The awards were handed over on 9 June at eHealth Week by Acting Deputy Director General Gail Kent (DG Connect, European Commission).
She introduced the award ceremony by saying: “There is great potential in digital health for SMEs in terms of business opportunities. This is a dynamic and growing market. But there is also a lot that digital health and European health and care systems can gain from the innovations coming from SMEs. It is often the SMEs that are able to be more flexible and thus also more responsive to users’ needs and open to try out new solutions.”
In the EU SME eHealth competition, there are two Categories depending on the turnover of the companies: Champions (SMEs with turnover more than 0.5 M€), and Promises (with less turnover).
As part of the 2016 edition, first prizes have been awarded to
- Champion category: iHealth (France) for the solution ‘iHealth Discovery’, a remote health management platform for chronic diseases that includes devices and software that are intuitive to use to encourage users to better manage their health;
- Promise category: Symptoma (Austria), a search engine for diseases. Physicians enter symptoms and receive a list of matching causes sorted by probability for the case according to age, sex and geography.
Second and third prizes went to:
- Custodix (Belgium), for the InSite Platform, a solution that enables the reuse of EHR data (Real World Data) for clinical research on a European scale in a compliant and trustworthy manner
- Jouw Omgeving (The Netherlands), an engaging eMental Health platform for children, youths and people with intellectual disabilities. Empowering and activating patients and those around them by involving and enabling them. Allowing for costeffective and efficient care.
- NiniSpeech (Israel) ,a solution that enables people with speech disorders to take control over their speech in day to day life, and equips speech therapists with reallife quantifiable compliance, performance and progress monitoring using unique technologies
- Oviva (Switzerland), their system is reducing the cost of treating chronic diseases related to diet, such as obesity & diabetes, by making medical nutritional therapy more accessible and efficient.
The objective of the SME eHealth Competition is to support the business success of European Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by giving them visibility together with marketing opportunities to attract customers, partners and external capital. Winners receive cash prizes, mentoring and free tickets to events.
In the 2016 edition, 112 SMEs registered and submitted a two page summary explaining the innovation and potential impact of their solutions.
Based on this information provided, 15 companies were selected for the Final. During the Final, the SMEs had 5 minutes each to explain their solution in front of a Jury of international eHealth stakeholders and sponsors. The jury panel was integrated by Jaakko Arnio (EC), Lars Kalfhaus (Emminens), MinSung Kim (XLHealth), Tim Ringrose (M3 EU Ltd.), Marko Kilk (North Estonia Medical Centre), Ilir Qose (COOSS Marche Onlus Scpa), Javier Quiles (Galician Health Service) and Patricia Martinez (BravoSolution).
EC support for SMEs
The 2016 Competition has been supported by European Commission. In her speech, Gail Kent underlined that the Commission is funding eHealth SMEs under the Horizon 2020 programme, “to deliver solutions to the market in a sustainable manner – offering support for developing business models, improving the maturity of new products emerging from Europe’s leading eHealth SMEs and for developing a pro-innovation approach to address legal conditions in Europe and globally.”
Ms Kent concluded by saying: “I want to thank and congratulate all those who have participated in this competition and for inspiring and encouraging others with your innovative solutions.”
More details: www.ehealthcompetition.eu/2016-edition
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