Companies chosen to join catalyst program by Festo and MassRobotics

Festo’s unique system designed for liquid handling with modular dispensing

The Festo Group and MassRobotics have selected the first four organizations in their inaugural Healthcare Robotics Startup Catalyst program. This new initiative for the international robotics startup community will advance healthcare development by offering investor and customer introductions, access to field experts, and a broad range of technical and marketing support resources to promising companies. The first Healthcare Robotics Startup Catalyst program is running from now to March of next year.

Access to innovation centres, expertise

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the lack of awareness between the healthcare and technology communities regarding how robotics could ease staffing concerns while minimizing the potential spread of the disease. The identification of many unmet and untapped white spaces spurred the partnership between Festo and MassRobotics to develop a Healthcare Robotics Working Group and Catalyst program.

The chosen startups will have access to Festo’s innovation centres and engineering teams. The four inaugural companies:

• Assistive Technology. An American startup committed to inexpensive at-home physical-therapy solutions, always accessible to rural patients and those who require closer monitoring.
• Bionomous. A Swiss corporation offering laboratory equipment to automate the screening, sorting, and pipetting of miniature biological entities for quicker, more ethical research in life sciences.
• Eureka Robotics. A Singaporean company that develops and commercializes innovative robotics and artificial-intelligence technology to automate high-accuracy, high-agility applications.
• Kinarm. A Canadian firm using robotic arms to provide an objective assessment method to identify, measure, and track cognitive, motor, or sensory impairments from disease or injury.

MassRobotics and Festo encouraged healthcare-robotics startups in many fields to apply to the program to fill these spaces; the fields included clinical care, public safety, laboratory and supply-chain automation, out-of-hospital care, quality of life, continuity of work and education, and healthcare-professional training and support. The program was overwhelmed with response, and the inaugural group represents an excellent cross-section of many initiatives in healthcare robotics today.

The ultimate mission of this program is to improve patient outcomes and healthcare quality with the transformative innovations that selected startups will bring to the market. Festo remains one of the world’s leading automation companies.

To learn more, contact Festo.

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