Oncompass Medicine wins European Future Unicorn Award

5 Feb 2021

Image: © Studio KIVI/Stock.adobe.com

The AI-based medical software company beat several other European start-ups at Digital Europe’s flagship event.

As part of this year’s Masters of Digital event, Oncompass Medicine was crowned the winner of the Future Unicorn Award.

The Hungarian company has developed AI-based medical software that aims to help oncologists choose the right targeted therapy for their patients. It also aims to support patients in finding access to the best personalised cancer therapies based on a unique clinical interpretation of molecular diagnostic results.

Using AI technology, the company said it can compute more than 20,000 potential associations between cancer genes and targeted therapies in 20 milliseconds to predict each patient’s response to targeted therapies. It aims to match cancer patients with effective treatments, lower unnecessary costs, and help pharma companies develop therapies faster and safer.

Digital Europe’s Masters of Digital event, held virtually this year, focused on the role of digital in strengthening Europe’s emergence from the global pandemic, and looked at how deeper collaboration between business, government and civil society can deliver on the goal of a stronger digital Europe.

Its Future Unicorn Award focused on SMEs in Europe that have the potential to become future tech giants. Oncompass Medicine was one of 21 final nominees from 17 countries. The companies are focused on a variety of industries, including e-health, renewable energy, cloud computing and fintech.

“This win is testament to the strength of the European health-tech sector; last year’s Future Unicorn Award was also an AI-based healthcare company,” said Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, director general of Digital Europe.

“There is huge innovation potential in Europe, but companies are often held back by lack of investment, outdated regulation or market fragmentation. To reach our goal of Europe being home to 25pc of the world’s unicorns, it is essential that policymakers create the conditions for companies like Oncompass Medicine to grow.”

Other nominees for the award included Interact Technologies, a Turkish company that builds AI-guided robotic exoskeletons to enhance the mobility of disabled or elderly people; Qarnot, a green cloud computing services company from France that reuses heat released by servers to heat buildings; and Irish start-up SwiftComply, which creates digital transformation solutions for water authorities.

Denmark was the only country to have three start-ups in the final 21 nominations, with CanopyLAB, a research-based social e-learning platform; Radiobotics, an AI start-up that automates the reading of x-rays; and Valuer, a data-driven innovation platform.

Jenny Darmody is the editor of Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com