MedTech | Startups&TheCity

Morning Health Talks: best practices in fostering collaboration between startups and hospitals

Sebastian Florian — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 06:02:05 +0000

Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation at FreshBlood HealthTech

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.

George Megas, EIT Health HUB and Horizon Europe National Contact Points’ Coordinator at the National Documentation Centre, Athens, 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.

Startups panel with the topic “Collaborating with hospitals do’s and don’ts”

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.

Adriana Dunca, RIS Program Manager FreshBlood

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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Telios Care and Cluj Business Campus to launch the first hybrid clinic in Romania, in Cluj-Napoca

Sebastian Florian — Wed, 25 May 2022 07:46:28 +0000

Vlad Buzoianu, CEO of Cluj Business Campus and Philip Choban, CEO & Founder of Telios Care.

Telios Care, a pioneer in telemedicine in Romania, and Cluj Business Campus announced the opening of the first hybrid clinic in Romania, which combines the services of a normal clinic with telemedicine and homecare visits. The clinic will be opened in an office campus dedicated to both the employees who work and live in the campus and employees residing in Cluj-Napoca and the surrounding areas.

The new medical unit will become the place where patients will have access to full medical care services covering all 23 specialties offered by Telios Care, making Telios the only experienced telemedicine company in Eastern Europe now giving people a ‘real choice’.

The investment in this new project is projected to be between 500.000 and 700.000 euros and covers both the purchase of medical equipment and the overall makeover of the space.

„We are pleased to tell the CBC community that starting this year they will have access to high-quality medical services, delivered in a friendly and innovative way. Philip Choban is a visionary and the Telios Care team has proven to be a benchmark in telemedicine in Romania. We believe that the future of medicine, like the future of work, will have a hybrid component and we are honored that they chose Cluj-Napoca and Cluj Business Campus to bring it to life”, says Vlad Buzoianu, CEO of Cluj Business Campus.

This clinic will also be an additional medical unit for those who have access to Telios Care’s medical services with or without health insurance. Both categories will be able to access the medical services at discounted rates and, of course, receive the same personalized care they now receive using telemedicine. Secondly, the general population also has direct access to the clinic and information on how they can benefit from medical services.

„Telios Care was founded with the sole purpose of making health and wellness services as accessible and affordable as possible through new and emergent technologies, being at the same time a patient-oriented business. Now we can move on to the next level and give people the opportunity to choose how they want to receive healthcare. Telemedicine brings the opportunity to reach people in rural communities and the Telios Care team makes this thing happen every day through its international expertise, professionalism and dedication. In fact, our experience in the field of telemedicine is our main asset.” says Philip Choban, CEO & Founder of Telios Care.

Through this partnership, Cluj Business Campus offers its community high-quality medical services and extends the range of services designed to strengthen the philosophy of „1-minute city” and „work-life blending”, which is an essential concept in the Romanian real estate and office building market. It also consolidates the idea that Cluj Business Campus has been outlining since its inception, the opening of the first hybrid clinic in Romania in an office campus. In addition, it reveals the next step in the Telios Care business, Telios Home Visit, the homecare medical service branch that will start this year in Cluj and in a small number of cities, including Bucharest, during the pilot phase. After this period, the service will be available nationwide.

Through its founding members, Telios Care, a pioneer in telemedicine in Romania, brings over 25 years of experience in the United States of America in the field of distance medical care services.

In 2017, together with the other founding members, Lucian Coșoi, Matt Henry (in the USA) and Dr. Adrian Danciu, Philip Choban laid the foundations of the first dedicated telemedicine service in Romania. In its 5 years of existence, it has offered telemedicine services for the employees of more than 200 companies in Romania, covering over 110,000 employees and 23 medical specialties.

The Telios Care team shares the same vision – access to quality medical services, available anytime, anywhere. An easier doctor’s appointment, a better doctor’s appointment. In support of this vision, it is transforming the way beneficiaries and companies use their time and resources.

Cluj Business Campus (CBC) in Cluj-Napoca is a real estate project that brings the concept of a „1-minute city” to the Romanian office market. Offices, apartments, bistros, a rooftop bar, a gym, a fitness room, a park, a kindergarten, an international school, and a podcasting studio are housed in the 30,000 square meters. Today, the campus has adopted the blending work-life philosophy and is building an environment in which wellbeing and sustainability are the main pillars of everyday life.

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Cluj-Napoca appointed leader in healthcare innovation within the European Innovation Area project

Sebastian Florian — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 11:03:31 +0000

On November 25th, during the Global StartUp Summit European conference, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, was appointed as a project leader in healthcare innovation and artificial intelligence within the European Innovation Area (#EiA), a new European project created to encourage innovation, whose ambassador is the European Commissioner for Innovation, Mariya Gabriel. Cluj will act within the #EiA together with Valencia, Cologne, Leuven and other European cities recognized for their initiatives in the fields of innovation and sustainable development.

Under the tagline “MedTech StartupCity Cluj-Napoca”, Cluj-Napoca City Hall will manage within the European Innovation Area a pioneering action at European and global level, called “Health iArea”, aiming to create an attraction point for new economic opportunities for the city related to startups and SMEs, with healthcare products and services for hospitals and citizens.

“Cluj-Napoca now takes over the management of the Health iArea, in order to create new economic opportunities for Romania and Europe. Our goal is to accelerate innovative solutions for one of the most important components of our lives: our health.“, said the mayor of Cluj-Napoca, Emil Boc, following the appointment.

Innovation fund and coworking space dedicated to startups in healthcare and artificial intelligence, financed by the City Hall of Cluj-Napoca

As a first concrete step to support innovation in healthcare and artificial intelligence, the Municipality of Cluj-Napoca will create an innovation fund dedicated to startups, with funding from the local government, alongside private and European funding, as well as a coworking space. The amount announced by Mayor Emil Boc as an investment by the City Hall in the innovation fund amounts to over 500,000 RON, to which private contributions from local businesses, contributions from international foundations (€350,000) and European funding will be added.

“Investing in healthcare innovation is very profitable, but in the longer term. If you invest in innovation, education, startups, that investment goes back into the ecosystem and can generate exponential growth. I am pleased with the initiative of Cluj-Napoca City Hall to create this innovation fund, because investment in innovation has the chance to be multiplied several times. There is a dose of risk, but it is offset by the benefits of the mindset and the benefits of developing and accessing the resources that the ecosystem gains.“, said Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, co-founder of FreshBlood HealthTech community in Cluj, endorsing the decision of the Cluj-Napoca City Hall.

Mayor of Cluj, Mr. Emil Boc presenting the city governance and innovation model at Startup Europe Summit 2019.

According to the statements of Mayor Emil Boc, Cluj-Napoca City Hall wants to offer collaboration opportunities to startups to develop the city’s capabilities in terms of business competitiveness and more. The European Union has specified that the three components that will be emphasized in the next period will be the “green”, “resilience” and “digital”, and within the digital component, the field of healthcare will have an extremely accelerated growth in the next period, being the area most likely to innovate the most. The healthcare field is where it is also expected that most European funds will be concentrated, but also the largest local and national resources.

Cluj ecosystem of healthcare innovation

The pandemic has already proven that only if we work together we can succeed, and the spirit of collaboration is the one which the Cluj innovation ecosystem has embraced for several years, including both local government, local and national NGOs, universities, companies, startups and other institutions.

One of the main catalysts of healthcare innovation and an expression of the involvement of local civil society in Cluj-Napoca is FreshBlood HealthTech, an NGO that has been actively supporting healthcare startups for many years. FreshBlood has been the hub of EIT Health in Romania for several years, and since May 2019 it has become connected to the European Connected Health Alliance, a European ecosystem network, forming the regional network Transylvania Digital Health Ecosystem, in order to increase the quality of regional health services, through European collaboration and technology.

Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Project Director of EIT Health Hub Romania and co-founder of FreshBlood HealthTech.

In 2020, FreshBlood carried out several major projects, including creating a map of Romanian health innovators (startups, innovative projects, etc.), collaborating with universities through GIPIA (Interuniversity Group for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), a group dedicated to interdisciplinary training and encouraging collaboration in research and business development of students, as well as funding innovative projects in healthcare.

“We at EIT Health and Fresh Blood place great value on encouraging discussions and collaborations. We encourage projects in which not only an entity or a person comes up with a solution that they find interesting, but especially projects which are a result of collaboration between several entrepreneurs and which obviously meets all their needs”, says Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Project Director of EIT Health Hub Romania and co-founder of FreshBlood HealthTech.

Other key players in the local healthcare innovation ecosystem include the Transilvania IT Cluster, School of Public Health of Babeș-Bolyai University, and other universities in Cluj, including the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Cluj-Napoca.

They are joined by the business environment and a growing number of successful local startups. Recently, .lumen, a startup from Cluj-Napoca, launched glasses for the blind with a system of assistive technology, which addresses the mobility of the blind. .lumen was founded by Cornel Amariei, inventor, together with Dr. Gabriel Chindriş, university researcher in the field of electronic engineering at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and Mihai Ivașcu, CEO and founder of M3 Holdings. In the last year, .lumen has attracted investments of over €1 million, the organization has tripled its team size compared to May and estimates an increase of over 100 employees by the end of 2021.

Cluj universities, the place where the innovators of tomorrow grow

In addition to local government, NGOs and startups, Cluj universities are one of the key factors in the development of Cluj’s innovation ecosystem. In a webinar organized on November 23rd, 2020 by Forbes Romania and EIT Health, with the theme “How did Romanian healthcare innovators become competitive at European level?”, the representatives of the universities of Cluj-Napoca presented the vision of the university environment on the role it has in the local innovation ecosystem.

Xcite, a Cluj-based startup created by students from the Technical and Medical Universities wants to create the first “digital coffee”, a magnetic field device that increases cognitive performance, similar to the effect of a coffee but without side effects.

Thus, Prof. Christian Săcărea, Vice-Rector of Babeș-Bolyai University (UBB) argued that the university must create an environment conducive to innovation and identification of those who have potential, the role of the university being to open doors, provide opportunities, provide guidance, find those projects applied research to whet the appetite for innovation.

“The innovation component is essential in a university that respects itself and goes beyond its role as a standard trainer. What the university should do, first of all, is to provide an environment conducive to innovation and to identify those who really have potential. We live on a mountain of creativity that students, researchers and teachers have, but it must be valued. In order to value it, you have to find those who really have potential. On a theoretical level, everyone wants to innovate and give their opinion as the best, but to innovate really you have to have the right mindset and you have to be serious in your approach.”, said Prof. Christian Săcărea.

Also, says Christian Săcărea, it is important to bring students in contact with those who know how to do entrepreneurship, in order to have a human-to-human interaction. UBB plans to introduce next year a cross-curricular entrepreneurship course, to which all students will have access and which will be supported by personalities with extensive experience in entrepreneurship.

In his turn, Prof. Răzvan Cherecheș, Director of the Public Health Department / Center for Healthcare Innovation within UBB mentioned that only by financing innovation can we have quick answers. Universities provide a context for innovators and train their teams. Innovation is created by overcoming obstacles, and Romania, considers Prof. Răzvan Cherecheș, is an extremely good place for innovation because there are many obstacles and unmet needs, thus offering phenomenal opportunities.

“With this pandemic, I discovered how unprepared the public health field in Romania was. It caught us completely unprepared. Innovation was not fast enough and well enough funded. We are still in a period of transition. It turned out that only by financing innovation can we have quick answers. We need to see the opportunities. An extremely simple example would be to identify the opportunities that are generated by the deficit. Research in Romania has not been funded for many years. It’s with the wheels up. This means that we have researchers and, implicitly, students who would like to be involved in research, but do not have a context. So, innovation appears as an alternative for them. Therefore, we have a greater involvement of young people in innovation, because the research part is no longer a potential career, due to the lack of funding policies.”, said Prof. Răzvan Cherecheș.

Răzvan Cherecheș considers that we need a reform of the education model, its transformation into a model “problem based education”, in which the teacher transforms into a moderator, facilitator.

Doina Pîslă, Director of the Council for University Doctoral Studies of Technical University of Cluj-Napoca mentioned in her turn, the need for cooperation between the university and companies, mentioning as an example the Technology Transfer Center within the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca.

“Our university also supports innovation and research excellence. What I find extremely challenging is the road from basic research to applied research, which can be done through cooperation between university entities and companies. We, the trainers, must be able to convey to our students and doctoral students how this is done. We support innovation through a Technology Transfer Center that we have at the level of the Technical University, a place where consulting for patents is offered, for example. All patents are analyzed. There are patents even in the field of health, with promising results. Of course, the road is long from idea to implementation in the medical environment, it also depends on the type of application that has been addressed.”, says Doina Pîslă.

Doina Pîslă considers very important the way in which entrepreneurship projects are approached: “We have a project that has been running for almost a year for our PhD students with the acquisition of transversal entrepreneurial skills extremely important for launching a company. When it comes to innovation, I believe that there must always be an interdisciplinary team of engineers, computer scientists and doctors. We have an extremely good collaboration with the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Cluj-Napoca. ”

As explained by Dr. Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, Project Director of EIT Health Hub Romania and co-founder of FreshBlood HealthTech, the Cluj innovation ecosystem is currently on the right collaboration mindset, in which discussions and cooperation between several stakeholders are encouraged: “I always insist on the mindset side. It’s what we all need. Before we set out, we must believe that we will succeed and that we will progress – this is somehow contagious. Just as fear is transmitted among people, the winning attitude is transmitted just as quickly. It is important to see it as a development priority. Because the ecosystem is the sum of us all and when someone rises, the others grow too, and thus we all evolve.“

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XVision scans patients suspected of being infected with COVID-19 in mobile laboratories in Bucharest and Timisoara

Sebastian Florian — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 09:57:17 +0000

Mobile laboratory for the detection of the new coronavirus. Photo: Institute of Pneumophysiology “Marius Nasta” in Bucharest

XVision, a medical platform that analyzes lung X-rays using artificial intelligence, started to be used for the identification of the patients with lung injuries, associated with COVID-19. The solution, offered pro-bono, became part of the mobile laboratories for the detection of coronavirus, located in the outdoor spaces of the Institute of Pneumophysiology “Marius Nasta” in Bucharest, respectively of the Emergency Reception Units of the Emergency Clinical County Hospital in Timisoara.

This new way of medical triage will reduce the risk of contamination of other patients already admitted, but also of the medical staff. In addition, this MedTech solution supports the medical team in managing the extremely high workload during this period.

Thus, through a partnership facilitated by the Institute of Pneumophysiology “Marius Nasta” in Bucharest, XVision is used to support the triage of patients showing signs of infection with the SARS-COV-2 virus. This hospital unit has two mobile laboratories equipped with X-ray devices for tuberculosis detection. One of the laboratories was sent to the Timișoara County Hospital to facilitate the patients triage process. These mobile units will be used until the end of the pandemic to prioritize patients who require lung X-rays.

The triage system is based on an evaluation score developed by XVision’s radiologists’ team, benchmarked with the scores and standards used globally, at the time being. Based on the algorithm, it describes the similarities between the radiological patterns in the patient’s X-ray and those found in COVID-19 cases.

“XVision is a system that can be replicated and adapted in other hospitals in Romania, too, being a real support for radiologists in managing the large volume of medical images and at the same time reducing the degree of infection of the medical staff. We are already discussing with a few hospitals that we could support during this period. We express our desire to help pro-bono as many as possible medical institutions that receive patients infected with this virus”, says Stefan Iarca, one of the co-founders of the XVision project.

As part of the triage, after the X-ray is done in the mobile lab, the XVision application provides a very quick result that is analyzed by the doctors, along with the initial X-ray. Based on it, a decision is made regarding the respective medical case. XVision detects signs of pneumonia, even in incipient form, and detects the degree of resemblance to the radiological pattern of pneumonia with that specific to COVID-19.

“For the County Clinical Emergency Hospital << Pius Brinzeu >> from Timișoara, the collaboration with the Marius Nasta Pneumophysiology Institute in Bucharest is a welcome and helpful one for both the medical staff and the patients who arrive in the Emergency Receiving Unit within the healthcare unit. The engineers from XVision, with whom the hospital has already implemented an artificial intelligence program in the Radiology Laboratory, have the opportunity to test this platform, which has proven to be useful for the imaging diagnoses investigated within the Radiology Section, as well as within the mobile caravan, which arrived with us at the end of last week.

Our goal is to minimize the risk of contamination for both patients and medical personnel who are in the front line in the battle with Covid-19, beyond all the truly rigorous procedures we have set up and the protective equipment for all the medical staff and for the patients.

The program developed by XVision experts facilitates the work of radiologists, by accurately detecting lung lesions specific to the new coronavirus. Images provided by this software are viewed and checked in real time so that the diagnostic errors are minimal” stated Asist. Univ. Dr. Raul Pătrașcu, Manager of the County Clinical Emergency Hospital “Pius Brinzeu” from Timișoara.

More details on how XVision platform can be used to evaluate X-rays of patients suspected of COVID-19 are available here.

The application developed by XVision, is the first of its kind in Romania. It was implemented initially in the Timișoara County Hospital where it helps doctors analyze up to 200 lung X-rays per day, meaning 20% more than in the past.

Currently, the application generates data related exclusively to the chest area using digital X-rays as basic information. Currently the team is working on developing new algorithms that will be able to analyze chest and cranial CTs.

XVision is a Romanian startup founded in 2018 by a multidisciplinary team from Timișoara, passionate about artificial intelligence, deep learning and optimization of medical processes.

XVision uses artificial intelligence algorithms for lung X-rays analysis, assisting physicians in the diagnostic process. With the help of XVision platform, medical imagery benefits from the technological advantage offered by artificial intelligence ensuring a more efficient medical act, centered on the quality of the patient-doctor relationship.

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Romanian startup XVision offers doctors its AI analysis system to help diagnose COVID-19 faster

Sebastian Florian — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 15:04:21 +0000

Chest X-ray of a patient infected with the new coronavirus, analyzed by XVision.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Timisoara-based startup XVision has announced it offers free access to its AI-based healthcare platform to any doctor who believes that this platform could ease his work in the coming period. The platform developed by XVision allows faster and easier analysis of chest radiographs with 20% more X-rays being interpreted daily, the application signaling those with pathologies and prioritizing them for visualization by radiologists.

XVision observed that a record number of chest radiographs were recorded in a partner hospital, the increasing workflow leading to the exhaustion of the doctors and to system overload. XVision uses artificial intelligence algorithms for the analysis of the pulmonary X-rays, among the radiological aspects identified being those directly correlated with pneumonia, a pathology that is also caused by COVID-19.

The doctors who would like to access the platform should contact XVision here for more details.

The startup was established two years ago, had an accelerated growth in 2019, reaching to expand nationally, the platform now being tested by hospitals in Timisoara, Oradea and Bucharest.

Last year XVision was selected in the Techcelerator acceleration program, through which they raised a total investment of € 100,000 from GapMinder Venture Partners. Techcelerator has recently launched an initiative intended to bring in one place Romanian startups that could ease the crisis situation generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Startups can register here.

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Timisoara-based XVision makes the first implementation of an AI-based healthcare platform in a Romanian public hospital

Sebastian Florian — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 16:12:05 +0000

On the 30th of January 2020, XVision announced they officially implemented their platform within the County Emergency Clinical Hospital in Timisoara, Romania.

XVision, a medtech startup based in Timisoara, Romania, announced it has implemented its AI-based platform for analyzing lung X-rays within the Timisoara County Emergency Clinical Hospital. This is the first implementation of an AI-based platform in a Romanian public hospital. 20% more lung X-rays can be interpreted daily with the help of XVision, the application signaling those with pathologies and prioritizing them for visualization by radiologists. The application will be further developed to provide data for upper and lower limb X-rays.

The introduction of the platform in the hospital takes place after the development of a pilot project over a period of one year, which aimed to improve the algorithms used in the analysis of X-rays and to make the image interpretation process more efficient. For this project, the XVision team worked with the radiologists of the hospital, coordinated by Professor Florin Birsasteanu.

A chest radiography of a patient that is infected with the novel Coronavirus. The XVision algorithms identified this image as being abnormal with a high risk of 5 different pathologies. Source: XVision.

XVision started two years ago, has accelerated in 2019 and their platform is now being tested by hospitals in various cities in Romania, like Timisoara, Oradea and Bucharest. Last year, XVision was selected in the Techcelerator acceleration program, through which they raised a total investment of € 100,000 from GapMinder Venture Partners.

“It was a very good year for us, both in terms of the technical development of the platform and its implementation in hospitals. In 2020 the focus will be on our expansion into as many public and private hospitals in Romania and we also plan to expand on international markets”, said Stefan Iarca, XVision co-founder. “We want to have a closer relationship with the doctors in the hospitals we work with. They play a vital role in the development and improvement of the platform. In turn, the XVision application facilitates their work, ensuring them an even greater degree of accuracy in interpreting the results”, he added.

Doctors who want to test the platform can make a demo account here where they can upload lung X-rays for analysis.

“The interest that XVision received from the Timisoara County Hospital further supports the argument that innovation capabilities in the Romanian healthcare ecosystem are growing and that the Romanian healthtech startups can potentially solve important healthcare needs in Romania and worldwide”, said Dr. Ion Petrovai from FreshBlood, a Cluj based NGO which supports health-related startups and one of the main catalysts of innovation in healthcare in Romania.

Romanian startup XVision offers doctors its AI analysis system to help diagnose COVID-19 faster

The post Timisoara-based XVision makes the first implementation of an AI-based healthcare platform in a Romanian public hospital appeared first on Startups&TheCity.

Best practices for creating an innovation ecosystem in healthcare, from TU Delft, the Netherlands

Maria Crisan — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 08:53:12 +0000

Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands. Photo: TU Delft / Guillermo Arto Sánchez

Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), ranked number one university in the Netherlands and the 50th in the world, has been supporting, since 2005, a startup incubator, training teams of students and other young entrepreneurs in setting up their company and networking the founders with potential investors, suppliers and customers. On a mission to build tomorrow’s leading firms, over 200 companies have been set up in YES!Delft incubator so far, raising at least 316 M€ in private funding. Yes!Delft is considered the best business incubator affiliated with a university in Europe, according to the UBI Ranking, and number 2 in the world. One of the focus areas of YES!Delft is MedTech, and the incubator is a partner of EIT Health, which enables the startups to tap into this vast European network.

Roel Kamerling is a managerial coordinator for public-private innovation programs at TU Delft, most of them focused on innovation in health and EIT Health programs. During a visit of Roel in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, we spoke with him about the best practices for creating an innovation ecosystem in healthcare, in Cluj.

Roel, could you please tell us what is your role at TU Delft?

My role at TU Delft is to set up new activities with our researchers and industry and other researchers outside the University, to do research and to develop new competitive products and services. I’m also involved in supporting startups going to our incubator, YES!Delft. As a liaison there I make sure that talented people from the University with the potential to set up a company, are aware of the opportunity to move to our incubator. And I support connected startups from the University side as much as I can.

YES!Delft opened the doors to its first location in 2005 as one of the first incubators in the Netherlands, next to the campus of the Delft University of Technology. Photo: Yes!Delft

Our incubator is situated in a building within our university campus and was established as an independent company owned by the University, the City of Delft and another research institute in Delft, TNO. The incubator runs a programe to train young teams in how to set up their company and supports them by organizing a network of potential investors, suppliers and customers. Next to that they develop now more and more training and development programs in entrepreneurship for professionals working in industry.

Tell us more about EIT Health and what you do there.

EIT Health is an EU supported program to stimulate the development of new products or services that support people in living active and healthy lives as well as creating jobs in innovative companies. I have had several jobs in EIT Health and in one – in the Accelerator program – I had a special focus at business creation using knowledge as a basis. For that program I’ve coordinated the development of EU wide validation bootcamps. I am now also a mentor for the Innostars RIS hub programs, a program that supports regions from Southern and Central Europe to develop the innovation ecosystem to the next level.

The EIT Health Validation Lab program for 10 startups at YES!Delft. Over the course of eight weeks, the teams traveled through the Netherlands and across Europe to validate the business potential of their ideas with leading universities, healthcare companies and hospitals. Photo: Yes!Delft

You’ve said that you are looking for ecosystems around Southern and Central Europe. Why are you visiting Cluj?

Dr. Ion Petrovai (co-founder FreshBlood) asked me to come to Romania to have a better understanding of what’s happening in Cluj, being one of the EIT Health Innostar regions. We had many interesting talks with the universities and cluster organisations and I brought with me a good example from Delft on what we do and how we overpassed our situation of being a university mainly focused on education and research and little on entrepreneurship.

Dr. Ion Petrovai (co-founder of FreshBlood) and Roel Kamerling (TU Delft), in Cluj-Napoca

In 2018 FreshBlood successfully applied for being one of the RIS hubs of the EIT Health in Romania. There are a select number of hubs of high potential regions and they all did an analysis last year including a SWOT analysis of their own region. For 2019 they had to make a plan on how to improve the health innovation system of the region. So, now we know what their strengths and weaknesses are, we can also start to plan concrete actions for the regions. So we understand what needs to be done, who could do it what would be necessary for expertise, investments or new policies.

What are the good practices you think Cluj would benefit from?

What I saw in the past few days was that there’s a lot already happening in Cluj. Talented people, good education level, great companies, there’s a willingness to build more international competitive products and services and move beyond outsourcing of IT services.

In the process of coming from a first idea for a company or product to the final product & business, there are some steps to take in entrepreneurship. There are some essential questions to answer:

Is there a problem – solution fit?
Is there a product – market fit?
Do I have a team to work with?

And a good company incubator is the perfect place to find the answers for such questions. Creating an incubator in Cluj would be a fantastic idea, a physical place where startups in e.g. MedTech, robotics, IT maybe mechanical engineering can develop their company, and get support for connecting to all the relevant partners that a young company needs, such as launching customers, (medical) experts, investors etc.

What about the YES!Delft incubator in Delft?

The YES!Delft program runs on the same principles as some similar entrepreneurship education programs at Stanford University and MIT. It’s an incubator where we mentor new startups in order to get funding and develop their ideas and have contact with possible customers and industrial partners.

As a partnership between YES!Delft and EIT Health, the EIT Health Validation Lab combines YES!Delft’s startup expertise with the extensive knowledge and network of EIT Health. Photo: Yes!Delft

The mission of this incubator in Delft is to build tomorrow’s leading firms. If you want to enter the incubator, as a company and you are reviewed as good enough (there’s a quality check) you will have to pay a monthly rent. You will get access to the education program, the network, all the events that are taking place there and also free coffee. The incubator does not give you funding automatically but you can apply for grants, bank loans or at a funding agency with different conditions.

Can you describe how the program works?

Well, if you want to grow to the next phase with your business, you can either do that yourself or you can apply for joining the YES!Delft incubator program.

First phase or actually the pre-phase of the program is a bootcamp for validation of the mentioned 3 main questions. That’s a good way for companies or teams with an idea to prepare for the launch of their company. If you decide to launch, you can apply for the incubation program and actually start. Then again there is an extensive support program for young teams to setup the company. The idea is to grow into a sustainable company within a few years and then you can enter a growth support program. Indeed, in all these phases of the program, they have a very extensive network of mentors, potential launching customers, international collaborations and investor network. And you get support in understanding what is the best type of financing for you.

TU Delft has investment funds for several phases of starting and growing companies, some of them together with close-by Leiden University and Erasmus University Rotterdam, so our companies will have access to several funding sources. There’s also a regional investment agency who wants to invest in the very early stages of these companies. This is a combination of public and private investments.

For how long is this program running at TU Delft?

Since 2005. There are around 200 companies that have been set up in YES!Delft. Since 2005 they raised at least 316 M€ in private funding. I’m sure the numbers are more, as these are only the publicly known numbers. Some of the companies are based on IP from TU Delft, but that is not a requirement to get into the YES!Delft incubator.

Yes!Delft is the best business incubator affiliated with a university of Europe according to the UBI Ranking and number 2 in the world. A very important side effect is that now entrepreneurship is cool among our students and university staff, which was not the case when we started in 2005.

What do you think about entrepreneurship and startups in Europe?

Now more and more people, at least think it’s cool to do a startup, but percentage wise, the ones that actually do it, is still very low. As I said, YES!Delft generated 200 startup companies in 13 years, while we had on average 20,000 students every year at our campus. These are good companies, they created a lot of products that are helping people with renewable energy solutions, health products or new robots. Those companies created thousand of new jobs, directly for themselves and also for suppliers.

Launch Day, at the end of a two-month EIT Health Validation Lab program for startups, at Yes!Delft. Photo: Yes!Delft

Moreover for TU Delft they are very interesting collaborators in R&D projects. So, even with low percentages of students and staff that actually set up companies there is still a high return on investment. We see that the early startups that are now mature actually start to mentor young teams and invest in the new generation. Because of the good program and interesting network we now also see that startups from different countries come to DELFT to develop their company.

The possibility of setting up such a program was discussed as a result of the EIT Health SWOT analysis but do you think this kind of incubator would be feasible for Cluj?

There are quite some courses and projects taking place already but it’s completely scattered all over the city and at different universities, not really coherent. I would suggest one incubator for the city so that you have sufficient deal flow. And teams can come to enter the program from Universities, from people that are mid career and want to do something else, companies that have ideas, doesn’t matter, as long as they want to launch a company that has a good product and a good team of people. Then, it’s essential to have an incubator somewhere in a physical location, where people can share ideas and do their own work as a company and get support focused on their needs as a startup.

Babes Bolyai University’s Center for Innovation in Healthcare in Cluj, created the HIVE project, with a first focus on innovation in health.

Shouldn’t the Medical University create this incubator in Cluj?

Medical University should be part of it but not as the only one. There has to be a collaboration between technical, medical and business universities and definitely the Technical University should be part of such an incubator. More products and services than just health can be developed in a startup of course. Always, the industrial players in the city or region are a big asset for a young startup.

This incubator should not be an investment of just one of the universities or companies. This incubator should be ment to build tomorrow’s leading firms and you have to have a joint understanding of that because everybody will benefit from it. And everybody is needed to support the young companies.

Cluj-Napoca based FreshBlood is a community which aims to support health-related startups, it is 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. You can read more about the Transylvanian Digital Health Ecosystem, here …

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