Two Hungarian startups in the forefront of European healthcare innovation

Two Hungarian start-ups – InSimu Patient, a medical case study educational app that provides learners with simulated patients and Sineko with a platform that improves the efficiency and quality of medical documentation – were selected among 13 other teams to receive mentoring and training support to the value of EUR 25,000 at the third edition of the EIT Health InnoStars Awards competition, a programme for start-ups from Regional Innovation Scheme Programme (RIS) countries with more moderate levels of innovation than other European countries.

Fifteen start-ups from Central, Eastern and Southern European countries that are still developing in terms of healthcare innovation will be given €25 000 in funding, as well as training and mentoring support, as winners of the 2019 EIT Health InnoStars Awards.

In the third year of the InnoStars Awards, the winners were chosen from 116 high-quality contestants based in the 13 Regional Innovation Scheme Programme (RIS) countries – which have more moderate levels of innovation than other European countries.

Selected by a panel of experts, the winning start-ups include five from Portugal, two from Poland, two from Hungary, two from Latvia, one from the Czech Republic, one from Lithuania, one from Italy and one from Romania.

They will receive €25 000 of smart money, individual mentoring for four months and the opportunity to participate in two bootcamps in Europe. EIT Health InnoStars will also organise three validation interviews with potential customers, investors and partners for the award winners. After the four month-programme, ten finalists will be selected to participate in the InnoStars Awards final pitch in November, to compete for the three top prizes: an additional €25 000, €15 000 or €10 000 in funding.

Increasing success in RIS countries

“More and more start-ups from the regions covered by the Regional Innovation Scheme apply successfully for prestigious European innovation programmes like InnoStars Awards,” said Mónika Tóth, EIT Health InnoStars RIS Programme Manager. “There is an impressive talent pool in this part of Europe, that has skills and knowledge to create and develop healthcare innovations.”

The InnoStars Awards programme is open for micro and small enterprises, spin-offs and start-ups that already have prototype or a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). All contestants must come from the RIS countries, and based on the increasing number of qualified applicants, the talent pool there is strong. The RIS Hub in Hungary is the Institute of Transdisciplinary Discoveries in Pécs, a space that encourages, mediates and hosts exchanges not only within the academia, but also develop, in a true transdisciplinary manner, effective communication between academia, the business sector and society.

“There are excellent science and talented teams being produced in Eastern Europe, Mediterranean countries and Portugal,” said Dr Nuno Viegas, Business Creation Manager, EIT Health InnoStars.

“InnoStars Awards provides start-ups from these countries with funds to further validate their health solutions, education on how to create a business plan and a chance to talk with investors and connect with expert mentors in other European regions that can share their network and experience.”

List of InnoStars Award winners for 2019

B-CULTURE: A Portuguese start-up develops 4D in-vitro human tissue models for drug testing. They offer an efficient and ethical solution for a monitored screening and validation of compounds and implants for the pharma, dental and biomedical industries.

BrachyDOSE: A Lithuanian team of experienced engineers and scientists offer a cancer treatment quality control tool that provides more effective and personalised treatment. Their product is made for oncologists who are seeking precision and the best possible treatment results in radiotherapy.

BRIGHT – Beyond Research and Information Graphics for Health and Technology: An innovative company from Portugal offers the Serious Games for Health project, which helps patients to self-manage their disease and promotes adherence to therapy.

Femyo: A Romanian company was created to cut the at-birth and infant mortality rate in Europe by half. The company seeks to achieve this by building the first digital health management organisation in Europe, to ensure that all their subscribers give the best start in life to their children.

HydrUStent: A Portuguese start-up focused on the development of innovative medical devices based on clinical needs brings together a highly skilled team with different backgrounds, from medicine to biomaterials science and engineering. The company is developing a portable, wireless and less invasive urodynamics testing technology that allows long-term continuous monitoring of intra-urinary pressures. This will positively impact patient’s lives by lessening the discomfort associated with this type of testing, currently performed only in clinical settings.

InoCure: A bionanotechnology company from the Czech Republic delivers solutions for life science and pharmaceutical industry. Its product DifMATRIX is the first active 3D cell culture membrane that enables faster, reliable and ethical preclinical testing.

InSimu Patient: This innovation from Hungary is a medical case study educational app that provides learners with simulated patients. The app helps medical students and physicians gain clinical experience by making decisions on their own to treat simulated, virtual patients. Mimicking all possible aspects of real-life diagnostics, InSimu changes the way young doctors think and learn.

Mosaic Software Srl: An innovative start-up from Italy transforming clinical research by virtue of a focus on patient centricity and forefront digital technologies. Their PatchAI is the first cognitive platform for collection and predictive analysis of patient-reported data in clinical trials, embedding an AI-powered virtual assistant mimicking human empathetic conversations to engage and motivate patients and increase protocol compliance.

Mhydrogel: A chemical start-up based in Latvia offers therapeutic contact lenses to save eyesight after a chemical eye injury.

OASIS Diagnostics SA: A Polish medtech company develops ONIRY, a non-invasive medical device for quick and robust diagnostics of obstetrical anal sphincter injury using machine learning model. This exam would benefit every woman just after vaginal delivery.

Sineko: A Hungarian company whose GRAID software aims to revolutionise cross-border teleradiology by translating radiological reports. GRAID is a synoptic reporting assistant that enables healthcare industry professionals to not only create high quality structured medical reports, but also to easily translate the whole report with one click into multiple languages. The platform improves the efficiency and quality of medical documentation and promotes residency and patient education, all while paving the road for automatic AI image to text generation.

Surgeonmate: A Portuguese technology-based company focused on developing technical solutions that aim to improve the working conditions of healthcare providers. They developed and patented a textile solution to be worn by the professional healthcare providers while working in places where cold is a problem and a potential source of discomfort exists.

TimeUp: A Portuguese team works on developing a medical device that can be used to monitor and detect the presence of bacteria in urine, alerting healthcare professionals of the potential development of an infection.

UVera: A Polish start-up employs innovation and an interdisciplinary approach to provide skin protection against the whole spectrum of UV sun radiation. Its mission is to create natural and safe UV protection products with a concomitant decrease in negative environmental impact on the planet.

Vigo: A Latvian start-up develops a prescription rehabilitation guide that uses artificial intelligence to help people recover faster and more efficiently from a stroke by providing therapeutic guidance, practical assistance and tools based on cognitive behavioural therapy, in a smartphone interface.

Source: EIT Health