Press release

In an award ceremony on December 5, 2014, Erwin de Buijzer, CEO of Humedics GmbH, and Prof. Karsten Heyne, co-founder of the company, together received the award from Albrecht Gerber, Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy of the federal state of Brandenburg, and Guido Beermann, Permanent Secretary in Berlin’s Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research. The prize, endowed with 10,000 Euro was awarded for the „personalized liver check by a breath test“. The jury pointed out that in the clinical practice the LiMAx test leads to optimal surgery planning and therapy of patients. In the Charité hospital the system has reduced mortality rates after liver surgery more than 60% and can be used for any kind of liver diseases. Humedics and four other prize winners were awarded with the prize out of 122 applicants in Berlin and Brandenburg.

Erwin de Buijzer stated: “We are very pleased to receive this prestigious prize and feel honored that we have been chosen out of so many innovative applicants in Berlin-Brandenburg. It is a fantastic sign of recognition for the founders. At the same time the award encourages us to accelerate preparations for the market entry of our LiMAx test – for the benefit of physicians and patients.” The LiMAx test is a result of cooperation between PD Dr. Martin Stockmann from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin at the Campus Virchow Hospital, Dept. of General, Visceral and Transplantation Surgery, and physicist Prof. Karsten Heyne from the Freie Universität Berlin. This breath test based diagnostic system represents a revolution in functional liver diagnostics by enabling clinicians to quantitatively determine the individual liver function capacity for a patient within minutes. It allows for better risk assessment in liver surgery and thus, superior surgery planning as well as selecting treatment strategies optimally adapted to the individual patients liver status. The LiMAx test provides certainty for the physician, safety for the patient and leads to cost reduction for the hospital.

Just recently, Humedics had announced the closing of a financing round with a consortium of international investors. The raised capital provides the financial basis to prepare the European market entry of Humedics’ proprietary LiMAx test and the corresponding FLIP diagnostic device.