Pandemic stimulated the record number of new ideas submitted to InnoStars Awards. In this year’s edition the number of teams eager to solve some of the most pressing healthcare challenges, improve wellbeing and comfort of patients increased by 47% year over year. Among the 15 shortlisted teams: three come from Italy, two from Spain, Romania, Portugal, and Hungary as well as one from Greece, Poland, Estonia, and Lithuania. InnoStars Awards is one of EIT Health’s most competitive accelerator programmes, which is aimed at early-stage start-ups with prototype or Minimum Viable Product. The semi-finalists will receive €25 000 smart money for business training and mentoring support from world-class experts. The ten best performing teams will be able to get into the finals, pitch to the international jury panel and win up to €25 000 to launch their product or service on the market.
“Every edition of InnoStars Awards entices cutting-edge medtech, biotech or digital health solutions that try to respond to some of the most pressing healthcare challenges as well as improving the quality of life of patients. This year we observe it on even larger scale. Pandemic has stimulated new ideas popping up and motivated innovators to do the next step. The key to success very often is to equip the ambitious teams with the business skills, access to network and support them in building international recognition. This is exactly what we do” – underlined Tamas Bekasi, RIS Business Creation Manager at EIT Health InnoStars. “For the last five years InnoStars Awards has moved dozens of teams from the prototype stage to the market level. The best teams got external funding, VCs interest and managed to scale out” – added Tamas Bekasi.
Lithuanian team “Liverinn” is among the participants of the semi-final of the 2021 EIT Health InnoStars Awards. “Liverinn” is developing an automated liver diagnostic solution based on artificial intelligence - a liver diagnostic test can be performed in just a few seconds. This technology also helps to more accurately determine the functional volume of the liver, to diagnose liver diseases faster. Along with “Liverinn” in the semifinals, there are also teams such as ScolioSense (Greece), PhotoBioCure (Poland), T-Control (Spain) and many others.
The winners, besides the financial awards, will have access to the support and potential investor connections available from EIT Health’s Investor Network and EIT Health’s Living Labs and Test Beds network. Beside the listed teams, EIT Health will provide mentoring support for further 20 runner-up start-ups with €4 000 value. More about InnoStars Awards: https://eithealth.eu/project/innostars-awards/
A full list of all selected teams can be found here: https://eithealth.eu/news-article/15-new-health-innovations-in-the-innostars-awards-semi-finals/
