Israeli ‘Smart Sock’ Startup Nabs $1.6M European Grant

April 8, 2018 | Israeli sock startup, ElastiMed, announced earlier this month that it selected as one of 57 companies worldwide (and one of four Israeli startups) to earn a $1.6 million grant from the Horizon 2020 program as a part of the European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot. The grant was awarded over two years and will be used “to further product development, clinical studies, production scale-up, marketing and expanding the company’s current intellectual property,” ElastiMed said in a statement. The northern Israel-based startup has developed a wearable medical device that helps improve circulation in the legs for treating venous and lymphatic diseases. ElastiMed’s sock uses battery-operated technology to activate electric pulses that compress and massage the legs to stimulate circulation. The pulses mimic contractions in the calf muscles that in turn increase blood flow. ElastiMed Founder and CEO Omer Zelka said the grant “is another step forward in ElastiMed’s quest to bring its product to market and provide users with a compression therapy solution that they can use comfortably.” The other three Israeli companies awarded grants were Vectorious Medical Technologies, which developed a miniature implant for left-atrial monitoring to detect heart failure and recently raised $9.5 million in a Series B funding round, Yokneam-based Israeli startup PixCell, which develops, manufactures, and markets portable medical diagnostic products for simple blood sampling and analysis, and Jerusalem’s Triox Nano, which is developing a “targeted drug delivery system via synergistic combination of intelligent DNA molecular machines and gated mesoporous nanoparticles.”