You can even have add up a pinch of Sustaintech and there you go: the fourth edition of Protechting is on the making.
After three previous successful editions, Protechting is back to promote the collaboration between startups and established corporations. It has now two different tracks to boost startups growth, according to their maturity: a Piloting track and a new Pre-Acceleration track, with a spotlight at sustainable and socially impacting solutions.
Protechting 4.0 – applications open
Healthtech, Insurtech and Fintech startups – If you are eager to pilot your solution or to speed up your growth, here are the Partners who are making it happen:
Fidelidade
As the largest insurance group in Portugal, with over 200 years of existence and an international presence, Fidelidade consists of a group of companies in the insurance and health sectors, including also a combination of services, that as a whole, protect the future of families, companies and Country. If Protection is your thing, this is the partner for you.
Fidelidade is here from the very first edition of Protechting (Jesus, it has been a few years now) noticing how startups have been bringing innovation and a new look into these areas. Shout out to the brave winners of the first edition of the program: EctoSense LifeSymb and CleenBeen.
Hospital da Luz Learning Health
Inside Luz Saúde Group, Hospital da Luz Learning Health is dedicated to the advanced training of professionals, translational research and innovation, in healthcare provision and management.
As the improvement of knowledge, technologies and advanced practices in healthcare are what makes their DNA, you can already see that innovation is part of the job and therefore the right partner to collaborate – “Healthteching” speaking.
Hauck & Aufhäuser
Hauck & Aufhäuser presents itself as the Fintech partner for Protechting. Adding not only knowledge and expertise into the area, it adds also to the international focus of the program, since it is a private german bank, with a 220-year history.
This is actually the most recent partner of the program, joining for the previous edition in 2018 – in fact here is their own testimony entering Proteching.
Fosun
Fosun was founded in 1992 and is a family-focused multinational company listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (00656.HK) since 2007. With its roots in China, and through technology and innovation, Fosun’s mission is to create customer-to-maker (C2M) ecosystems in health, happiness and wealth. The group embraces all the other partners of the program.
Actually, the presence of Fosun in Protechting is what can be taking you to China: The three best solutions of the piloting track will get the chance to participate in a roadshow in China with access to some of the largest global investors.
Wrapping up here, it goes without saying that Protechting is powered by Beta-i, so if you feel like you could use some more info or just wish to chat, you can reach us at scouting@beta-i.com
Applications for Protechting are now open – you can apply here
Protechting Startups are bringing innovation in areas we can all relate to: the protection of people and their belongings, service, health and savings. Sohow are these teams building the tools that will change our daily routines?
This is the first of a series of three blogposts updating you on the latest developments of the startups in the Protechting startup accelerator program by Fidelidade/Fosun and Beta-i.
A lot of progress has been made so far in the program by the teams but the most important part still lies ahead as we’re just two weeks away from the final presentation. Mário from CleeBeen Technologies, Bart from Ectosense and Ridhi from Noxidity joined us for a quick status update on their learnings and milestones.
CleenBeenTechnologies aims to resolve one of the most predominant problems in hospital environment: bacterial/superbug and MRSA infections through an IoT technology that provides real-time information about the levels and hygiene processes at any hospital. By using CleenBeen’s solution, hospitals will contribute to a better infection controlled environment, reducing the resulting diseases (even deaths) and the associated maintenance costs.
Their initial focus was on hospital’-s’ bathrooms, where they applied their sensors to see if the hygiene steps we’re being followed correctly, controlling for example the time the water tap was open, if people dried their hands and if they had flushed the toilets, between many other metrics. But we all know how speaking with potential customers can radically change the way you build and implement your solution: Since they started talking with the head of the Infection Control department at the Beatriz Ângelo Hospital in Lisbon, Dr. Carlos Palos, they realized that instead hygiene control in bathrooms, their main focus should be the medical rooms where the patients are in direct contact with doctors, nurses and other staff elements.
Definitely extremely valuable feedback that most of times only experts can give you.
The CleenBeen team was “lucky” to have met Dr. Carlos Palos as one of the Coaches assigned to the Protechting program –as soon as they met each other they knew that implementing a pilot at Beatriz Ângelo Hospital was the next big step, and they’re working on the final legal issues to start the pilot.
Their main challenge right now is to “teach” their algorithm to learn the five steps for hand-Hygiene made by the World Health Organization (WHO), the fifth being the most tricky one: How to control the hygiene process of somebody who enters a medical room, without having close contact with the patient but who still needs to clean his hands before leaving the room.
Ectosense leverages mobile technology to measure and analyze the user’s sleep quality in their home environment. Analyzing the user’s heart rate using third-party devices as well as recording other inputs gathered through your mobile device, the app determines the presence of disturbed sleep in a similar way the physician would do it.
“Lisbon is a nice and cheap city to live in and the main reason we applied was the sponsors because they’re right in our industry and also the direct-level access we have with experts through Beta-i and Fidelidade/Fosun. That in any other way would be really hard to reach.”
Again, expert feedback at Hospital da Luz was one of the key moments of the program since it allowed them to validate the features they had planned and start defining what to prioritize. They also had a really relevant time with Marcelo Lebre, Lead Developer at Faber Ventures, who help them structure their IT architecture.
Noxidity, a new Internet-of-Things enabled (IoT) technology that predicts and facilitates the maintenance of corrosion, is now focused on interviewing larger companies to gather as much input as they can while developing the prototype.
For example, many of the utilities companies have sub-power stations in remote locations that easily corrode. With Noxidity’s technology, the companies will be able to keep track of the corrosion levels in real-time from their offices, saving money and time. The team also secured a really relevant advisor, the President of the European Federation of Corrosion, Dª Fátima Montemor.
In Lisbon Ridhi found a growing Startup ecosystem, where people and businesses genuinely want to help, high quality talent is easy to find and where the quality of life is a tremendous plus point.
With two weeks to go and so much work to get done the pressure on the startups is rising but their contagious motivation and drive will definitely boost a killer presentation on the final day. Freddie Mercury would clearly define the goal for these two last weeks: From singing “Under Pressure” in the middle of the show to a “We Are the Champions” overwhelming performance in the end.