Bayer HealthCare is the first big pharmaceutical company to have started its own accelerator. The company’s Head of Marketing & Sales IT Christian Ullrich said that they understand that innovation and healthcare “cannot only be driven by the industry but also needs creativity.”

In order to make this happen, Bayer has teamed-up with universities and smaller companies and last year started the crowdsourcing initiative called Grants4Apps. This year, it was turned into a “full-blown” accelerator.

The jury picked 5 startups from the pool of 70 applications from all over Europe. Selected companies will now participate in the 3.5 month long program, each receiving €50,000 as financial support, mentor support and free office space at the Bayer HealthCare HQ in Berlin. In return, Bayer will take no more than 10% equity.

Here are the companies selected for the program:

• Cortrium – Maker of the C3 device which is designed to assess body surface temperature, activity and respiration rate. It also has a three channel ECG to screen and diagnose cardiological diseases.
• PharmaAssistant – This medication container communicates with a patient’s smartphone to make sure he/she doesn’t forget to take the right amount of medicine at the right time. It sends push notifications as reminders.
• Parica – Parica is looking to deploy contactless detection systems that analyze vital signs and make a recommendation to visit a specialist if warning signs are detected.
• FabUlyzer – Dubbed “Next Generation Wearable device,” it is based on proprietary nano-sensors that smells user’s breath to provide a personalized indication of your fat-burn during and after activities.
• Cardimoni – Maker of a smartphone app that empowers users to measure their heart rate and rhythm, while leveraging mobile connectivity for medical experts to provide clinical feedback.

The startups will present results of their work at a Demo Day in early December.

[Via: VentureBeat]