The European Patent Office (EPO) has announced the 15 finalists for the European Inventor Award 2016. The winners will be announced at the award ceremony in Lisbon on 9 June. Lithuanian professor Arminas Ragauskas is among the 3 finalists in the SME‘s category of these prestigious awards.

Vote for your favorite inventor every day here.

Vittamed, one of the most promising Lithuanian startups that raised $10m last year, is one step from the European Inventor Award 2016

The invention of two devices for measuring intracranial pressure and blood flow by Lithuanian scientist Arminas Ragauskas enables fast and safe diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, strokes, glaucoma and brain tumors. Ragauskas' novel measuring devices are important tools for treating intracranial injuries, which are among the world's deadliest killers.

Brought to market in 2015, two medical devices developed by Ragauskas and a team of fellow Lithuanian scientists give neurologists and other doctors precious extra time to detect and assess increased cranial pressure. They no longer need to resort to costly and time-consuming invasive surgery, which itself is not without risk.

Ragauskas – along with colleagues Gediminas Daubaris and Algis Dziugys from the Health Telematics Science Institute at Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania – achieved a breakthrough by applying the Doppler wavelength effect in order to arrive at an accurate reading of cranial pressure, using an ingeniously simple formula. 

“Our product, a non-invasive intracranial pressure monitor is the only one of its kind in the world yet, because intracranial pressure is still measured by placing a special sensor into brain tissue. Our technology is cheaper, safer, can be used outdoors – it has already attracted the interest of NASA. More than 20 years ago, professor Ragauskas  started inventing the monitor. We met in 2012, during the international forum “Life Sciences Baltics” organized by Enterprise Lithuania for the first time – at that event science merged with business, Mr. Ragauskas is CTO of Vittamed at the moment. Vittamed became the winner of the startup session at the forum, and by now we have secured the investment of USD 10 million” – last year said Remis Bistras, CEO of Vittamed.