Spin-offs
In line with one of its strategic objectives – to promote transfer to the enterprise sector of scientific knowledge and of technology applied to healthcare, contributing to the arrival on the market of innovative solutions in the Healthcare field and consequently, reaching the population, – CINTESIS is proud to be related to the creation of six spin-offs.
These enterprises benefit from the support provided by the Innovation & TT branch of the CINTESIS’ Management Team, created to follow-up and develop businesses, bring them closer to mature enterprises established in the market, and identify business opportunities as well as national and international funding possibilities.
The base for the business development of the spin-offs at CINTESIS relies on the research that takes place in the framework of this R&D Unit and is a result of the experience accumulated during the last years by its founders.
The emergence of these businesses was a response to market challenges and needs, which could not be answered quickly and efficiently enough within the framework of an R&D Unit. As an alternative, some researchers identified in those challenges an opportunity to extend the areas of intervention and commercialization of products and services that result from the research activities, through the creation of enterprises.
The research work and the knowledge created namely at the facilities of the U.Porto were decisive for establishing the business ideas and enhancing the technology and market variables relevant to the success of these companies.
5 of the 6 enterprises associated to CINTESIS received the U.Porto Spin-off seal granted by the U.Porto Innovation.
MyBiome
MYBIOME, LDA is a spin-off from the NOVA University of Lisbon promoted by researchers from CINTESIS, whose object is microbiota research and the development of microbiota-based therapeutic products.
MYBIOME’s mission is to ensure safe and effective access to the treatment of pathologies through fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) and to develop new microbiota-based therapeutic formulations for the treatment of dysbiosis.
FMT is recommended as a treatment for recurrent C. difficile infection, but its use in the treatment of other conditions, including metabolic disorders, is also very promising. However, the implementation of FMT in daily clinical practice is limited by the absence of a reference donor sample bank and by technical difficulties in the handling of fecal samples. To overcome these difficulties, MYBIOME aims to establish the first production and storage site in Portugal for fecal microbiota solutions and preparations for FMT and other innovative therapies.
The idea behind the creation of MYBIOME LDA, formally established in June 2019, was born from the research developed in the group led by Professor Conceição Calhau, Ph.D., and was later developed in a Health Market entrepreneurship program at Healthcare City, an incubator of ideas and accelerator of companies in the health area, by the managing partners of MYBIOME, Cláudia Marques and Diogo Pestana.
The existence of a close institutional relationship with the NOVA University of Lisbon and CINTESIS translates into a competitive advantage that will allow us to differentiate the products and services provided and to enhance research for the development of new therapeutic formulations for the treatment of dysbiosis.
More information: https://www.unl.pt/empreendedorismo/mybiome
IS4H
IS4H’s mission is to improve the cost-effectiveness of cardiopulmonary auscultation, reducing health costs worldwide. To achieve this objective, IS4Health acts in three main lines: the training in auscultation of future medical doctors, the integration of auscultation in telemedicine, and the creation of intelligent systems of auscultation.
Their main product is the IS4Learning, a technology of medical simulation based on virtual patients that is designed to teach and certified auscultation skills of students and health professionals. The main costumer of this product are health education institutions among which the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto and the University Paris Descartes in France, are already clients. More than 1000 students have been trained so far and more than 30 workshops have been delivered using this product.
More information: https://is4health.com/
HealthySystems
The mission of HealthySystems (HLTSYS) is to effectively promote security and robustness of its clients’ Information Systems and Network Infrastructures. HLTSYS’ products offer includes secure authentication solutions, integration systems that promote messages exchange among different health information systems and integrated logging systems that aggregate logs from different information sources. This offer is reinforced with services of cybersecurity systems optimisation, security and performance audits, quality assessment of data contained in databases and in messages exchange in real time, optimisation of network and infrastructure, and data protection consulting (GDPR).
HS.REGISTER is a technology aiming to create a one-stop audit log for health institutions aggregating heterogeneous events that collect logs from different sources (for example, syslog, log4j, HL7, web server logs). This solution is aligned with the IHE-ATNA profile (Audit Trail and Node Authentication) and it allows to perform complex audit processes that cross-reference different systems in an integrated manner, and allows to diagnose problems that may be taking place in those systems using only one web application.
HS.REGISTER aims to provide health institutions with a system that facilitates compliance with the GDPR standards (European General Data Protection Regulation); that can be compared to ATNA systems (Audit Trail and Node Authentication); facilitates the BSHI certification process (Brazilian Society of Health Information).
More information: http://hltsys.pt/
VirtualCare
VirtualCare results from the experience acquired in the last 10 years by a group of researchers associated to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto. They all have different backgrounds and professional experience that go from the medical and the biostatistics fields to computer sciences.
Our systems aim to enable a secure decision-making by health professionals through the acquisition, processing, validation and presentation of patients’ data with quality.
ObsCare is an electronic clinical registration system that fully supports the obstetric practice. The VCObsCare application has several modules that allow to record, consult and analyse information related to each type of service carried out in an Obstetrics service, and follow up its functioning.
The system has a fairly intuitive interface based on WEB technology and it can be used in Windows, Linux or Macintosh computers. Data is stored in a server with an Oracle Database to which all entries are registered and which can only be access by password.
More information: http://virtualcare.pt/
FASTinov
Counting on a large international network of collaborators that includes academic and clinical centres, clinical analysis laboratories, industrial partners and advisors, FASTinov aims to become a key player in the development of innovative solutions for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST).
With the ultimate goal of supporting clinical decisions, FASTinov offers a unique and comprehensive solution in terms of time saving, allowing to determine a susceptibility phenotype in 2 hours. This is an innovative approach when compared to the 48 hours needed when using usual standard methods.
The patented methodology (Flow Cytometry Antimicrobial Susceptibility Test) fills the gap between current AST methods: microbial cells can now be discriminated in terms of Susceptible vs. Resistant phenotypes, regardless of the growth.
This fast methodology provides a clinically timely sensitivity profile and unravels the main resistance mechanism involved. The technique can be applied to a large panel of microorganisms and antimicrobial drugs, showing great potential for the development of AST Kits.
More information: http://www.fastinov.com/
MEDIDA
MEDIDA aims to increase the quality of life of patients with chronic respiratory and allergic diseases through the constant improvement of customised health solutions and services based on Research, Development and Innovation.
The company develops, assesses and distributes product and services addressed towards people with chronic diseases, especially to allergic or with respiratory problems patients.
m.Carat is a portable app that enables patients with asthma and allergic rhinitis to maintain a record of all of the disease-related events, medication, health care, and access information about the disease.
Among the application’s main functionalities are the CARAT questionnaire (Control of Allergic Rhinitis and Asthma Test); assessment of the degree of control of Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis; synchronisation with the caratnetwork.org; maintaining a record of the patient’s Asthma / Rhinitis medication; creating Asthma/Rhinitis-related tasks -such as medical appointments; alerting the patient about medication intake; recording all of the patient’s symptoms, crisis, respiratory function tests values, and hospital/doctor visits; and receiving information and news about Asthma and Rhinitis.
More information: http://www.medidasaude.net/
GLYCO4CLINICS
GLYCO4CLINICS’ main objective is to ally research to clinical practice, aiming at developing new biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis as well as promoting the creation of new therapeutic agents and devices.
The mission of GLYCO4CLINICS consists in researching the changes in the protein glycosylation profile (the way proteins are coated with sugars/glycans), in a context of human diseases so as to develop new biomarkers applied to diagnosis and to create new therapeutic agents which are tested and validated in clinical trials. GLYCO4CLINICS’ vision comprises close collaboration between research (R&D) and its application in clinical practice.
More information: http://www.glyco4clinics.pt/
OTHER COMPANIES
ADHARA
Adhara results from the experience in medical education of a groups of medical doctors and researchers associated to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto.
Given their experience in teaching and in introducing new technology for teaching purposes, Adhara intends to be at the forefront of medical training, making it possible for students and health professionals to access interactive and flexible training tools.
The company’s main product is called HarriFlash, a portable support app for studying and preparing for the Prova Nacional de Seriação, a national seriation exam taken by junior doctors. This technology, based on Learning Analytics principles, was designed and supported by algorithms that aim for the efficiency of the learning process, especially during early individual exposure of each student to content entailing more difficulties and enabling customised feedback of study progression and performance.
More information: https://harriflash.adhara.online/