Insights

Spinverse health tech and funding experts have been supporting Helsinki University Hospital (HUS), the largest academic medical centre in Europe, in some of their publicly funded research projects and activities related to EU funding applications. We discussed with Suzan Ikävalko, Senior Research and Innovation Manager at HUS, on the importance of EU funding as means to boost innovative research projects and collaboration with other parties.

Phenolic resins are one of the most versatile polymers yet invented. Spinverse recently supported the VIOBOND consortium to secure funding of 16 M€ from the Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) grant. VIOBOND project with a total budget of 35 M€ is led by Latvijas Finieris, and it aims to help build a sustainable and safe flagship plant for large-scale production of lignin phenol-formaldehyde (LPF). In this project, lignin will be used to partially substitute hazardous chemicals of fossil origin.

Mirka is seeking new innovative solutions for dust control and measurement in different working environments. The freshly launched Mirka Innovation Challenge, arranged in collaboration with Spinverse,  invites new ideas and ready solutions for dust level measurement, to join Mirka’s decades of experience in dust-free sanding. 

Fortum and Metsä Group launched ExpandFibre, a 4-year R&D collaboration, in summer 2020. It is a major effort towards developing high-volume bioproducts that have a significantly lower carbon footprint compared to currently available fossil-based products. To succeed in the ambitious mission, the founding companies have joined forces with a large and continuously growing group of innovation partners – the ExpandFibre Ecosystem. Spinverse has supported the ecosystem in setting up the ExpandFibre activities and is working with Fortum and Metsä Group to accelerate impactful collaboration.

Sometimes companies who have first succeeded in securing public funding for their own R&D&I project may find themselves being further funded as a part of a large European consortium tackling global challenges. This is where Spinverse’s customer SSH Communications Security succeeded. We talked to Jussi Mononen of this Finnish cybersecurity company on the differences and benefits of applying funding as an individual company to being part of a large consortium. 

The newly launched National Battery Strategy strengthens Finland’s role as a competitive, competent and sustainable player in the international battery industry. Spinverse collaborated with Gaia Consulting to provide their collective expertise on the battery strategy work for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.

Spinverse is one of the nine partners in the STARDUST project, launched in 2017, to create a miniaturised neurosurgical implant leading to a proof-of-concept for a new treatment approach for Parkinson’s disease. The four-year project has now progressed to its final year, coming a few steps closer to introduce novel ways to treat a wide variety of diseases.

The European Commission recently funded AICCELERATE, a multiparty project aiming to develop AI solutions to improve patient care and hospital processes. The goal of the “AI ACCELERATOR – a Smart Hospital Care Pathway Engine” project is to demonstrate the scalability of the AI solutions for different types of healthcare use cases. The project consortium led by Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) consists of 16 partners from eight European countries.

Since its launch in 2017, Spinverse has been an active facilitator for the partners of CleverHealth Network that develops top-class health tech solutions to solve clinical challenges to support patients, care personnel and clinical researchers. eCare for Me is one of the subprojects of the ecosystem where Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) nephrologist Virpi Rauta and HUS Chief researcher and Head physician Kimmo Porkka lead their respective research activities together with a group of clinicians, technology companies and university researchers. We asked Virpi and Kimmo how the projects are progressing.

The Chalmers researcher Kasper Moth-Poulsen's unique solar energy system, MOST, has been granted just over 4.3 M€ in funding from the prestigious EU programme, Future Emerging Technologies (FET) within the Horizon 2020 framework. "This project would not have been possible without IMCG's professional help. IMCG was involved from the start and helped me to identify funding options, how to find good partners, how to structure the project and how to present all this in the proposal," Kasper says.