We are very pleased to announce that the Biomedical Electronics Research Group (BERG) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) has obtained the European Innovation Council (EIC) Transition grant for the FORESEE project. Our team will develop and validate an implantable microsensing platform for remote monitoring of chronic heart failure patients. The press release from UPF can be read here. This the first proposal by a Catalan university to receive funding from the EIC Transition programme of the EIC, one of the most competitive and prestigious calls in the field of knowledge transfer
👉 This incredible achievement is the result of years of hard laboratory work leaded by Prof. Antoni Ivorra and performed by BERG team, and the support of Núria Brunet from the Technology Transfer Office of Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Javier Colás, our Chief Strategy Officer, and the advice of several clinicians including the iCor team at Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol. Thanks also to the excellent advice for the project proposal and interview from the Innovayt team, very especially to Thomas Elmbæk Knudsen and Morten Kröger.
💪 It is incredible how discipline and hard work finally pays off. Antoni Ivorra conceived the idea of a novel method to wirelessly power and communicate with thin and flexible microstimulators for neuroprosthetics. In 2012 Laura Becerra-Fajardo joined him in this endeavour, first with her Master’s Thesis, and then as a PhD student. With the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant granted to Antoni in 2017, the #eAXON team was finally created. Several researchers and engineers joined us to develop the microstimulation platform, including Albert Comerma, Jesús Minguillón, Aracelys García, Marc Tudela, Ahmed Eladly, Nerea Alvarez de Eulate, Anna Comas, and Carla Leal. Antoni then gave Laura the opportunity to lead the use of this method for powering and interrogating microsensors. Since then, we have been able to develop and test different prototypes with the support of the UPF INNOVALORA program, the ERC Proof of Concept grant #Senso_eAXON, and the #CaixaResearch Validate program from Fundación ”la Caixa”.
🔨 📈 It is going to be three years of very hard work to develop and validate the microsensing platform and the business strategy that will take us to the market in the future. We are sure this journey will be even more exciting!
