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Story 16 April 2021
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EIC Impact Stories - EIC Innovation Procurers Day: Pitching to procurers from the pharma industry

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Jasper Havermans

March 2020 marked the very first EIC Innovation Procurers Day. Together with the German Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement and Logistics (BME) the European Innovation Council (EIC) offered 9 EIC beneficiaries the opportunity to pitch and meet with procurers from the pharma industry. Since then several interesting deals and partnership were formed. Let’s take a look at what the EIC innovators managed to achieve. 

 

EIC Innovation Procurers Days are tailor-made and highly effective acceleration services to facilitate collaboration between large procurer departments and EIC-funded innovators. Public purchasers are important actors for the innovation ecosystem. With their 14% of European GDP purchasing power they are not only customers of innovative solutions, they also drive innovation by asking the market to develop new ones. Private corporate purchasers always need to maintain and develop their supply chains and introduce innovative solutions in their procurements. 

 

Medicsen 

Spanish start-up Medicsen attended the EIC Procurers Day with BME back in March 2020. The company developed a patented and innovative methodology to personalize the management of chronic diseases. With this innovation in mind, they were hoping to meet with big pharma players at the event. And that they did. After pitching their company, they were approached by a representative from Ypsomed, a leading developer and manufacturer of injection and infusion systems. Ypsomed was interested in their SmartPatch, which painlessly delivers insulin through the skin, and introduced them to the Diabetes Center in Berne (DCB). After the positive results on the preliminary in vivo pig trials of Medicsen, the DCB signed a letter of intention to confirm the efforts on reaching a collaboration regarding the clinical and regulatory path of Medicsen´s Smartpatch.  

 

Eduardo W. JORGENSEN DE VIZCARRONDO, CEO and Co-founder of Medicsen: 

“We had an event the day before the EIC Procuers Day, as well as the day after. We only stayed in Dresden for two, three hours, but we managed to obtain this relationship with Ypsomed, a major outcome for us. Having the EIC back you up gives a boost to the position of your company. The pharma supply chain that was present at the event felt that the EIC already picked the best of the best, which is a valuable position to be in.”

 

 

Cypheme 

EIC-backed Cypheme has set out to put an end to counterfeiting. How? By providing artificial intelligence solutions to authenticate products and defeat counterfeit goods with the use of a simple smartphone camera.  At the event, Gilles Bonnabeau, EMEA Director of Cypheme, met a big pharma group, specialised in pharmaceutical equipment, offering both to the public and private sector. Cypheme’s solution was exactly what the pharma group was looking for, namely identifying and stopping counterfeit products.  After the event, they initiated a short pilot. With agile parametrization and adaptation of the technology, it proved its value and they agreed to start implementing it in one of the product lines. The partnership, initiated in the EIC event, lead to a deal worth 100 000€ of yearly revenues for Cypheme in a timespan of less than six months.  

 

“The EIC offers the opportunity to meet with exactly those high-level decision makers you need to close a deal. With the support and facilitation of the EIC we managed to add another global player to our clientele and increase our yearly revenues.” Gilles Bonnabeau, EMEA Director at Cypheme  

 

 

More EIC Innovation Procurer Days are on the way 

On 22 June 2021 the EIC is teaming up with ORSI for another EIC Innovation Procurer Day (applications will open in the week of 19 April). For more BAS-events and inspiring stories, keep your eyes on the EIC Community. 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.

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