The internet of things has reached Spanish healthcare. Several Spanish startups such as Social Diabetes, Dycare or Exotive are succeeding and winning awards in the sector. Some of these companies have become what they are thanks to public funding.
Spanish IoT e-health company with a promising future
Social Diabetes
Social Diabetes is a blood glucose self-monitoring application capable of adjusting insulin dosage at any given time in real time and quantifying carbohydrate intake and exercise that runs on multiple devices and platforms and connects to the cloud with full freedom of data access while maintaining a continuous record of data.
The app has won numerous awards and has received two small rounds of funding amounting to €300,000, one in 2013, a year after its creation, and another in 2015.
Social Diabetes has recently developed an application together with the Basque company Nire iHealth and the Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid, which was selected as a finalist in the Best M-Government Service Award competition organised by the Government of the United Arab Emirates.
Dycare, wearables for injury rehabilitation
Dycare es una empresa catalana que ha desarrollado un dispositivo para analizar el movimiento de las articulaciones del ser humano a través de sensores «wearables» que se colocan sobre la zona que se quiere estudiar. Gracias a este wereable , el medico puede aplicar un tratamiento más personalizado y ver la evolución del paciente.
Dycare is not yet on the market, but they hope to bring the product to market soon, once the relevant quality certifications have been obtained.
Dycare has so far obtained an Enisa loan for young entrepreneurs of 40,000 euros. It has also received support from the pharmaceutical company Bayer, which provided them with the use of coworking facilities and made available specialists in mentoring and coaching for 6 months. It has also received €50,000 in European funding through the SME instrument. It is now looking to close a funding round in order to move forward with the development of new products.
Exovite
Exovite manufactures 3D splints to replace the classic plaster cast. His system first scans the patient's limb and then creates the splint with a 3D printer. The splint can get wet, and because it can be printed with windows, if the patient has wounds it can heal. The system is also pioneering at the rehabilitation level. Thanks to an app (connected to the doctor) and the windows of the splint, the patient can use electrostimulators without going to the medical centre.
Exovite is one of the 11 companies selected worldwide and the first Spanish company (among 300 applicants worldwide) to participate in the Microsoft acceleration programme in the Israeli city of Tel-Aviv. In addition, in the I Ibero-American Campus Etopia, Exovite won the prize for the most innovative project with less than three years of life and the prize chosen by the participants themselves.
QuBiotech
QuBiotech is a start-up a biotech company dedicated to the development of new techno-informatics tools for processing and analysing medical images. Its first product, IQ-brain, is an online tool designed to complement visual image analysis, increasing safety in the diagnosis of neurological diseases.
The company was founded in 2014 and has received numerous awards in its barely two years of existence, including the 2014 Bioga Award for Best Business Idea and the award for Best Young Company granted by the University of Santiago in June 2015 as part of the Uniemprende business creation programme.
Furthermore, in May QuBiotech was selected to attend Health 2.0 Europe, the largest European trade fair in the digital health sector, where projects are exhibited to more than 40 investors from all over the world specialised in the sector.
Public funding to finance innovation
For some of the companies mentioned above, public funding has been essential to get them to where they are today, including the aid they have received:
EnisaDycare received €400,000 from Enisa's young entrepreneurs line. The aim of this aid is to provide the necessary financial resources to newly established SMEs created by young people, so that they can undertake the investments required by the project in its initial phase.
SME Instrument H2020SME Facility: This is a phased grant funding scheme aimed at supporting SMEs, which have the ambition to grow, develop and internationalise through an innovation project with a European dimension. Dycare has also obtained an SME Instrument.
Navarre Entrepreneurial Impulse ActionImpulso Emprendedor", promoted by the Government of Navarreoffers entrepreneurs a comprehensive four-month programme for the creation of companies to activate the development and start-up of their business initiatives. Exovite participated in the second edition.
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