CRAASH Barcelona, accelerating innovation in healthtech

Moebio is the Biocat talent-development initiative to foster entrepreneurship and innovation in the healthcare arena. In 2018, coinciding with its fifth anniversary, Moebio went one step further, launching its second long program: CRAASH Barcelona. This initiative, officially launched in February 2018, is a 12-week course to help research teams from Catalonia and other European countries successfully launch innovations to market in the fields of medical devices, diagnostics and e-health and digital health. 

CRAASH Barcelona is a bootcamp program of EIT Health, the largest European health consortium, and is organized by Biocat in collaboration with CIMIT. The teams transfer their research to market with guidance from expert mentors from CIMIT (Boston), the most experienced healthcare accelerator in the world. In 20 years, CIMIT has successfully accelerated more than 600 healthtech projects, has doubled the product-to-market rate and helped raise over $1 billion in additional funding. 

The CRAASH Barcelona teams validate the problems and solutions for their products and how they fit the market in some of the most important healthcare ecosystems in Europe and the United States. In July and September, they visited the Medicen (Paris) and Yes!Delft (Delft) ecosystems, respectively. In October, they traveled to Boston to do some networking and validate their projects in this ecosystem at the Device Talks, where they had the opportunity to pitch to potential investors and partners.

CRAASH Barcelona has been recognized by Diario Médico as one of the best ideas in healthcare of 2018.

Presentation of CRAASH Barcelona 

 

Eight cutting-edge projects

A total of 35 projects applied to the first edition of CRAASH Barcelona: 70% from Catalonia and 30% from the rest of Europe. The eight projects chosen to participate in the first edition were:

  • Biel Smartgaze: Project from Biel Glasses to develop electronic glasses that use computer vision and virtual reality to improve the sight of those with low vision.
  • ABLE (Assistive Biorobotic Low-cost Exoskeleton): Project from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) with Institut Guttmann to develop a light, low-cost robotic exoskeleton to help patients with spinal injuries walk.
  • Funny Friends: Project from Vecmedical and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu to develop a respiratory rehabilitation system to allow children to play while doing exercise.
  • DeepStroke: Project from Methinks to make diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients faster and more precise.
  • QuantEmTool: Project from the Portuguese start-up B2Quant that offers a software service to automatize analysis of medical images.
  • ReMemory: Project promoted by the Consorci Sanitari de Terrassa to develop a cognitive training program for people with mild cognitive impairment.
  • iBreve: Wearable device to improve stress resilience by analyzing users’ breathing patterns with machine learning.
  • Pancreatic elastase non-invasive test to diagnose pancreatic insufficiency: Project from the Institut Català d’Investigació Química (ICIQ) and Hospital Universitari Parc Taulí to improve quality of life for patients with pancreatic insufficiency.