EIC Accelerator Report Card: ADVITOS's Multi-Organ Dialysis

Most patients who die in intensive care die of several organs failing at once, and hospitals treat each failing organ with a separate machine. ADVITOS, a Munich company, sells one dialysis device that supports the kidneys, the liver and the lungs and corrects the acidity of the blood at the same time. The European Union backed it twice: with a €2,292,538.50 grant from the June 2019 round of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, and with blended finance from the March 2020 EIC Accelerator pilot, the round the Commission opened to coronavirus projects. Both Commission lists name ADVITOS GmbH as the only beneficiary of its project.

Six years on, the record is mixed. The device is certified, used in clinics and has just won design prizes, and the company was nominated in September 2026 by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office for the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, the Federal President's prize for technology and innovation. But the EIC Fund's 2021 investment ended in an insolvency in self-administration in 2024, after which a single shareholder took over the company, and the main new technology promised in the COVID project has not reached the market.

Hepa Wash, ADVITOS, ADVOS: The Names

The company was registered in Munich on 22 January 2004 as Hepa Wash Research & Development GmbH, renamed Hepa Wash GmbH in February 2005 when its seat moved to Garching, and renamed ADVITOS GmbH on 25 April 2019, according to the commercial register entries shown by North Data. The old name described the first product, a liver dialysis machine; ADVOS, short for "ADVanced Organ Support", is the name of the multi-organ device that followed. The old domain, hepawash.com, which the Commission still listed as the company's website in 2020, now redirects to advitos.com. The founding year differs between sources: the register and the company's own 2025 press release give 2004, while Crédit Mutuel Equity and Munich Startup say 2005.

The Technology: Dialysis With Albumin and Adjustable pH

The founder, the nephrologist Bernhard Kreymann, had worked on single-pass albumin dialysis at Munich's Klinikum rechts der Isar in the 1990s and started Hepa Wash as a one-man company to make it cheaper, Munich Startup reported in 2016. In the ADVOS device, blood passes a membrane on the other side of which flows a dialysis fluid containing albumin, the blood protein that carries many toxins the liver would normally clear. The fluid takes up both water-soluble toxins, which ordinary dialysis removes, and protein-bound ones, which it does not. The used fluid is then cleaned and reused in a closed loop by changing its pH and temperature, so the device needs less albumin than single-pass methods.

Because the pH and bicarbonate content of the fluid can be set, the same machine can remove acid and carbon dioxide from the blood. A 2021 study at the Technical University of Munich in nine ventilated COVID-19 patients measured a median CO₂ removal of 49.2 mL per minute through a conventional dialysis catheter, "without a membrane lung or a gas phase", according to the abstract in Artificial Organs. That is the difference from the usual approach, in which patients with several failing organs may need several separate support devices at once, as a 2022 review of ADVOS puts it. The review concluded that the device detoxifies well in small observational studies and that "larger randomized trials are now necessary".

The largest data set so far is the EMOS registry: 282 patients treated at five German hospitals between January 2017 and August 2020, of whom 66% died, against 84% expected from their SOFA organ failure scores, according to the final analysis in PLoS One in 2025. The authors, who include ADVITOS's current medical director Tobias Bingold, note there was no control group. Two randomised trials of ADVOS starting in 2023 are registered, at Hamburg-Eppendorf (52 patients planned) and Mainz (14 patients planned); both are listed with an unknown status, and no results have been posted.

The 2019 Grant: Making the Device Easier to Use

The first EIC project, ADVOS, ran from 1 December 2019 to 30 April 2022 with an EU contribution of €2,292,538.50 towards a total cost of €3,275,055, according to CORDIS. Its starting point was frank: the device had a CE mark and 20 "first beta user hospitals" in Germany, but "the ADVOS usability is by far not good enough to increase revenues more quickly". The project was to integrate accessory components, add a rotatable touch screen and user assistance, build in internet connectivity for remote maintenance, and expand marketing.

The final report says the company designed "a more user-friendly exterior and interface", prepared the system for uninterrupted operation and automatic identification of disposables, and "developed prototypes" for connectivity. It signed commercial contracts with clinics in Austria and listed France, Switzerland and Italy as "in the pipeline". The redesigned device, the ADVOS BK300, was presented in December 2024, two and a half years after the project ended, and won iF Design Award Gold in 2026 for its colour coding and graphical guidance. Its own product site still says the product "is undergoing conformity assessment procedures". No clinic in France, Switzerland or Italy has been announced; the company described its footprint in February 2025 as "over 20 clinics in Germany and Austria".

1. Easier device: integrated components, new interfaceLateDesigned in the project; BK300 shown December 2024, still in conformity assessment per its site.
2. Remote access and maintenancePrototypePrototypes only, per CORDIS; no connected service announced since.
3. Market entry beyond GermanyAustria onlyAustrian clinic contracts; France, Switzerland and Italy not announced.
4. Faster revenue growthUnverifiedNo revenue figures public; clinic count unchanged at about 20.

The 2020 Award: Oxygenation for COVID Patients

In March 2020, already a grant holder, ADVITOS applied to the EIC Accelerator pilot's coronavirus call for blended finance "to speed up device production and installation in Germany and other EU countries", fund sales and service staff, gather clinical evidence, and integrate "fluid-based blood oxygenation for comprehensive lung support and AI/digital capabilities", according to CORDIS. The grant part was €951,946.10 of a €1,381,605 project that ran from 1 October 2020 to 30 June 2023. The Commission announced that this round gave close to €166 million to 36 coronavirus projects, as Science|Business and the Commission's Croatian representation reported.

The project's published report, which covers the period to the end date of June 2023, is two sentences long on results: specifications were clarified, and "the feasibility of the various methods being researched to integrate oxygenation into the ADVOS device is currently being evaluated". No ADVOS product with oxygenation has been announced since; the BK300 is described with a multi-organ mode and a kidney replacement mode. COVID use did produce published evidence, including the nine-patient Munich study above.

1. Blood oxygenation in the deviceNot deliveredStill at feasibility evaluation in the final report; no product since.
2. Installation in other EU countriesNot deliveredFootprint still Germany and Austria in 2025.
3. Clinical evidence in COVID-19 and MOFDeliveredCOVID case series (2021) and the 282-patient registry analysis (2025).
4. AI and digital capabilitiesUnverifiedNo AI feature announced; a separate €332,336 German grant (OSMOS, 2022) funds prediction models.

Did the EIC Equity Arrive, and What Became of It

It did arrive. On 24 June 2021 ADVITOS announced a €20 million round led by Crédit Mutuel Equity through Crédit Mutuel Equity Germany and Crédit Mutuel Innovation, with the EIC Fund co-investing "as part of the EIC Accelerator Pilot blended finance programme", according to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and Crédit Mutuel Equity. The register shows a capital increase to €800,097 on 11 June 2021. How much of the €20 million came from the EIC Fund has not been published. ADVITOS does not appear in the EIC Fund's current list of invested companies, checked on all 16 pages for this article.

Three years later the company went into insolvency proceedings. Management applied for protective shield proceedings in July 2024 (the company's later release dates the start to the end of June), because "several investors in the shareholder group" were blocking the restructuring and deterring new money, the company said in an October 2024 release, when the court opened the insolvency in self-administration with Christian Gerloff as court-appointed supervisor and 75 employees on full pay. The creditors approved an insolvency plan unanimously in January 2025, and the proceedings were lifted, by a court order of 14 February 2025 according to the register notice on North Data and on 17 February according to the company. The company said that "some institutional investors among the shareholders did not want to participate in the further financing, but at the same time did not want to waive their own privileges", and that the previous main shareholder took over "as sole shareholder", as devicemed also reported. The register entry for the continuation of the company on 4 March 2025 shows share capital of €25,000. With one sole shareholder, the EIC Fund and the other institutional investors no longer hold shares; neither the company nor the EIC has said what, if anything, they recovered. Court supervision of the plan ended by an order of 22 April 2026.

Where ADVITOS Stands Now

ADVITOS is trading. It says the second-generation ADVOS multi went on the market in December 2024, that its workforce exceeds 100, and that since the start of 2025 the therapy has a code in Germany's OPS procedure catalogue, so clinics can negotiate an extra fee for acidosis treatment. The German Future Prize nominees are chief executive Claus Jessen, medical director Tobias Bingold and head of research and development Christoph Hüßtege; the winner will be named in Berlin on 18 November 2026, the patent office said. The headcount growth is reported by the company and its investors only, while the number of clinics it names has stayed at about 20 since 2019, so growth in sales cannot be confirmed.

Why Europe Should Care

The 2020 award was part of the EU's emergency response to COVID-19: almost 4,000 companies applied in March 2020, more than 1,400 of them with coronavirus-related ideas, and the Commission added €150 million to the round, Science|Business reported. The broader case is supply of critical care equipment from within Europe: a European device that combines several organ support functions in one machine gives intensive care units an option that does not depend on stacking separate devices. ADVITOS also went through recertification under the EU's Medical Device Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2017/745, receiving MDR certification in February 2024, according to the company. The weak point, for patients and for public money alike, is evidence: after more than a decade on the market the survival benefit still rests on observational data.

The Verdict

ADVITOS has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements, peer-reviewed papers and EU project data, linked throughout.