This year’s Europe Day is focused on the “European Year of Youth”. The European Commission wants to promote the concepts of progress and innovation among our younger generations, especially when it comes to three essential areas – health, green and digital. To celebrate 2022’s Europe Day, we got in contact with some of the most recent EIC beneficiaries that are developing solutions in the health, green and digital sectors, contributing to create better living conditions for the Europeans of the future.
HEALTH
Tactonom (Inventivio): creating a more independent life for blind people
Blindness is a health condition that often does not receive enough attention, although more than 2.5 million Europeans live with it. The current existing output technologies don’t sufficiently support the visually impaired, causing disadvantages and underrepresentation in education, employment, mobility and societal integration. Tactonom is working to change this.
The EIC-funded project Tactonom, developed by the German company Inventivio, aims to provide informational autonomy and allow blind people to live a more independent life. The project proposes the first interactive output technology relying on a big tactile matrix with more than 10 500 tactile dots. The software automatically transforms the information on the computer screen into Braille letters and tactile graphics allowing the user to read texts and graphics with their fingertips.
When talking with Klaus-Peter Hars, General Manager of Inventivio, we learned more about the current and upcoming company endeavours: “The Tactonom is scheduled to be tested in large scale user tests across Europe in the fall of this year. Currently Inventivio is introducing another ground-breaking learning tool for schools and universities across Europe: the Tactonom Reader augments paper based tactile graphics and thus enables blind children and students to access, work with and understand even complex graphic information.”.
MultiplexDX: improving efficiency on breast cancer’s diagnosis & treatment
The occurrence of cancer diagnosis is becoming more frequent among our population, namely when it comes to breast cancer (BCa), which is the most common type among women. Still, diagnostic tests are lacking precision and, as a result, many BCa patients are misdiagnosed and treated inaccurately. MultiplexDX proposes a personalised and precise diagnostic test for early and late stage BCa, called Multiplex8+. This test combines two different cutting-edge technologies that can eliminate misdiagnosis by creating a specific barcode that suggests a personalised treatment, length of therapy and clarifies how likely will a BCa patient benefit from chemotherapy or not.
The company is focused on the processes of multiplexing, cross-testing and verifying the same result from at least two independent sources. By embedding numbers into pictures and vice-versa, MultiplexDX’s diagnostics shed light on the patient’s set of cancer markers and profile, enabling oncologists to make evidence-based decisions and prescribe treatment quickly, directly and more accurately.
“Our company is at the forefront of a growing trend in the cancer diagnostics community to develop tools that can detect cancer earlier and provide more tailored treatment plans. We, at MultiplexDX, believe that the younger generations of Europe can look forward to emerging technologies like Multiplex8+ that will catch cancer earlier before it becomes deadly and will benefit from bespoke treatment plans that will extend our longevity and well-being.” commented Evan Paul, CSO of MultiplexDX, when it comes to the benefits of his company’s medical innovation.
DIGITAL
Guardtime: promoting log security in digital systems
The risk of cyberattacks has greatly increased in recent years, so tech companies are directing innovation towards the achievement of safer platforms. Logs are a vital elemental for discovering cyberattacks, hence, malicious actors usually manipulate logs to remove traces of their activity. Guardtime has noticed that the market was lacking solutions for verification of tampered logs by potential attackers. In this way, they are developing a breakthrough solution for log security in global markets. This Estonian EIC-funded technology will enable massive-scale automated and independent log integrity assurance, providing real-time log integrity checks and long-term log record validity.
Furthermore, Guardtime is known for its KSI platform that can build zero-trust applications. This technology has been productised and deployed in production by governments and enterprises around the world. In fact, KSI was originally designed to support the Estonian Government when looking for systems that could provide formally verifiable mathematical proof of the correctness of operations.
We reached out to the company and Tanel Ojalill, Head of Innovation & Research Cooperation at Guardtime, mentioned the following: “The younger generation is looking for a "new" or next-generation Internet. In this new virtual world, the individual is visioned to have more security, control and transparency of digital interactions and data. Guardtime is building a technology stack, which can be one layer or tool in the toolbox for enabling the uptake of the next phase or wave of the Internet.”
InPhoTech: making 5G accessible to everyone, everywhere
5G technologies are already here, accompanied by a higher demand for connections that can provide more speed and reliability. The industry agrees that these needs can only be met with fixed optical fibre connections. The problem is that current fibre infrastructures cannot continue to support the foreseen demand without an upgrade to carry the increased traffic. InPhoTech saw this as an opportunity: their patented IPT-CORE technology can increase optical throughput seven times in the same physical space.
By being fully compatible with existing infrastructure, InPhoTech’s IPT-CORE innovation provides a cost-effective replacement for target customers such as 5G operators and data centres. The company’s long-term goal is to become the world’s first mass-scale multicore optical fibre supplier.
“Digitalisation is undoubtedly the domain of younger generations, who report the need to transmit massive amounts of information. Multiplying the bandwidth of information transmission through the implementation of multicore fibre will enable the digitalisation of almost every area of society, simultaneously bridging the existing social disparities in the economy. It should also be emphasized that what we offer the young generation is the opportunity to participate in the implementation of ground-breaking research and the development of innovations that will change the way society functions, including communication.” said Klaudia Woroniecka, Business Development Specialist at InPhoTech, about the impact of their technology on European youth.
GREEN
INERATEC: developing technologies for CO2-neutral fuels
Reduction on CO2 emissions are of the utmost importance nowadays. Nonetheless, we keep using fossil fuels that increase emissions. To stop this dangerous pollution cycle, INERATEC has received EIC funding to scale, multiply and implement their “Power-to-X” technology. This innovation aims to contribute to a CO2-neutral world through the development of CO2-neutral fuels and products.
INERATEC has two different applications of its green technology: the Power-to-Gas process and the Power-to-Liquid process. With the Power-to-Gas process, synthetic natural gas is produced from hydrogen as well as from carbon dioxide and/or carbon monoxide. The Power-to-Liquid process converts renewable electricity and carbon dioxide into liquid, versatile applicable fuels, and chemical feedstocks.
Philipp Engelkamp, CEO of INERATEC, said the following regarding their technology: "INERATEC supplies modular chemical plants that produce sustainable fuels (e-fuels) and chemicals. They are fully compatible with global infrastructure and vehicle fleet due to their drop-in compatibility. With further scaling, multiplication and implementation, we will be able to deliver PtX technology faster and at lower cost. We will contribute to making mobility and the chemical industry more sustainable with e-fuels and e-products.”.
SaltPower: generating clean energy through osmosis
New forms of creating clean energy are being studied every day. But EIC-funded SaltPower has discovered one new option that leads to very efficient results: using the natural force of osmosis to produce competitive, clean and eco-friendly energy. The Danish company has developed osmotic power units (OPUs) that are delivered in containerised modules and generate non-fluctuating baseload power for own consumption or the power grid.
This innovative technology is based on Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO), where two water sources with different salinity are mixed via a membrane to produce electricity. Water flows across the membrane and builds up pressure, and by passing the pressurized water through a turbine electricity is generated. SaltPower has created a unique process, based on the osmosis principle, to produce clean and CO2-free energy by harnessing the potential energy of saltwater and water.
Jesper Culmsee, Sales and Business Development Director of SaltPower, talked to us about their innovative solution: “SaltPower has developed a commercially viable technology platform to generate power on this technology by taking advantage of an until now unexploited force of nature to generate baseload power. The technology has matured and SaltPower is constructing the first industrial plant to be commissioned in the second half of 2022.”.
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.