In February 2020, the acceleration hub Sector X based on UNIT.City announced the opening of 3 tracks (MedTech, Logistics and BeautyTech) with strong corporate partners: pharmaceutical giant Farmak, top retailer of household appliances and electronics Foxtrot and leader in the beauty industry L’Oréal. 11 months of the companies’ work with the startups on tracks that underwent an acceleration program resulted in the following.
Farmak signed a cooperation agreement with two startups. This is one of the first cases in Ukraine when the corporation will officially invest in startups.
Bicovery startup received $ 50K from Farmak and another $ 30K from angel investors.
Bicovery (FOUNDERS: Volodymyr Tutov, Oleksandr Sharko)
is an ecosystem with web and mobile applications, which helps a person with bipolar disorder, his/her relatives and doctors have more complete information about the dynamics of the disease; receive warnings about potential manic or depressive episodes, measure the efficacy of medicinal products and procedures; reduce the cost and increase the systemic treatment; improve the quality of life of the patient and his/her relatives.
How does it work?
Using machine learning techniques and deterministic analysis, Bicovery monitors the mental and physical condition of a person with bipolar disorder in real time.
90% of Bicovery analysis is built on tracking current behavioral information collected from multiple sources:
Bicovery reduces the cost of treating a person with bipolar disorder by 10-30%, significantly reduces the number of visits to the doctor, reduces the need for outpatient treatment and speeds up the process of selecting efficient medicinal products for a particular patient.
ComeBack Mobility
ComeBack Mobility Startup will receive the first tranche of $ 100K from Farmak Group and $ 30 from the angel investors of this Company, and the team will receive another $ 150K after the KPI are completed. Farmak’s partners joined the negotiation process and also helped to complete the round: a representative of the French company Undisputed Paris SAS Frédéric Delfosse with $ 40K, as well as Dmytro and Oksana Tomchuk with $ 75. The total investment is $ 395K.
ComeBack Mobility (FOUNDER: Illia Popov, Co-founder: Liza Voronkova)
is represented by smart crutch tips to control the load in the rehabilitation process after diseases and injuries of the lower limbs
How does it work?
When walking on crutches, the data on the load on the patient’s leg and the number of steps is sent to the patient’s mobile phone. The data are compared with the rehabilitation program and transformed into recommendations to the patient. The patient adjusts the load on leg in accordance with the recommendations, noting the data on pain in the application at the same time. The doctor remotely monitors the gradual increase in load and pain threshold of the patient. If necessary, the doctor adjusts the rehabilitation program.
“We started working with Sector X for the sake of breadth of concept, and for the sake of synergy between industry and creativity, which will allow us to find new and requested solutions for doctors, pharmacists, patients to improve the quality of life and increase its duration. This is just the beginning, there will be other startups. We take interest in the directions at the confluence of advanced near-patient testing, digital medicine, interactive patient involvement, which allow us to anticipate and prevent potential health problems. And if they are detected, to identify the causes and recommend solutions to the detected problems using biomedical and computing technologies. We are ready to invest in the growth of these startups, to participate in their development to the level of successful business,” said Andriy Goy, Technical Director of Farmak.
In total, Farmak became familiar with more than 30 startups in 11 months, and more than 60 applications for MedTech were made. We can safely say that the number of interesting MedTech startups in Ukraine is pleasing.
