EYEFREE ASSISTING COMMUNICATION LTD

Their core work

EyeFree is an Israeli medical-device SME that builds EyeControl, a wearable eye-tracking communication device for patients who cannot speak — primarily ventilated ICU patients and people with locked-in syndrome (ALS, stroke, brainstem injury). The device lets a patient spell words, answer yes/no questions, and signal distress using only eye movements, giving clinical staff and families a direct channel to a population that is otherwise silent. Beyond communication, their work addresses a measurable clinical problem: ICU delirium, which is strongly linked to the inability of ventilated patients to interact with caregivers. They are a commercial company with a finished product, not a research lab, and have taken EyeControl through the full EU SME Instrument pipeline from feasibility to market rollout.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

The company's H2020 trajectory is a textbook SME Instrument progression rather than a change of subject: the 2018 project (EUR 1.99M) validated the EyeControl device and business model, and the 2020 project (EUR 2.13M) scaled the same technology into ICU deployment with an explicit clinical angle. What shifted is the framing — the early work was a generic assistive-technology play, while the later project sharpened the value proposition around two concrete buyers: ICU departments (delirium, ventilated patients) and locked-in patient organisations (social inclusion). The direction is clearly from "communication device" toward "clinically validated ICU product."

Moving from general assistive technology toward hospital-grade ICU deployment, with clinical outcomes (delirium reduction) as the selling point — a partner worth talking to if you are building ICU, neurology, or palliative-care consortia.

How they like to work

EyeFree ran both of its H2020 projects as sole-beneficiary SME Instrument grants, so there is no consortium track record to analyse — they have been a solo operator funded directly by the EU to bring their own product to market. This is typical for product-focused medtech SMEs and tells you they are used to owning delivery end-to-end rather than coordinating academic partners. Expect them to behave as a technology provider or clinical pilot partner in a consortium, not as a scientific lead.

No consortium partners recorded in H2020, because both projects were single-beneficiary SME-2 grants. Any European collaboration network they have was built outside H2020, likely through hospital pilots and distributors.

What sets them apart

EyeFree is one of very few companies — and the only Israeli SME in this dataset working on it — that has taken an eye-tracking ICU communication device through both phases of the EU SME Instrument, pulling in over EUR 4M of non-dilutive funding. Unlike research groups working on eye-tracking as a scientific question, they already have a productised, deployable device. If you need a partner who can put hardware on real ICU beds rather than publish a paper about it, this is the profile.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EyeControl (2020)
  The larger of the two projects (EUR 2.13M) and the one that pivoted the product toward ICU delirium and ventilated patients — their strongest clinical positioning.
• EyeControl (2018)
  The foundational SME-2 grant that funded market validation of the wearable and enabled the follow-on 2020 scale-up project.