The Eurecat technology center and Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWC) have created the startup Dipneo to develop and market a new medical device for resuscitation in the event of cardiorespiratory arrest, based on a new system patented by Eurecat that allows the patient to be insufflated with air autonomous. The project arrived at MWC last year.
The new device differs from the classic insufflators, based on a manual airbag, in that it acts autonomously, without hands, which represents a technical, economic and performance improvement in the resuscitation maneuver, with respect to the systems of existing advanced ventilation.
According to the CEO of Dipneo, Xavier Castells, "the goal is to bring the first version of the device to the market in 2025" with a sales forecast that reaches 2.5 million euros by 2026. The company's idea is " to be the perfect complement to defibrillators (AEDs), "with a market potential of 4,200 million euros and forecast growth of 8.8% per year," says Dipneo's technology director, biomedical engineer, Julio Díaz.
The founder of the company and responsible for the valorization of industrial technologies at Eurecat, Ferran Soldevila, remarks that the purpose is to "develop a product to improve survival". According to calculations, the product will start the regulatory path to obtain authorization in 2024.
Once this stage is over, "it is planned to be launched on the market, starting with the expert user" and later adapting the device for use by professionals. The CEO estimates that the new device will have an impact in extra-hospital environments such as medical emergencies, intra-hospital, such as primary care centers, emergencies and traffic rescue, but also in cardioprotected areas, such as residences for the elderly, companies, sports spaces and municipal facilities.
Out-of-hospital cardiorespiratory arrests are estimated to reach 700,000 per year in Europe and represent a serious health problem, given that the survival rate is 10%. According to Castells, improving this ratio to 45% "only requires being able to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation as quickly as possible."
Dipneo, apart from the directors already mentioned above, has a committee of experts and the participation of Dr. Marc Bausili, specialist in anesthesiology and resuscitation and entrepreneur in this field, and David Osorio, director of the Red Cross medical emergencies area in Catalonia.
