Innitius, a Bilbao-based startup focused on improving diagnostics for women’s health, has closed a €1.8 million financing round led by Clave Capital and Nara Capital, which has also been joined by most of the investors that had previously backed the company.
The startup, created in 2017, aims to improve the health and quality of life of pregnant women and newborns by reducing the impact of pathologies such as premature birth, induction of labor, or cervical cancer.
According to their press release, currently, 85% of pregnant women hospitalized with symptoms of preterm labor do not give birth and receive unnecessary treatment. On the other hand, almost 20% of patients who are diagnosed as false threats of preterm labor end up returning to the emergency department, giving birth prematurely during the same pregnancy.
They add: Threats of Preterm Pregnancy cause hospitalization for some 38 million women each year, costing the system 8 billion euros for false alarm cases in the European Union alone. Although there are several solutions on the market, their accuracy rates do not allow them to directly address the problem.
That is why the startup is developing a technology based on analyzing the consistency of the cervical tissue of the pregnant patient with symptoms and introducing this parameter into an Artificial Intelligence (AI) network, which provides gynecologists and obstetricians with a diagnosis that facilitates decision-making.
His vision is to apply this method developed to obtain consistency in other women’s health pathologies, such as induction of labor or cervical cancer.
Plans for the near future
Rubén Molina, CEO of Innitius, told Novobrief that the money raised will be used “to advance the company’s clinical strategy (we are currently in a multicentre study in 7 national hospitals). Also to advance the industrialization process to have our industrial production line in the next year, and of course to accelerate the recruitment of talent to help the project scale up quickly and safely”.
He added: “After this, the next steps will be another clinical study, which we need to obtain regulatory approval, the advancement of the CE marking process, and the market launch by the end of 2024-early 2025”.