EIT Health nominates seven innovative people and projects for the EIT Awards

Awards recognise Europe’s top innovations and innovators

The nominees include start-ups seeking solutions for cardiac conditions, breathing problems and Alzheimer’s; women who have founded start-ups and incubators; and a recent graduate who conducted market analysis of healthcare innovation. They have been chosen as EIT Health’s entrants into the 2018 EIT Awards, which celebrate exceptional achievements of members of the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities.

The EIT Awards give recognition and support to Europe’s successful start-ups, innovative projects and young entrepreneurial talent. In 2017, projects supported by EIT Health won three of the four EIT Awards.

This year’s EIT Award winners will be announced at the October 2018 INNOVEIT conference in Budapest, Hungary. EIT Health has named the following seven nominees for the contest:

EIT Venture Award

The EIT Venture Award puts the spotlight on successful entrepreneurial start-ups that have been supported by the innovation communities through dedicated business creation or business development processes. EIT Health’s nominees for this award are:

• FibriCheck: FibriCheck’s innovation is a software-only solution that allows for measurement of cardiac rhythm anywhere and anytime, simply by having the patient place their finger on the camera of a smartphone.
• Enmodes: RAS-Q®, a device made by Enmodes, is like a “lung in a backpack”, offering a new, more mobile therapeutic approach for patients suffering from pulmonary diseases.

EIT Innovators Award

The EIT Innovators Award recognizes KIC innovation teams composed of individuals from across the knowledge triangle that have developed a product, service or process with a high potential for societal and economic impact. EIT Health’s nominees for this award are:

• Alzheimer’s Disease Prediction Service (ADPS): One of the first validated solutions to enter the EU market as a pre-symptomatic, computational biomarker to predict Alzheimer’s risk for people over 50.
• POLLAR: An integrated software platform combines emerging technologies with machine learning to understand effects of air pollution in allergic rhinitis and its impact on sleep, work and asthma – and to uncover preventive measures and policies for this problem.

EIT Woman Award

The EIT Woman Leadership & Entrepreneurship Award recognizes the outstanding work and achievements by an exceptional woman from the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities. EIT Health’s nominees for this award are:

• Laura Soucek: Laura is the award-winning founder of Peptomyc, a start-up that is developing a treatment for cancer and has been supported by the EIT Health Headstart and Accelerator programmes. Her firm raised €4 million in venture capital from within the EIT Health community. She mentors women entrepreneurs under EIT Health’s WE Health programme.
• Montse Vendrell: Montse’s leadership in life-science innovation is based on pionerering and enabling entrepreneurship – from the first science park in Spain, to the first bioincubator and biocluster on to co-founding Alta Life Sciences VC fund. She was instrumental in setting up EIT Health and continues to contribute as a partner, an evaluator, and as an investor.

EIT CHANGE Award

The EIT CHANGE Award celebrates graduates of EIT-labelled education programmes who spur innovation and entrepreneurship in health. EIT Health’s nominee for this award is:

• Nóra Félegyházi: Graduating this summer from MSc. Business Administration & Innovation in Healthcare, Copenhagen Business School, Nóra produced a specialist thesis on Market analysis and innovation in hand hygiene monitoring.

Find out more about our nominees on the EIT Health Awards Page.