How Vårdinnovation Spent Its EIC Accelerator Grant on AI Triage

Vårdinnovation Sverige AB, a Malmö company registered in 2018, sold Vårdexpressen, a tablet tool on which primary care patients enter their symptoms before they see a doctor or nurse. In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 round of 5 June 2019, the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, it won an EU grant of €1,895,853.75 for Medical Express, a project to roll the tool out across Europe and the US, according to CORDIS. The company appears under its own name, with no partner company, in the European Commission's list of selected companies for that cut-off.

The grant was signed on 5 November 2019 and the project started on 1 December. At the end of January 2020, Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen, the two regions whose tender the company had won, stopped working with it after questions about the procurement, SVT reported. A bribery investigation followed. Vårdinnovation was declared bankrupt on 21 January 2021, according to SVT and Läkartidningen, and CORDIS records that the EU project was "terminated on 19 March 2021", eight months before its planned end. How the EU money was spent is not public: CORDIS shows no periodic report.

Where Vårdinnovation Stands Now

The company no longer exists. North Data, which republishes Bolagsverket's register entries, lists a liquidation on 6 May 2022, a liquidator appointed on 17 June 2022, and the company's termination on 29 October 2025, and marks it as terminated, according to its company page. The credit agency Syna still shows the earlier status, "Likvidation beslutad" (liquidation decided), and a postal address in Stockholm. The two sources therefore disagree only on whether the final step has been registered. How the company moved from the January 2021 bankruptcy to a liquidation in 2022 could not be verified from public sources. The domain vardinnovation.se now hosts an unrelated health blog.

The company was also registered as the director of a London company, VI-Health Technologies Ltd, incorporated on 17 November 2020 and dissolved on 26 April 2022, according to Companies House. No activity of that company is public.

The Technology: Symptom Intake Before the Consultation

Vårdexpressen asked patients to enter their symptoms and history on a tablet in the waiting room. The software compiled the answers into a structured note for the doctor or nurse, with the stated aim of cutting the time spent on each visit. The company said doctors could see "almost 50% more patients" without a larger workload, SVT's Uppdrag granskning reported. Its EU application described Medical Express as AI that "augments personnel in compiling and analysing data, creating reports and supporting decision-making", and as "the only CE-marked solution of its kind in Europe", according to the CORDIS objective.

What set Vårdexpressen apart, on the company's account, was its AI. That claim was contested. An investigator at Läkemedelsverket, the Swedish Medical Products Agency, told SVT that AI systems of this kind were "still at the research stage", that the product's registration with the agency did not mention artificial intelligence, and that the agency planned to supervise the company in 2020, according to SVT. In the same report a doctor described a case in which the tool missed a seriously ill patient with meningitis. The outcome of the agency's supervision is not public.

What the EU Was Told, and What Was True

The EU application made claims about the market that later reporting contradicted. CORDIS still carries the project's objective: Medical Express "is currently implemented in 30% of Sweden's public primary care", where it "has proven to allow each general practitioner (GP) to see 50% more patients/day", saving "on the order of €100 000 per GP/year". The 30% figure matches the share of Swedish public health centres covered by the regional framework contract, not the number using the tool. When the application was submitted in early June 2019, no public health centre was using Vårdexpressen, in Skåne or elsewhere, SVT reported, so the savings could not have been measured there. SVT put the earlier testing at 3,000 patients at one private clinic in Skåne, and the Region Skåne pilot at about 10 health centres.

The same SVT report found that the application said the chief executive held a PhD in medical science, which his supervisor at Lund University said he did not, as he had not yet defended his thesis; that it named him to a medical director post at Clinical Studies Sweden that the unit's head said did not exist; and that three people listed as key advisers denied any involvement with the company. The European Commission told SVT it was investigating. Whether it recovered any of the grant is not public.

CORDIS lists a single result for the project, a 2020 Lund University student thesis on a user-experience redesign of a digital tool in primary care, on its results page. No deliverable, report or market launch outside Sweden is recorded.

1. Roll out to new market segmentsNot deliveredThe two launch regions stopped the tool in January 2020, per SVT.
2. Launch in Europe and the USNot deliveredNo customer outside Sweden announced; a London company it directed was dissolved in 2022.
3. More than 20 new EU jobsMissedAbout 20 staff were affected by the 2021 bankruptcy.
4. Complete the 24-month projectTerminatedEnded 19 March 2021, no periodic report on CORDIS.

The Procurement Case

The project's commercial base was a tender that Region Skåne ran for itself and Västra Götalandsregionen. Vårdinnovation won it in September 2018 with contracts worth up to SEK 1 billion over eight years, covering about a third of Sweden's public health centres. SVT's Uppdrag granskning reported in March 2020 that the company's chief executive had had the region's internal procurement material months before the tender was announced, and that the company had been able to influence the questions that decided it, according to SVT. A PwC review commissioned by Region Skåne found suspected irregularities and recommended a police report, and the region reported suspected bribery.

Vårdinnovation fought back. In September 2020 it sued Region Skåne for SEK 469,482,646 plus interest, arguing that a broad rollout had been decided and that it was owed at least five years of payments; the region said no such decision had been made, according to SVT. The outcome of that suit could not be verified. In autumn 2020 Region Dalarna signed its own Vårdexpressen contract, which it cancelled under a bankruptcy clause in January 2021, according to Läkartidningen and SVT Dalarna.

The bankruptcy itself followed a court order. In January 2021 the Court of Appeal froze SEK 7 million of the company's assets to secure a possible corporate fine, after the prosecutor pointed to rapidly shrinking bank balances, a broker hired to sell a property and plans to sell the company. With its assets frozen, Vårdinnovation could not pay salaries and filed for bankruptcy, affecting about 20 employees, SVT reported.

The criminal case took more than two years. In May 2021 the Malmö District Court sentenced the former chief executive and two former regional officials to prison terms of two to three years and ordered damages of SEK 20 million to Region Skåne and SEK 8 million to Västra Götalandsregionen, according to Dagens Juridik and SVT. That verdict was annulled because a lay judge was found to be biased, and a retrial began in January 2022, which again ended in prison sentences. On 18 April 2023 the Court of Appeal overturned the prison terms. It convicted the former chief executive, Damon Tojjar, and one former official of gross bribery, gave both suspended sentences, banned Tojjar from running a business for three years, acquitted the third defendant and awarded no damages, finding it unproven that the bribery had caused the regions any financial loss, according to SVT and Realtid. Whether the case went further could not be verified.

The Money

Vårdinnovation filed accounts for only two years. In 2018 it reported revenue of SEK 1.3 million, a loss of SEK 4,000 and 5 employees; in 2019, revenue of SEK 25.6 million, an operating profit of SEK 2.97 million, a net profit of SEK 339,000, total assets of SEK 35.8 million and 23 employees, according to hitta.se, which uses Dun & Bradstreet data, and Syna. No accounts for 2020, the year in which the regions stopped the tool, are shown. How much of the 2019 revenue came from the regional pilot and how much EU pre-financing reached the company before the termination is not public.

The company is not among the companies listed in the EIC Fund portfolio; the grant-only award of 2019 came with no EU equity. No private funding round is public. North Data's record of the company's EU funding shows only this grant.

Why Europe Should Care

The problem Medical Express claimed to solve is real. Europe's primary care is short of doctors, and the EU is building the rules for digital tools in health: the European Health Data Space Regulation, in force since 26 March 2025, sets common standards for electronic health records, and the AI Act treats AI in medical devices as high-risk. Tools that sit between patients and clinicians are exactly where both apply.

The case also shows the limits of the EIC's due diligence in 2019. The evaluators accepted claims about live deployment, measured savings, a doctorate and named advisers that a single journalistic investigation disproved within months. The EU's money went to a company whose central market claim was not true when it applied.

The Verdict

Vårdinnovation's former management, its liquidator and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, court reporting and EU project data, linked throughout.