These four SMEs will receive a total of over €2 million to finance their projects spanning artificial intelligence in radiology, early diagnosis of cancer, telemedicine for heart failure patients and prediction of acute episodes in cystic fibrosis.
Paris, France, March 11, 2019 – Medicen Paris Region, Europe’s leading health competitiveness cluster, today announces that it has supported four of the eight winners in the healthcare category of the second wave of the French government’s Innovation Challenge program. The four SMEs will receive in total more than €2 million ($2.3M) from Bpifrance, the French government’s investment bank, to finance their research and development projects. This result emphasizes the importance of the high added value that Medicen’s support brings to companies in its competitiveness cluster, especially in national grant opportunities.
The publicly-funded Innovation Challenge, which forms part of the French government’s investment plan, operated by ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency), Bpifrance and FranceAgriMer, aims to support innovative projects led by start-ups and SMEs around several themes, including healthcare. The second edition is aimed at supporting start-ups and SMEs from the diagnostics and prevention sectors. The Challenge fosters these innovative projects by helping to accelerate the growth of those businesses which aspire to become European and even global leaders in their sector. The Challenge selects innovation projects that show a high potential to be particularly beneficial to the French economy. It offers the co-financing of selected projects in research, development and innovation with total costs of between €600K and €5M ($681K – $5.7M).
“We are always happy to help our members in becoming successful. Our ambitious strategy is to be a key driver in the innovative healthcare technologies ecosystem,” said Stéphane Roques, general manager of the Medicen Paris Region competitiveness cluster. “We will reinforce and strengthen our support and assistance to healthcare start-ups in order to further accelerate the transformation of our scientific and medical resources into economic value for the French healthcare sector.”
Medicen assessed and certified four SMEs in order to stimulate their development and facilitate their financing:
