Finnish start-up victorious in an international pitch

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Kolme palkittua salin edessä, Kukkakimput kädessä ja isokokoinen voittoshekki edessä.
  • Finnish start-up won the Start-Up competition of the NOME Annual Meeting
  • The victorious Te?ted team participated the BusinessUp acceleration programme 2016
  • The Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship is coordinated in Finland by Turku Science Park Ltd

The Finnish university spin-out Tezted was the winner of the diagnostics track – and the overall winner of the Start-Up Competition at the NOME Annual Meeting. Tezted is innovating the way complex diseases are diagnosed with their product Tickplex, a complete diagnostic test for tick-borne diseases. Ticks are responsible for infecting humans with diseases such as Lyme disease, Neuroborreliosis, and Relapsing Fever.

Every 120 seconds, someone is diagnosed with a tick-borne disease in the Nordics, but the current diagnoses methods are slow, expensive, and test for only one microbe at a time. Tickplex can test up to 20 tick-borne associated microbes simultaneously – with a 90 % cost reduction for the patients. The results are processed on a web application, that can be accessed by clinicians anytime, anywhere.

Tezted wants to be the new gold standard in the tick-borne disease diagnostics test industry, and their innovation is currently protected with four patents and four more coming at the end of 2018. Tezted is also ISO 13485:2016 certified and all Tickplex products are CE and IVD certified.

Three finalists from Finland

To celebrate the strong Nordic life science ecosystem, the Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship hosted the NOME Annual Meeting. Nine start-ups were selected to pitch for the price of 50.000 kroner and a spot in the NOME network.

Kolme palkittua salin edessä, Kukkakimput kädessä ja isokokoinen voittoshekki edessä.
The three winners: In the middle Leona Gilbert (Te?ted Ltd), on the left Einar Ponté (Lipum AB) and on the right Peter Mossner (MecSense).

”There were totally more than 70 participants and nine were chosen to the pitch in Copenhagen, three of them from Finland. The two other were Medicortex Finland from Turku and Nukute from Oulu. Only six Finnish start-ups had registered to the competition. That means a good success rate”, says Senior Advisor Hanna Halme, the NOME contact person in Turku Science Park Ltd.

Te?ted Ltd is based in Jyväskylä, but they participated the BusinessUp acceleration programme in Turku in 2016.

”We still have contacts and we spar them. They also have cooperation with the University of Turku”, Ms. Halme says.

Read more about the competition and two other finalists, Lipum and MecSense, on NOME homepage.

Celebration of Nordic life science ecosystem

At the NOME Annual Meeting life science experts, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs from around the world gathered in the Maersk Tower in Copenhagen to celebrate the strong, Nordic life science ecosystem. This was also the day where the Start-Up Competition took place.

Nine start-ups had been chosen from a pool of more than 70 applications to pitch in three tracks on the day: Lifescience and biotech, medtech, and diagnostics. After a round of pitching, one winner from each track was selected to pitch in front of the full audience in the auditorium of the tower. Only one of them took home the prize of 50.000 kroner and a spot in the Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship, but all three companies showed a great product, a strong team, a well-organized structure, and enough financing – and thus belief from the market – to achieve their goals.