Tellspec's EIC Accelerator Bet on Breast Milk Analysis, Revisited

Tellspec Ltd, a UK company registered in 2015, won an EU grant in the 5 June 2019 round of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, for Preemie: a handheld near-infrared sensor that measures the fat, protein and carbohydrate in breast milk so that neonatal units can add the right amount of fortifier for each premature baby. The European Commission's list of selected companies names TellSpec LTD as the only company on the Preemie project, and CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,664,556 towards total costs of €2,377,937.50, from 1 October 2019 to 30 April 2022.

The project's own goal was to obtain "the medical certification needed to go to market". Four and a half years after the project ended, no such certification has been announced. A validation trial at University Hospital Southampton, which its registry entry says will be used to gain CE certification, was last updated in June 2024 as "not yet recruiting". Meanwhile the company's new website, Preemie Health, sells the same sensor as part of a federated AI platform for neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and drug makers.

Where Tellspec Stands Now

Tellspec Ltd is active. Companies House lists it as active, with accounts to 31 December 2025 filed on 16 February 2026 and a confirmation statement made on 5 March 2026; North Data shows the same filings. The second director, Alasdair James Gill, appointed in May 2021, resigned on 4 March 2026, leaving one director. The company's description of its business in its 2025 accounts is "developing sensors for the health sector".

Two websites present the work. Tellspec.com still offers sensors and software for food, dairy, aquaculture and pharmaceutical testing alongside the Preemie sensor. Preemie Health lists a team of 16 plus advisers, led by Isabel Hoffmann as founder and CEO. Its clinical brief, a file dated July 2026, invites hospitals, pharmaceutical and nutrition companies to join a "Preemie Consortium" and says pilot studies on multi-site NICU data showed federated models could predict late-onset sepsis "hours before clinical suspicion". The brief cites no study for that claim, and none could be found.

The names need a note. CORDIS's 2022 results article quotes "Isabel de Oliveira Correa, CEO of Tellspec". Companies House lists Isabel De Oliveira Correa as the director since 2015 and as the only person with significant control. Both websites name Isabel Hoffmann as founder and CEO, the name used in press coverage of Tellspec since 2013.

From Food Scanner to Neonatal Unit

Tellspec started as a consumer gadget. TellSpec Inc. of Toronto raised $386,692 from 1,765 backers on Indiegogo in 2013 for a handheld scanner that would tell users what was in their food, according to Crowdfund Insider. In 2015 Boing Boing reported that the company had threatened to sue a critic of its crowdfunded gadget. In March 2017 the "London-based branch of a Canadian company" was one of two runners-up in the EU's Horizon Prize for a food scanner, winning €100,000, according to FoodNavigator; Tellspec's website lists the same prize.

The UK company's own filings show how small it was when the EU picked it. Companies House published a first notice for compulsory strike-off on 11 December 2018, withdrawn on 8 January 2019, five months before the June 2019 cut-off, according to its filing history. Its 2018 accounts show net assets of £19,760, cash of £660 and one employee.

The Technology: a Pocket Milk Analyser

Breast milk varies in fat and protein from mother to mother and from feed to feed, so standard doses of fortifier leave many preterm babies short of the nutrients they need. Hospitals that measure milk usually rely on benchtop infrared analysers. Miris, the market leader by its own description, received US Food and Drug Administration clearance for its Human Milk Analyzer in December 2018, which it called the first instrument approved in the US as a diagnostic device for human milk nutrients, according to the Miris launch release. Academic groups have also tested general-purpose handheld spectrometers: a University of Oviedo team reported in Sensors in 2022 that a Thermo Fisher microPHAZIR device predicted fat in 68 breast milk samples with an r² of 0.841, but protein with only 0.512.

Preemie's sensor scans a few drops of milk in a disposable cuvette with near-infrared light from 1,350 to 2,150 nanometres, sends the spectrum over Bluetooth to a tablet and lets a cloud-based machine learning model estimate the nutrients, according to the product page and the CORDIS results article. Software then calculates the fortifier for each baby and tracks growth. The company's Innovate UK project summary claims its AI uses the whole spectrum where competitors use "only a few wavelengths". No independent peer-reviewed accuracy study of the Preemie sensor on human milk could be found.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 9 November 2019. The project promised to tailor the software, validate the system with a European hospital and a milk bank, obtain the medical certification needed to sell it, and set up distribution in Europe, according to the CORDIS objective. The final periodic report for the period to 30 April 2022 says the sensor "obtained the CE Mark in May 2020 and is currently sold for research purposes", that "several units" were sold, that the software grew into four applications, and that four patents were filed. It also says the system was "validated in April 2022 for the analysis of lipids, total solids and energy", not protein or carbohydrate, and that the company was "actively working to finalize our clinical trials and certify the Preemie system as an IVD medical device".

The patent filings exist. Google Patents lists four Tellspec Ltd filings from 2021 and 2022: a US design patent for the sensor, which is in force; an application on personalised infant nutrition and one on spectral analysis, both pending; and an application for the hinged cuvette, marked abandoned.

1. Preemie sensor builtDeliveredCE marked May 2020 and sold for research use, per the CORDIS report; listed on Preemie Health.
2. Software for NICUs and milk banksDeliveredFour applications reported; NutriNTrack and milk analysis apps offered on the website.
3. Validation with a hospital and a milk bankPartlyValidated in April 2022 for lipids, total solids and energy only; the Southampton trial was "not yet recruiting" at its last update in June 2024.
4. IVD medical certificationNot achievedNot obtained by project end; the 2024 trial entry still lists CE certification as a goal; none announced since.
5. European distribution and customersUnverified"Several units" sold for research; no distributor or hospital customer has been named.
6. Intellectual propertyDeliveredFour US filings; one design patent in force, two pending, one abandoned.

On timing, the project ran its full 31 months and its report was published in September 2022. The certification step slipped beyond the project, and the UK government then paid for it a second time: Innovate UK awarded Tellspec £442,936 for a "Preemie" project from May 2023 to April 2026 whose stated aim was "to perform the external validation and obtain the IVD medical certification in UK and EU", according to UKRI's Gateway to Research; North Data lists the same amount. That project has ended, and no certification has been announced.

The Money

Tellspec Ltd files small-company accounts without a profit and loss account for most years, so revenue is not public. The balance sheets show the grant passing through: deferred government grants of £560,617 at the end of 2019 and £405,727 at the end of 2020, none by 2021. Net assets rose to £136,081 in 2021 and £136,119 in 2022, then fell to £19,579 in 2023 after a loss of £116,539, and to a deficit of £82,982 in 2024 after a loss of £102,561. The 2024 accounts record an exceptional item: a loan to a related party company "written off in the year". At the end of 2025 net liabilities were £64,270, with £7,544 in cash, according to the filed accounts.

The staffing figures are just as small. The UK company reported an average of one employee in 2019 and 2020, the years it ran a €2.38 million project, rising to seven in 2025. Its 2019 and 2020 accounts also show amounts owed by "group undertakings" of £87,669 and £94,072, so some of the work runs through other entities that the filings do not name. No equity round has been reported: the share capital has been £100 since 2015, and the company is not among the roughly 315 companies on the EIC Fund's portfolio list, which is expected for a grant-only award. A bank charge registered in April 2022 was satisfied four months later.

Whether the company is growing cannot be read cleanly from these numbers. The head count rose and a second public grant arrived, but there has been no investment round, and net assets have been negative since 2024.

Why It Matters for Europe

About 500,000 babies are born preterm in Europe each year, the CORDIS summary says, and better nutrition is one of the few cheap levers on their long-term health. A low-cost analyser would sit squarely in the EU's push for digital, data-driven care. But any diagnostic claim now has to clear the EU's In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Regulation, which brought stricter rules for IVD devices from 2022, the year Preemie's grant ended. The federated learning pitch matches the European Health Data Space, which is built to reuse health data while keeping it protected. The grant also went to a British company that signed before the UK left the EU; its follow-up money came from Innovate UK and its trial from an NHS hospital.

What Cannot Be Checked

The Verdict

Tellspec and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.