PKvitality Joins Future4care, Europe’s Largest eHealth Accelerator
PKvitality, a French company specializing in Bio-wearable Health and Sports, has been selected to join the 1st promotion of Future4care, the largest eHealth accelerator in Europe. At the forefront of diabetes innovation, PKvitality has developed K’Watch Glucose, the world’s first Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) smartwatch. The acceleration will speed up the development of this unique innovation in diabetes monitoring that takes the form of a smartwatch.
A share ambition: accelerating eHealth
Future4care is Europe's largest open-innovation ecosystem on healthcare created under the initiative of four leading companies: Capgemini, Generali, Orange, and Sanofi. Its ambition is to support emerging companies in bringing their solutions to market and to accelerate future of healthcare for patients, by making the most of the possibilities of digital technology.
PKvitality’s mission is to enable everyone to be actively involved in their well-being and health through pleasant and straightforward products. PKvitality is developing K'Watch Glucose, the world's first painless CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) smartwatch that will track glucose levels continuously and discreetly. The system will measure glucose levels by analyzing interstitial fluid (ISF) thanks to Skintaste, a patented system using micropoints. The system enables a painless and non-stigmatizing experience in a design-to-cost architecture. Using the same technology, they are developing K’Watch Athlete, a real-time lactate monitoring design that will allow athletes and trainers to significantly improve training and performance while reducing the risk of injuries.
PKvitality has the support of Bpifrance and EIC accelerator, is accelerated by Dassault Systemes and is the winner of multiple awards, including Best of CES, EIT Health Catapult, and the Healthcare Innovation World Cup.
Minh Lê, General Manager of PKvitality, declared: “The support from Future4care and its four leading founders will significantly help us to move from Research & Development activities to industrialization and commercialization of our solutions. We have grown up from 10 to 40 people in the last two years, and we plan to be more than one hundred by 2023. Future4care will be a major support in that scaleup phase, from regulatory and market access to business development and AI, from consolidating existing teams to creating new functions as sales is approaching.”
Agnès De Leersnyder, CEO of Future4care, declared: “We are delighted to be welcoming PKvitality to join the Future4care accelerator, among twenty-one other health startups. They have shown promising results as a growing scaleup in the bio wearables sector. PKvitality is exactly the type of scaleup that aligns with the vision of Future4care. As they are developing the first ever CGM smartwatch, we are determined to support them by welcoming them into the our community and offering the best office spaces, networking, and acceleration program.”
The Future4care accelerator came at the perfect time for PKvitality which is progressing very fast: beginning of their first clinical trials in November 2021, closing of its €6m Series A in January 2022, they are also present on the crowdfunding platform Wiseed which is open to any investor.
K’Watch Glucose, the 1st smartwatch to monitor glucose
K’Watch will be the first Continuous Glucose Monitor in the form of a smartwatch. It is composed of two parts: K’Watch, the smartwatch and K’apsul, an adhesive patch at the back. It will enable a continuous monitoring of systemic glucose levels anytime and anywhere. This is possible thanks to SkinTaste®, a patented biosensor array that uses micropoints (<1mm long) in order to analyze chemical compositions of the interstitial fluid. Completely painless and invisible to others, the diabetes patient will be able to check its level discreetly or follow its average glucose and time in range.