Priority 4 - Antwerp Innovation Powerhouse

Software for doctors

The last case is a software for doctors to make consultations better and more focused. In Bingli’s system the patient fills in a questionnaire before the consultation and the doctor gets subsequently an overview of potential diagnoses, allowing the consultation to become more focused.

Bingli collaborates with farma companies for the identification of specific rare diseases. The company wants to export its system: targets are the Netherlands, Germany, France, the UK and the US.

To make this expansion possible it raised its capital end 2022 with 5.4 million euro, amongst others from venture fund Capricorn and farma company UCB.

Bingli

Artificial Intelligence

Babies born prematurely are susceptible to significant health challenges like bloodstream infection (or sepsis). Timely diagnosis and treatment is critical to prevent a heartbreak. Experts at Antwerp University Hospital developed with the help of IBM and AI company ML6 iNNOCENS, a digital assistant that monitors vulnerable newborns 24 on 7. The system uses patient data integrated with artificial intelligence, machine learning and data modelling capabilities. iNNOCENS is able to predict sepsis up to several hours in advance of the standard monitoring protocol. Antwerp University Hospital works together on iNNOCENS with University of Antwerp, IBM, and AI company ML6.

iNNOCENS

Central Data platform

In 2023 a new collaboration was initiated: Antwerp Health Harbour. Partners in this are UZA (the Antwerp University Hospital), University of Antwerp, City of Antwerp, the hospital ZAS and the hospital group Helix. The first project is building a dataplatform with patient data from all hospitals. This dataplatform should become a basis for hospitals and startups to develop innovating new products.

Antwerp Health Harbour

Telemonitoring

Covid19 puts a very high pressure on hospitals. Gaining some days by sending nearly recovered patients at home and following their health at a distance, makes a big difference. Antwerp hospitals like ZNA used a monitoring system from the startup Byteflies. The development of this product was financially supported by the City of Antwerp.

Antwerp University Hospital developed its own telemonitoring system, Telecovid.

Byteflies launched a new research project: OncoCare@Home. Cancer patients will be monitored at home for infections.

Byteflies

Machine building

Talenco is an engineering company – founded in 2015 – which diversified with building a machine which produces filter material – so called melt blown fabric – for FFP2 masks. The development was made possible by a financial aid from the City of Antwerp. The machine was built to lower the dependency from foreign producers of masks. In 2022 Talenco was a SME of the year finalist for the Antwerp Province.

Talenco

CASE 1: Talenco

CASE 2: Byteflies

CASE 3: Antwerp Health Harbour

CASE 2: Innocens

CASE 1: Bingli

The city of Antwerp and the University of Antwerp are members of BlueHealth Innovation Center, a digital health incubator that targets students, startups and care professionals. It is a public private partnership between cities, hospitals, research institutions and companies like UCB. Antwerp is an important partner because of its big and highly integrated hospital structure. Since 2023 BHIC is integrated in imec.istart where it will cover the pre-accelerating route before istart takes an equity participation.

Five of the BlueHealth Innovation Center partners have established a pre-seed investment fund, BlueHealth Innovation Fund. The fund collaborates with accelerator imec.istart to identify the future leading digital health companies. The fund has investments in 18 digital health startups.

hub 2 — BlueHealth Innovation Center powered by imec.istart

The University of Antwerp, the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp and the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology have formed a partnership to build Vaccinopolis, a place for clinical trials of vaccines. The investment amounts to 40 million euro.

Vaccinopolis is a facility for clinical studies, with accommodation for volunteers, adapted laboratories, state-of-the-art diagnostics, and biobank facilities. Vaccinopolis will significantly improve and accelerate the development of new vaccines and/or therapies for infectious diseases. Human challenge studies contained in Vaccinopolis with 20 to 100 volunteers are replacing clinical studies in real life with 1000 till 40.000 volunteers. Vaccinopolis will become an ecosystem for pandemic control.

hub 1 — Vaccinopolis

Make Antwerp a healthier city

This is about two things: integrating digital flows in hospitals and introducing digital healthcare at a distance. In digital health Artificial Intelligence is an important technology. It supports doctors in decision making, diagnostics, care planning and clinical workflows. Patients following up their own health or being followed by doctors from a distance, brings more attention to preventive health.

Pandemic control is the most wanted issue at the moment. Covid19 made unseen cuts in our world economy. The world came to a stand still. Startup research organization StartupBlink puts Belgium and Flanders on the fourth position world wide as best Covid-innovators. Not surprisingly because Antwerp has two excellence centers in vaccine development & testing: the University of Antwerp and the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp. Antwerp is holding many cards next to these two excellence centers: big and integrated hospital networks and many diagnostics companies.