Trinity to launch new digital health accelerator programme

Posted on: 09 April 2018

Trinity College Dublin is set to launch a brand new digital health accelerator programme – the EIT Health Validator – which will run for two months this summer to enable early stage Digital Health start-ups to validate their business ideas and find their product/market fit in Europe.

The programme is open to applicants from all over Europe, and the deadline for applications is Sunday April 15.

The EIT Health Validator seeks new technologies or processes that promote healthy living, support active ageing, and/or improve health care systems. After six weeks of intensive validation activities at Trinity, those involved will embark on a two-week tour of four health tech hubs across Europe. The tour is designed for rapid multi-market validation.

CEO of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Hub at Trinity, Fionnuala Healy, said: “As the leading university in Europe for generating entrepreneurs, we are very excited to open our doors to Digital Health start-ups from across Ireland and Europe.”

“Our talented team will work with the startups to validate their business model here in Ireland and then tour the four health tech hubs, so in just eight weeks the participants will have established how they can establish and test the size of the opportunity they can capture.”

Hospital overcrowding is not just an Irish issue — in fact, the global health care system is under considerable strain due to growing populations that are ageing rapidly and global healthcare expenditure is expected to reach €9 trillion by 2020. To really put that into context, that equates to more than €1,000 per year for every single person on the planet.

Opportunities for efficiencies are infinite in health systems and hopes are high that many of these will be developed within the Validator programme. The programme, funded by the EU, is the first of its kind at Trinity, which has been ranked the #1 University in Europe over the last three years for producing Entrepreneur graduates, according to independent source, PitchBook.

To find out more about the Validator programme, and for information on how to apply, see: https://www.tcd.ie/tangent/accelerators/digital-health/