European Innovation Council Fund invests €5 million in NanoVation to speed up development and market launch of its novel respiratory monitoring device

NanoVation is the first Israeli company to receive EIC funding and was one of selected few out of hundreds of companies across Europe

European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund is investing €5 million in the Israeli medical startup NanoVation, for accelerating the development of its high accuracy respiratory monitor and for launching initial marketing efforts in the EU. The investment is part of the EIC’s strategy to identify and support high-impact startups and small companies and assist them in scaling up game changing technologies.

Last year NanoVation received a €2.5 million grant from the European Union’s prestigious and highly competitive Horizon 2020 EIC Accelerator program. 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.

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 for continuous monitoring of patients’ breathing, intended for remote monitoring and management of 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 allows to shorten 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, to prove the technology is both safe and highly accurate in monitoring the respiration of patients. Unlike existing solutions, SenseGuard™ can provide clinically useful information about lung’s health, lung-function, and disease propagation, by analyzing the patient’s normal breathing. SenseGuard™ measurement is simple and straightforward as it 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.

Dr. Gregory Shuster, CEO and co-founder of NanoVation, commented: “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. 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. We aim to keep the momentum going and are even considering increasing the latest funding round, to assure effective market penetration and growth prospects.”

NanoVation was founded in 2014 as a spinoff from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and 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, as well as from the Israel Innovation Authority.

José Fernando Figueiredo, member of the EIC Fund Investment Committee, says: “NanoVation is a great example on 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.”

Dr. Gregory Shuster CEO and founder of NanoVation. Photo credit – Osnat Krasnansky.