HeartWatch and BiomimX awarded financing from EIT HEALTH

HeartWatch and BiomimX, two young spin offs from the Politecnico di Milano, have won the Headstart competition, one of the Innostar Start-Up Competitions organised by EIT Health. The prize, financing worth €35,000, will help them to develop their businesses and attract new investment.

EIT Health, financed by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a European Union agency, is one of the largest international initiatives in the healthcare sector. It aims to promote sustainable basic healthcare, conditions for a healthier life and the wellbeing of all European citizens. 

As part of its business acceleration activities, EIT Health provides financing to start-ups and small to medium sized enterprises to develop new products and services that address three issues: healthy living, active aging and improved healthcare.

BiomimX is a pioneer in the development of new-generation in vitro models, called organs-on-chips that will revolutionise the way drugs are tested, reducing or even replacing animal testing. Specifically, by integrating 3D cell cultures and mechanically stimulating many types of tissue, BiomimX offers “beating organs-on-chips”, leading to more reliable, responsive and accessible pre-clinical models that can be used to assess both the therapeutic effects and toxicity of drugs. BiomimX’s catalogue includes uHeart, a human heart on a chip and uKnee, an osteoarthritic model joint.

HeartWatch offers a contactless solution for continuous monitoring of patients’ health status, aimed at nursing homes and hospitals. It utilizes a combination of advanced computer vision techniques, signal elaboration and machine learning to find cardiac and respiratory problems, to prevent further diseases. The software, coupled to any optical sensor, can monitor in real time heart/respiratory rate and movement of the patient. Besides, it allows to recognize potential alterations of the patient’s health status simply framing it.

To find out more:
BiomimX http://www.biomimx.com
HeartWatch http://www.heartwatch.it