THE BLOG

Nice: O-Kidia awarded the mental health innovation acceleration program

The “IMPACT – Mental Health Innovation Accelerator” initiative is the result of an innovative public-private partnership that launched its first call for projects in 2022 to foster the emergence of solutions targeting gaps in mental health care pathways.

The objective of the program is to promote innovation in mental health by supporting projects that create value in the mental health care pathway through technologies that address needs in prevention, early detection, diagnosis, clinical strategy, city-hospital coordination, and therapeutic wandering, with an expanded scope encompassing child psychiatry, adult psychiatry, and dementia in the elderly.

This call for projects has been a great success, with a total of 51 submissions, 35 completed applications, and 10 validated applications presented to the selection committee. Each startup presented its project to two juries, the Pre-selection Committee and the Grand Jury, both composed of medical experts and representatives from the health innovation ecosystem.

The partners of IMPACT include PariSanté Campus, Fondation Université Paris Cité, Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris, Groupe Hospitalier Universitaire Paris-Psychiatrie & Neurosciences, Fondation FondaMental, iPEPS, France Biotech, France Assureurs, Otsuka, Eisai, Groupe Vyv, and MGEN.

The call for projects for Season 2 of “Impact Season 2” led to the selection of 5 companies, including the Nice-based startup O-KIDIA, alongside Callyope, Healthy Mind, Sêmeia, and Shifters.

O-Kidia, a deeptech startup based in Nice, is developing mental health applications

Present at CES Las Vegas 2023, O-Kidia positions itself as a research and development company, O-Kidia focuses on the development and commercialization of innovative digital solutions aimed at improving the diagnosis, therapeutic guidance, and monitoring of neurodevelopmental disorders and mental health in children and adolescents.

Taking the form of a digital clinic, O-Kidia simplifies the patient journey and that of their family by offering tools designed to optimize both clinical benefits for patients and healthcare professionals’ practices.

The startup focuses on developing software applications for healthcare professionals, providing valuable support for the diagnosis and therapeutic guidance of children and adolescents facing neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders.

O-Kidia’s digital solutions measure various parameters related to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functions in a contactless manner. These parameters include attention, social skills, anxiety, emotions, behavior, motor skills, visual speed, and sleep variables. These measurements provide healthcare professionals with valuable information for diagnosis and therapeutic decision-making while facilitating support for caregivers.

The award-winning startups will benefit from a personalized 9-month mentoring program to accelerate their deployment, with strong involvement from the initiative’s partners.

We would like to express our gratitude to all the startups that applied to IMPACT 2. We are delighted to have received around fifty applications, just like in 2022, which reflects the richness and relevance of such a program. Indeed, IMPACT addresses a significant societal need and demonstrates the momentum of innovation in Mental Health in France,” explained Aurélie Lécuyer, Medical Director at Otsuka Pharmaceutical France SAS, a founding member of IMPACT.

“Following our first edition of IMPACT in 2022, for this second edition, we decided to broaden the scope to include technologies that address the needs of prevention in the mental health care pathway. We also chose diversity in terms of the maturity of companies, with startups that are still young and others that are more established,” clarified Gérard Friedlander, General Delegate of Fondation Université Paris Cité, a founding member of IMPACT.