As many as four Croatian healthcare innovation projects are included among 20 projects from central, eastern and southern Europe selected for financing by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) under the Regional Innovation Scheme, the Vecernji List (VL) daily said on Sunday.

Eighty projects have applied for funding, and four Croatian ones have been selected, more than from any other country in the region.

The EIT Health Regional Innovation Scheme supports the development of innovation in healthcare in the countries of central, eastern and southern Europe. The consortia behind the selected innovations will be granted up to €75,000 for further development of products or solutions, mentoring, a place at a bootcamp, and access to potential investors and partners through EIT Health, a network of top healthcare innovators in Europe.

The selected Croatian projects are: MEGI, PsyFlux, StressLyft and the Human-Machine Interface.

MEGI aims to develop an AI-enabled virtual cardiovascular health assistant that uses personalised protocols to remind patients to take medication and measure their blood pressure at home.

The PsyFlux consortium is developing a telemetric intracranial pressure monitoring device that can be used outside the hospital without infection risks, allowing the patient to partake in everyday activities.

StressLyft is an educational course about workplace stress and stress relief skills, based on interactive video content, which companies provide for their employees to prevent work-related stress.

The gesture-based human-machine interface for guided orthopaedic surgery aims to develop novel medical devices that help surgeons to make millimetre-precision measurements during hip replacement surgery and possibly other types of operations.

“Our aim is to find the best ideas and early-stage innovations in the region and encourage players from business and academia to build consortia and turn their concepts into realities,” Mónika Tóth, EIT Health InnoStars RIS Programme Manager, was quoted as saying.