EIT Health, EIT RawMaterials jointly recognise best business models

Innovators in health and raw materials win up to €10 000

EIT Health and EIT RawMaterials transferred business skills to innovative entrepreneurs, with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe, by supporting good ideas in an initiative that culminated in a 10 November award ceremony in Budapest, Hungary, to honor the winners of a business plan competition.

This was the first cooperation on a Business Plan Competition between EIT Health and EIT RawMaterials, two of the EIT’s Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs).

“Companies fostering sustainable growth need high quality and tailor-made support to become competitive on the market and attract investment,” said Balázs Fürjes, Director of EIT Health InnoStars. Giving this support is essential added Giorgio Recine, Business Developer with EIT RawMaterials. “If an idea or project fits into our innovation scope and promises to contribute to our overall objectives, we offer any support needed in order to bring novel solutions successfully to the market!”

The competition focused on participants coming predominantly, but by no means exclusively, from countries included in the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (EIT RIS), which boosts innovation capacities in Central, Eastern and South European Countries.

Following two bootcamps in Tartu and Budapest during summer 2017, entrepreneurs mainly from the Central and Eastern European region were invited by EIT based on their business plans developed to the final pitches and the following award ceremony. On 7 November in Budapest, the juries selected the winners of business ideas and plans finding solutions to challenges we face, from healthy living and active ageing to raw materials.

Besides the tools and resources needed for their business growth, the winners are provided further tailor-made support by the KICs and the EIT’s network of partners.

“To boost Europe’s ability to innovate, we will continue to support Europe’s talented entrepreneurs, helping them to turn their best ideas into products, services and jobs for Europe,” said Katerina Sereti, Stakeholder Relations Officer at the EIT, the organisation that formed both EIT Health and EIT RawMaterials.

The winners:

Health category

1. Mantas Venslaukas – Lithuania; project: Fidens – A device for treatment of blood circulatory disorders and hands shake stabilizer for Parkinson’s disease

2. Sándor Urszin – Hungary; project: Clavicont – Early detection of Parkinson´s desease

3. Alar Aints – Estonia; project: Kvintest – Endometriosis and infertility tests

Going beyond discoveries and intelligent mine

1. Pawel Kawalec – Poland/Switzerland; project: Augmented Quarry – Real time data visualization for swift decision-making

2. Roman Slobodyanyuk – Ukraine; project: ROTATE – Round-trip haulage for open pit mines

3. Constantin Weigel – Germany; project: EHUAV – Application of a Drone for Hang-Up Handling in Multi-Level Underground Mining

Recycling and circular economy

1. Yun Luo – France; project: RoSi – Silicon recycling from Photovoltaic wafer production sludge

2. Andreas Bittner – Germany; project: e-Top – Electrohydraulic Treatment of Photovoltaics

3. Lukas Haedicke – Austria; project: AMR – Advanced Metal Refinery

Substitution of critical and toxic material, optimization of processes

1. Fedir Pankov – Ukraine; project: BioGOLD – Substitution of toxic cyanidation processes

2. Alberto Abanades – Spain; project: DECARGAS – Decarbonization of fossil resources for the direct production of pure graphitic carbon and hydrogen

3. Anrin Bhattacharyya – Austria; project: RECYRON – Recycling of Integrated Steel Plant Wastes for Iron Production.

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