In real application environments, the young companies had to prove that their ideas can keep what they promise: namely to provide tailor-made answers to very specific challenges at B. Braun - from the more careful use of resources to the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI). . "We would not be more than 180 years old as a company if innovation were not our constant driving force," said CEO Anna Maria Braun. "The focus must always be on innovations protecting and improving people's health."

The ideas of the start-ups Wefight from Paris and HappyMed from Vienna aim directly at improving the well-being of patients: the former developed the chatbot “Vik” to provide stoma patients and other chronically ill people with around-the-clock virtual advice and the latter produce special virtual reality glasses that are designed to distract and calm patients before and during surgeries, thereby reducing the need for drug sedation. Both have now been able to determine through real-life tests and patient surveys that their ideas work.

Amplyfi from the UK proved the strength of its self-learning algorithms for evaluating unstructured data through an insight report generated from public sources. 7LYTIX from Austria used AI technology to very precisely predict impending failures in dialysis machines. PANDA from Hamburg set up an algorithm-supported quality control on older production machines from B. Braun, which worked already successfully within a few days. At the Klinikum Kassel, the Hamburg-based start-up Resourcify tested the recycling of Ecoflacs and achieved a high quality of the separated plastics. And Tesalys from France, after its pilot project for the sterilization and (partial) recycling of infectious disposable items, calculated that the French dialysis centers of Avitum alone could save 132 tons of CO2 a year in this way.

For the first time, only companies that meet at least two of the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations could apply for the B. Braun Accelerator. The next issue, which is already being prepared, will focus on this concern. "The fourth B. Braun Accelerator," announced Alexander Katzung, Vice President Acceleration & Innovation at B. Braun, "will be 100 percent geared towards sustainability."