EIC Fund Invests $5.9M In Israeli Medtech Startup NanoVation

The European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund is investing €5 million ($5.9 million) in the Israeli medical startup NanoVation, a medical device company developing a new respiratory monitoring technology to remotely monitor patients’ breathing and lung function.

The investment is part of the EICs strategy to identity and support high-impact startups and small companies and assist them in scaling up game-changing technologies.

It will also help to accelerate Nanovation’s high accuracy respiratory monitor and launch initial marketing efforts in the EU, a statement from the EIC said.

NanoVation is the first Israeli company to receive both a grant and equity funding from the EIC. The latest investment underscores the EIC’s confidence in NanoVation’s groundbreaking product and its potential to significantly impact the field of respiratory monitoring and remote management of chronic disease, according to the organization.

The Haifa-based company is developing its respiratory monitor, the SenseGuard™, based on its proprietary first-of-a-kind nano-sensor technology.

SenseGuard is a wearable wireless solution for spot-checks or continuous monitoring of patients’ breathing, intended for remote monitoring and managing various respiratory conditions and chronic diseases. It allows to save costs and improve patient’s safety and quality of life by reducing the number of hospital admissions, caused by unnoticed respiratory exacerbations. It also helps to shorten a patient’s length of stay in the hospital by providing data to support healthcare professionals’ timely and efficient decisions and actions, and by enabling earlier discharge through a continuum of monitoring of the patient at home.

The device has already undergone clinical trials and received CE marking. SenseGuard says it can provide clinically useful information about lung health, lung function, and disease propagation, by analyzing the patient’s normal breathing. The measurement is simple and straightforward and does not require any unpleasant and stressful breathing maneuvers from the patient, nor it requires the supervision and guidance of a clinical professional to assure correct execution and reliable results. This allows the patients to use the device at home and execute their daily measurements by themselves. 

NanoVation was founded in 2014 as a spinoff from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and is led by Dr. Gregory Shuster, CEO, Nadav Bachar, CTO, and Professor Hossam Haick, the company’s CSO. The company’s mission is to reduce the high medical and economic cost to hospitals of patients with COPD exacerbations and other respiratory conditions and to improve their safety, quality of care and life expectancy. The company has so far successfully completed two rounds of financing and received grant support from the EU Horizon 2020 program and the Israel Innovation Authority.

Last year, NanoVation received a €2.5 million ($2.9 million) grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 EIC Accelerator program.

“We are grateful and honored by the privilege of being the first Israeli company on such an exclusive list of companies, receiving both a grant and equity financing from the EIC,” said Shuster. “This is an additional endorsement of NanoVation and a vote of confidence in our team, in the novel technology we are developing, and in the significance of the problem we are addressing.”

José Fernando Figueiredo, a member of the EIC Fund Investment Committee, said: “NanoVation is a great example of how the EIC Fund is targeting the best innovators across Europe and associated countries. This equity financing will support NanoVation to successfully scale up its breakthrough technology SenseGuard, an innovative solution for monitoring of patients with respiratory diseases, including COPD, based on a unique nanosensor-based technology, that aims at improving patients’ quality of life and treatment as well as reducing health care systems costs.”

SEE ALSO: Israeli Scientist Wins EU Innovation Award For Breath Test Device That Detects Diseases

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