AI healthcare start-up Oncompass Medicine wins DIGITALEUROPE’s Future Unicorn Award 2021

Oncompass Medicine, a Hungarian start-up who developed an artificial intelligence-based medical software for targeted cancer therapy, is the winner of DIGITALEUROPE’s Future Unicorn Award 2021.

The Award has been delivered by Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, at the ceremony closing Masters of Digital, DIGITALEUROPE’s annual flagship conference.

Director-General Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl said:

“Congratulations to Oncompass Medicine for being crowned this year’s Future Unicorn! Their pioneering cancer treatment technology has the potential to save thousands of lives.

This win is testament to the strength of the European health tech sector; last year’s Future Unicorn Award was also an AI-based healthcare company.

There is huge innovation potential in Europe, but companies are often held back by lack of investment, outdated regulation or market fragmentation. To reach our goal of Europe being home to 25 per cent of the world’s unicorns, it is essential that policymakers create the conditions for companies like Oncompass Medicine to grow.”

István Peták, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO of Oncompass Medicine, said:

“It is our honor to receive the prestigious Future Unicorn Award this year. We will work hard to fulfil the expectation this prize represents and find the right therapy for as many cancer patients as possible.

We want to thank the organizers for highlighting the importance of young technology companies in all areas of our lives. I want to congratulate the other two finalists and all the nominees and express my gratitude for their contribution to our better future.”

About Oncompass Medicine

Oncompass Medicine has developed an AI-based medical software to choose the right targeted cancer therapy for every patient, supporting oncologists in their therapy decisions. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the software can compute more than 20,000 potential associations between cancer genes and targeted therapies in 20 milliseconds to predict each patient’s response to targeted therapies. It increases cancer patients’ chance to receive the right effective treatment, lowers unnecessary costs, and helps pharmaceutical companies develop therapies faster and safer.

About the Future Unicorn Award

Running for the fourth year in a row, the “Future Unicorn Award” celebrates scale-ups from across Europe that have the potential to become the future European tech giants. It is compiled in collaboration with DIGITALEUROPE’s national trade associations.

This year, 21 companies from 17 European countries were nominated for the award, representing a variety of digitally-transforming sectors, including financial technologies, education technologies, e-health, energy, security and more.

Besides Oncompass Medicine, who was selected as 2021 winner, the other two finalists are two green technology companies:

• Exeger from Sweden – The inventor and producer of a patented solar cell technology integrated in everyday products to improve people’s lives.
• Ocean Sun from Norway – A solution provider and design architect for floating solar power plants.

Scaling in Europe

To highlight the importance of small businesses and fast-growing companies for Europe’s economy, DIGITALEUROPE has also released today the report “Scaling in Europe”. The report’s results stem from a survey of 37 European high-growth businesses from 22 different European countries, and highlight the kind of investments and policies which would be most beneficial to support the European scale-up ecosystem.