CHF 40,000 to support neuromodulation therapies, automated reporting in medicine, and novel energy storage systems
07.07.2021
Bottneuro, Celerato, and voltWALL were selected by the Venture Kick's jury of experts as winners of the second stage of financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects provide neuromodulation therapies for Alzheimer's disease, offer an efficient all-in-one solution for creating structured medical reports, and develop solutions with far greater flexibility in either stationary or mobile energy storage applications.
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 Bottneuro: CEO Dr. Bekim Osmani, CTO Alois Hopf, and CSO Dr. Tino Töpper
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 Celerato: Claudio Molina (QM & Form.Dev.), Samuel Merki (CEO & App.Dev), and Norbert Wey (Sales & Admin.)
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 voltWall team form left to right: CEO, CTO Aldo Grech, Business Developer Andrea Padoan, CFO Calogero Amato, and CCO Giorgia Pati
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Bottneuro: neuromodulation therapies for Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive neurodegenerative disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, eventually leading to death from complete brain failure. It is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. The current number of people with AD in Europe, the US, and Switzerland exceeds 15 million, with about 11’000 new patients every day. Annual costs are estimated to CHF 440 billion and are expected to rise by 50% until 2030 due to our aging society.
Bottneuro offers a unique, non-invasive therapy for early- and moderate-stage AD patients using electrical stimulations of neurons and glia cells in the brain. Positron emission tomography (PET) allows the detection of regions in the brain affected by tau and amyloid depositions. With this information, Bottneuro designs a personalized electrical stimulation therapy. The stimulation device can be used at home while watching TV or reading a newspaper. The team of Bottneuro includes highly experienced managers and experts in different fields of science and medicine. CEO Bekim Osmani graduated from ETH in Biomedical Engineering and Robotics and served in several management positions before completing his Ph.D. in nanoscience at the University of Basel. CTO Alois Hopf graduated from ETH in Biotechnology and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at the University of Basel. Rolf Wildermuth, former country president of Medtronic Switzerland, serves as chairman of the board at Bottneuro. Pascal Brenneisen, with more than 30 years of experience in pharma and life sciences, is board member and will support the business development team to establish a worldwide franchising system.
Venture Kick funds will be used for business development and fundraising activities. bottneuro.ch
Celerato: Giving structure to medical reporting
With the continuous progress in medical science, keeping up with ever-changing medical guidelines and coding systems is both a nuisance and a challenge for physicians. In addition, most medical reports are still written in plain text nowadays, making it impossible to directly access the data for automatic billing, further processing, and research.
Celerato tackles these problems by providing access to a user-friendly structured reporting software as well as a variety of multilingual web forms that efficiently guide pathologists through the creation of standardized reports. The software was originally developed within the PathoLink project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) in collaboration with four institutes (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), University Hospital Basel (USB), University Bern (UNIBE) and the University of Zurich (UZH)). In 2020 alone, physicians of those institutes created more than 10’000 reports using Celerato's SynReport software. The team of Celerato, consisting of Samuel Merki (CEO and software development), Claudio Molina (QM and form development), and Norbert Wey (Sales and administration) has several years of experience in the MedTech sector and has already successfully implemented multiple projects.
voltWALL: energy storage systems
The sun shines only during the day while most of us require electricity at night, which is a major issue for photovoltaic (PV) panels owners as they are still dependent on utility providers. For this reason, the stability of clean electricity requires environmentally friendly Energy Storage Systems (ESS). PV installers indicated that current solutions are heavy, rendering them difficult to install, reducing profitability, and creating the same problem when they require replacing due to breakdown. Also, most ESS are single-phase units, not compatible with most Swiss and German residences. To address this issue, voltWALL's team CEO, CTO Aldo Grech, Software Architecture/Engineering Lakshmi Vasudevan, Computational Design/ 3D Modelling Milica Cizmic Lebar, CFO Calogero Amato, CCO Giorgia Pati, and Business Developer Andrea Padoan are working together on voltWALL’s core product: An advanced, user-friendly, multi-application energy storage module called ‘xBlade’, that offers solutions with far greater flexibility in either stationary or mobile energy storage applications. The innovation provides clean, affordable, transportable, and secure energy. The xBlade is based on lithium cells providing modularity for each solution that voltWALL offers to the market. Each module is individually monitored so that any breakdowns in the field are preempted and replacement modules are sent and installed. voltWALL is easier to install and highly customizable. From a safety perspective, being modular and immersion liquid-cooled, “run-away” fire-incident likelihood is further lowered due to lack of oxygen in the module. The battery energy storage system worldwide market is projected to grow to USD12.7 Billion, with a 32.9% CAGR, in the next 5 years.
They are finalizing the industrial prototype and start the patenting and certification process. In parallel, they intend to close new partnerships with Ticino and other Swiss installers in order to broaden their initial market coverage. Then, they will set up the factory and start the production to meet the initial demand. Venture Kick funds will be used to complete the final prototype, the patenting, and the certification processes as these are the key first phase to reach the go-to-market phase.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive neurodegenerative disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, eventually leading to death from complete brain failure. It is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. The current number of people with AD in Europe, the US, and Switzerland exceeds 15 million, with about 11’000 new patients every day. Annual costs are estimated to CHF 440 billion and are expected to rise by 50% until 2030 due to our aging society.
Bottneuro offers a unique, non-invasive therapy for early- and moderate-stage AD patients using electrical stimulations of neurons and glia cells in the brain. Positron emission tomography (PET) allows the detection of regions in the brain affected by tau and amyloid depositions. With this information, Bottneuro designs a personalized electrical stimulation therapy. The stimulation device can be used at home while watching TV or reading a newspaper. The team of Bottneuro includes highly experienced managers and experts in different fields of science and medicine. CEO Bekim Osmani graduated from ETH in Biomedical Engineering and Robotics and served in several management positions before completing his Ph.D. in nanoscience at the University of Basel. CTO Alois Hopf graduated from ETH in Biotechnology and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at the University of Basel. Rolf Wildermuth, former country president of Medtronic Switzerland, serves as chairman of the board at Bottneuro. Pascal Brenneisen, with more than 30 years of experience in pharma and life sciences, is board member and will support the business development team to establish a worldwide franchising system.
Venture Kick funds will be used for business development and fundraising activities. bottneuro.ch
Celerato: Giving structure to medical reporting
With the continuous progress in medical science, keeping up with ever-changing medical guidelines and coding systems is both a nuisance and a challenge for physicians. In addition, most medical reports are still written in plain text nowadays, making it impossible to directly access the data for automatic billing, further processing, and research.
Celerato tackles these problems by providing access to a user-friendly structured reporting software as well as a variety of multilingual web forms that efficiently guide pathologists through the creation of standardized reports. The software was originally developed within the PathoLink project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) in collaboration with four institutes (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), University Hospital Basel (USB), University Bern (UNIBE) and the University of Zurich (UZH)). In 2020 alone, physicians of those institutes created more than 10’000 reports using Celerato's SynReport software. The team of Celerato, consisting of Samuel Merki (CEO and software development), Claudio Molina (QM and form development), and Norbert Wey (Sales and administration) has several years of experience in the MedTech sector and has already successfully implemented multiple projects.
The funds provided by Venture Kick will be used to establish a scientific advisory board, to develop new forms with interested pathology institutes, to extend the multilinguality in terms of both reporting forms and web appearance as well as for finding new investors. celerato.ch
voltWALL: energy storage systems
The sun shines only during the day while most of us require electricity at night, which is a major issue for photovoltaic (PV) panels owners as they are still dependent on utility providers. For this reason, the stability of clean electricity requires environmentally friendly Energy Storage Systems (ESS). PV installers indicated that current solutions are heavy, rendering them difficult to install, reducing profitability, and creating the same problem when they require replacing due to breakdown. Also, most ESS are single-phase units, not compatible with most Swiss and German residences. To address this issue, voltWALL's team CEO, CTO Aldo Grech, Software Architecture/Engineering Lakshmi Vasudevan, Computational Design/ 3D Modelling Milica Cizmic Lebar, CFO Calogero Amato, CCO Giorgia Pati, and Business Developer Andrea Padoan are working together on voltWALL’s core product: An advanced, user-friendly, multi-application energy storage module called ‘xBlade’, that offers solutions with far greater flexibility in either stationary or mobile energy storage applications. The innovation provides clean, affordable, transportable, and secure energy. The xBlade is based on lithium cells providing modularity for each solution that voltWALL offers to the market. Each module is individually monitored so that any breakdowns in the field are preempted and replacement modules are sent and installed. voltWALL is easier to install and highly customizable. From a safety perspective, being modular and immersion liquid-cooled, “run-away” fire-incident likelihood is further lowered due to lack of oxygen in the module. The battery energy storage system worldwide market is projected to grow to USD12.7 Billion, with a 32.9% CAGR, in the next 5 years.
They are finalizing the industrial prototype and start the patenting and certification process. In parallel, they intend to close new partnerships with Ticino and other Swiss installers in order to broaden their initial market coverage. Then, they will set up the factory and start the production to meet the initial demand. Venture Kick funds will be used to complete the final prototype, the patenting, and the certification processes as these are the key first phase to reach the go-to-market phase.