The European Innovation Council together with the Network Of practitioners For Emergency medicAl systems and cRitical care (NO-FEAR) organised an EIC ePitching with Procurers-session on Thursday 22 July 2021. During this event, the EIC-backed innovators had the opportunity to pitch their innovative solutions with regards to the NO-FEAR consortia’s needs in the fields of medical care.
The 10 EIC-funded start-ups and scaleups from 7 different countries pitched their innovations in the field of emergency medical services on a disaster/crisis scene and hospitals and nursing homes. After the event, we got together with Luca Leonardi Project Manager of the NO-FEAR Consortium and Per Reidar Ørke the VP Business Development & Co-founder of EIC-funded Excitus.
NO-FEAR is a 5-year Horizon 2020, Coordination and Support Action project, that brings together a pan-European and beyond network of emergency medical care practitioners, suppliers, decision and policy makers to collaborate and exchange knowledge, good practices, and lessons learned. Luca shared with us the motivation for joining forces with the EIC stating that “the decision came because of the needs of our project, to “matchmake” with innovative suppliers. That will allow us to find new solutions and will offer us new ways to attract and engage with them.”. Additionally, he disclosed on which point the consortium was focusing during the pitches mentioning that “we look for something that will solve or mitigate the needs of our practitioners. In general, we try to smooth the conversation between suppliers and practitioners for better understanding and results.”. The main areas of focus for the NO-FEAR consortium were on sustainable Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and cyber security for health care organizations, like hospitals. Luca concluded the interview by sharing his impressions of the event “The setup of the event was perfect, the portfolios of the startups was impressive and it helped us a lot to get a contact with the suppliers.”.
Excitus, EIC beneficiary since 2019, is a Norwegian hightech medical devices company founded in 2014. Their goal is to develop disruptive pre-hospital medical devices for global distribution with focus on the ease of use for the end user. As Per mentioned during the interview “what our company has done, is to take an existing device and improve it. These devices exist in ambulances, but they are often not used, despite being needed. The interesting fact that we grasped was that by interviewing a lot of users we have found the causes for that, and we made a tool that will actually be a better fit for the purpose and can save 10-15k lives in Europe alone.”. Per openly shared the benefits of participating in the EIC events stating that “Our participation, besides giving visibility to our company, offered us access to organisations dedicated to the Medtech-sector. Normally, I pitch to physicians, nurses or investors but during the EIC ePitching with Procurers event I had the opportunity to pitch to them and make a connection to the usage of the device and how this can save money for the customers. It was a very interesting experience to be pushed from doing investor/user pitches to real procurer pitches.”.
Interested in EIC Procurers Days?
Are you looking for opportunities to connect with some of the largest public and private procurers of innovation in Europe? The next EIC ePitching with Procurers event is with the Parkering Malmö, and will take place on 30 September 2021, online (applications are open until 13 August). Stay tuned to our events calendar and apply today to grab the opportunity to take your business to the next level.
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.