Wild Card: Building and investing in game-changing companies

A comfortable extended wear natural contact lens for managing myopia in dry eye patients.

There is an urgent need for novel cost-effective and non-invasive approaches for management of myopia and dry eye to avoid visual impairment and blindness. Our solution, a bioengineered natural contact lens (NaturaLens), can help address this underserved need.

Team NaturaLens is developing a Natural Contact Lens made from the same material as the human eye that can help manage myopia in dry eye patients.

"The EIT-Health Wild Card helped us better understand the need, examine our assumptions towards developing a solution for addressing a major underserved need in eye and vision care."

A portable and AI-based perimetry device for 70% faster, patientfriendly and much more cost-efficient glaucoma patient monitor.

PeriVision wants to reimagine glaucoma monitoring to benefit patients and doctors alike by offering a portable and Al-based perimetry device for 70% faster, patient-friendly and much more cost-efficient glaucoma patient monitoring.

“The trend towards democratized and decentralized access as well as telehealth solutions is already well under way. We want to shape this future in glaucoma care. In this context, the Wild Card program helped us to understand who benefits most from our solution and how we build a sustainable business around that.”

A device-agnostic Digital Therapeutic (DTx) to enable personalized treatment of Parkinson’s Disease.

Orbit has developed Neptune, a device-agnostic Al solution regulating treatment dosage for Parkinson's disease patients, restoring patient function and quality of life. Neptune offers to patients up to 5 extra symptom-free hours per day. 

“Our solution equips clinicians with reliable, continuous, and objective symptom insights that are easy to access to effectively personalise treatments for each patient. Wild Card accelerated our understanding of how our solution fits in the market”

Endometrial cancer diagnosis – easy, quick, accurate and less costly diagnostic kit.

MiMARK sets to provide in vitro diagnostic tool based on the determination of 5 protein biomarkers in uterine fluid samples to provide a diagnosis to 100% of patients, to rule out endometrial cancer with great specificity, and provide information on a histological subtype of the tumour to guide surgical treatment.

"With our solution, we will change the standard of care for endometrial cancer by providing innovation in diagnostic technology at an early stage and without the need for invasive and uncomfortable procedures. The Wild Card programme has been fundamental in accelerating our development."

Abtrace is using artificial intelligence to tackle AMR- perhaps the greatest global health threat of our time.

Every use of an antibiotic comes with a risk that resistance might develop. Abtrace is using artificial intelligence to tackle AMR perhaps the greatest global health threat of our time.

“The process is tough and thorough but, in the end, the Wild Card programme gives you the freedom to really challenge the boundaries of what is considered possible today. It’s an exciting opportunity that brought together an extraordinary team of mentors who are brilliant, very experienced and really enthusiastic.”

Digital blood samples – changing medical diagnostics from a trust-based system into an accurate, evidence-based system.

Digital innovations are taking diagnostics from a trust-based system into an accurate, evidence-based system. Smart4Diagnostics closes the data gap between blood collection and lab analysis.

“The future of healthcare is in essence a data driven future. The question is, who is producing the data? Who is owning the data? And in the end, who is interpreting the data? [Smart4Diagnostics] wouldn’t have been started in this successful manner without the help of EIT Health.”

Harnessing bio-photonics and Artificial Intelligence to unlock new possibilities in Alzheimer’s drug discovery.

iLoF is creating a pathway which promotes breakthroughs in Alzheimer's disease research. iLoF (short for Intelligent Lab on a Fiber) it is using machine-learning to develop an non-invasive way of screening patients for clinical trials, which will accelerate the development of new and personalised Alzheimer’s treatments and make them more economically viable.

“We all know the social tragedy behind Alzheimer’s – but the industry problem behind that is less visible. The [Wild Card] programme allowed us to study a whole industry at a deeper level and understand that in order to solve Alzheimer’s and enable a treatment, we first need precise, personalised, inexpensive tools that all stakeholders can apply. And because of that, suddenly, iLoF was born.”

Revealing the risk of post-operative cognitive complications in the over-60s. Developing a powerful app that personalises pre and post-op patient care.

Disorientation, memory loss and speech difficulties are some of the symptoms of postoperative cognitive complications in the over-60s. PIPRA, short for Pre- interventional Preventative Risk Assessment, is developing a risk score in-app intervention for pre- and post-operative patients.

“I think we got fantastic support and guidance from people that have so many years of experience. You gain a lot, it is tremendous and pretty unique.”