Trinity College Dublin has launched a new European incubator programme aimed at identifying new technologies to promote healthy living, support active ageing and improve health care systems. The EIT Health Validator is hosted by the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Hub at Trinity, in collaboration with EIT Health (European Institute for Innovation and Technology). The first of its kind in Ireland, the incubator is open to health-tech start-ups founded by professionals and researchers working in the medical and technology sector across Europe. The incubator will enable early stage digital health start-ups to validate their business ideas and identify suitable markets for their products.
Ten start-ups from Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Finland and Poland and Latvia will participate in six weeks of intensive validation and mentoring activities at Trinity, before embarking on a two-week tour of four health-tech hubs across Europe — TU Delft, Netherlands; Grenoble EM, France; Imperial College London and Newcastle University. This tour is designed for rapid multi-market validation.
The 2018 teams are made up of health and science researchers, medical professionals, software engineers, digital innovators, pharma specialists, medical device experts and business developers. To gain entry to the programme all ten teams had to prove that their venture had a defensible technology with a measurable health benefit to society that can be delivered within a realistic time frame.
Speaking ahead of the programme’s launch, CEO of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Hub at Trinity, Fionnuala Healy said: “Trinity College Dublin is delighted to be working in partnership with the EU’s European Institute of Technology to welcome digital health entrepreneurs from across Europe to participate in this new health tech incubator. The first of its kind in Ireland, the EIT Health Validator programme is seeking to identify new technologies that promote healthy living, support active ageing and improve health care systems. Here at Trinity we are very proud of our standing as the number one university in Europe for producing entrepreneurial graduates and we’re looking forward to working with these high calibre teams over the coming weeks to help them validate their business idea and identify markets.”
