CÚRAM, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centre for Medical Devices, hosted a webinar on 16 February 2021.

The organizers welcomed the Chief Compliance Officer of Comac Medical – Tsvetelina Ivanova, who took part in this event along with representatives of the European Commission, business organizations and EU Member States.

The webinar introduced key recent developments in the next generation medical device technologies and their potential to impact health outcomes and improve the quality of life of patients. The webinar also covered the regulatory environment necessary to sustain the competitiveness of this highly innovative European sector.

Bulgaria was represented by Ms Tsvetelina Ivanova (CCO Comac Medical ltd.) and by Ms Karina Angelieva Vice Minister of Education and Science of Bulgaria.  Ms Tsvetelina Ivanova presented the innovative project of Comac Medical part of the Horizon 2020 programme concerning a medical device for diagnosing respiratory diseases.

Comac Medical is one of the few SMEs in Bulgaria that have benefited from the EU’s largest research and innovation framework programme in history which goal is to lead to more breakthroughs and discoveries by taking great ideas from the lab to the market focusing on three key areas: excellent science, industrial leadership and societal challenges.

In 2015 Comac Medical positioned Bulgaria on the map of the Horizon 2020 programme with an innovative approach for early diagnostics and monitoring of inflammatory and degenerative processes in the lungs including but not limited to asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), tuberculosis and lung cancer.

After successfully completing the Phase I of Horizon 2020, Comac Medical’s team submitted a final report, containing the details and the outcomes of the feasibility study which had proved the commercial potential and the significant innovativeness of the project idea. Currently, Comac Medical is in a process of obtaining an IP protection at international level.

“According to the latest statistical data in Horizon 2020, the participation of the Central and Eastern European countries is less than 5% in the health topics. This leads to concentration of innovations and excellent research in some countries while we are losing the unique opportunities to build innovation ecosystem chain across the whole EU. There is still unused potential in Central and Eastern Europe. We believe that together we can reword problems in a different way, generate innovative solutions and strategic vision in order to find new creative approaches in the future”, commented Ms Tsvetelina Ivanova.