Tag Archives: tata nano

Fluorobot has been selected for H2020 SME EU Funding, in first round of calls.

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Fluorobot, the world’s only dedicated robotic microscope for TB screening, managed by Consultask in collaboration with technology partner ASK-M Ltd and Ateknea Solutions, has been selected for H2020 SME EU Funding, in first round of calls.

European Comission The Fluorobot development project, now reaching mature stages, ready for independent evaluation, is among the 155 projects selected by the EU, within its  H2020 SME Instrument PHC12 Program, awarded funding for Phase I. Successful completion of Phase I. will allow the participants to submit a proposal for carrying out the validation studies in Phase II.

An unexpectedly high number of proposals (2666) have been submitted to this new H2020 SME instrument, directly accessible for innovative SMEs, where the first cut-off date of PHC12 Program Call was mid June.

H2020 SME instrument Phase 1

In-line with EU objectives, the decision and the process of concluding the contract are considerably speeded up. Of the 2602 projects that met the formal requirements, 155 were preselected to be offered financing in the totality of 11 topics. It is worthwhile to note, that Fluorobot is the only Biomarker and Medical Device project that  passed threshold, from the new member states. In this topic, only 11 countries have submitted successful proposals, 10 being EU member states.

It is a particular honor for us, and a very important feedback concerning the importance and credibility of the project, that Fluorobot is among the mere 24 projects in this chapter, reaching the required threshold and qualified feasible for funding.

Analysis of proposals by topic

Hungary has submitted 166 proposals, and 3 were accepted for financing, 1 in this Program, 1 in the Food and 1 in the Low Carbon program. The only Hungarian Diagnostic project that was successful is Fluorobot, submitted by our technology partner ASK-M, in collaboration with our partner Ateknea Solutions, highly experienced in innovation management and EU funded projects.

Projects pre-selected by topic

As the EU has commented this first decision of the SME instrument, the reason for being very selective was that only the “champions of innovation” can succeed.

On the occasion of this remarkable success, we would like to thank all the contributors of the project for the hard work during these past years, especially our technology partner ASK-M, and our innovation management partner Ateknea Solutions. We welcome that in the new 7 years budget period, the EU has introduced such accessible and fast moving instruments for R&D and Innovation funding, as this SME Instrument. We believe the best return we can promise is introducing Fluorobot on the market soon!

The „Tata Nano” approach confirmed

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The „Tata Nano” approach confirmed again in an interesting article in the „European Medical Device Technology” 2014 Article.

A recent article, by Thomas Klein, in the EMDT Spring Issue, p.:8, with the title „What MedTech Manufacturers Need to Copy from Chinese and Indian Companies”, confirms and strengthens further our conviction, that the frugal approach we are following in our development, is the future path for reaching markets such as India and China, with medical device technology, in the 21st Century.

As we communicated in the past years, we strongly believe that the right approach is not „stripping down” sophisticated products developed for the developed countries to succeed in conquering the fast growing third world medical device market. On the contrary, the „frugal engineering” concept of achieving more with less, is going to be the right approach.

This is why our highest priorities throughout the development of  Fluorobot, the only dedicated robotic microscope for TB screening in the world, has been from the beginning:

  • Affordability
  • Robustness (to withstand extreme temperature, humidity, shock, etc. conditions)
  • Small footprint (due to space restrictions in distant microscopy centers)
  • Use of off-the-shelf subassemblies as much as possible (instead of expensive, dedicated developments, or costly general purpose components such as high quality microscopes)
  • Ease of use, ergonomics (self explanatory User Interface for example)
  • Maintainability

In one of our most recent presentations we have prepared for a discussion, we took the liberty to formulate our wish to become the „Tata Nano of TB Screening” (as mentioned in this blog earlier), and visualize it in our own way:

fluonanoOne of the most interesting examples quoted in the article, is an ECG device, developed by GE in an R&D Centre in India, using a bus ticket printer and a telephone component keypad. As a result, the cost of the device is less then a tenth of the models available in developed countries.

We hope to live up to these markets’, and our own, expectations, and arrive to the market soon, with Fluorobot in huge quantities, with its original, frugal, dedicated design, and its cost targeted to be considerably below a setup assembled from commercially available components from the rich world.

Donát Kiss
CEO