CRAASH Barcelona projects validate their technologies in Europe and Boston
<p>ABLE and iBreve, selected to extend their stay in the American city with a three week immersion program</p>
Seven projects from the CRAASH Barcelona acceleration program, driven by Biocat as part of the EIT Health bootcamps, have begun to validate their healthtech projects in different European markets, and next October they will do so in the Boston ecosystem.
The projects have visited the ecosystems of Medicen (Paris) and Yesdelft! (Delft) during July and September, respectively, to validate the market fit of their technologies.
“The trips to Paris and Delft have been extremely profitable for our project,” states Alfons Carnicero, co-founder and CEO of ABLE Human Motion, a spin-off of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in partnership with Institut Guttmann, which developed a lightweight, low-cost robotic exoskeleton for home which helps people with bone marrow injuries walk and is a participant in CRAASH Barcelona. “In Paris we met with a CRO specialized in home clinical tests, which helped give us a more precise estimate of what a study of this kind might cost us,” says Carnicero. “Furthermore, in both Paris and Delft we visited other companies making medical and industrial exoskeletons to exchange experiences on suppliers and financing and regulatory strategies.”
Next stop: Boston
CRAASH Barcelona is an intensive 12-week program that trains research projects to market their healthtech technologies in a period of between 3 and 5 years. CRAASH Barcelona is part of the bootcamp programs run by EIT Health, the main European healthcare consortium.
In the first phase of CRAASH Barcelona, between April and June, the projects received training and advice through face-to-face and virtual meetings with experts from CIMIT (Boston), the most experienced health accelerator in the world. In 15 years, CIMIT has successfully accelerated more than 600 healthtech projects, doubled the marketing rate and reduced more than half the time to reach the next phase.
After visits to Delft and Paris, the CRAASH Barcelona teams will be able to network and validate their project in the ecosystem of Boston, one of the most important in the world in the health sector. All teams will present their projects in October in front of the Boston ecosystem, as part of the Device Talks, where Biocat will also participate to present a presentation on the BioRegion of Catalonia
In addition, two of the CRAASH Barcelona projects have been selected to extend their stay in the city with a three-week immersion program organized by the Richi Foundation. The selected ones have been ABLE (Assistive Biorobotic Low-cost Exoskeleton), project of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and iBreve, an Irish company project of the same name to develop a wearable device that improves stress resistance by analyzing patterns of respiration of the user by means of machine learning.
Eight projects in the 1st edition
Eight teams participate in the 1st Edition of CRAASH Barcelona. Six of them are projects from the BioRegion: Biel Smartgaze project to develop electronic glasses that use computer vision and virtual reality to improve the sight of those with low vision; ABLE Human Motion, project from the Biomechanical Engineering Lab at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) with Institut Guttmann to develop a light, low-cost robotic exoskeleton to help patients with spinal injuries walk; Funny Friends, project from Vecmedical and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu to develop a respiratory rehabilitation system to allow children to play while doing exercise; DeepStroke, project from Methinks to make diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients faster and more precise with automatic analysis of neuroimaging using deep learning techniques; and ReMemory, project promoted by the Consorci Sanitari de Terrassa to develop a cognitive training program for people with mild cognitive impairment.
International participants include QuantEmTool, project from the Portuguese start-up B2Quant that offers a software service to automatize analysis of medical images by quantifying relevant biomarkers for monitoring neurological diseases; and iBreve, an Irish company to develop a wearable device to improve stress resilience by analyzing users’ breathing patterns with machine learning.
With the support of*:
* With the support of the Department of Enterprise and Knowledge and the co-financing of the ESF