Mainly funded by taxpayers’ money, the construction industry has a poor track record in sustainability, efficiency, and safety, which are, in many cases, linked to the lack of understanding of ground behaviour. The construction industry is responsible for 11% of global carbon emissions from construction embodied carbon, 9 out of 10 projects experience cost overruns (+45% of project cost) and 60,000 fatal accidents in construction yearly. Geotechnical uncertainty translates to over-designs, unforeseen events, and impacts overall safety.

The EIC Accelerator co-funded project GEORGIA responds to the opportunity to reshape the Capital Infrastructure and Large Building Projects market by introducing and consolidating the concept of interactive design. GEORGIA will enhance the development and commercialization of DAARWIN as the pioneer end-to-end digital platform based on an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm to address the ground uncertainty problem, reduce carbon footprint and cost overruns and increase the safety of construction projects.

DAARWIN makes the automation of geotechnical back-analysis possible to match the construction progress pace and empowers decision-making for a more sustainable, efficient, and safer construction industry. As long as construction projects adopt DAARWIN, they save up to 20% on carbon-intensive materials, such as steel and cement. Moreover, DAARWIN reduces up to 30% of cost overruns and 20% of accidents in complex construction industry environments.

Epilepsy is a chronic disorder of the brain that affects people of all ages. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, making it one of the most common neurological diseases globally.

People affected by uncontrolled epilepsy suffer from unpredictable seizures. They do not know when they could have a seizure or if it could cause a serious accident.

All this uncertainty means that 50% of people with drug-resistant epilepsy also have anxiety, depression, or both. The ability to lead a full life is drastically reduced, and fear of attending school, inability to get a job or loss of social life becomes routine.

mjn-SERAS is a wearable medical device, wireless, non-invasive, and discreet, that can generate an alarm signal between one to three minutes before seizures start. Patients can reach a safe place within this time until the seizure is gone. Bridge the Gap helped the consortium to prepare the project’s proposal, define the technological developments, craft the workplan and the go-to-market strategy and coordinate the submission process.

Nine partners with complementary competencies and roles share this mission.

The Oxford University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (UK), Diakonie Kork,  Epilepsiezentrum (Germany), Clínica Universidad de Navarra (Spain) and Synaptia (Spain) will carry out the clinical trial to validate the technology with actual patients in daily life and outside the hospital.

In close cooperation with DKV Salud and Medtronic, two leading health and medical device players, mjn-neuro will optimise the technology and the device’s design.

The Medical Valley (Germany), IESE Business School (Spain), Biocat (Spain) and Oxford University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (UK) will take care of the communication and business activities, including the insurance reimbursement aspects.

Finally, the DKV Integralia Foundation will support the social inclusion of people affected by epilepsy by providing job placement opportunities.

This project, led by mjn-neuro, aims to accelerate the penetration into the European markets of its mjn-SERAS device, the world’s first device capable of providing early warning of an epileptic seizure.

mjn-neuro provides a solution to reduce stigmatisation and improve the quality of life and social integration for people affected by epilepsy in Europe.

mjn-SERAS will drastically improve the quality of life of people affected by epilepsy.

Yearly, around 2 trillion paver blocks are produced worldwide in long production cycles (15 days), requiring vast and expensive warehouse areas for stocking and unnecessary immobilisation of billions of euros. Moreover, the standard paver blocks manufacturing process emits more than 14 billion tons of CO2, consuming more than 300 million tons of water and 6.5 billion tons of natural resources.

The steel industry faces challenges in giving proper destination to its waste. Yearly, 400 million tonnes of steel slag are generated, and most of this is dumped at landfills, giving rise to environmental problems and the costly obligation for steel companies to store them adequately.

ECO2Blocks, a patented technology, uses 100% steel slag and wastewater to produce pavement blocks that are 5x more mechanically resistant and 2x more fire resistant compared with current concrete pavement blocks.

The pavement blocks made using our technology show a mechanical resistance 5x higher and a fire resistance 2x higher when compared with current cement materials.

The project has helped the company to exploit the business opportunity by introducing the technology in Brazil by conducting a small-scale pilot with the  Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) to validate the improved process for ECO2Blocks production. This pilot will be used as a showcase for commercial activities and to contact potential partners and other regional stakeholders.

ECO2Blocks has a tremendous impact on the steel industry and the construction sector. ECO2Blocks, facilitate the transition of the steel industry towards a circular economy paradigm under two perspectives. We give value to the steel slag, which currently is treated as a waste output of the steelmaking process and is often stored in landfills. For each ton of steel slag, steel producers pay 5 euros for its management.

Using our technology, the steel slag, which represents with dust 32.9% of the steelmaking process by-product output, is re-used to produce value. Moreover, we store the Co2 present in the flue gas resulting from the steelmaking process in the pavement blocks contributing to limiting the emissions.

The cement manufacturing industry represents 5–7% of the total CO2. ECO2Blocks will replace the current method used to produce pavement blocks with a cement-free technology, permanently storing the Co2 in the block´s matrix.

The energy market faces unprecedented challenges caused by climate change and the urgent need to build a decarbonised, digitised, and decentralised ecosystem. Most of the existing infrastructures to transport and distribute energy will require upgrading to guarantee a supply of clean, affordable, and secure energy. High costs in operation and maintenance or millionaire investments in new electricity lines are needed to secure the electricity of our economy and society. In addition, the increase in variable and distributed renewable energy sources claims for the digitalisation of the grid to have an intelligent operation. Global IoT deployment for a smart grid has not been feasible until nowadays. The available technology is too expensive for a vast deployment, requires batteries, or is not suitable for any asset.

Thanks to the project named 𝗘𝗚𝗠𝗢𝗜, ENERGIOT will develop a solution that aims to be the ‘Google Maps’ of the electrical grid where all the events are monitored in real-time and precisely located.

Just as Google Maps indicates the best way to move between two locations, avoiding traffic jams, EGMOI can decide which power lines have a greater capacity to absorb renewable energies, avoiding congestion. Google maps provides information about the exact position where an accident happened; similarly, EGMOI monitor in real-time the electric grid, enabling the reduction of congestion on power lines, the optimisation of asset utilisation, efficiency improvement, and cost reduction. This permit increased solar and wind integration, reduces curtailment for these renewable energies and makes power generation dispatch more cost-effective.

EGMOI is a unique HW and SW solution consisting of smart self-powered wireless sensor nodes integrated into a SaaS platform, increasing the power grid capacity (ampacity) between 50 % and 100 % and saving up to 20 % of maintenance costs.

EGMOI enables a global IoT implementation in the grid for the grid operators, TSO and DSO, to instantaneously detect unpredictable events that affect power losses and operational costs. The solution can achieve savings of up to 10 % in energy and 20 % in maintenance costs. This means 2.1 GWh and €1.5 million of saving per year for every thousand km. Instead of batteries, our devices harvest residual ambient energy to power sensors that gather data about grid status. EGMOI represents a previously unthinkable solution due to the large amount needed sensors, high technology costs, troublesome battery use and replacement, and difficulty of sensor placement. 

Globally, electricity as an energy source is expected to grow from a 20% share of final consumption to an almost 50% share in 2050 due to the expansion of renewable energy and electro-mobility. Consequently, most of the existing infrastructures and assets will require smart and digitised management to guarantee a clean, affordable, and secure energy supply. Power system operators face costly challenges as an adaptation to shifting conditions caused by decarbonisation and decentralisation of power generation and prevention of power outages or damages caused by unforeseen meteorological events or wildfires. This is the situation of ENERCAL, the distribution and transmission system operator (DSO/TSO) of New Caledonia, with 43% of energy production coming from renewable energy.

Thanks to the Digifed Application Experiment, named DYNAGRID, ENERGIOT and ELEMENT will collaborate to provide a solution of smart grid management to ENERCAL, the electricity utility of New Caledonia, which has a goal of 100% renewable energy supply in 2030.

ENERCAL aim to implement Dynamic Line Rating algorithms to adapt the capacity of the lines according to the environmental and physical conditions of the conductors. The objective is to avoid curtailment of solar and wind farms and increase the penetration of distributed renewable generation when available, avoiding millionaire investments in the network. Furthermore, fault detection can be optimised, and maintenance expenses reduced, including preventing severe and harmful accidents such as wildfires.

DYNAGRID solution enables global IoT implementation in the grid helping grid operators instantaneously reduce congestion allowing higher penetration of renewable energy, optimising assets utilisation safely, increasing incomes from power generation assets, reducing power losses, and avoiding investment in new lines. DYNAGRID can help their clients to increase grid capacity by up to 30 % and save up to 20 % of maintenance costs.

Manufacturing quality still has great potential for improvement because it is often based on experience and intuition. This gives room for interpretations and results in limited improvements during running production, acceptance of recurring scrap, and flat learning curves.

nebumind is a German company founded in 2019 with the vision to use the growing amount of data available in production companies to increase the quality of manufactured products and facilitate the shift toward Industry 4.0. Spatiomind is their first software on the market, making quality analyses during manufacturing economical for production companies. Spatiomind is suitable for aerospace, automotive and semiconductor’s manufacturing and has raised the interest of industries. It has been validated in pilot with large manufacturing companies, including Airbus, MT Aerospace, Fraunhofer/KUKA, Ariane Group, and Otto Fuchs.

Thanks to SPATIOMIND shop-floor-tools project the company updated the go-to-market strategy and business plan and received coaching services from EIC Business Acceleration Services. All the learnings in female leadership acquired by the CEO will boost the company growth.

Spatiomind’s unique selling point is based on the innovative data search engine, developed internally, which can reduce data/information search by a factor of 1 billion compared to conventional solutions. It enables manufacturers to retrieve quality data very efficiently on any manufactured component, display it in an intuitive 3D visualization for first insights and use it for the implementation of more automated quality control and improvement processes in productions.

Abdominal malignant tumours represent more than 1.8 million new cases diagnosed annually, resulting in over 1.4 million deaths worldwide.  Current diagnostic approaches are either reactive, starting when cancer is already present, or require invasive procedures and years of monitoring the detected precursor lesions. It results in inefficient and late diagnosis. Thus, there is an unmet need for non-invasive tools that can detect these lesions early and even anticipate malignancy of pre-cancerous lesions as a medically accepted screening method, averting millions of deaths. Moreover, the radiology departments in charge of these cancer diagnoses are today suffering excessive workload generated by physician shortages and the tremendous increase in the number of medical image acquisitions.

SYCAI Medical is the solution to this unmet need: an AI-driven digital screening Medical Device Software, non-invasive, designed to assist radiologists in healthcare centres in detecting benign lesions in the pancreas, liver and kidney and predicting their progression into cancer. The screening is optimally integrated into the imaging management system of the healthcare centre, working silently to analyse all the medical images. Only when a lesion is detected the radiologist is warned, together with a prediction of the lesion’s evolution to prioritise patients’ diagnosis and treatment.

Thanks to the collaborative efforts with the esteemed DARE-KPL project, Sycai Technologies has expanded its algorithms to detect and classify cancer precursor lesions in the pancreas to other organs, the liver and kidney. This partnership ensures the highest level of accuracy and reliability. The University Hospital Erlangen further enhances the system’s precision by its diagnosis knowledge. deepc helps seamlessly integrate SYCAI Medical into the hospital’s imaging infrastructure, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow.

• Early diagnosis: Improve the diagnosis of precursor lesions to reduce pancreas, kidney and liver cancer-related deaths.
• Quality of life: Reduce unnecessary tests and surveillance of patients with benign lesions (23% of diagnoses correspond to unspecific lesions that, in most cases, require a more invasive test)
• Healthcare system relief: Reduce the time radiologists require to analyse and report these abdominal lesions (70% of lesions are diagnosed by chance).

Abdominal malignant tumours represent one of the groups of oncological pathologies with the highest prevalence and mortality. Annually, new cancer cases related to organs in the abdomen (pancreas, liver, kidney, etc.) are diagnosed globally, representing more than 1.4 million annual deaths worldwide. Sycai Technologies is a deep-tech company that has developed AI-driven digital screening Medical Device Software, non-invasive, designed to assist radiologists in healthcare centres in detecting benign lesions in the pancreas, liver and kidney and predicting their progression into cancer.

See DARE-KPL for more information.

The Women TechEU programme supported Sycai’s CEO and CSO with high-value coaching and mentoring to improve female leadership skills and acquire new capabilities and knowledge to face the company’s acceleration.

TRAIFAC project helped them to update their business plan with a particular focus on pricing strategy, analysis of competitors and deep assessment of long-term R&D expenses. Principles of social impact and responsibility were considered since they are key to Sycai’s strategy. In addition, several activities related to intellectual property rights protection were developed.

Sycai has the vision to transform the early detection of cancer in upper abdominal organs by identifying focal lesions and predicting its evolution.  Sycai’s solutions will improve the dedication of resources to patients needing prioritisation in cancer care according to the status of lesions. Therefore, Sycai contributes to public expenditure savings for a sustainable and resilient European healthcare system.

Abdominal malignant tumours represent one of the groups of oncological pathologies with the highest prevalence and mortality. Annually, new cancer cases related to organs in the abdomen (pancreas, liver, kidney, etc.) are diagnosed globally, representing more than 1.4 million annual deaths worldwide. Sycai Technologies is a deep-tech company that has developed AI-driven digital screening Medical Device Software, non-invasive, designed to assist radiologists in healthcare centres in detecting benign lesions in the pancreas, liver and kidney and predicting their progression into cancer.

See DARE-KPL project for more information.

After obtaining the CE mark for Medical Device Class IIb in Europe, Sycai will pursue the FDA approval. Their unique value proposition is highly attractive for the USA market because abdominal cancer mortality rates are high and the number of unnecessary surgery procedures too. Thanks to RADUSA project, Sycai aims to carry out a feasibility study to understand the regulatory affairs, particularly related to FDA compliance, competition landscape and the product fit to American radiologist’s best practices.

Sycai has the vision to transform the early detection of cancer in upper abdominal organs by identifying focal lesions and predicting its evolution.  Sycai’s solutions will improve the dedication of resources to patients needing prioritisation in cancer care according to the status of lesions.

Sycai Medical’s innovative approach could potentially reduce the number of people visiting their doctors by a staggering 8.7 million annually. This, in turn, could save the lives of 60,500 pancreatic cancer patients each year in the EU and the USA, demonstrating the significant impact and cost-saving potential of this solution.