, in meetings and closer contact with some of the faculty members most involved in the project, two senior IBM consultants are building a technology plan to be presented to the Faculty, with technical recommendations, suggestions and procedures for the creation of a technological solution that enables the online availability, by segmented audiences, of some of the contents that the students of Otorhinolaryngology have been producing over the last few years. In parallel, we will try to address the correct way of relating this content to the ENT archive of physical material that exists in the Faculty Museum, with the aim of establishing a connection between the present and history, and to what it has taught us. This is a very rewarding challenge, and we hope that its results allow the Faculty of Medicine, its professors and students, as well as society in general, to have access to an important and unique source of information and knowledge.

size="10"

What benefits does the brand have when it takes on this kind of support?

Rita Miguel: IBM has moved from era to era, since more than a century ago, it has existed for 107 years in the world and 80 in Portugal. This ability to reinvent ourselves, to go further, is only possible when we accept the need for a fundamental transformation based on investing in business, in order to help our customers and the world to move forward into the future. And it is on that same spirit of transformation, innovation and leadership at a social level and with global impact, that our corporate citizenship strategy is based. For IBM, effective contributions to positive changes in our communities are, without a doubt, a fundamental part of our mission to be essential and to contribute, with results, to the construction of a more just, equitable and socially sustainable society.

size="10"

Joana Sousa

Editorial Team