CHF 40,000 for startups developing a platform to assess knee, next generation cancer diagnostic and monitoring, and a device for visually impaired users
23.06.2021
Inmodi, Oncobit, and SoundMap win Venture Kick's second stage of financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects collect relevant information about the integrity of knees and evaluate certain musculoskeletal disorders or injuries, enable personalized cancer care, and help visually impaired users with a camera providing real-time information on the surrounding environment of a person through directional sounds.
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 Inmodi: Dr. Jérôme Thevenot
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 Oncobit’s team, including CEO Dr. Claudia Scheckel, cancer specialists, bioinformatic entrepreneurs, software engineers, and scientific advisors from the University Hospital of Zurich.
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 SoundMap's team from left to right: CEO Maël Fabien, Software Engineer Rudolf Braun, and CTO Bruno Vollmer
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Inmodi: a smart wearable to assess knee health at any Point of Care
One of the leading causes of chronic knee pain and disability worldwide is osteoarthritis (OA), an irreversible degradation of cartilage, affecting millions of people worldwide. The disease remains to date incurable and is typically detected at a late stage. The rise in obesity, sedentary lifestyle and aging population contribute to an increase in OA prevalence and in knee replacement surgeries (a costly late-stage OA treatment). The progression of the disease can be delayed or prevented if patients get early on preventative regimens and adhere to these. To activate patients for these regimens, accessible and cost-effective detection as well as objective tracking of joint health progression is required.
Inmodi is developing an ML-enabled smart wearable, which analyses acoustic, thermal, and kinematic data extracted from the knee in motion. This data is needed to assess the knee function and integrity and help earlier detect conditions such as OA. The smart wearable is user-friendly, provides quantifiable results – which are easy to track – and can be used at any Point of Care. The technology was invented by Dr. Jérôme Thevenot, a Biomechanical researcher. He is further supported by a multidisciplinary team and by experienced board members and advisors, helping bring the new joint assessment approach to the market. The mission is to prevent disability and decrease the socio-economic burden caused by musculoskeletal disorders, by easily checking and monitoring joint health anywhere. The team sees further applications for the technology in rehabilitation, diagnostics, sports, and research.
The Venture Kick funds will help further develop the prototype and acquire early adopters and key partners.
Oncobit: Next-generation cancer diagnostic and monitoring
Every cancer is unique, so every cancer patient should be treated differently. Yet, current solutions don’t capture the information needed to treat patients optimally.
Oncobit has developed three diagnostic and monitoring tests for personalized cancer care. Oncobit’s products aim to provide a detailed understanding of genomic cancer alterations throughout the patient’s history. Highly sensitive diagnostic and monitoring tools allow Oncobit to deliver the most appropriate treatment selections and to help physicians improve the treatment options they provide to their patients. The company is currently focused on melanoma, but Oncobit’s approach is data-centric, modular, and scalable to other cancer types in the near future. The team around CEO Dr. Claudia Scheckel was recently expanded after closing a CHF 2.3 million seed financing round and includes skilled cancer specialists, bioinformatics entrepreneurs, software engineers, and scientific advisors from the University Hospital of Zurich. Oncobit’s expertise is further complemented by a newly elected Board of Directors, including entrepreneurial, pharma, and diagnostics specialists.
The Venture Kick funds will allow Oncobit to obtain regulatory approval for its cancer diagnostics and monitoring products and launch them on the European market.
SoundMap: changing the lives of blind and visually impaired people
One of the leading causes of chronic knee pain and disability worldwide is osteoarthritis (OA), an irreversible degradation of cartilage, affecting millions of people worldwide. The disease remains to date incurable and is typically detected at a late stage. The rise in obesity, sedentary lifestyle and aging population contribute to an increase in OA prevalence and in knee replacement surgeries (a costly late-stage OA treatment). The progression of the disease can be delayed or prevented if patients get early on preventative regimens and adhere to these. To activate patients for these regimens, accessible and cost-effective detection as well as objective tracking of joint health progression is required.
Inmodi is developing an ML-enabled smart wearable, which analyses acoustic, thermal, and kinematic data extracted from the knee in motion. This data is needed to assess the knee function and integrity and help earlier detect conditions such as OA. The smart wearable is user-friendly, provides quantifiable results – which are easy to track – and can be used at any Point of Care. The technology was invented by Dr. Jérôme Thevenot, a Biomechanical researcher. He is further supported by a multidisciplinary team and by experienced board members and advisors, helping bring the new joint assessment approach to the market. The mission is to prevent disability and decrease the socio-economic burden caused by musculoskeletal disorders, by easily checking and monitoring joint health anywhere. The team sees further applications for the technology in rehabilitation, diagnostics, sports, and research.
The Venture Kick funds will help further develop the prototype and acquire early adopters and key partners.
Oncobit: Next-generation cancer diagnostic and monitoring
Every cancer is unique, so every cancer patient should be treated differently. Yet, current solutions don’t capture the information needed to treat patients optimally.
Oncobit has developed three diagnostic and monitoring tests for personalized cancer care. Oncobit’s products aim to provide a detailed understanding of genomic cancer alterations throughout the patient’s history. Highly sensitive diagnostic and monitoring tools allow Oncobit to deliver the most appropriate treatment selections and to help physicians improve the treatment options they provide to their patients. The company is currently focused on melanoma, but Oncobit’s approach is data-centric, modular, and scalable to other cancer types in the near future. The team around CEO Dr. Claudia Scheckel was recently expanded after closing a CHF 2.3 million seed financing round and includes skilled cancer specialists, bioinformatics entrepreneurs, software engineers, and scientific advisors from the University Hospital of Zurich. Oncobit’s expertise is further complemented by a newly elected Board of Directors, including entrepreneurial, pharma, and diagnostics specialists.
The Venture Kick funds will allow Oncobit to obtain regulatory approval for its cancer diagnostics and monitoring products and launch them on the European market.
SoundMap: changing the lives of blind and visually impaired people
Blindness and visual impairment affect close to 300 million people in the world. Blind people have a limited understanding of their surroundings which typically creates a lack of autonomy and stressful situations.
SoundMap is a smart device, worn as a harness, that brings autonomous driving technologies to blind pedestrians. Users receive intuitive feedback through sounds and vibrations. Maël Fabien, CEO and Ph.D. student at Idiap and EPFL, Bruno Vollmer, CTO and computer vision engineer, and Rudolf Braun, signal processing engineer, built SoundMap to bring innovations of the AI industry to the world of assistive devices.
Venture Kick funds will allow SoundMap to reach their MVP, expand their team and organize additional test sessions across Switzerland and abroad.