Health issues plague businesses
One of the biggest challenges for business in the Netherlands will be keeping workforces healthy. Right now, if you call your family doctor with emerging coronavirus symptoms, they’ll tell you they’re only testing patients with severe symptoms.
Healthcare insiders told Dispatches two weeks ago that because resources are finite, Dutch officials are planning for multiple outcomes, including a worst-case scenario that could temporarily close hospitals to non-life threatening conditions, only admitting serious coronavirus cases. And that’s exactly what is happening.
Now, St. Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven is setting up triage tents on the grounds to test suspected coronavirus cases before the people enter the hospital’s new, dedicated COVID-19 treatment area, according to Studio 040.
Xeltis … raising serious capital in Europe
Speaking of health, Xeltis is one of Eindoven’s biggest success stories that no one knows about. Xeltis, which makes bio-absorbable heart implants, has raised 70 million over 10 years including 45 million in 2017, according to the Eindhovens Dagblad. This is in Europe, where a couple of million is considered a big deal.
The Technical University of Eindhoven spinout project, now based in Zurich, is raising another 12 million euros this year … because we all know how expensive it is to get medical products through testing and to the marketplace.
Future astronaut Mindy Howard is the new Female Tech Heroes ambassador
Mindy Howard, the first Dutch (sort of) woman who will go into space, will become an ambassador for the Female Tech Heroes movement. Female Tech Heroes is an initiative by High Tech Campus Eindhoven to create more diversity in the tech world. Howard is technically American (born on Long Island outside New York City), but educated at TU/e and now a Dutch-speaking citizen of the Netherlands.
She’s scheduled to go into space on a commercial flight in 2023 after coming this close to making the NASA short-list.
You can hear a podcast here with High Tech Campus Eindhoven’s Ingelou Stol interviewing Howard.
Just before everybody was relegated to their homes to wait this out, there was an intense flurry of activity in Eindhoven including:
• TicTag gets funding
Congrats to our friend Pieter Heersink at TicTag. TicTag recently signed a new investment deal with LIOF and LBDF. Both are investment funds funded by the province of Limburg. With these new partners TicTag will be able to expand the current sales funnel and set up strategic partnerships with other technology providers and OEM’s.
TicTag’s SmartTag connects your smart phone to, well, just about anything you can think of in the wide world of IOT. TicTag is yet another HighTechXL alumnus.
• Accenture acquiring VanBerlo
VanBerlo is an industrial and consumer design firm that takes up most of the first floor (second floor, if you’re American) of the Innovation Powerhouse in Strijp-T. The company uses global Internet teams to work for high-profile customers in design and packaging. We met founder Ad van Berlo in May 2019 during the DTW High Tech Discovery Route. He showed our group some of the cooler products they’ve developed, from the dashboards of port tugs to the LifeSaver, an intuitive, app-enhanced CPR device to the evolution of MaxiCosi baby seats from simple safety seats to smart devices that use iPad technology to make certain the seat is installed and positioned properly as children get bigger.
Accenture is a Fortune 500 global consultancy based in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. Accenture’s roots connect back to Louisville, Ky., the hometown (sort of) of Dispatches co-founders Terry and Cheryl Boyd.
• Aircision working with VTEC
Aircision, a graduate of HighTechXL’s deep-tech venture building program, is in a co-development collaboration with VTEC Lasers & Sensors that includes 50,000 euros in laser development. There was a public event scheduled for an announcement of this, but of course it, like everything else, has been rescheduled.
VTEC, based in Eindhoven, develops custom solutions for new application areas in photonics and IoT. Aircision uses CERN laser technology to develop free space optics used in communications links including 5G. And there … we completely exhausted our knowledge of the topic.
You might want to hold off a bit trying it out, but Eindhoven has a new VR esports arena where you can compete against other people, go full team v. team or just test your endurance against virtual benchmarks. Too cool!
• Eindhoven wants a nighttime Formula E race
Okay, you’re skeptical, but this makes perfect sense. Eindhoven is a hotbed of electric car development, with the TU/e solar racing team birthing Lightyear solar/electric cars. And this is the city that gave Europe afforable electric lights. So, a nighttime Formula E race should be a slam-dunk, to mix sports metaphors. Eindhoven would join several other cities in this fledgling electric car race series including New York, London and Berlin.
