The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has given people looking to lose weight another treatment option by recommending endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) as a therapy to help treat obesity. The move comes amidst increasing awareness of the disease brought on by the growing prevalence of GLP-1 agonists.

The €173 million (US$187 million) in capital that Earlybird Health recently raked in from investors will go towards bolstering investment in European health care startups, many of which are still recovering from the impact of COVID-19, Thom Rasche, a partner at Earlybird Health, told BioWorld. The fund is looking to invest in the technologies that can improve patient care.

Through its intellectual property holding company, Eindhoven, the Netherlands-based Bambi Medical BV is seeking patent protection for an enhancement to its flexible sensor belt that is worn around the abdomen for monitoring the vital signs of neonates.

Venture capital (VC) firm TVM Capital Life Science recently co-led a $16 million series A financing for Vektor Medical Inc., which has developed an AI-based tool that identifies potential arrhythmia source locations. The funding is part of TVM’s strategy of investing in med-tech companies which have no development risk and offer an exit opportunity in under four years.

Body: The U.K.’s Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has a program designed to facilitate more rapid market access for medical devices of urgent need, and now the agency has put money into the policy.

Insulet Corp. received the greenlight from EU regulators to combine its Omnipod 5 automated insulin delivery (AID) system with Abbott Laboratories Freestyle Libre 2 Plus sensor to treat individuals aged two years and older with type 1 diabetes.

Toku Inc. recently obtained CE and UKCA marks for its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Clair, which evaluates the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) using retinal images captured during an eye exam.

The Belgian academic Stefan De Wachter is seeking patent protection for methods of ensuring pelvic health and treating a disease or disorder characterized by a dysfunctional autonomic nervous system using neuromodulation and applying a burst stimulation pattern of electric pulses of high frequencies from electrodes located in the proximity of the sacral plexus and/or pelvic plexus.

Theryq SAS and Gustave Roussy, a European center for cancer research, were given €38 million (US$40.1 million) in funding by Bpifrance, the French public sector investment bank, to further develop Flashdeep, a flash radiotherapy device that uses extremely high energy electron (VHEE) radiation to treat cancers that are resistant to traditional treatments.

The European Union (EU) is steadily making progress on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), landmark legislation that will affect AI not just for medical uses, but for all uses across the EU economy.