After months of preparation, healthcare start-ups pitch in EIT Health Wild Card 2019 final

Two teams will win €2 million, lab space and mentoring

Six teams, made up of some of Europe’s most promising, innovative entrepreneurs, gather to pitch their ideas for transforming European healthcare in EIT Health’s Wild Card final in Munich, Germany on 16-17 July 2019.

Two of the teams will win €2 million in funding, lab space and two years of support from EIT Health’s network of expert academic and business mentors.

EIT Health Wild Card is a pan-EU programme that seeks out game-changing people and innovations to radically alter the way we prevent, diagnose and treat diseases, and to address structural issues in our healthcare services. Through months of competition and training, the programme prepares candidates for this final pitch contest, which allows teams to show who is best prepared to develop a transformative healthcare innovation and bring the idea to market.

Now in its second year, the 2019 Wild Card Programme asked candidates to address two challenges:

• Mental and Brain Health, or how to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and strengthen brain health, using technology.
• Digital Biomarkers, or how to use digital biomarkers, like heart rate and body temperature, measured with wearable or implanted devices, to improve diagnostics.

Wild Card Finalists

The following are the teams seeking to address this year’s challenges, and their innovations:

Mental and Brain Health challenge

• iLoF: Novel extracellular vesicle (EV) detection method based on an artificial intelligence.
• Panthera: Theranostic imaging system targeting necrosis in the brain.
• Pipra: Post-operative cognitive dysfunction risk score assessment.

Digital Biomarkers challenge

• BioDtek: Early detection of lung infections through immune system self-monitoring.
• Dinosis: Eye-tracking method for early autism diagnosis in infants.
• PHI: Biomonitoring stickers for physiological data acquisition, such as heart and brain signals, muscular activities and body temperature.

Wild Card 2019 process

The winners of EIT Health’s Wild Card programme will be the two teams judged to demonstrate a watertight idea with immediate commercial potential to address one of these challenges. Contestants must also show that they have a solid, insightful team with complementary skillsets.

To reach the finals, they applied in December 2018, went through a Hackathon challenge in early April and months of mentoring to hone their ideas. The two 2019 Wild Card winning teams will receive two years of support from EIT Health, including €2 million in funding, lab space within a start-up focused incubator and mentoring and advice from EIT Health’s world-leading network of healthcare academics, researchers and members of industry.