Capri Medical Promised the EIC Accelerator Pain Relief: The Record

In 2019 Capri Medical, then a young start-up based at NUI Galway according to Galway Bay FM, told the European Innovation Council it could treat chronic pain after surgery with a nerve stimulator delivered by a single injection, instead of pain pills or repeated nerve blocks. The EIC selected the project, called CAPRI, in its 9 October 2019 cut-off with blended finance, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, and the EU paid €2,396,489 of a €3,423,556.25 project that ran from 1 February 2020 to 31 July 2022, according to CORDIS. The list names Capri Medical as the only beneficiary of the project.

Seven years after the award, the company is still developing, not selling. Its injectable platform for chronic migraine, built with a second EU grant, was cleared for first-in-human trials in June 2026, according to Irish Tech News. Its own website now presents a third target, sleep apnea. No CE mark or FDA clearance for a Capri device could be found, and no patient treated with a Capri implant has been reported.

Where Capri Medical Stands Now

Capri Medical Limited is still operating, but it has pivoted away from the post-operative pain product the EIC funded. The Irish register lists it as "Normal", incorporated on 22 August 2018 under company number 632518, with its latest financial statements, for 2024, received on 14 October 2025 and the next ones due in August 2026, according to SoloCheck and Business Barometer, which both draw on Companies Registration Office filings. North Data gives the same number and a registered office at a Dublin law firm. The company files as a small company, and its revenue, losses and headcount are not in any free source. Tracxn puts the staff at 15, a figure no second source confirms.

The filings also show money coming in. A special resolution and an amended constitution dated 19 October 2023 were filed, and a return of allotments records new shares issued on 23 December 2024, according to the same register extracts. The size of either deal is not public. The company says on its website that Ward has raised "over €12M to date in a mix of grant and equity funding". About €4.15 million of that is the two EU grants on CORDIS.

What the company is for has changed twice. CAPRI was pitched for persistent post-operative pain. By the project's final report the company described its "initial focus" as chronic migraine. Its website now says "Our Focus: Sleep Apnea", offers a "minimally invasive" alternative to CPAP masks and to implanted sleep therapy systems that need surgery, and names no product other than "Neuro Stim".

The Technology: A Nerve Stimulator Delivered by Needle

Implanted nerve stimulators send electrical pulses to a nerve to block pain signals or trigger a muscle. Spinal cord and peripheral nerve stimulators already exist, but they are implanted by surgeons, often under general anaesthetic, with a separate battery and leads that can move. Capri told the EU that neurostimulation is considered for chronic pain patients only "once all other treatments fail at 5-7 years post diagnosis", partly because of that surgery.

Capri's answer has four parts, as the TARA project lists them: a small implant without a battery, a wearable unit that powers it wirelessly through the skin, a phone app, and an injector that places the implant through a delivery catheter under local anaesthetic. The CAPRI objective claimed the implant would last over five years with "no side effects", be a low-risk class 2 device and sell for 50% less than competing systems. Those are claims from the application; no clinical data exist yet to test them.

The patent record matches that description. Google Patents lists 16 publications naming Capri Medical Limited as applicant, among them wireless power transfer systems and a stimulation generator (priority December 2020), delivery devices for percutaneous implants (June 2022), an RF transceiver (May 2023) and a sleep apnea treatment system with a priority date of 22 June 2022, which stimulates the genioglossus nerve branch that moves the tongue. Ward and Vallejo are among its inventors.

What CAPRI Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The CAPRI objective on CORDIS set the goal "to develop a product to replace current pain medication and nerve block injectable approaches for chronic pain", protected by four patent filings. The final periodic report, for February 2021 to July 2022, says work was "progressing according to plan across all work packages", but it describes early-stage results: two iterations of the electronics, the start of software and hardware integration testing, a quality system "ready for stage 1 auditing", a first set of preclinical studies, and three of the four planned core patent applications filed in year one. It does not mention a finished product, a clinical study or a regulatory filing.

The report also shows the change of target. It opens with "Our initial focus is to develop an implantable device to treat Chronic Migraine" and spends its context section on migraine, not on post-operative pain. The CORDIS summary published in December 2022 quotes Ward saying the company had submitted seven patent families and was "100 % focused on product development, after which we will turn to conducting clinical trials and moving the product to market".

1. Prototype implant, power and delivery technologyDeliveredTwo electronics iterations and first preclinical studies, per the CORDIS report.
2. Four patent filingsDeliveredThree core filings in year one; seven families by December 2022; 16 publications on Google Patents.
3. Quality system for a class 2 devicePartly"Ready for stage 1 auditing"; no certification announced.
4. Product replacing pain medication after surgeryNot deliveredNo product, approval or patient implant; the company dropped post-operative pain as its target.

The grant did what Ward says it did: it paid for the building blocks and the patents. It did not produce the product named in the objective, and the indication it was won for has disappeared from the company's materials. That makes the delivery partial at best.

What Came After the Grant

The largest follow-on was a second EU grant. TARA, a Horizon Europe consortium coordinated by the University of Pisa, ran from 1 September 2022 to 28 February 2026 to build the migraine platform, with an EU contribution of €4,260,220.75, of which €1,755,260 went to Capri Medical, according to CORDIS. CrowdHelix, a consortium partner, and Irish Tech News both put TARA's funding at €4.5 million; the CORDIS figure is €4.26 million of EU money towards a total cost of €5,744,005.

The TARA report for September 2023 to August 2024 credits Capri with the injection system and calls it "the only way to inject hermetically sealed implants & leads", citing a European patent granted in 2023 that was being extended to 13 countries. Partners designed the stimulation chip and launched the patient app, called OPORA, in the Apple and Google stores. In June 2026 Irish Tech News reported that the consortium had completed product development and that the platform, now called LUNA, "has now been cleared for First-in-Human clinical trials". The article names no regulator, trial site or start date, and no trial of the LUNA implant appears in the sources checked for this article.

The sleep apnea work runs on a separate track. Capri registered a feasibility study, NCT05914948, at an ear, nose and throat clinic in Medellín, Colombia, first posted on 22 June 2023, to test a minimally invasive way of placing a stimulation electrode at the hypoglossal nerve in 20 patients. The device named in the record is a Medtronic Vectris electrode, not a Capri implant. The record was last updated in February 2024 with the study "not yet recruiting" and an estimated start in May 2024; its status is now listed as unknown and no results have been posted.

Why Europe Should Care

The CAPRI summary on CORDIS calls chronic pain "the number one cause of long-term disability" and puts its cost to EU taxpayers at EUR 300 billion, a company figure, and the pitch leaned on the risks of opioids. A cheaper implant that a non-surgeon could place in minutes would widen access to a therapy that today reaches few patients; Ward told Irish Tech News that "the highest-penetrated neurostimulation market today serves only 10% of patients". The TARA call itself was for smart medical devices for "resource-constrained settings".

Bioelectronic implants are also a field where Europe wants its own makers. The Commission's Strategy for European Life Sciences of 2 July 2025 aims to make Europe "the world's most attractive place for life sciences by 2030", and the industry body MedTech Europe responded that its regulatory reform must include "supporting SMEs and reducing unnecessary administrative burden". Capri is a test of that ambition: about €4.15 million in EU grants, plus EIC equity of undisclosed size, have gone into an Irish platform that has yet to reach its first patient.

The Verdict

Capri Medical has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout. Its filed accounts were not reviewed, as they are not freely available.