Six EIT Jumpstarter finalists compete for three main prizes in the healthcare category during the Grand Final event

EIT Jumpstarter, a  flagship programme of the Cross-KIC cooperation within the EIT Health RIS region, is run for the fourth time by EIT Health, EIT Food, EIT RawMaterials, EIT InnoEnergy, EIT Manufacturing and EIT Urban Mobility. Six teams will compete in the healthcare category during the EIT Jumpstarter Grand Final, which will be held online on 25 November 2020.

EIT Jumpstarter is a creative community with the contribution of best-in-class experts that helps innovators and entrepreneurs build a viable business model around their product or service idea, validate it and encourage the most potent teams to register their company. After the programme, graduates will possess skills and knowledge to launch their start-up, and as part of the alumni community, they receive further support and dedicated advisory from the EIT Communities regarding the next stage of their start-up journey.

348 applications were submitted for this year’s EIT Jumpstarter and out of these projects, 120 teams from 25 countries were selected to join the programme in 2020. The best 36 got into the Grand Final (6 from each thematic field), which will pitch their start-up projects in front of an expert jury panel during the online event. These start-ups, coming predominantly from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, are working on providing solutions to societal challenges across six domains: healthcare, agri-food, raw materials, energy, urban mobility and manufacturing.

”Each year proves that EIT Jumpstarter is a community that is very much needed to help innovation teams execute their ideas by developing their business skills and supporting them in jumpstarting their venture. Our aim is to boost healthcare innovations and entrepreneurship within the emerging regions of Europe. I am proud that EIT Jumpstarter, as an award-winning programme, is here to help teams overcome challenges,” says Dóra Marosvölgyi, EIT Jumpstarter Programme Manager and Healthcare start-up mentor.

Six finalist start-ups in the healthcare category:

• Fetalix (Portugal): Fetalix provides the first regenerative fetal-inspired solution to treat low back pain through a minimally invasive application. Their developed and patented natural biomaterial is obtained from a mammalian fetal source offering unique regenerative properties. This injectable and off-the-shelf material provides veterinaries and orthopaedic surgeons a new and preventive treatment for intervertebral disc degeneration, eliminating the need for surgical procedures and reoperations, while reducing intervention time by 90% and hospital stays by 70%.
  The production itself is simple, safe, affordable and scalable, and promotes circular economy by creating value from animal waste;
• NeuroTech (Latvia): the team develops a project called Hedda that is a combination of biofeedback-induced video game and a headset that integrates real-time biometric data as an extra input into the gameplay, helping children with mental disorders. As a result, it prompts beneficial states of a kid’s body and mind by visually rewarding them in the gameplay. HEDDA offers an opportunity to use video games to train children’s self-regulation skills and measurably improve their mental wellbeing;
• Biomaterial Bridge (Portugal): their project, Axodynamic, develops drug release biomaterials to promote neuroregeneration and remodeling of the glial scar, with the goal of halving the hospitalization length and disability period for patients who suffer from some form of spinal cord injury;
• VocDec (Estonia): VocDec develops a cry-based non-invasive tool for early screening of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in newborns. The technology of VocDec is innovative and unique through an algorithm that is based on cry-signals of newborns. It will significantly improve and accelerate the current diagnose pathway via early diagnosis. Early diagnosis will accelerate and increase the efficiency of the treatment, gradually improving patients’ quality of life and saving the related healthcare costs;
• MMD3D (Croatia): they develop an adaptive medical search algorithm, based on the fact that the motion is coherent for acquired medical 3D MRI or CT data, to reduce the system requirements and boost the speed of the examining data in DICOM (medical image standard) viewers as well as reduce the storage requirements;
  
• Semse Apps (Hungary): Semse Apps develops Semse Vision, a unique application for neurofeedback devices that can help us learn how to release stress consciously, calm ourselves and be able to focus better. The app proves that meditation is available for everybody and it can be part of their everyday life. The team is working on bringing biofeedback devices to a more popular level because they think technology can be used for good and they want to use it as a tool to help people develop the skills necessary to grow the act of introspection into a habit. The aim of their other application, Semse Mission, is to create a Play Meditation Ecosystem of mindfulness users and professionals.

All finalist teams will present their pitches in three parallel virtual rooms during the online EIT Jumpstarter Grand Final event on 25 November. At this year’s panel discussion, Zoltán Várdy, a global business development advisor, will discuss the power of focus with three successful Jumpstarter Alumni start-ups. Right after the Award Ceremony, the attendees will have an opportunity to join an online networking event and meet the talented finalists and other participants.

Register for EIT Jumpstarter free of charge here!