Polish Genius, Cyber Aye / Bartosz Kunka

The Polish company AssisTech was awarded for technologies facilitating patient rehabilitation. C-Eye, the so-called cyber-eye, allows you to read eyeball signals. 37-year-old Joanna Mikołajczuk from Łosice in eastern Poland is one of many people whose lives were changed by a device called C-Eye by its producers, popularly known as cyber-eye. Thanks to this device, which is a kind of screen placed on a stand, Joanna can communicate with her surroundings using eye movements.

He has suffered from cerebral palsy since childhood. She doesn't talk, she doesn't walk, she can't sit on her own. In childhood, doctors diagnosed him with "severe intellectual disability". However, Joanna managed to pass her high school final exams, she is the author of the blog "Moje Życie C-eye pisane", and she writes poetry. C-Eye enables her to do this. "Just because I don't talk doesn't mean I have nothing to tell you," we read in the subtitles in a short video recorded by Joanna's sister. The creator of C-Eye is the Polish company AssisTech, whose co-founder and president Bartosz Kunka says that Joanna was "recovered for society". Proudly holding the statuette of the Polish-German Economic Award, she also talks about another patient who, with the movement of her eyeballs, letter by letter, wrote a book. A man who was hospitalized in a vegetative state communicated using C-Eye during a therapeutic session. A breakthrough in rehabilitation
– The C-Eye system uses eye tracking technology, thanks to which paralyzed people who cannot communicate with their surroundings regain contact with their loved ones. This is a technology used in the treatment of strokes, strokes, car accidents or suicide attempts, and cardiac arrest - explains Kunka in an interview with DW. He adds that it is increasingly used in the therapy of children born with disabilities.

– Let's imagine that we are tied up, our hands are tied, our mouths are covered, and we want to tell the world that we are hungry or that we have a toothache. Our technology makes this possible, he says.

The C-Eye system can also help people after neurosurgery, people with autism and seniors with limited cognitive functions. In Poland, the price of the device ranges from PLN 25,000 to PLN 30,000 and is co-financed by the State Fund for the Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons (PFRON). Recently, AssisTech registered its invention with the roofing organization of the German health insurance fund GVK, thanks to which C-Eye therapy can also be co-financed in Germany. AssisTech conducts training and authorizes therapists to use C-Eye. Artificial intelligence and the space program
In addition to the winner AssisTech, the list of finalists selected from dozens of applications included MEB Technical, a company producing renewable energy systems from Opole, which specializes in energy storage. In turn, Med App S.A. creates innovative systems for medicine, including three-dimensional holograms of the patient's internal organs, which allows the doctor to "enter" the heart or kidney and, consequently, precisely plan the operation. In this way, the amount of contrasts and blood administered to patients is reduced, and the operation time is shortened by one third. Med App technologies, created based on artificial intelligence (AI), have already been used in over 500 treatments.