Aarhus, Denmark (May 2, 2019) – Cercare Medical has been awarded €1,831,375 for a Phase 2 grant from the European Innovation Council’s SME Instrument. The grant will help finance innovation activities, including demonstration, testing, piloting and scaling up. The grant includes coaching and business acceleration services as well. For the iTrust project (In-time TReatment of acUte ischaemic STroke), Cercare Medical will be furthering its advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-powered CT and MR imaging analysis software, Cercare Medical Neurosuite, to ensure timely treatment of acute stroke.
Analyzing and treating acute ischemic stroke is time-consuming and best done by a stroke specialist. In the emergency setting, physicians must consider imaging, clinical presentation, and electronic health record data, when deciding on diagnosis and possible intervention. The decision largely rests on the expert radiologist to predict the potential outcome of different treatments for each patient, which is a difficult task given the heterogeneity of acute ischemic stroke progression.
Cercare Medical Neurosuite (CMN) is a groundbreaking CT and MR imaging analysis solution. Its goal is to help healthcare professionals improve the decision-making process in acute ischemic stroke situations. Powered by machine learning, CMN allows clinicians to obtain quantitative and qualitative information based on previous patient cases.
The € 1,8 million EU grant provides the resources to further advance CMN. “Our aim is to significantly improve the precision of stroke outcome prediction for different treatment scenarios for each individual patient,” said Cercare Medical Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder Mikkel Bo Hansen.
“The importance of such information is hard to underestimate. Knowing how different treatments will affect your stroke patients, can help you choose the treatment option with the highest possibility for a positive outcome almost every time. The effect it will have on stroke analysis and treatment is enormous.”
The value-added for Cercare Medical by the highly competitive EU SME phase 2 grant is substantial. The amount in itself enables Cercare Medical to add additional resources to product development and grow faster. However, the most valuable benefit is the tight connections to clinical key opinion leader sites that will be established. This forms an integral part of the project and enables access to some of the best stroke physicians in the world, while at the same time expanding the clinical research patient database substantially.
The EU grant was awarded on a highly competitive basis. Only 68 companies received a grant, out of 1,848 proposals. This is Cercare Medical’s third grant award under the EU framework. “It takes time and resources to apply for big grants such as this one,” said Hansen. “However, they can provide needed financial resources, which is important for smaller companies with highly innovative products that require significant funding.” Cercare Medical will use the funding to grow the company in the number of employees and the number of solutions provided.
