A few days ago, the local Spanish node of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) Health, informed us that MiWEndo had been awarded the Josemi Azkoitia Award, based on our participation in the HeadStart 2020 competition in which we participated last year. In this competition we present the preclinical development project of our device, a project that is being carried out from July 14, 2020 to July 14, 2021 and that now, therefore, we are about to finish.
During the project we have achieved great successes for the company, both in the technological field, in the (pre) clinical, as well as in the market access field. In the technological field, we have developed two great advances this year. The first is the development of the final version of the device that will be validated in clinical studies; and, not least, the second is the software that analyzes the signals collected by our antennas and detects the presence of polyps. In the preclinical field, we have validated our technology with colons extracted from patients and this has allowed us to validate the technology developed. Finally, in the market access field, we have created cost-efficiency models that allow us to determine the price of access to 7 of our target markets.
But who was Josemi Azkoitia to whom we now pay tribute through this award? This was the first question we asked ourselves from MiWEndo when EIT Health informed us about the recognition received. Dr. Azkoitia was an industrial engineer who was the Business Development Manager for Health at the Basque Technology Centre Tecnalia. Unfortunately, Dr. Azkoitia left us a few years ago and, in gratitude for his work in the medical device ecosystem, EIT Health decided to create this mention that recognizes every year a start-up in the medtech sector.
To conclude, we want to thank EIT Health Spain, once again, for the recognition received and to ensure that the effort we will make to honor Dr. Azkoitia’s memory will be the maximum.
