The invention of Greek researcher Ioannis Tarnanas has climbed at the top of Europe’s most innovative business projects, to the prizes awarded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) to Budapest.

The Greek inspiration of Altoida is an application that measures the brain activity of users in a virtual reality environment to diagnose if one of them will be experiencing Alzheimer’s within six years.

Indeed, the service is one of the first validated solutions that can predict the risk of developing Alzheimer’s for people over 50 years of age. The name of the project is a “combination” of the German “alter”, which means age and the ancient word “οἶδα” meaning “I know” (I know my age), and it is a spin-off from the University of Zurich.

In addition, the other Greek professor, Giannis Pontikis, received compliments as well, who, with his project of recovery, managed to secure a place in the final of the competition amongst 38 candidates, claiming the same prize (EIT Innovators Awards).

However, Mr. Pontikis and Mr. Tarnanas are two cases of young people who choose to develop their products abroad. The reason is that Greece’s business environment seems to act for them as a deterrent, which may hinder the development of their products. The headquarters of Altoida represented by Mr. Tarnanas is located in Switzerland, while Mr. Pontikis’ Recover in Belgium.

It is worth noting that the history of the EIT is now ten years old and is a European initiative whose main aim is to provide training programs and to create new entrepreneurs through the involvement of universities, research institutions and enterprises, either SMEs or multinationals such as Siemens, Philips, Totale and Roche.

Within the EIT, six communities (climate change, digital technology, sustainable energy, raw materials, food for the future, healthy living) dominate more than 1,250 start-ups, over 600 new products and services have been supported more than 6,100 new jobs. As far as Greece is concerned, the response of domestic companies to the inauguration of the two new EIT innovation communities expected to take place since December this year is positive.

These communities are concerned with the development of actions in the areas of “urban mobility” and “value-added processing”, in which many Greek companies have already expressed an interest in strengthening the work of the EIT by “educating” new aspiring Europeans businessmen.