EIT Health welcomes three new partners to its network of healthcare innovators

EIT Health welcomes three new partners to its network of healthcare innovators in Hungary. The new members, SmartHumed, QTICS Medical, and Loginet, bring their specialized expertise to further enhance EIT Health’s collaborative environment.  With its Central, Eastern and Southern European regional headquarters in Budapest, EIT Health has already established fruitful partnerships with six leading Hungarian organisations, including Semmelweis University and GE Healthcare. The new alliances confirm EIT Health’s commitment to driving innovation and improving the healthcare system in Europe.

EIT Health, part of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union is one of the largest European public-private partnerships in healthcare innovation. Its mission is to build an ecosystem that enables future healthcare development so that European citizens can live longer and healthier lives. The InnoStars cluster, one of the eight geographical areas of EIT Health, covers half of Europe, such as  Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Portugal, as well as 9 additional countries in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe included in the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme, qualified by the European Innovation Scoreboard as moderate innovators.

Innovative Hungarian companies at the threshold of further opportunities

The basic principle of EIT Health is cooperation and network operation: it partners with around 130 various organisations across Europe, among them the Sorbonne University, the Karolinska Institute and Philips. In Hungary’s landscape of collaboration and innovation, notable partnerships have thrived, with esteemed organizations such as GE Healthcare and Semmelweis University paving the way. Now, as the realm of healthcare innovation continues to flourish, three exceptional entities have joined their ranks.

1. SmartHumed is a Budapest-based, company with a Hungarian background specialising in patient journey management services. Its goal is to build a comprehensive private healthcare and social life course management system that provides expert support and empathetic assistance for everyday healthcare needs. Its services include group health insurance solutions, online medical consultations and other virtual clinical solutions, as well as health fund savings products.
2. QTICS Group is a dynamically growing industrial player in the international Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) sector. QTICS Medical is a division within the company, which provides a wide range of regulatory (MDR, IVDR, FDA ), safety, cybersecurity, preclinical, clinical and system certification services for the successful conformity assessment of medical devices. The member companies of the Group possess and obtain Hungarian, European and international accreditations in order to be able to provide independent, objective, third-party complex conformity assessment services in the selected industrial segment as a one-stop shop. Apart from medical devices, the Group operates in three other industrial segments: Energy and Industry, Mobility and Drones, as well as Consumer and IoT.
3. Loginet Systems provides design and development services for the creation of digital healthcare applications. They provide expertise in user interface design (UX and service design) and the latest mobile and web technologies. Among others, they have already worked together with companies such as Phoenix Pharma, Pingvin Patika, and the Hungarian health start-up called xLab, with which they developed a solution that facilitates the evaluation of laboratory results.

EIT Health and Hungary – a fruitful relationship

“We are delighted to welcome our three new partners to the EIT Health network,” said Zsolt Bubori, Ecosystem Lead for Hungary, EIT Health InnoStars. He added, “Our principle is that no one can innovate alone, therefore all our programs and initiatives serve the purpose of connecting healthcare and companies, organisations and professionals intending to innovate, so that together they can achieve meaningful positive impact for society. That is why we work hand in hand with our partners as well. Our new partners offer unique knowledge that will play a key part in the realisation of the goals of EIT Health, and I am sure that we are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.”

According to the recent EIT Health study called “InnoStars Innovation Index”, Hungary is a strategic location for EIT Health, and the country’s healthcare start-up ecosystem is emerging as one of the most promising in the region and beyond. It is one of the four countries in the InnoStars region that has a dedicated Ecosystem Lead and a partner network of leading enterprises, universities, and research institutes.

One example is GE Healthcare, a global MedTech player with significant R&D capacity in Hungary. GE Healthcare is a core partner of EIT Health and has initiated successful open innovation and education programmes in collaboration with EIT Health, like HelloAI and the Health Venture Lab. Another core partner in the country is the prestigious Semmelweis University, while the E-Group ICT company, Syreon Research Institute and University of Debrecen and MOME are Associate Partners.

Europe’s leading healthcare innovation network has invested around €6 million in boosting innovation in Hungary. EIT Health has also been committed to supporting Hungarian start-ups: 30 of them have received around €700 thousand worth of financial, mentoring, training, and networking assistance.

Hungary’s healthcare start-up ecosystem is buzzing with success stories and is rapidly gaining recognition as one of the most promising in Europe. Success stories include HandInScan, which develops a hand hygiene control system for direct and objective assessment of hand rubbing and has received over €2.5M in external funding; and Fetal Health, which has developed a new gynecological diagnostic medical device that measures fetal EEG and ECG waveforms to reduce newborn death and injury.