The EIC Accelerator Backed Kite Medical's Reflux Test: Did It Work

Between 2% and 3% of children have vesicoureteral reflux, a backflow of urine from the bladder towards the kidneys that can scar them for life, according to a 2019 study. Confirming it usually means a voiding cystourethrogram: a urethral catheter, radiation and "forced bladder filling and emptying while awake", as Kite Medical's EU project report puts it. Kite Medical, a Galway start-up spun out of NUI Galway's BioInnovate programme, wanted to replace that test with electrodes on the skin. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's March 2020 cut-off the European Commission selected its project, Kite, for a grant-only award, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names Kite Medical Limited as the only beneficiary of the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,795,431 towards a total cost of €3,164,744.13.

The project was to run from 1 September 2020 to 31 August 2023. CORDIS records that it was "terminated on 30 November 2022". Two months later Kite Medical was "appointing a liquidator as it struggled to get funding to continue", The Currency reported on 25 January 2023, and the Irish company register lists the company as dissolved on 10 January 2025, according to Solocheck and Business Barometer.

What Happened to Kite Medical

Kite Medical no longer exists. The register shows a creditors' meeting on 30 January 2023 and a notice of appointment of liquidator effective the same day, followed by liquidator's statements in 2024, a final statement of accounts and a final winding-up meeting dated 9 August 2024, according to Solocheck and OpenCorporates, which lists the status as "Dissolved" and the registered office as 13-18 City Quay, Dublin 2, after a change of address filed in February 2023. The last accounts on file run to 31 December 2021. Their figures, the liquidator's name and the outcome for creditors sit in paid documents and could not be verified for this article; the Companies Registration Office's own search site blocked automated access.

The reason for the collapse is reported consistently. The Currency headlined its account with the chief executive's words, "We tried everything that we could", and said the company was struggling to get funding. The Phoenix wrote on 26 January 2023 that the firm was being wound up after failing to secure long-term financing, having "attracted plenty of praise but not enough moolah". Both articles are behind paywalls beyond their openings. The company's website, kitemedical.ie, now shows a domain-sale page, according to an archived copy from September 2025.

The Technology: Imaging Urine With Electricity

Urine conducts electricity better than the tissue around the kidneys. Kite's idea, described in its 2016 patent application EP 3 291 731, filed by the National University of Ireland, Galway with Sarah Loughney and Prem Puri among the inventors, was to pass tiny currents through electrodes on the abdomen and back and watch for the change in conductivity when urine flows the wrong way up a ureter. The technique, electrical impedance tomography (EIT), is radiation-free and is already used to monitor lungs. The company's website listed a US patent for "Non-invasive detection of the backflow of urine" as granted in March 2020.

The animal evidence was encouraging. In a study in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, co-written by Kite staff and partly funded by the company, researchers infused a urine-like solution into the ureters of pigs in 116 experiments; reflux was detected in 94.83% of the mean voltage signals and over 98.28% of the reconstructed images. The alternatives are poor: the gold-standard X-ray test is invasive, and ultrasound, the non-invasive option, has a sensitivity of 44% for reflux, the company's final CORDIS report notes, citing a Cochrane review.

Children are not pigs. A pilot clinical investigation began at Cohen Children's Medical Center, part of Northwell Health in New York, in November 2018 and was to run for six months, the company announced on its website; Fora reported the same trial in December 2018. No results were published. The CORDIS report says only that a review was carried out "in light of the signal noise observed during a clinical evaluation in 2018/19". That noise, from a moving child, is what the EU money was meant to fix.

What the EU Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

According to the CORDIS report, the objectives were "to advance the technology to limit the impact of motion on the signal and to subsequently evaluate the clinical performance of a prototype system". The company hired an EIT specialist as chief technology officer and moved to a 3D EIT system with more electrodes plus sensors for shape and movement. It developed filtering algorithms for different noise sources, a method for choosing stimulation patterns, and a circuit to reduce common-mode voltage, for which it filed a patent application in August 2022. A preclinical study in pigs, with reflux created by stenting the bladder-ureter junction and confirmed by fluoroscopy, indicated that "VUR is identifiable" even with forced leg movement.

The second objective was not reached. The report lists what still had to be done before "the system to be evaluated in a clinical study": better usability, better data quality, revised procedures and privacy changes for a human trial. The project was terminated nine months before its planned end, and no clinical evaluation of the prototype is reported anywhere.

1. Limit the effect of motion on the signalDelivered3D EIT system, motion sensors and filtering algorithms, per the CORDIS report.
2. Preclinical proof with movementDeliveredPig study: reflux identifiable despite forced leg movement.
3. New intellectual propertyFiledPatent application of August 2022; publication or grant not verified.
4. Clinical evaluation of the prototypeNot achievedStill listed as a next step; project terminated on 30 November 2022.
5. A point-of-care VUR test for primary careNot achievedNo product, CE mark or FDA clearance; company dissolved in 2025.

Against the full grant term, the record is mixed but clear. The engineering work the EU paid for was done and is described in detail. The step that would have shown whether the device works in children, and the product the CORDIS summary describes as a "point-of-care VUR screening tool", never came.

The Money

Kite Medical raised €1.5 million in April 2018 from Enterprise Ireland's High Potential Start-Up fund and private investors, named by Silicon Republic as the HBAN MedTech Syndicate, the Western Development Commission and SOSV; The Currency gives the same round and investors. In July 2019 it won €50,000 in EIT Health's Headstart competition. When the EIC award was announced in June 2020, chief executive Joan FitzPatrick said the money would pay for six new technical, quality, regulatory and clinical jobs, Silicon Republic reported. The company advertised engineering roles and internships into 2022, its archived homepage shows.

The round that was supposed to follow never appeared. In December 2018 the company told Fora it was seeking a further €5 million by the end of 2019. No later equity round has been reported, and Kite Medical is not among the 326 organisations on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which fits its grant-only award. How much of the €1,795,431 the EU paid out before termination, and whether any was recovered in the liquidation, is not public.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU regulates medical radiation closely. Directive 2013/59/Euratom introduced "stronger rules particularly on the recording of radiation doses", and the EU's framework aims at "the minimum clinically needed radiation dose", according to the European Commission. In February 2021 the Commission adopted SAMIRA, its action plan for the safe, high-quality use of medical radiation. A test that keeps young children out of the X-ray room fits that agenda, and Kite's approach drew on Irish university research and Irish public money from the start.

Kite Medical also shows a familiar gap. The EIC grant paid for development, but a paediatric diagnostic needs clinical trials, regulatory approval and, above all, follow-on investors willing to wait for them. When those investors did not come, the technology stopped with the company.

The Verdict

Kite Medical's former managers and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.