The FlashGuard project represented by Gonçalo Ribeiro won, on November 27, the first prize (a monetary award of 4,000 euros) in the 3rd edition of the Business Acceleration Program – LISPOLIS IGNITE – which aims to support startups in developing their business models. The young researcher, part of the Particles4Health team from the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP), a leading institution in Portugal in the field of experimental particle physics, was chosen by the jury from among the 11 startups that participated in this initiative promoted by Lispolis, the Association for the Lisbon Technology Park, in whose board the Lisbon City Council is represented.
“Flash is a technology already well known and used in the field of Particle Physics, but it is its direct application in radiotherapy, in oncology, that makes this project disruptive compared to the conventional approach used in cancer treatments. Flash radiotherapy is a promising technique, and its differentiating factor lies precisely in the fact that the radiation is delivered in fractions of a second, which can help protect healthy tissue. The treatment takes less than a second, and one of the main challenges is to monitor the beam at such an extremely short time scale. And ‘our’ device does exactly that,” says the LIP researcher, adding that pre-clinical tests are already underway.
The plans of the Particles4Health team – made up of professors Patrícia Gonçalves, Pedro Assis and Bernardo Tomé, Gonçalo Ribeiro, Carolina Miranda and Gonçalo Roriz – which is behind the FlashGuard project, are for it to cross the boundaries of academia and laboratory environments and become integrated as a new component, a technological device, in radiotherapy machines used in hospitals. “We are in the product development phase and, for that, we have support from, among others, FCT (Faculty of Sciences and Technology) and the La Caixa Foundation. We then plan, in a subsequent phase, to partner with an entity, a company capable of producing our technology on a larger scale, and also with companies that manufacture radiotherapy machines. We hope to have everything licensed within three years,” highlights Gonçalo Ribeiro.
For this 23-year-old “physicist and entrepreneur”, originally from Famalicão and the visible face of the project, events like LISPOLIS IGNITE have the virtue of “helping to disseminate innovative projects and facilitating contacts with national decision-makers, allowing us to have a more integrated vision,” he adds. It is indeed support that we speak of when we talk about incentives, recognition and awards. “We do the best we can. And in Portugal, there is a lot of talent. But… then there is always the problem of funding, which is chronic. Look at the United States and China, for example. They invest heavily in ventures, close to 90 percent. Whereas Europe does not go beyond 10 percent. And that says it all,” he states.
The Demo Day of LISPOLIS IGNITE, where the 11 startups participating in the program presented four-minute pitches, marked the closing of the 3rd edition of this initiative, which for the second time focused on the HealthTech area.
In addition to the winner, FlashGuard, the jury of Demo Day — composed of Vítor Crespo from Health Tech Lisboa, Isabel Neves, lawyer and investor, Joana Vaz, researcher and founder of Ophiomics, José Vale from IAPMEI, and Luís Caldas de Olveira, IST/Lispolis — selected for second place, with a prize of 2,000 euros, the project Flash Rapid Diagnostics, a rapid diagnostic device created by a startup that promises that, within one hour, it is possible to reliably detect the presence of multi-resistant bacteria in hospitalized patients or residents in long-term care institutions.
In third place was the project Enterprise Bot, a multi-channel platform that uses Artificial Intelligence to structure and organize data and information in the clinical area, enabling highly efficient appointment scheduling, report writing, patient management, etc. This project was awarded one year of free mentoring and incubation at Lispolis.
UpSpeech, Balvia Ecosystems, Exercogs, Consenth, Mena.ai, Reabilitar em Casa, Hopli and Lyvoo were the remaining startups that responded to the challenge of presenting their products in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, automation and robotics, telemedicine and digital health, precision medicine and advanced therapies, mental health, MedTech and medical devices, technologies for home care and aging, and nutrition.
António Cardoso Pereira, Chairman of the Board of Lispolis, highlighted the great “diversity and quality” of the startups and their respective projects that participated in another edition of LISPOLIS IGNITE, which counted on CNS – Campus Neurológico and SGS as official sponsors. With 35 years of existence, Lispolis is more than a technology park. “Above all, we are a community. And in these 12 hectares where more than 100 companies and 2 incubators coexist, there is a true health ecosystem already installed. That is what we want to be: a technological Health hub.”
Recently awarded in Copenhagen also because of FlashGuard, Gonçalo Ribeiro, who before entering university hesitated between Medicine and Physics, considers himself privileged to be doing what he loves most: research focused on improving people’s quality of life. “If I have already contributed to that through my work, I am truly happy. Whether prizes come or not. Because I know firsthand the suffering of people.”
