News from Accelerator
EIT Health and BIO Clustermanagement NRW GmbH have launched the digital Private Equity platform “www.startups4.eu” at the 5th BIO.NRW Business Angel Congress in Düsseldorf. This platform should help start-ups to apply for funding from business angels and investors. In order to get the attention of a large investors community, young entrepreneurs and start-ups can register and upload a 3-minute biotech/life science/medtech/digihealth company video in order to apply for funding.

This is one of the first Accelerator activities and it is open to be joined by all existing private equity networks across the EIT Health countries. EIT Health Accelerator creates an ecosystem where innovation can thrive. It gathers the best and brightest health industry entrepreneurs, and provides them with the support, skills and services that they need to get their ideas off the ground and into the market. A follow-up article of the 5th BIO.NRW Business Angel Congress can be found here. The next BIO.NRW Business Angel Congress will take place on Tuesday, 7 March 2017 in Düsseldorf.

PoC/ HeadStart
The French CLC invited 25 start-ups out of more than 60 applications to pitch for their PoC/HS funding requests. Seven excellent entrepreneurs from BioTech, MedTech and DigiHealth have been selected. In the UK/Ireland CLC more than 40 applications are currently under review. With the exception of the BeNe CLC, the calls are open in all CLCs/InnoStars.

In different CLCs/InnoStars regions, Business Plan Competition and PoC/HS projects are linked with Local Training Programmes in order to provide required competencies for the participants. Methodology, content and organised training events have been prepared in five InnoStars regions.

Update from Campus
Over 25 partner organisations came together in Strasbourg, France from 25-26 May to launch the EIT Health Caregiving and Ageing Reimagined Across Europe (C.A.R.E.) Campus programme and chart a pathway forward.

The C.A.R.E initiative is part of the Campus programme, which is intended to empower Europe's top talents and citizens with new opportunities and resources to create new solutions in healthcare.
 

Campus Update: New Short Courses
The Graduate Hub is pleased to announce three new short courses this year.Following a call to all partners earlier this year, the Education Committee reviewed and then selected three exciting courses for EIT Health support.

Brain to Market is an education programme combining translational neuroscience and entrepreneurship training in a boot-camp format. The course is taking place at the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moëlle épinière (Paris, France), for five days from 29 August to 2 September, led by INSERM (FR) with input from UCB (GE), Philips (BENE), ICM (FR) and Collège des Ingénieurs (FR). It combines training in neuroscience and entrepreneurship for graduate students, researchers, clinicians and engineers. After working in multidisciplinary groups to share knowledge, the projects prepared by each group are challenged by an international jury composed by key opinion leaders scientists, venture capitalists and serial entrepreneurs.
The closing date for registration is 1 July 2016. Please register via this link >> 

Entrepreneurial Introductory Translational Research (EITR), is taking place in Cologne from 27 June – 1 July 2016. This short course is a collaboration with several partners including Siemens, Miltenyi, Roche and Profil. The one-week intensive course is set up in collaboration with the CECAD Translational Platform (RP-C) of the Key Profile Area I – Ageing-associated Diseases of the University of Cologne. This short course is part of the EIT Health Campus programme and is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The course is closed for applications.

Innovation Game is a short course bridging health innovation, education and gamification taking place in Gotland in mid-August. It is organised by Uppsala University (SCAN) in collaboration with University Medical Center Groningen (BENE), Heidelberg University (GE), Université Grenoble Alpes (FR) and Phadia AB (Thermo Fisher Scientific, SCAN). The course focuses on the use of serious games as a tool for health innovation and education; challenging interdisciplinary groups of students, professionals, researchers and educators into creative ways of innovative thinking, igniting an entrepreneurial mindset. Still open for late registrations: >>

28.06. Partner Assembly (11 am, online, duration: 60 min) on the topic: „Closing of 2015 EIT Health Accounts“
23.-24.11. EIT Health Innovation Summit in Barcelona, Spain 30.09.-04.10. Lisbon Vitality Festival: "Lisbon, city with rights, for all ages" (as part of Campus activities). The EIT Health international day is on 3 October: dedicated to professionals, civil servants, VIP's and entrepreneurs.

Deadlines: 
30.06. Call for applications DPhil/PhD transition fellowships >>
30.06. New documents for German Head Start call for proposals have been distributed at the beginning of June. Next cut-off date will be 30 June. >>
31.07. EIT Health invites micro and small enterprises (< 50 employees), spin-offs and start-ups (already incorporated) to submit applications for the EIT Health Business Plan Aggregator >>
 

+++ Belgium-Netherlands: The call for Head Start projects and PoC is out in the BeNe, expecting a lot of applications. Application deadline: 31 July +++ France: A seminar on “Ethics and technologies for the elderly at home” took place on 23 May. It was organised by CLC France's partner MADoPA and sponsored by EIT Health France. On 30 May, the CLC held a Board of Directors meeting and its General Assembly. The new Board of Directors and the president were elected. The selection day of the EIT Health France Business Plan Competition took place on 31 May. In attendance of Kurt Höller, Director of Business Creation, 7 out of 25 pre-selected start-ups were awarded the 50,000 Euro grant to speed-up market access with individual coaching. +++ Germany: BIO Clustermanagement NRW GmbH represented EIT Health at the BIO International Convention 2016 in San Francisco. There, the representative for biotechnology of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Dr. Bernward Garthoff, held a presentation at the European Commission's booth on 8 June. Together with Heidelberg Startup Partners e.V., Heidelberg University and Hackerstolz e.V., the German CLC organised the Life Science meets IT – Hackathon in Heidelberg on 20-22 May 2016 >>. On 9 June, the CLC hosted its Partner Assembly in Berlin. From 8 to 10 June, EIT Health was represented at the Hauptstadtkongress Medizin & Gesundheit 2016, together with AbbVie and Siemens Healthineers. The CLC organised a presentation on collaboration opportunities and perspectives from EIT Health partners at the MedTech Summit 2016, which took place on 15 and 16 June in Nuremberg. +++ Scandinavia: The Scandinavian Partner Assembly meeting took placein Stockholm on 19 May, followed by a reception and celebration. +++ Spain: On 20 June, CLC Spain's Partner Assembly took place at University of Barcelona's Medicine Faculty. The "Bilateral meeting EIT Health: France - Spain" will take place in Barcelona on 27-28 June. +++ UK-Ireland: Recently, Medtronic and the Oxford Academic Health Sciences Network joined the CLC as core partner and associate partner, respectively. The UK-Ireland call for Headstart/Proof-of-Concept applications (which closed on 31 May 2016) was heavily oversubscribed; receiving 50+ applications from promising health start-ups and SMEs. Core partners Imperial College and Oxford University officially launched their call for applications for this year's DPhil/PhD Transition Fellowships Pilot Program. +++ InnoStars: Rudi Westendorp, Professor of Medicine at the Centre for Healthy Ageing at the University of Copenhagen, held a presentation on aging and vitality at Brain Bar Budapest. Hans Hofstraat, Vice President at Philips Research and Member of the EIT Health Supervisory Board, held a presentation in Budapest on 9 June at a conference on  the effect of digitalization in life sciences. It was organised by the Hungarian Association of IT companies. Among the audience were Hungarian EIT Health members, and several companies/SMEs interested in cooperation with KIC and participation in EIT Health programmes. In addition, Hans Hofstraat visited academic partners in Budapest, helped strengthening the InnoStars and opened doors for future EIT Health projects. InnoStars members had a face-to-face assembly in Munich on 13 June with the participation of members of the EIT Health Management Team.