On February 27, 2025, the LevelUP Health & Life Sciences Accelerator Demo Day took place at Hub UTCN in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, bringing together some of the most promising health tech startups. The program’s finalists pitched their innovative solutions in nutrition, psychiatry, surgery, telemedicine, and healthcare management before a jury of investors, doctors, and business experts. The event also featured a panel discussion on the collaboration between healthcare professionals and startups, as well as a networking session.

After five intense months of work, including seven workshops, 29 experts, and over 70 hours of mentorship and consultancy, the six most promising health & life sciences startups reached the grand finale of the second edition of LevelUP Health & Life Sciences Accelerator.

At the end of the Demo Day evening, Argus AI won the Best Startup, Jury’s Choice, while Neurocare was awarded the Best Startup, Public’s Choice, recognizing their outstanding contributions to health innovation.

Argus AI: Augmented Reality to Support Neurosurgeons

One of the standout startups at Demo Day was Argus AI, a company leveraging augmented reality to assist neurosurgeons in reducing surgical errors, operation times, anesthesia exposure, and post-operative complications. Their solution integrates MRI/CT scans into VR headsets, allowing surgeons to visualize critical structures such as tumors and blood vessels, helping them better prepare for complex interventions.

Vladimir Verbulski, the founder of Argus AI, highlighted the immense value of the LevelUP Accelerator in shaping their journey. “The industry-specific mentorship and tailored sessions were exactly what we needed. The program helped us refine our approach and move towards real-world application,” he shared.

Currently, Argus AI has developed a minimum viable product (MVP) and is starting trials in collaboration with clinics and hospitals to gather feedback and refine their technology. They are also seeking €1.9 million in investment to sustain operations for the next two and a half years. “This funding will allow us to bring the product to market, validate its impact in real-world settings, and ultimately improve neurosurgical procedures,” Vladimir Verbulski explained.

Argus AI’s innovation and potential were recognized at the event, earning them the Best Startup, Jury’s Choice award.

Neurocare: Enhancing Dementia Care with Smart Wearables

Another promising startup at Demo Day, Neurocare, is revolutionizing dementia care through smart wearables and a connected platform. Their solution monitors vitals, activity, sleep patterns, and fall risks, ensuring greater safety for patients. Caregivers benefit from real-time insights and AI-powered support, while healthcare professionals gain access to data-driven patient management tools, leading to improved care coordination.

Founder Florin Leu, along with Vladimir Plotean, emphasized how the LevelUP Accelerator helped refine their strategy and accelerate growth. “The experience has been invaluable—we’re now better prepared to navigate the market and avoid past mistakes,” they shared.

The team is currently focused on finalizing their MVP by the end of Q2 and preparing for clinical trials. Their goal is to launch first in Romania, then expand across the EU. To make this happen, they are seeking a €500,000 pre-seed investment and strategic partnerships with hospitals and healthcare organizations. “We need strong endorsements to build trust and scale our solution effectively,” Florin Leu explained.

Neurocare’s efforts resonated strongly with the audience, earning them the Best Startup, Public’s Choice at Demo Day.

Other Startups That Pitched at Demo Day

Besides Argus AI and Neurocare, four other promising startups showcased their solutions at LevelUP Demo Day:

• Dr-Online – A telemedicine app that facilitates easy access to quality medical services. Through partnerships with doctors, clinics, and service providers, their platform offers virtual consultations, integrates medical devices, and enables efficient electronic medical record (EMR) management.
• Forkpie Kids – An AI-powered app that helps parents monitor their children’s nutrition. Users take a photo of their meals, and the app analyzes nutritional values while providing personalized recommendations based on Healthy Eating Plate principles. Parents receive daily and weekly reports to support healthier eating habits for their children.
• MaeveAI – An AI-powered virtual assistant designed to simplify the workload of healthcare professionals. MaeveAI automates tasks such as patient communication, appointment scheduling, and inventory management, allowing doctors to focus more on patient care.
• Smart Bites – A comprehensive nutrition solution, offering personalized meal plans, expert consultation, quick online grocery shopping, and ingredient delivery. Smart Bites simplifies the journey toward healthy eating for the entire family.

LevelUP’s Vision: Personalizing the Startup Journey

Reflecting on this edition of LevelUP, Anca Roman, Head of the Accelerator, highlighted the impressive progress made by the participating startups. “Innovation in healthcare is often a slow process, but with the right mentorship, expertise, and partnerships, we’ve seen remarkable growth,” she noted.

Looking ahead, the accelerator plans to further personalize the journey for each startup and explore a challenge-driven approach, potentially focusing on areas like oncology or green health tech. Another key priority is fostering long-term engagement through community events, bringing together alumni and experts to discuss funding opportunities and sustain momentum.

“We want to keep supporting startups even after the program ends, ensuring they have the resources and connections to scale,” Roman emphasized.

LevelUP Health & Life Sciences Accelerator

Launched in March 2023 by INNO, the North-West of Romania Regional Development Agency’s department responsible for regional innovation and attracting investors, LevelUP is the first accelerator in Romania exclusively dedicated to startups in the fields of health and life sciences. The program has been developed with assistance from EIT Health as part of their DRIVE program, further strengthening its commitment to fostering cutting-edge healthcare solutions.

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EIT Health, a network of best-in-class health innovators supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, began engaging with the Romanian healthtech ecosystem by opening a call for a local hub at the beginning of 2018. Since then, EIT Health has provided networking opportunities, expertise, and a platform for collaboration to Romanian healthtech startups and innovation projects.

By connecting the local ecosystem to European healthtech innovation centers such as Barcelona, Budapest, Berlin, and London, EIT Health has elevated the level of activity and understanding in Romania. Represented by FreshBlood HealthTech, a Cluj-based NGO dedicated to supporting health innovation, EIT Health has played a critical role in mentoring innovators, offering feedback, and fostering essential connections.

The Romanian healthtech ecosystem has undergone significant transformation over the past seven years, with EIT Health playing a pivotal role in driving innovation, fostering collaboration, and supporting startups.

Romanian HealthTech Ecosystem Performance and Notable Achievements

Insights from the “InnoStars Innovation Ecosystem Maturity Assessment” highlight the strong performance of Romanian companies participating in EIT Health programs. These startups excel in external grants received, valuation, and the percentage of market-entry startups, although they underperform in external funds raised compared to their peers. The ecosystem’s maturity level is classified as “experimenter,” supported by robust numeric indicators and extensive questionnaire responses. Notably, Romanian participants contributed more than any other observed countries to the questionnaire, reflecting EIT Health’s exceptional collaboration network in Romania, facilitated by FreshBlood HealthTech Community based in Cluj-Napoca.

A standout success story is Lumen, a Romanian startup creating glasses for blind individuals unable to use advanced mobile solutions. Lumen replicates the primary functionalities of a guide dog in a scalable product. In 2020, the startup was a winner at the EIT Health Headstart Grand Final and the EIT Health Healthy Longevity Catalyst Award. The startup also gained significant industry support, collaborating with Kaufland Romania and Ascendis. Lumen’s achievements include winning the prestigious Red Dot Luminary Award in 2021 and receiving €9.3 million in funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC), marking a milestone as the first Romanian startup to secure this level of support.

Mapping and Maturing the Romanian HealthTech Ecosystem

The Romanian HealthTech ecosystem is evolving rapidly, showcasing an increasing number of competitive and innovative startups. A recent report, the Romanian HealthTech Startups Overview, categorizes these startups into four main groups:

1. Tools for self-care (with a focus on nutrition and mental health).
2. Tools for patients and their relatives.
3. Tools for healthcare professionals (not limited to doctors).
4. Tools for institutions (healthcare providers and companies).

The ecosystem now boasts over 100 Romanian healthtech startups deemed worthy of follow-up, alongside 10 Moldovan startups increasingly collaborating with Romanian counterparts to enter the EU market. This growth is a significant leap from the 70 startups highlighted in previous reports, reflecting both maturity and regional connectivity.

The Romanian ecosystem is marked by a pragmatic approach, with many startups targeting professional and institutional players rather than solely focusing on consumer-driven trends. This shift, compared to the hype of five years ago, underlines the founders’ focus on delivering impactful and scalable solutions.

Some of these startups have gained international recognition, presenting at global medical conferences and entering international markets. At the same time, Romania has become a hub for startups from countries such as Poland, Czechia, and Estonia, attracted by collaboration opportunities.

Opportunities and Challenges for Growth

The ecosystem’s maturity is evidenced by its “experimenter” status (level 3 out of 5), as confirmed by an evaluation conducted by EIT Health in April 2023. This positions Romania alongside Italy and Poland in healthtech ecosystem maturity. However, significant challenges remain, especially regarding governmental support. The upcoming National Digital Health Strategy, set to begin implementation in 2025, is expected to provide a clearer path for integrating digital tools—many developed by startups—into the national healthcare framework.

Additional funding opportunities are also on the horizon. The Draghi Report by the new European Commission revealed that innovation should be a priority for all EU member states and the currently under implementation PNRR Digitalisation for Hospitals program will strengthen the framework that can drive  hospital-startup collaborations. Notable projects such as Healthchain, where the Medisprof Oncological Center collaborates with Rayscape, exemplify the potential for such partnerships to foster trust, innovation and impact for all stakeholders involved.

Scaling Up and Building Bridges

Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation at FreshBlood HealthTech, the EIT Health RIS Hub for Romania, highlights the maturation of Romania’s healthtech ecosystem, which has grown, with over 100 startups, to a dynamic community of innovators. Successful examples include Synaptic, which expanded to over 20 oncology centers and secured €1.5 million in grants, demonstrating the potential for scaling impactful solutions.

“Despite limited resources, Romanian startups are becoming increasingly competitive,” Dr. Ion Petrovai observes. EIT Health’s efforts to connect these startups with the European ecosystem have been instrumental. 

However, Dr. Petrovai emphasizes the need for greater local contributions, advocating for increased allocation of resources and the creation of flagship events. Among the ambitious plans is organizing a medical hackathon in collaboration with MIT Hacking Medicine, envisioned as a reference event for Eastern Europe.

Ion-Gheorghe also acknowledges challenges brought on by the IT crisis, which exposed gaps in product development. Yet, this period also revealed opportunities for startups to focus on quality over quantity. “Customer feedback is now at the forefront of validating innovative solutions,” he says.

He further elaborates on the role of programs like LevelUP, Hubvantage and Health Innovation Zone in preparing startups for market entry. These programs provide practical feedback, connections to advisors, and a platform for refining ideas. Dr. Petrovai emphasizes that fostering collaboration between Romanian and international stakeholders remains critical for scaling efforts.

Growing Startup Support through Tailored Programs

Adriana Dunca, RIS Program Manager FreshBlood, underscores the evolution of the Hubvantage program, designed to provide Romanian startups with the mentorship and resources they need to thrive. Now in its third year, Hubvantage offers tailored mentorship based on a rigorous needs assessment conducted by specialists from partner organizations. 

Hubvantage is a personalized support program for HealthTech startup founders, with all year round activities specifically designed to help HealthTech startup founders get the support they need to move to the next level. The program offers founders: thorough needs assessment and identification of the immediate needs to address, personalized one-on-one mentoring with healthcare, technical mentors and relevant patients/users, the opportunity to be part of an exclusive club of health founders that inspire and support each other, specially designed events with relevant high quality content, access to opportunities and resources, national and international exposure through the consortium network.

The Hubvantage program is organized in collaboration by FreshBlood HealthTech, HIVE Center for Health Innovation of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca and Activize and is supported by EIT Health.

A notable enhancement in 2024 was the introduction of a “mix and match” event, where startups engaged in focused 15-minute sessions with stakeholders, including hospital representatives and specialists. “Startups appreciated this fast, contextual approach,” says Dunca. Looking ahead, plans for 2025 include further customization to align with startups’ evolving needs

The EIT RIS Hub in Romania has also flourished under EIT Health’s guidance, particularly in the health sector. “We’ve seen significant growth in startups’ interest in tackling mental health problems, which is aligned with European health trends, “Dunca notes. Programs like LevelUP (Health & Life Sciences Accelerator) and FIX (Cluj Innovation & eXperiment Fund) have accelerated this growth, emphasizing the importance of tailored support and community-building.

Accelerating Health Innovation with Community Support

The LevelUP Health & Life Sciences accelerator, led by Anca Roman, exemplifies how healthtech programs adapt to ecosystem needs. Initially launched with a straightforward structure, the program’s second edition introduced competitive elements, including a mid-program ‘cut-off’ to enhance focus and drive. 

 LevelUP Health & Life Sciences Accelerator program in Cluj-Napoca has been developed with assistance from EIT Health as part of their DRIVE program by INNO, the North-West of Romania Regional Development Agency’s department responsible for regional innovation and attracting investors.

“We’re considering aligning the program’s schedule with specific health challenges, possibly integrating hackathons,” Roman explains. She highlights the program’s broader impact in fostering a supportive community where networking and collaboration thrive. “Around 20% of accelerated ideas have potential market viability, which is a promising outcome,” she adds.

Validating Ideas and Tackling Global Health Challenges

The impact of the LevelUP accelerator extends to projects like Forkpie, a startup addressing childhood obesity through personalized nutrition advice for parents. Entering the program with an unclear direction, the team received valuable feedback that helped them validate their idea, pivot their project, and focus on market-specific solutions. “The accelerator emphasized the importance of testing and validating ideas,” they shared, noting significant changes in their product development.

Forkpie’s app uses AI to analyze children’s meals and provide personalized insights to parents, starting locally in Romania with plans for EU and global expansion. The team credits the program for teaching them to focus efforts and avoid non-essential tasks, ensuring a targeted market approach. “The program helped us plan for scalable growth while solving one problem at a time,” they emphasized.

Reflecting on Seven Years of Progress

EIT Health’s presence in Romania has catalyzed the healthtech ecosystem’s evolution. Programs like Hubvantage and LevelUP have nurtured startups, while initiatives such as the EIT RIS Hub and Health Innovation Zone have cultivated a culture of collaboration and innovation.

Adriana Dunca’s focus on tailored mentorship, Ion Petrovai’s advocacy for scaling impactful solutions, and Anca Roman’s dedication to community-building all underscore a shared commitment to advancing health innovation. 

As Romania’s healthtech ecosystem continues to mature, the lessons learned from EIT Health’s journey provide a roadmap for future growth—one that emphasizes adaptability, collaboration, and the unwavering pursuit of innovation.

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On Thursday, 19 September 2024, Morning Health Talks #2 was organized by FreshBlood HealthTech, the local representative of EIT Health in Romania, an event that brought together healthcare innovators, entrepreneurs, and experts in a hybrid format in Cluj-Napoca and online. The event focused on real-world case studies, best practices, and lessons learned in healthcare innovation. 

The EIT Health Morning Health Talks is an event series organized by the EIT Health Hubs in the RIS countries, running for 4 years now. The aim is to strengthen relationships between the local, regional, and national stakeholders of the healthcare innovation ecosystems, through honest, professional discussions. 

The theme of this year’s event in Cluj-Napoca, Open Innovation in Healthcare, provided a platform to explore the latest trends and challenges in this dynamic field. Key international and local voices came together to discuss the role of open innovation in improving healthcare outcomes, especially in startup environments.

The event highlighted key strategies and challenges in leveraging external resources to foster innovation in the healthcare sector. 

Key Speakers and Highlights

One of the main speakers was Maria Sanchis Amat, PhD – Senior Open Innovation & Innovative Procurement Manage at EIT Health Germany. An organization renowned for its work in healthcare innovation, EIT Health has established itself as a leader in fostering open innovation across Europe, and Maria’s presentation emphasized the importance of adapting successful European programs to local contexts, particularly in Romania. The LevelUP startup accelerator, which was highlighted at the event, serves as a model for such adaptation.

To further contextualize open innovation within the healthcare sector, the event brought together both international and Romanian speakers. 

For instance, Jorge Pimenta – Innovation Director at Space Solutions Portugal presented tangible examples of local initiatives that bridge the gap between global innovation and local implementation, while Sándor Kovács – Health Economist, Division of Pharmacoeconomics at Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Pécs & Senior Researcher at Syreon Research Institute discussed critical aspects of health economics and outcomes research (eHTA), often overlooked by startups in the tech and healthcare space.

Anca Roman – Head of the INNO – Rethinking Business Networks at North West Regional Development Agency, representing LevelUP, the first Health & Life Sciences startup accelerator in Romania, provided valuable insights into Romania’s evolving healthcare ecosystem. 

Additionally, the presence of two National Contact Points (NCPs), Adina Stanculea – NCP EIT Romania & Elena Ungureanu – NCP EIC & EIE Romania, was crucial in highlighting the complexities involved in translating EU funding opportunities into actionable local projects. These NCPs work to localize EU programs like EIT, EIC, and EIE, ensuring that Romanian entities can successfully navigate the application processes.

Finally, the event featured an important discussion with Serban Udrea from Medisprof Cancer Center, a business leader in healthcare, who shared his experience working within the open innovation framework. As a private entity balancing profitability with technological advancement, Serban’s insights into the challenges of integrating startups into healthcare were invaluable.

Serban highlighted the barriers startups face in terms of healthcare regulations and business acumen, and how open innovation can help overcome these obstacles to create a more collaborative and innovative ecosystem.

Lessons Learned from the LevelUP Accelerator

The key takeaway from the LevelUP project, as part of the EIT Health Drive Program, was the importance of community building in creating value within a specific domain.

Presenting the program, which last year involved more than 25 diverse partners including universities, startup associations, media, and medical institutions, Anca ROMAN highlighted that networking and exposure to new stakeholders are as crucial as funding for startups. 

The initial community-focused approach, which connected startups with various entities, proved to be more beneficial than immediate financial support, as it helped startups mature their ideas and attract funding over time.

Best Practices in Collaborating with Medical Startups

The key best practices and lessons learned from collaborating with medical startups, as discussed with Serban Udrea, include understanding the root problem by engaging directly with end-users, personalizing solutions to fit specific medical practices, and presenting clear clinical advantages to gain adoption. 

Cost-effectiveness should be quantified in terms of clinical outcomes and productivity. Conducting research or clinical studies is essential to provide credible evidence of clinical benefits, which is crucial for gaining trust and acceptance in the medical field.

Lessons Learned from Founding a Medical Startup

In the conversation, two of the co-founders of Hello Carl, Vlad Plotean and Florin Leu, shared lessons learned and best practices for founding a medical startup. They emphasized that the initial idea often changes due to market feedback, advocating for continuous market engagement through questionnaires, MVPs, pilot programs, and focus groups.

Networking and partnerships with institutions are crucial, especially in the health industry, where relationships take time to develop. 

They also stressed the importance of leveraging existing solutions to expedite development and seeking advice from specialists, particularly in sensitive health tech areas like their dementia startup. 

Lastly, they highlighted the need to consider cultural and regional differences when planning for a global market.

Best Practices in Tech Transfer and Health Sector Collaboration

Kinga Hening, Tech Transfer Officer at Babes-Bolyai University’s TechTransfer Center, emphasized the importance of collaboration in the health sector, and particularly in Romania.

Kinga highlighted the university’s efforts in integrating research with practical applications, fostering partnerships with various entities like the Romanian Academy, EIT Health, FreshBlood, and startups. The goal is to enhance safety, health and community well-being through technology transfer. 

Kinga underscored the tech transfer office’s role as a facilitator, bridging gaps between research, investors, companies, and hospitals to create beneficial outcomes for the community.

Conclusions

The event highlighted the critical role of open innovation in transforming the healthcare landscape, particularly through collaboration and the sharing of best practices across borders.

With contributions from both international and Romanian experts, the event underscored the importance of building strong communities that bring together diverse stakeholders—universities, startups, medical institutions, and more. This approach, as demonstrated by the LevelUP Accelerator, was shown to be more effective than immediate financial support, helping startups to mature their ideas and create long-term value.

Key lessons from the discussions highlighted that networking, co-creation, and collaboration with a wide range of partners are indispensable for the success of healthcare startups.

Exposure to diverse stakeholders not only enhances innovation but also helps startups navigate the complexities of the healthcare sector, including regulatory barriers and the need for credible clinical evidence.

Ultimately, the event showcased the power of open innovation in overcoming traditional barriers in the healthcare sector, creating a collaborative ecosystem that benefits both startups and the broader medical community.

By fostering connections, building partnerships, and integrating external resources, these initiatives are helping to drive healthcare innovation forward, both in Romania and across Europe.

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On the 25th of May 2023, FreshBlood HealthTech, the local representative of EIT Health in Romania organized in Cluj-Napoca an event part of their Morning Health Talks series, having as main theme “Hospitals and startups, joint drivers of healthcare innovation”.

FreshBlood organizes two Morning Health Talks events per year, focused on how startups can help each other through sharing their achievements and problems.

The discussions of the first edition of this year were centered on real case studies, best practices and lessons learnt from different stakeholders – organizations, startups and hospitals – to boost healthcare innovation through collaboration between healthtech startups and hospitals.

The event started with an introduction of EIT Health and FreshBlood HealthTech priorities in 2023, by Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai. The Romanian NGO will focus this year on supporting an increase of health innovation capacity, while at the same time fostering engagement and generating inspiration in the healthtech community.

Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai also presented the Hubvantage program, launched at the beginning of 2022. Hubvantage is a personalized support program for HealthTech startup founders, with all year round activities specifically designed to help HealthTech startup founders get the support they need to move to the next level. The program offers founders: thorough needs assessment and identification of the immediate needs to address, personalized one-on-one mentoring with healthcare, technical mentors and relevant patients/users, the opportunity to be part of an exclusive club of health founders that inspire and support each other, specially designed events with relevant high quality content, access to opportunities and resources, national and international exposure through the consortium network.

The Hubvantage program is organized in collaboration by FreshBlood HealthTech, HIVE Center for Health Innovation of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca and Activize and is supported by EIT Health.

Next speaker, George Megas, EIT Health HUB and Horizon Europe National Contact Points’ Coordinator at the National Documentation Centre, Athens, Greece explained how they encourage the collaboration between startups and hospitals in Greece.

“We are the EIT Health Hub in Greece, supporting startups in the healthcare sector, and students, trying to do that with the knowledge triangle integration model, connecting startups, industry, academia and research organizations. 

As a hub we have a variety of acceleration programs available for our community startups, depending on their maturity level. We have given more than a million euros to Greek startups through EIT Health in the last five years.

We have a lot of students participating in a variety of EIT Health programs, education programs, summer schools, campuses, we are among the first in recruitment of students EU-wide regarding EIT Health student and education programs. 

In today’s Morning Talk we’ve discussed mostly about how to connect startups with hospitals. EIT Health gave us a mandate last year to create a specific program for this. We selected the category of startups in hospitals and we created the SymbIASIS program.

SymbIASIS comes from the Greek words ‘symbiosis’ and ‘iasis’ which means healing. The goal was to connect the startups with some interesting parties inside the hospitals that were supporting the program, of course, not all Greek hospitals are in the program. We have public hospitals, private hospitals and we had 14 startups participating in 2022. We are going to have 15 more in 2023. In total, with the addition of eight more or seven more new hospitals and clinics this year, we’re going to have 15 hospitals and around 55 startups, and we’re going to do common events to put them in discussions. 

We are not going extremely deep in the technology connection, but we know what the startups are offering. We analyze their maturity and we know what the hospital’s needs through specific surveys, and we put them in common grounds like today’s events, we bring them together to events, we let them discuss.

The most important factor is to find the right person from the hospital with the right culture and mindset that likes and enjoys technology and he is technological savvy and he can understand the solution at hand provided by the startup. So it’s all about people. If you find the right people, then the connection can happen. But of course you have to overcome some regulatory issues or you have to have some procurement methodologies if you are talking with public hospitals. And these things can be overcome if you have the willingness to collaborate or if you have the culture to collaborate.

If you have the right technology, maybe the doctors that know about it and can understand it won’t say no to it, they will look at it, they will support it. And then maybe there are some pilots happening inside the hospitals. 

One other issue is funding, for example we have a startup with a new AI technology to support the anesthesiologist, they’re going to do some testing in some hospitals in Greece, but we are not sure if we can find funding for this. They’re doing it without funding just to collect some data and test their technologies. I think that the government should also support these efforts.The Ministry of Health, the hospital departments should allocate some funding in the innovation departments. They should have specific departments focusing on this. If they don’t have their own department on scouting for technologies then they can rely on EIT Health. We can scale the technology for them through SymbIASIS projects or other projects.”, said George Megas, EIT Health HUB and Horizon Europe National Contact Points’ Coordinator at the National Documentation Centre, Athens, Greece.

Next there were two online presentations, “How to prepare your startup for hospital collaboration” from Petros Papachristou (PhD), Chief Information Officer Hellenic Healthcare Group, Athens, Greece, while Dr. Ionut Nistor – Senior Nephrologist, lecturer at the “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iasi, coordinator at MAVIS Techcenter transfer presented “Startup-hospital collaboration in Romania in 2023 – the UMF Iasi example”.

Petros Papachristou presented the needs in digital technology of a big group of hospitals, Hygeia Group in Greece, as its CIO. He stressed that a hospital needs to have in place a digital strategy, a business model for new solutions, to modernize the IT environment for all hospital basic functionalities and to have structured, medical codified data based on standards. Petros also presented case studies of successful implementations of digital services in their group of hospitals, like the Online Electronic Health Record or the Patient Experience Telemedicine.

Dr. Ionut Nistor presented the MAVIS Center for Innovation and Technology Transfer part of the at the “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iasi, Romania, and some of the projects and activities of this technology transfer center. One of the challenges presented was the management of chronic patients and the process they went through to find solutions created by European startups to solve this problem, with the help of EIT Health.

The event continued with a startups panel with the topic “Collaborating with hospitals do’s and don’ts”, having as invited panelists Stefan Iarca – Co-founder & CEO Rayscape, Andrei Moldovan – Product & Account Manager at MediNav, Alexandru Lazar – Tech Executive and Founder Docviser.

It was very interesting to find from each of the startup founders, how they managed to create the first collaboration with a hospital.

“What has been very important for us was to find what they call an early adopter. We basically found a professor in our hometown of Timisoara, Romania, who was willing to give us a shot, to allow us to test our solution in their hospital, in their clinical environment. That was the point where, by having him and proving to him that the solution is indeed something that could work, it has been much easier from that point on to go to other hospitals and talk to them and say, look, we have this deployment here. The one crucial thing I would say is to get this early adopter to test your solution.”, said Stefan Iarca, Co-founder & CEO Rayscape.

“Once the startup was founded, and we had the MVP ready, we adopted a doctor in a private hospital. We sent him our solution to try it, and he was impressed with it. He also became part of the team. And then with his help, so a down top approach, we managed to get the interest of the hospital where he was working. There was a trial by fire, we entered the market and saw how the product would change or survive. We work now with around 15 hospitals, mainly with private clinics. But we also started working with the Ministry of Health and we have some pilot projects with state hospitals”, added Andrei Moldovan, Product & Account Manager at MediNav.

“We were kind of lucky because my co-founder is a doctor so our advantage was that we started from a real problem existing in hospitals, and we tackled it. Because he is the medical director,  we haven’t encountered any bureaucracy issues. We were able to launch the pilot program into a big county hospital. We had this opportunity to test our first version of the product one year and a half ago. With real data from real patients in the hospitals. We get some feedback. Of course, we had multiple iterations afterwards. It’s an ongoing process. We’re a software development company. So we know exactly what we’re doing. We know how to iterate on the process. So all we needed was the right feedback, from the real hospitals, to understand exactly what’s happening there and what are the challenges.”, said Alexandru Lazar, Tech Executive and Founder Docviser.

The final part of the event was dedicated to the presentation of “The patient feedback monitoring – a modern tool for health managers” by Dragos Vana – Founder Graphs.ro.

FreshBlood HealthTech, Cluj based NGO, is one of the main catalysts for healthcare innovation in Romania, supporting healthcare related startups since 2017. The NGO is also the hub of EIT Health in Romania starting from 2018.

Adriana Dunca, RIS Program Manager FreshBlood, explained the scope of the Morning Health Talks series of the events, and also informed of the other events and programs for startups they organize in Romania.

“We organize two Morning Health events per year, for this event our purpose was to have international speakers, local speakers and startups talking about how they work/collaborate with hospitals and their challenges and lessons learned. We focus a lot on startups helping each other through sharing information, sharing the process and sharing their problems. And I think we really accomplished that.

For this year, we will also have two satellite events in Techsylvania (How to tech in HealthTech – the startup way and GIPIA informal gathering) and also we will have HealthTech Next Generation #4 in December. So these are our major events. We also have the Hubvantage program in which we will have about four more events, and also the mentorship part. We’re also collaborating with LevelUP, the first Health & Life Sciences startup accelerator in Romania, where we are offering support and mentorship. We are also part of DIGIT-PRE – The European support programme for Innovative Solutions in Prevention, Prediction & Remote care. DIGIT-PRE combines 10 regional ecosystems (across 7 European countries) with diverse economic profiles. We helped identify and formulate the challenges and we still have a lot of things to do this year. 

We are always looking for new opportunities to help startups so we might just create new services/programs according to the feedback that we have. In whatever we do, we focus on the startups and with all the experience that we have, we see where we can help them improve. That’s how the Hubvantage program appeared. What we do is we try to connect the community and help them share information among them: startups, founders and mentors.”, said Adriana Dunca, RIS Program Manager FreshBlood.

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INNO, the North-West of Romania Regional Development Agency’s department responsible for regional innovation and attracting investors, launches the first accelerator in Romania exclusively dedicated to startups in the fields of health and life sciences, LevelUP Health & Life Sciences Accelerator.

The accelerator has been developed with assistance from EIT Health as part of their Drive program. The accelerator offers expert assistance to teams looking to hasten the commercialization, validation, promotion, and sales of their solutions, obtain authorizations or access funding sources.

Early-stage startups that are registered with the Trade Registry and working on solutions in the fields of life sciences and health can apply until April 2, 2023. Teams with just a prototype may also apply, but they must commit to forming a commercial company by the end of the acceleration program. Teams can apply by filling out this form.

LevelUP Health & Life Sciences Accelerator will take place in Cluj-Napoca over ten meetings spread over a period of six months, with the possibility of attending online. The program will start with a bootcamp designed to improve participants’ understanding of business development and introduce them to the accelerator’s specialists, with whom they will collaborate to chart their personal roadmap. Based on this plan, start-ups will conduct specific activities using the resources provided in the accelerator to validate the business hypotheses underlying their solutions and get closer to their objectives.

The bi-monthly meetings will provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to share the results of their activities, as well as the lessons they have learned and other important nuances they have discovered in front of a panel of regional and international experts who will provide critical feedback. Between these meetings, participants will focus on executing their tasks and mentoring activities, with teams having direct access to any of the program’s experts and 1-on-1 meetings with them. 

At the end of each meeting, there will be advanced workshops on topics relevant to their businesses, such as obtaining accreditations for medical devices, protecting intellectual property, promoting and selling their solutions, developing strategic partnerships and networking, attracting public and private funding, validating problems or solutions, and many other topics of interest to the field in which they operate.

The program’s highlight is Demo Day, where start-ups will have the opportunity to pitch in front of investors and experts and convince them to join their cause.

The program’s intrinsic value is of 8,000 euros per team, without quantifying the direct and indirect benefits resulting from interactions with experts, promoting ideas internationally, and being integrated into the international network of NW RDA and EIT Health partners.

The program would not have existed without the support of local and regional partners: the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca, the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, the Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, the Technical University Cluj-Napoca, FreshBlood, Fortech, Nagarro, Linnify, Activize, Transilvania IT Cluster, ROTSA, ClujIT Cluster, Startup Reaktor, Make IT in Oradea, AI Minded, Telios Care, the Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council, and many others.

More details about the program can be found on the INNO platform.

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In 2022 the Romanian HealthTech ecosystem grew in maturity and got more visibility on the European map of HealthTech innovation, with the support of catalyst organizations like FreshBlood and ROHealth and through the achievements of MedTech startups like re.flex. The ecosystem has seen in 2022 the launch of Hubvantage, a new mentorship program with the objective of capacity building at the level of the healthtech ecosystem and of BIOdyssey, a hub dedicated to healthcare innovation.

Together with Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation at FreshBlood HealthTech, the local NGO representing EIT Health in Romania, we reviewed the main highlights of the Romanian HealthTech ecosystem in 2022.

Launch of the Hubvantage mentorship program

Launched at the begining of 2022, Hubvantage is a program organized in collaboration by FreshBlood, HIVE Center for Health Innovation of Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and Activize that has the objective of capacity building at the level of the HealthTech ecosystem. 

The program is supported by EIT Health and helps health tech founders get reality based feedback from mentors and from more advanced startup founders from the health tech ecosystem.

“Until now we’ve organized seven events that had the purpose of exposing the founders to relevant information, both technical and activity based from the more advanced founders, as well as exposing the doctors with HealthTech, to the innovation mindset and methodology, and examples of innovation from the ecosystem. We are also organizing mentorship sessions based on an evaluation of startup needs that are answered by relevant mentors as well as more advanced founders.”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation at FreshBlood HealthTech, the local NGO representing EIT Health in Romania.

Re.flex, a Romanian HealthTech startup included in the apps approved to be reimbursed in Germany through the DiGA system

In 2022, Romania got more visible on the map of HealthTech innovation and one of the examples is re.flex, a Romanian startup which was included in the apps approved to be reimbursed in Germany through the DiGA system. 

DiGAs are “apps on prescription”, digital health applications that can be prescribed by doctors for patient use for a variety of diagnoses. The introduction of DiGAs is quite revolutionary, and Germany has officially introduced a legal framework to include digital health care innovation into primary care.

re.flex is the most accurate digital assistant for MSK physical therapy on the market. It helps patients treat knee, hip and lower back pain effectively and lasting, using validated exercise protocols. With proven results in reducing pain and improving the quality of life, re.flex offers instant 3D feedback to help patients exercise correctly.

In March, FreshBlood organized an event called Morning Health Talks, which talked specifically about the re.flex achievement of being accepted into DiGA. And this provided a lot of inspiration for potential founders by showcasing the example of the re.flex founder, Camil Moldoveanu, and his team.

“When we started five years ago with FresBlood, we wanted to put Romania on the map. And I do believe that re.flex is the proof of innovation made in Romania that can become a reference in much more advanced markets.”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai from FreshBlood HealthTech.

FreshBlood, part of an international consortium with the purpose of identifying and consolidating a portfolio of demand led solutions for the healthcare ecosystem

Recently, FreshBlood became part of an international consortium called DIGIT-PRE, made up of 10 different partners, with the objective to build a collaboration between different partners with the purpose of identifying and consolidating a portfolio of demand led solutions to digitize prevention, prediction and remote care in the healthcare ecosystem. 

The project is focused on the development of the local ecosystem through a call named Interventional Innovation Investment. This consortium is coordinated by ISAB INNOVATION SKANE from Sweden and includes partners from France, Belgium, Finland, Portugal and as well as Hungary and Romania.

“DIGIT-PRE is one of the highlights of the Romanian HealthTech ecosystem, not just for the end of 2022, but will be one of the highlights in the future. We are very happy to be one of the representatives of the Eastern Europe, putting Romania again on the map of healthcare innovation. We are looking forward to connecting this opportunity with the smart specialization strategy of the North-West Region of Romania, but as well as with other regions of Romania.”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai from FreshBlood HealthTech.

Healthcare innovation was identified as one of the three priorities of the smart specialization strategy for the Nord-West Region of Romania, so the participation of FreshBlood in the consortium is well in sync with the expectations of growth of the regional ecosystem.

“FreshBlood is a main regional actor for the ecosystem, and its actions of identifying and consolidating a portfolio of demand led solutions for the healthcare ecosystem are filling an important gap between various actors. The strengthening of FreshBlood as an organization, especially with a participation in an international consortium is very well welcomed and in direct correlation with the expectations of growth of our ecosystem. After a rigorous process, health was identified as one of the three priorities of the Smart Specialization Strategy for the Nord-West Region of Romania. So, sustaining the regional HealthTech ecosystem with specific actions correlated with the main needs for its growth is a key area of focus for RDA North-West. This focus is provided through the action plan of the RIS3, including the North-West Regional Programme for 2021-2027 programming period.”, said Cristian Otgon, Head of Smart Specialization Department at North-West Regional Development Agency of Romania.

The North-West Regional Development Agency of Romania, together with Digital Innovation Zone from Iași, was also part of the EIT Health DRIVE program in 2022, designed to upskill organizations from Central-Eastern and Southern Europe in designing validated, sustainable health & life science startup support programmes tailored to regional needs.

Global StartupCities eHealth Program 2022 announced its winner

Global Startup Cities eHealth program was organized by the Hive Center for Health Innovation together with Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Linnify, identifying and supporting startups in the early stage in order to validate their solution through a model that was proposed by Linnify.

This multi-stage EU eHealth startups competition is a chapter of the Global StartupCity Cluj-Napoca and it’s designed to help early stage health innovation entrepreneurs transform their ideas into world changing companies, faster and smarter. Within this program, Cluj-Napoca is taking care of the healthcare and AI components.

The program and the final competition took place in October 2022 and the winning startup, Synaptiq.io, was promoted through the network of global startup cities at the Unique Summit conference in Braga, Portugal, at the end of November. 

“Global StartupCities Health Initiative means for the city of Cluj-Napoca an amazing opportunity to develop and offer support to the regional ehealth ecosystem, by providing to startups customized training and mentoring through its support process. Additionally, the winner of the StartupCities competition will benefit by support for scientific validation and medium-term mentoring.”, says Razvan M. Chereches, MD PhD, Director HIVE Health Innovation Center.

A growth of maturity at the level of the national HealthTech ecosystem

We are seeing a growth of maturity at the level of the national HealthTech ecosystem with some opportunities potentially provided by the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Romania (PNRR) financed by the EU. The telemedicine norms have been released at the end of September and there is hope that Romanian telemedicine startups will also benefit from the implementation of this regulation. 

The end of the year also saw the launch of BIOdyssey, an innovation hub based in Bucharest, which is dedicated to healthcare and it is supported both by the university environment as well as by know-how brought from the USA, but filtered in Israel for a better connection with the environment in Eastern Europe. This hub will train innovators and later on provide the additional funding solutions to the innovators that are actually growing their project at the fundable level.

“BIOdyssey is the first hub focused on innovation in HealthTech in Romania, founded with experts in the field from Israel and the US. Through BIOdyssey we want to help those Romanians who want to develop HealthTech solutions and have an impact on healthcare with the help of technology, by offering them all tools and assistance they need to succeed: an innovation framework which has been tested and validated for many years in Israel, access to international experts in the technical, medical and business fields from Israel, the USA and Japan (among others) to mentor our teams, to help them with identifying and validating ideas that are competitive at a global level and to give them support on the technical and business implementation of those ideas. Concretely, this would include helping entrepreneurs find investors in their field, and opportunities to access our international network of hospitals and accelerators. BIOdyssey offers all of this through 2 distinct programs: the Germination program, which has already started and can be compared to a “Mini MBA for startups” focused on identifying and validating business ideas. The acceleration program follows the 1st, and is focused on accelerating the most promising ideas and teams from the Germination program. Though startups which have not gone through the Germination program are also eligible to apply. BIOdyssey is the bridge in HealthTech between Romania and the most innovative ecosystems in HealthTech in the world: Israel and the US.”, says Elena Ovreiu, co-founder and CEO BIOdyssey.

One other highlight of autumn was the annual hackathon for health organized by the Medical University in Bucharest together with support from Johnson & Johnson. This hackathon once again showed the potential of Romanian innovators to solve relevant problems. Another hackathon, EIT i-Days, was organized in Cluj-Napoca, at the Hive Center for Health Innovation, with support by EIT Health. The event focused on neurology and enjoyed the collaboration with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the jury at the final presentation.

The ecosystem saw activity also at the level of clusters, the healthcare clusters now having their regular conference, at the end of October. Not only a conference where you see people from different institutes of research or from different companies which are focused on innovation in healthcare, but an opportunity to connect to international organizations to explore the partnerships and see potential opportunities of developing your own projects. The BEhealth conference organized by ROHealth cluster, is now an important part of the ecosystem, with FreshBlood and EIT Health supporting both the educational session as well as the international startup competition that took place in the conference.

“Our focus for the next year is very much linked with sustainability. Because in the future there will be less and less money coming from the EU to support innovation. And we need to find internal resources both public and private. And this is going to be done only through partnerships. We are beginning to explore partnerships with potential other players in the ecosystem. We will prepare a fundraising campaign for the beginning of the next year, as well as building on the projects that have been visible and that can make a difference in healthcare in Romania, Europe and in the world.”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation at FreshBlood HealthTech.

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EIT Health, a network of best-in-class health innovators supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, decided four years ago to come towards the Romanian healthTech ecosystem by opening a call for a local hub at the beginning of 2018.

In the last four years, EIT Health has been a provider of networking and know-how, a supporter of Romanian healthTech startups and innovation projects, and a platform for collaboration. 

EIT Health provided the ecosystem with connection to the European healthcare ecosystem and to the level of activity and understanding that is present in other healthTech innovation centers around Europe like Barcelona, Budapest, Berlin or London. Since the beginning, EIT Health has been represented in Romania by FreshBlood HealthTech, a Cluj-based NGO that supports health innovation by connecting innovators to things that they need, providing feedback and mentoring.

Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation at FreshBlood HealthTech, the EIT Health RIS Hub for Romania, is convinced that EIT Health helped pushed the local ecosystem “to build the table” and to invite around it all the stakeholders, most of the universities, the doctors interested in healthcare innovation, the local authorities and companies.

“Evolution can only happen if everybody is contributing. I like a lot a quote, ‘collaboration moves with the speed of trust’, and we needed to grow our collaboration to increase the trust in each other and actually further develop our contribution in the ecosystem, if we want to actually use the resources that we have, and become more visible on the European and also on the international map.”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation at FreshBlood HealthTech.

Results of the involvement of the EIT Health in the Romanian healthTech ecosystem

The results of the involvement of the EIT Health in the Romanian healthTech ecosystem began to be visible especially in the last two years, but the activity was intense all the last four years.

Between 2018-2019, the beneficiaries of the EIT Health programs were mostly individuals, students or young professionals that attended courses or participated in different programs.

From 2019, and especially in 2020, the local ecosystem got to the level where the Romanian startups began to apply at European level and began to be selected as beneficiaries of local innovation grants. 

In 2019, the Romanian startups had three winners from the twelve grants that were given, while in 2020 the local ecosystem received four grants from the total of fifteen grants that were given. There were also six startups that won different grants in different competitions from EIT Health in 2020. 

“While in 2020 we had a year of quantity, and I’m very happy to say that 2021 was a year of quality, as Romanian startups began to be among the winners of competitions. I would just like to mention here MyTully that not only entered in the InnoStars Awards, but won the first place of the competition, and also another startup from the Cluj-Napoca ecosystem, .lumen, which this year won the first European Innovation Council funding.”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai.

Cluj-Napoca-based startup .lumen has received in 2021 a funding worth EUR 9,3 million in the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator. In 2020, .lumen was among the winners of the Headstart program of the EIT Health, winning 50,000 euros to develop the project.

“EIT Health and FreshBlood have been with us from day 0 of .lumen as a company (May 2020). We won support and a 50k EUR grant and we are continuing through their programs. Just a few days ago we became the first Romanian company to receive EIC funding. Even when applying to EIC, we’ve got support from EIT. We got very far, in a very short time, because of partners such as FreshBlood and EIT Health.”, says Cornel Amariei, CEO & Founder of .lumen.

EIT Health can also be considered among the most important investors in healthcare innovation in Romania through the grants it offered in 2020 and 2021. At the same time, it’s a way for the startups and for the innovators to raise their level and to compete at a higher level than they used before. 

A number of Romanian startups have international collaborations with partners from Europe which they got through the EIT Health Network, which is essential if they want to understand where they are, what they need to do to grow and at the end to transform their knowledge and motivation into actual results.

Impact of EIT Health within the Romanian ecosystem

As per Dr. Ion Petrovai observations, everybody that got connected with the EIT Health has improved their way of thinking and have now a much more applied approach to innovation.

A lot of researchers see innovation as a way to put their knowledge and their results into the market, but the approach of EIT Health is that you need to start with the problem, and not with the results of your research. The research results might be very valuable, however they need to be connected to a problem, which is the most effective way to approach innovation especially in healthcare. This approach is changing the mindsets from ‘I’m smart and you need to listen to me’ to ‘Let me better understand what you need, and I will try to help you‘.

Another observed impact of EIT Health and EIT is that it creates a mindset of collaboration. The EIT’s HEI Initiative helps higher education institutions build the capacity to teach innovation and entrepreneurship. One of the cross-section programs that was launched this year is encouraging universities to collaborate and to build an ecosystem, a mindset of innovation in their institutions.

EIT Health is requesting specifically not only to do just classes with students, but to create a vision and to be committed to that vision. Two of the biggest universities in Cluj-Napoca, Babes-Bolyai University and the Technical University are now part of the higher education innovation EIT programs. 

Besides the financing that EIT Health is bringing to the ecosystem it is also pushing the stakeholders to collaborate, requesting a different approach to the projects: focus on the problem and not on an idea, because an idea is only as good as it solves a problem.

EIT Health and FreshBlood next steps to develop the healthTech ecosystem

FreshBlood will dedicate the next few years to accelerate collaborations between startups, other stakeholders and funding, aiming to become self-sustainable.

FreshBlood is now planning to build in Cluj-Napoca a Health Tech Hub for startups that need to get their reality check faster and to get potential collaborators from the medical field, doctors but not only, nurses, pharmacists, healthcare administrators, healthcare organizations, both in the private and in the public sector. The hub is to be launched at the beginning of 2022.

Becoming self-sustainable is another key goal of FreshBlood for next year, meaning that the ecosystem will need to find resources within. If it sees healthcare innovation as relevant and a priority, the ecosystem will need to prove this by putting resources on the table, meaning people, financing and access to facilities.

“We believe that the other stakeholders, like the companies and the local administration, should come forward with resources that can be used for everybody’s benefit. As an example, the infusion that the grant from EIC to .lumen will bring in the ecosystem (9.3 million euro), will impact us all even though we had different roles in the winning of the prize. There will be things built in our ecosystem and used in from that financing and this is our larger target, to build something valuable enough in order to attract funding and interest.”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai.

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Cluj-based Stressless, developers of TULLY, a wearable emotional monitoring and control device for children diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) announced the closing of the first angel funding round of €45,000 from a group of tech angels investors, including Dragos Nicolaescu (founder of Tech Startup School), Niculae Dinca and Emmett King (Co-founder of Transylvania Angels Network, Cluj).

The funding adds to an €75,000 EIT Health – RIS InnoStars grant, in which Stressless collaborates with the Faculty of Psychology of Babeș-Bolyai University from Cluj-Napoca and FreshBlood (the EIT Health RIS hub for Romania), and will be used to further development and large scale testing of the device and for a crowdfunding campaign launch towards the end of the year.

TULLY is a wearable device monitoring physiological indicators, helping children with ADHD and their therapists by providing external input for stress and agitation awareness, and by improving the therapist’s visibility on his patient emotional evolution and therapy efficiency. Hyperactivity in ADHD is linked to intellectual challenge and mental strain and manifests mostly during school lessons. The intellectual challenge increases the children’s stress until an emotional flare episode. This can happen multiple times a day, interrupting classes and leading to the children’s marginalization, with sever effects on their development. 

Stressless was founded in 2017 and in the last 3 years the four founders, specialized in Psychology, Strategy and Sales, Electronics, Hardware and Embedded Software Development, went through several product variants, reaching the second version of the fully functional prototype earlier this year.

Dragos Nicolaescu, mentor and lead investor, said: “At a startup that does not yet have a product launched, but only a prototype and some functional tests, the only thing you can evaluate is the quality and seriousness of the founders. And you don’t realize their quality just by watching them at a presentation or a coffee, but by working together”, mentioning the fact that he discovered them last summer, when they sent a pitch deck on the TechAngels website and has been working with them since then.

“Knowing the team for some time, it’s not hard to appreciate the dedication and passion that they invest in helping children, parents and last but not least, doctors who use the TULLY app. In addition, the financing of this startup is an excellent example of communication and inter-organizational support, which brought together various members of the Romanian startup ecosystem, including: Transilvania Angels Network, TechAngels, Cluj Startups, FreshBlood, Babeș-Bolyai University and EIT Health”, mentioned Emmett King, co-founder of Transilvania Angels Network and one of the investors.

“We see now healthtech startups from Cluj and Romania assuming global ambitions and being supported by different ecosystem players. This is a proof that the ecosystem is developing and the connections between the players are strengthening, and we are looking forwards to see the healthtech innovators like the TULLY team having an impact at european and global level”, added Dr. Ion Petrovai, from FreshBlood, the EIT Health RIS hub for Romania, and one of the main catalysts of innovation in healthcare in the region.

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In a first of a kind move in the academic history of the city, the big four universities of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, gathered their forces to organize Innovation Days (iDays), an innovathon dedicated to healthcare, which took place in Cluj between 1-2 November 2019. This is the first time such an event was organized by all the big universities in Cluj as equal partners, bringing together their knowledge in the benefit of the patients, the healthcare system and the community as a whole. Cluj-Napoca (often referred to simply as Cluj) is the unofficial capital of Transylvania and one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan cities in Eastern Europe, a cultural center, an academic hub, and of one the most important innovation hubs of the country.

The participating universities were Babes-Bolyai University (UBB), the University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMF), the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (USAMV), and the Technical University (UTCN), with the support of the Liver Research Club and the Student Entrepreneurship Association “Iuliu Hațieganu”. The 8 hours long innovathon was part of the EIT Health iDays, an event which took place in 31 locations within several countries across Europe, during which students met to develop and present their digital health projects. The event aims to show how innovative ideas targeting the health sector can be transformed into real life projects, with impact on the patients and the healthcare system. During the program, students are presented with practical tools for health innovation and work in multidisciplinary teams to address real health challenges.

iDays is a unique annual series of events designed to promote innovation in healthcare among students, through a 2 day program conducted within academic institutions in Europe. The event was held in some of the top universities in Europe, like Oxford and Imperial College in the UK or the University of Tartu in Estonia (ranked as one of the best in Eastern Europe). Romania is one of the 20 EU countries where iDays were organized this year, with the support of FreshBlood HealthTech Community, the EIT Health RIS hub for Romania. EIT Health is an European network of 140 leading medical, pharmaceutical, technology companies, research institutions and universities, supported by the European Union.

Making an impact together

The host of the event, UMF, already had a group which was working on innovation and digital health, but decided to co-organize this event when they noticed that within their incubator they were lacking the know-how from the technical part or some other input that could be complimented from people with different backgrounds, more likely to be found in this kind of competitions.

“I think it’s a first step of bringing all the universities on the same table and to actually realize that we have the knowledge to properly impact our communities.”, said Radu Pirlog, PhD student at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, member of the jury and representative of university hosting the event.

While for the universities its important to know each other, to see what kind of projects they are each involved in and to apply together for funding to support their research and innovation, from the point of view of the innovation ecosystem, there is a big need to put together the research part with the practical aspects of the research, to create a link between the academia and the startups environment ecosystem, and the students are seen as having a great potential, as they can be a link between these two, as they are more open minded and more eager to develop their ideas.

“I believe that’s the role of universities, as hubs and accelerators of knowledge producing, and I believe we need to move into to the next steps, not just doing business as usual, doing education, as we did until now, but we need to step it up, to actually push the students to face real life problems and try to generate real life solutions”, said Razvan Chereches, professor of Public Health at Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj.

During the event, the students formed multidisciplinary teams (with medical, technical or economic backgrounds) and tried to solve real healthcare challenges, focusing on the medical care outside the hospital, at home. To address the challenges, they used their business skills and digital health ideas, while mentors with experience in the field of healthcare innovation helped them build their projects. At the end of the event, the teams presented their ideas and were judged by a group of experts who used standardized scoring criteria to award the best teams.

“For students I think it’s really important to see that they get support, and that the faculty acknowledges them, their potential in doing more than learning in different classes, on taking exams. For our faculty this is really important because if they succeed, we succeed.”, said Adina Rus, from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj, and member of the jury at iDays Cluj.

Bringing change by addressing real life problems

The jury chose as the winner of the competition a project called Simply Care, a personal health assistant, a wristband that will give advice based on the condition of the patient. Simply Care targets old people which don’t understand their disease and need support in a situation where the medical doctors don’t always have time to follow them and to give them explanation on a day to day basis. 

“It was really nice to make something really from nothing, in just one day. It was a lot of pressure, because you have to do a lot of research, to be sure that your solutions attacks the problem, and it’s relevant and a strong one. And you have only one day to build a business, which is really hard, but also exhilarating when you succeed.”, said Beniamin Matei from the winning team of the iDays Cluj, with project Simply Care.

The winning team will participate to the Winners Event, which will take place in Paris on December 1st, 2019, where they will meet with colleagues from all the participating universities. During the event in Paris, the students will be provided with support and resources to further develop their ideas and will also receive additional training in innovation methodology.

“We have a lot of work to do, in food, in health, in public services. We have to change a lot of things, and with this involvement of the students, we can do more for the community of Cluj, and our region.”, said Lucian Cuibus, from the University of Agriculture, Food and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj.

The civil society creates the glue of the innovation ecosystem

As EIT Health is trying to establish and promote the cooperation between universities and industry, the significant glue for an ecosystem to foster innovation is seen as the self organized element of the ecosystem, the civil society. And this is where Cluj, compared to other regions of Romania and even compared to other cities in the CEE, makes a significant difference, by having a good cohesion between the key players of the ecosystem, mostly because the vibrancy of its civil society. This makes the whole communication between the partners not about what is in the research department of the universities, or what is in the technology departments of the industry, but it’s building up from the actual needs of the market, which are the patients, which is the unmet need, where the whole ecosystem should be built around.

“I believe that innovation is about private individuals and Cluj happens to have some very strong, very dedicated private individuals. That’s one of the most important factors for innovation, because if you don’t have dedicated private people who have the ambition to make the system better, then it will not work. The civil society is very present in Cluj and I am missing this one, even in my own ecosystem in Budapest, because that is the glue, that is what is taking the whole system together, the catalyst, which makes it move. Everybody is very happy in the status quo, and everybody knows the change is painful, change is difficult, change will help some, and change will deprive some from the rights from the status and everything, but change is inevitable, the digital has come, up on our necks, you cannot resist it, so it’s better just to get in front and just start a change”, said Marton Kis, Health Innovation Expert from the Semmelweis University, Budapest.

FreshBlood, a Cluj based NGO which aims to support health-related startups is now seen by most of the key players in the local ecosystem as the main catalyst for healthcare innovation, and an expression of the involvement of the local civil society. FreshBlood is also one of the hubs of the EIT Health in Romania, and in May 2019 has become connected to the European Connected Health Alliance, a European network of ecosystems, forming the regional network Transylvania Digital Health Ecosystem, with the purpose of increasing the quality of the regional health services, through European collaboration and technology. The vision of the Transylvanian Digital Health Ecosystem is to become a dedicated healthcare focused innovation accelerator for Eastern Europe. 

A win – win situation for the universities, the students, the patients, the local community, and the businesses

For the universities, an event like iDays brings visibility and new opportunities for collaborations, both with the local and international partners, while for the students it brings opportunities to work in an multidisciplinary environment, opening their minds, finding new ways of approaching their ideas of healthcare. For the students of medicine in particular, events like this makes them understand what healthcare is outside of the patients and outside of the disease, by approaching healthcare in a more holistic way. For the local community the hope is that some of the ideas that are going to be generated in such events, can be applied in the future, for the benefit of the community.

“I think for the local community, it offers an opportunity for students to innovate. Students need events where they can innovate. An event that’s taking place each year, can have a good impact on community because some of the ideas can be can can become startups, real products on the market, and this is something interesting for community, to have their own products, which are innovative and started from here from Cluj.”, said Valentin Sita from the Technical University of Cluj.

Thinking of EIT Health, its main mission and vision, to facilitate the conversion of the research and the conversion of the technology of research of universities and technology and product scopes of industry, for long time, due to a rusty mentality, this two tended to speak in parallel, not matching their ideas, not getting into actual production. That’s why for the ecosystem it’s important to catalyze the transition and the communication, and to put into the scope the actual need of the patient, the unmet need, so that the two main players, the academia and the industry, can align, and the final result to become useful and sustainable.

As a next step for the ecosystem, the idea of a healthcare innovation incubator in Cluj is starting to take roots, and has attracted supporters from outside Romania too. Roel Kamerling, managing coordinator for public-private innovation programs at the Technical University of Delft (TU Delft), the Netherlands is one of them. During a visit to assess the health innovation ecosystem of Cluj, Roel endorsed the idea of creating a innovation incubator in Cluj, a place where startups from the HealthTech area could develop, receive support and get connections to relevant partners, based on the model of the YES!Delft incubator, ranked the best business incubator affiliated with a university in Europe, according to the UBI Ranking, and number 2 in the world.

For Cluj, the future of innovation looks bright, as Razvan Chereches sees the ecosystem strongly coming together, and the universities transforming themselves and becoming a force for innovation in the city: “In Cluj we have the ferment for a real culture of innovation. There are a lot of forces are coming together and they’re starting to complement each other. We have a chance here to transform the university into what it was meant to be initially: integrating the community and pushing the community forward.”.

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