Ventinova Took EIC Accelerator Money for a Ventilator, Then Folded

Ventinova Medical B.V., founded in Eindhoven in July 2013, made Evone, a ventilator that controls how air leaves the lungs instead of letting patients breathe out passively. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's March 2020 cut-off, the European Commission selected its project Jane, "Harmless Respiration for Intensive Care Patients decreasing mortality and shortening stays, including COVID-19 patients", for blended finance among the COVID-19-related projects, according to the Commission's list of selected companies. Ventinova is the only company listed for the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,498,539.75 towards a total cost of €3,608,092.50, from 1 August 2020 to 31 October 2022.

The aim was to turn the operating room ventilator into an intensive care ventilator and to "lower ICU mortality by 20% and ICU stay with 15%". On 13 June 2023, eight months after the project ended, the Rechtbank Oost-Brabant declared Ventinova Medical bankrupt, together with its parent Ventinova Group B.V., according to faillissementsdossier.nl and North Data. The bankruptcy was closed on 2 June 2026 for lack of assets.

What Happened to Ventinova

The curator's first report gives the directors' explanation. When COVID-19 struck in 2020, demand for ventilators soared, and on the strength of that demand and open orders the company decided to build a large number of machines quickly, financed with a current account at its bank. In the summer of 2020 the market collapsed, because fewer machines were needed and because locked-down hospitals could not introduce a new technology or train staff on it. The slump lasted until mid-2022 and left the company with "a large stock and a large debt burden", according to the curator's report of 13 July 2023 (translated). In her final report of 10 December 2025, the curator says she found no other cause, no mismanagement and no transactions to be reversed.

On 5 September 2023 the curator sold the stock, inventory, goodwill and order book of both bankrupt companies to International Emergency Services S.L., a Spanish company, for €240,000. The patents and brands sat in a third company, Ventinova Technologies B.V., which was not bankrupt; they went to the same buyer for €960,000. Ventinova Technologies was then wound up and dissolved by its liquidator, the final report says. A US patent of Ventinova Technologies on devices and methods for ventilating a patient was assigned to International Emergency Services SL on 19 February 2025, according to Google Patents.

The Ventinova brand lives on in Spain. IES Medical, based in the Bizkaia science and technology park in Derio, lists "Incorporación de Ventinova Medical" for 2023 in its company history and calls it an acquisition on its company page. It exhibited Ventinova Medical at MEDICA in Düsseldorf in November 2025, according to its news page, and ran a flow-controlled ventilation workshop at Euroanaesthesia 2025 with a "Ventinova Medical" clinical trainer among the speakers, according to its workshop flyer. The Ventinova Medical website now gives a Spanish phone number and lists four products: Evone, Ventrain, Cricath and Tritube.

The Dutch company itself is gone. The bankruptcy of Ventinova Medical B.V. was terminated on 2 June 2026 "wegens gebrek aan baten", for lack of assets, according to the insolvency register entry reproduced by faillissementsdossier.nl. Under article 2:19 of the Dutch Civil Code, a company is dissolved when its bankruptcy is terminated because of the state of the estate, and it ceases to exist if it has no assets left at that moment. The bankruptcy of the parent, Ventinova Group B.V., ended on 26 June 2026 with a binding distribution list, after the curator had forecast a small payment to its unsecured creditors, according to faillissementsdossier.nl.

The Technology: Breathing Out Under Control

Standard ventilators push air in under pressure or volume control and then let the lungs empty passively. Ventinova's project summary argues that this fast, uncontrolled exhalation causes shear stress and the collapse of distal lung regions, which can prolong ICU stays. Flow-controlled ventilation (FCV), whose concept the company credits to the anaesthetist Dietmar Enk of the University of Münster, keeps a constant flow in both directions and actively draws air out, so pressure in the airway falls in a straight line rather than dropping abruptly, as described on the Evone product page and in the CORDIS report. Because the machine measures pressure inside the trachea, it can ventilate through Tritube, a tube with a 4.4 mm outer diameter instead of the usual 8 to 11 mm, which leaves surgeons more room in throat surgery, according to the report on the earlier EVA project.

Evone was first developed in EVA, a Horizon 2020 Fast Track to Innovation project from November 2015 to October 2018 with an EU contribution of €1,890,000 for a consortium led by Ventinova with four other participants, of which €793,261.87 went to Ventinova, according to CORDIS. Evone received its CE mark on 9 August 2017, the first unit was sold to VUmc in Amsterdam in January 2018, and by the end of 2018 devices had been sold in seven countries. FDA clearance, a milestone of that project, was not achieved.

What the Studies Show

The clinical evidence for FCV in intensive care is small. In a study funded by Ventinova and the Jane grant, ten ICU patients ventilated after heart and lung surgery needed less mechanical power under FCV than under pressure-controlled ventilation, 7.7 against 11.0 joules per minute, according to Intensive Care Medicine Experimental (2024). In eleven patients with moderate COVID-19 lung failure, 30 minutes of FCV gave the same oxygenation as volume-controlled ventilation, a PaO2/FIO2 ratio of 169 against 168 mmHg; that study was not funded by the grant, according to its authors in the same journal (2022). Neither study measured mortality or length of stay, the two outcomes the project promised to improve.

What Jane Promised, and What the Record Shows

The project's final periodic report lists five objectives: an ICU prototype showing benefit in observational data, field demonstrator units for studies, a CE mark under the Medical Device Regulation for three days of ICU ventilation, clinical benefit in distinct ICU patient groups, and a CE mark for ICU ventilation "without undivided attention", meaning without a doctor constantly at the bedside. Engineers connected the device to patient monitoring systems, made it splash-proof and reduced its noise. Because of the pandemic, the planned multi-centre observational study was cancelled. Because of delays at the notified body DEKRA, the three-day ICU CE mark came in November 2022, a month after the project ended, and "therefore the next step in product improvement, being ventilation without the need for undivided attention, was not achieved", the report says.

The final curator report confirms that Ventinova held DEKRA certificates for ventilators used "on intensive care units, among others" when it went bankrupt, and that the buyer had to agree a transfer with DEKRA after an audit. A product called Jane was never launched under that name: the product range today names no separate ICU ventilator, and the Evone page describes control of ventilation "in anesthetized patients". The FDA's 510(k) database returns no clearance with Ventinova as applicant, so the second phase in the USA did not happen.

1. ICU-ready deviceDeliveredMonitoring link, splash-proofing and noise work, per CORDIS.
2. CE mark for 3 days of ICU ventilationLateNovember 2022, a month after the project ended.
3. Multi-centre observational studyNot deliveredCancelled during the pandemic.
4. Clinical benefit in ICU patient groupsPartlyTen-patient study on mechanical power; no outcome trial.
5. CE mark without undivided attentionNot deliveredNot achieved, says the final report.
6. ICU markets incl. USANot deliveredNo FDA clearance; company bankrupt in 2023.
7. 20% lower ICU mortality, 15% shorter staysNot shownNo study has measured either.

The award was blended finance, but CORDIS lists only the grant. Ventinova does not appear among the 319 companies on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies (16 pages checked on 14 October 2026), and no equity investment in Ventinova has been published. How much of the grant was paid out is not public.

The Money

Ventinova Medical's revenue was €2,949,637 in 2020, €2,085,434 in 2021 and €741,023.70 in 2022, the last figure taken from a trial balance, according to the curator's reports. Its loss was €1,021,737 in 2020. The 2021 loss is given as €1,609,231 in the first report and as €1,709,231 in the final report; which is correct cannot be checked without the filed accounts. Ventinova Medical also received four COVID-19 state aid awards between April 2021 and April 2022, worth €318,930 in total, according to North Data, which lists them from the EU state aid transparency register.

The creditors bore the loss. Rabobank, which had lent to all three Ventinova companies, was repaid in full from its pledges, largely out of the €960,000 paid for the patents and brands. RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, received part of its claim through a pledge on some of the IP and remains an unsecured creditor for the rest. The tax authority's preferential claim against Ventinova Medical stood at €503,996.95, and the unsecured claims at €1,363,259.80 for Ventinova Medical and €5,499,712.58 for Ventinova Group. The final report says only the employee insurance agency UWV, which had taken over the staff's wage claims, could be paid from the Ventinova Medical estate; its other creditors would receive nothing.

Why Europe Should Care

The cut-off fell one day after the Commission set up its first rescEU stockpile of medical equipment on 19 March 2020, with ventilators at the top of the list, and while member states were jointly buying respiratory ventilators. A European ventilator that protects the lungs fitted that priority. But Ventinova's own account shows the other side of crisis funding: the company built stock for a surge in demand that ended within months, and the debt it took on to do so outlasted the pandemic. The technology stayed in Europe, with a Spanish distributor that now trains clinicians in it.

The Verdict

This article is based entirely on public records, court-published curator reports and published statements, linked throughout. The curator, IES Medical and the EIC were not asked for comment.