Awarded Projects Summary
Students / Future Entrepreneurs category:
1)Hightech Enterprises: Business ideas developed by teams of Students/Young people from EU countries that exploit new technologies to generate new products/services and processes.
1st prize, awarded with 5000 €, MediWiSe: Medical Wireless Sensing
MediWiSe (Medical Wireless Sensing) is an innovative venture in the emerging Microwave Medical Imaging market. Our core technology is based on a novel and original use of low-power microwaves for non-invasive, early stage screening of cancer. Our patent pending technology offers an improvement on the existing medical imaging procedures as it is safer and more cost-effective for the screening of certain cancer types. The MediWiSe team is extremely committed to this real project and fully intends to bring it to market. MediWiSe’s initial focus is early stage screening of breast cancer as, with more than a million women diagnosed every year, this is one of the most common cancer types in the World. In the UK alone, in 2006 more than 45,500 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, that’s around 125 women a day. Breast cancer incidence rates have increased by more than 50% over the last 25 years. Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in the earliest possible stage have a nine in ten chance of surviving for at least five years after diagnosis. But if the cancer is very advanced at the point of diagnosis, these odds fall to under two in ten. These challenges highlight the need for a safer and at the same time cheaper medical imaging technology that can allow the worldwide distribution of early screening of breast cancer equipment.
2nd prize, awarded with 2500 €, Biotechware
Biotechware is a business venture by Alessandro Sappia, Enrico Manzini and Vertigotech s.r.l., a company specialized in electronics. They conceived a telemedicine integrated platform for remote cardiac monitoring, aimed at pharmacies. Two main kinds of structures are currently operating in Italy on the cardiac monitoring market: private laboratories, offering expensive services with short waiting periods and low bureaucracy, and the national health service, with lower costs but long waiting lists and much more bureaucracy. Both are not always easily reachable, especially by the elderly or people living far from cities, as requiring long travels. These are time and money waste, thus discouraging people and reducing the number of check-ups. Nevertheless people needs these check-ups to be rapid and affordable. On the other side, pharmacies need to offer new services not to succumb to the growing number of OTC-shops. The team’s solution permits to record a professional grade ECG directly at the pharmacy with an easy to use and innovative device. The record is then remotely reviewed and reported by a qualified cardiologist and made available to the patient through a secure website.
2)Transnational Enterprises :Business ideas developed by teams of Students/Young people from at least 2 different EU countries.
1st prize, awarded with 5000 €, eReader (Italy / Spain)
This project aims to complete the technological transformation that has already happened in several content markets, covering the last remaining sector: the text documents. Defined as a comprehensive solution for managing digital contents, eReader enables the organization, visualization, acquisition, and sharing all types of text documents. In addition, we aim at implementing an automatic synchronization of contents among all user devices. We plan to realize the eReader software for multiple platforms, including smartphones, and to exploit multitouch devices to provide an outstanding user experience. In the modern society, despite of the effect of globalization, we still have a lot of production of text document in mother tongue. Each user of eReader will benefit from the possibility to add friends using social networking primitives in order to share the documents, and request/perform translations. In order to manage the resulting community of translators, eReader will implement a strong reputation system. Several current trends confirm the viability of the project, our goal is to create and energize the market trend to achieve the highest possible penetration.
2nd prize, awarded with 2500 €,NOA (Portugal / Spain)
The business is based on the application of real case solutions of highly hydrophobic foams able to absorb oil products off the water, acting like an oil sponge, to clean up the sea surface and beaches along Canary coasts by using floating structures (similar to marine jails). The strong hydrophobic character, surface area and 98% of porosity allows this material to absorb circa 540g oil per 100g of material. The main products will be: 1. In the case of remediation (marine disasters) the standard product is a circular 10x10 square meters structure with the absorption of app. 650 Kilograms of oil and with a price around 1.350€. 2. In the case of prevention the product will be 1 square meter with a price of 135€. The target region will be the Canary Islands, in which the marine traffic is very high, tourism is the main economical factor (30.4% PIB), and marine resources, sun and beaches are the most attractive components for European tourists and no competitors have been identified. The high impact of oil pollution or environmental disaster such as Mexican Gulf on Canary coasts will comprise a critical risk for the tourism on Canary coasts over long years. The main scope to develop the technology in the Islands for then, launching to Europe within distribution channels.
New entrepreneurs: Business concepts from new entrepreneurial ventures (established less than 3.5 years before the date of the application) from EU countries.
1st prize, awarded with 1000 €,ONYX SOLAR ENERGY
Onyx Solar is a technology driven company that has developed smart building solutions for Building Integrated Photovoltaic’s (BIPV) in façades as well as in roofs. These solutions consist in the replacement of conventional materials such as glass or ceramics for a PV glass which is not only aesthetically attractive but also customized for each Project, achieving energy saving from the Sun. www.onyxsolar.com
2nd prize, awarded with 500 €,Tre Tau Engineering
Tre Tau Engineering started as an engineering company with a strong focus on R&D. We develop together with our customers new processes and products. Thanks to our high-tech orientation, we integrate great part of our work into European sponsored R&D projects, working in these projects as coordinators and subcontractors. We already work as coordinators in ERA-NET projects (4 of them), with partners ranging from Romania to Belgium and from France to Turkey. We are as well possibly starting an Eureka and a Research for SMEs project in the 7th Framework Program. As a complement of our business line, we offer to our clients integrated ERP solutions based on open-source platforms, such as Linux. This complementary product helps our customers better manage and integrate innovation in their business models. www.tretau.it