Startup Village: results of the Hypercube Conference

Hello, I need a million!
A large-scale conference was held in Skolkovo

Published on the website of the Skolkovo Foundation

Aspiring entrepreneurs met with investors in Skolkovo at the Startup Village conference, which completed the Russian StartUp Tour – an expert selection of the most interesting and promising projects in fifteen Russian cities. The event turned out to be large–scale - more than 3 thousand people took part in the Startup Village, representing 250 investment organizations and 1.7 thousand startup teams from 65 regions of Russia and 26 countries of the world. The guests were waiting for discussions with "business sharks", the exhibition "Made in Skolkovo" and sessions where startups demonstrated their potential to investors.

Russia has reached the fourth place in Europe in terms of investment volume and the first in terms of their growth, such an assessment of Dow Jones analysts was given by Igor Agamirzyan, head of the Russian Venture Company. "It is symbolic that there is a construction site around us, we are all building a new Russian economy together," he addressed the creators of high–tech companies from the stage of the Hypercube.

"In two years, most of you will go bankrupt, do not give up business – the most interesting thing happens after you go bankrupt for the first time," Dmitry Peskov, director of the Young Professionals direction of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, admonished the audience.

Along with information, "clean" and energy-saving technologies, biomedical innovations and projects in the field of medical informatics were among the main topics of the conference.

Guests from the futureThe biotechnological cluster "Skolkovo" organized an acquaintance of entrepreneurs with fundamentally new approaches and models of research and development in the field of medical technology and the creation of medicines, as well as a discussion of business opportunities that open up thanks to the development of smartphones and the spread of online services.

Thus, at the junction of biology and information technology, a new pharmacy is born. Pediatrician and endocrinologist, bioinformatician, professor at Stanford University Atul Butte told about the creation of a pharmaceutical company "in the garage". According to him, all it took was the Internet, a head on his shoulders and several thousand dollars. Scientists have developed software that compares data on the human genome with information about existing drugs on the market and helps to find a new application for tested and approved drugs.

Over the past 30 years, healthcare costs have been growing faster than GDP in all countries of the world, said Thomas Rudolf, a partner in the healthcare area of the German office of McKinsey, and most of the money is spent not on expensive medicines and technologies, but on the patient's stay in a medical institution. Therefore, in all healthcare systems, the task is to minimize the time of hospitalization of patients, and a large and promising market for technological innovations opens up here, Rudolf is sure. Basic telecommunication technologies already exist, now applications will be needed.

An example of such a solution is the domestic interactive system for automating self-monitoring and remote management of patients with diabetes mellitus, which was described by Evgeny Birger, a representative of the Foundation for the Promotion of Research in the Field of Diabetes Mellitus. The hardware and software complex created by his company for high-precision monitoring of glucose levels and software for intelligent analysis of factors affecting the course of the disease are aimed at improving the quality of life of patients and preventing severe complications. Reducing costs with such a solution is of interest to insurance companies, Birger believes. According to statistics collected in the USA, every dollar invested in self-monitoring of a patient with diabetes saves almost 9 thousand dollars.

According to Gelena Lifshits, head of medical projects at the Skolkovo biomedical Technology Cluster, many speakers at Startup Village with reports on breakthrough technologies have already achieved real results on the way to changing the healthcare business model. "Today we see them at the beginning of the path, but I am sure these are the people who will be quoted, because their work will inevitably change the way we are treated today and will be treated tomorrow."

mHealth is becoming mainstreamThe tendency to use smartphones for health monitoring (as a medical device or bundled with one) in Skolkovo could be seen firsthand.

A separate pitch session was devoted to getting acquainted with projects in the field of mobile healthcare, where each company was given four minutes to please the jury and investors in the hall, plus a couple of minutes to answer clarifying questions.

Despite the fact that many teams have participated in such selections more than once (like Russian Mobile Health), and even received Skolkovo awards ("Fruit MD"), most of the performances of Russian startups were not very focused, and therefore looked unprofitable against the background of foreign and international companies that presented their business models clearly and clearly structured.

At the same time, our innovators conceptually and technologically develop quite interesting solutions. For example, Intro-Micro company intends to develop a pocket detector of volatile biomarker molecules for non-invasive diagnostics and preventive medicine. By the air that a person exhales, it is possible to determine the state of the respiratory system, diagnose infectious diseases, pneumonia, bronchitis and even lung cancer at an early stage. The authors of the device analyzing exhaled air consider it useful to record the entire "gas history" of the patient.

An interesting way to diagnose on a mobile device is being developed by the MD team. Voice: The technology she creates is capable of analyzing voice data without a phoniatrist to detect abnormalities in the early stages. It turns out that by changing the voice, you can also detect serious diseases.

The European Innovation Development Center is looking for funds to develop a line of biosensors for multiparameter individual rapid immunodiagnostics. The Swiss company Lumeden Medical is developing an online pregnancy management project, when information about the condition of the fetus and cervix is transmitted from highly sensitive sensors issued to pregnant women to the smartphone of the doctor observing her.

AngioScan has introduced a novelty in its mobile line: the i-Uh device is put on the ear and performs non-invasive diagnostics of health status with instant analysis of biometric indicators, detection of pathologies and prediction of their development trends. When using such devices at home, regular monitoring of indicators serves as a strong motivation for a healthy lifestyle, since sensitive sensors record all the consequences of "crimes" against their own health.

Russian developers of mobile diagnostic devices had to compete for the attention of investors with the American creators of the tricorder, working at the NASA research center. The company Scanadu undertook to realize the concept that you can check your health as often and easily as e-mail. Alan Green, head of the medical department of Scanadu, brought to Skolkovo a prototype of the Scout scanner, the size of which does not exceed a few centimeters. It is enough to bring it to the patient's temple area in a matter of seconds to measure and transmit to a smartphone via Bluetooth 4.0 data on temperature, pulse rate and respiration, pressure, oxygen saturation of blood, electrical activity of the heart and stress level. At the request of the patient, this encrypted data can be stored in the cloud, Green noted. The first copies of Scout Scanadu are offered to users for $199, counting on the feedback needed to obtain FDA approval. Having launched a company in the IndieGoGo collective financing system to collect 100 thousand dollars for the release of the first batch of scanners, Scanadu collected half a million dollars and orders for 2 thousand devices in a few days. Scout sales are scheduled to begin in March 2014.

The PiterSoftwareHouse company, which has developed a software platform for connecting sensors for remote monitoring of the patient's condition from different manufacturers, is among the 20 finalists of the Startup Village selection, who will receive incentive prizes of 150 thousand rubles.

Personal medicine and othersInformatization will become an integral part of another bright trend – personalized medicine, individual medicines and treatment approaches, the development of which has been ensured by the achievements of science in the field of genotyping.

In Startup Village, this direction was represented by the cloud service for medical interpretation of genetic data iBinom, the authors of which intend to make the decoded genomes understandable to doctors, and the software and hardware complex of the company "Mikrospace", which allows automating and standardizing the indicators of immunohistochemical analysis and histology in general.

Among the projects that are looking for investments in Skolkovo, it is also worth noting a computer platform for the selection of cancer treatment, developed at the First Oncological Research and Consulting Center, software for the integrated search for new medicines by the In silico team and the Eco Vision software and hardware complex for the diagnosis, prevention and correction of visual fatigue in computer users. The need for developments for these areas is also undeniable.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru03.06.2013