RACC-IT aims to connect Romanian IT businesses with development opportunities in the United States and globally

06.06.2024 ZF English

Romanian and US medical and healthcare experts, IT entrepreneurs, and investors came together on May 28 at an event organized by the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce - IT Alliance (RACC-IT), in partnership with Babes Bolyai University: "Tech Dialogues: IT and Medicine, Innovation and Collaboration." 

Speakers on the day included representatives from key Romanian academic institutions Babes Bolyai University, the Matei Bals Institute for Infectious Diseases, Destination Medical Center in Minnesota, which is centered around the world-famous Mayo Clinic and is the premier medical and healthcare center in the United States, and representatives of fast-growing Romanian medtech startups Axes Software and Rayscape.

The speakers revealed several key announcements on the day, pointing to a promising outlook for Romanian IT businesses looking to grow in Romania and the US.

• Babes Bolyai Cluj University is set  to launch a medical technology research and startup incubator
• Destination Medical Center, an economic development initiative built around the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, which deploys over 1 billion USD annually in research spending, opens a path to partnerships for Romanian IT businesses via RACC-IT, in areas such as digital health, biotechnology and medical devices.
• Axes Software is set to launch the first live implementation of integrated healthcare management software in a key Romanian hospital
• Medical imagery software company Rayscape announces live integrations in 10 countries across Europe and the first steps made towards the US market

RACC-IT aims to connect Romanian IT businesses with development opportunities in the United States and globally. The organization provides members and supporters a platform to connect with entrepreneurs, investors and business peers.

Opening the event, Adrian Zuckerman, RACC-IT honorary board member and former US Ambassador to Romania, remarked on the “key role that Romania plays in the world, in a bilateral relationship with the United States, in a multilateral relationship with the European Union NATO. (...) Everybody expects Romania and Poland to be the gateways to rebuilding Ukraine. There's tremendous value in that, and IT and technology will be crucial at every stage. RACC-IT tries to help Romanian companies interface with American companies, which can help Romania develop and become a global influencer in the tech space.”

Razvan Chereches, professor at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj and leader of its postgraduate program, unveiled a major initiative that the prestigious academic institution has been focussing on: “We're working right now to set up an interdisciplinary industry-collaborative research program in medical sciences, where we will foster applied projects,. This means that researchers will work on developing new products that they can use for scientific and market validation. This can lead to product commercialization via startup incubators and accelerators, which is the plan we envision. It is currently one of our most significant projects.

‘We will connect our researchers with student startup teams and foster them to work together in a business incubator style, giving them some conditional equity and encouraging research and ideas to be tested. We will open up the university and all the brilliant ideas stored within it and push them into the market.

‘We are at the consulting stage and inviting industry and tech companies to participate in this project as partners because we strongly believe that education and research must be done hand in hand. We want to have a meaningful impact in society by bringing academia and businesses together.”

The RACC-IT  event was also the stage for a partnership opportunity announcement from

Destination Medical Centre, which is centered around the Mayo Clinic and deploys $5.6 billion in investment in a 20-year development plan. Its innovation district has over $1 billion in annual research spending and connects over 15,000 healthcare companies.

Kylle Jordan, Business Development Manager at Destination Medical Center, based in Rochester,  Minnesota, joined the RACC-IT event to unveil a path to partnerships with the world-renowned Mayo Clinic. “Destination Medical Center aims to open the doors to industry for innovators in groups like digital health, biotechnology and medical devices. DMC wants to support early-stage entrepreneurs and find opportunities for commercialization and research partnership in the US healthcare market. DMC welcomes product and solution development ideas in areas such as PA (pre-market approval) new devices; digital leveraging AI and EMR; regenerative cell and gene therapy; cardiology, neurology and oncology; and Smart Hospitals, biotech and diagnostic.” RACC-IT can connect Romanian IT businesses with the DMC to explore opportunities.

US partnerships are solidly on the radar of Romanian medtech companies, which are increasingly looking to expand beyond national and regional borders, with RACC-IT hosting success stories from Alexandru Nitu, Head of Research and Development Department at Axes Software, and Andreea Purcaru, Head of Operations at Rayscape.

Axes Software has emerged over two decades of sustained development as a leader in software solutions for warehousing and transportation, and it then deployed that expertise to healthcare software. Some initial projects for Axes were to support the Cantacuzino National Institute in deploying Romania’s first Covid vaccines, a strong foundation from which it then built further medical software solutions, with current capabilities including surgical tool tracking, inventory management, patient tracking, drug preparation, food flow management or RFID based patient tracking.

Rayscape, a Romanian IT company that develops AI for medical images, has built a digital assistant with over 42 million medical images of experience, which assists radiologists in analyzing medical images The company’s software is used in hospitals with ER departments, ICU departments, or large hospitals which handle a heavy workload of cases, as well as smaller institutions facing shortages of radiology staff. The company operates in 10 countries, most of them in Europe, and is now establishing the first touch points to expand in the US.

Closing the event, RACC-IT president Bogdan Capatina and Vice President Calin Buzan remarked that  “The US is more standardized and therefore a hugely attractive growth market, and is traditionally very open to adopting and integrating innovative solutions”

The RACC-IT Alliance is an independent, non-profit association within the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce. RACC-IT helps Romanian IT companies to connect with American and international markets, in six key pillars:

- Data, AI and Cloud

- Medical IT and healthcare

- Cyber ​​security and cyber defense

- Energy, Industry and ESG

- Fintech

- IT services

The mission of the RACC IT Alliance Chapter is to provide a support framework for Romanian IT companies looking to expand their presence in the US, and advise US companies regarding business opportunities in the Romanian IT sector.  This entity has been created within the framework of the Romanian American Chamber of Commerce, a non-profit, US based organization that has been active for more than 30 years and has chapters in both the US and Romania.  It is dedicated to the development of business relationships between Romania and the United States.