Ghent medtech startup PointCaré has raised nearly €1.5 million from a group of private investors.
The company is developing OnTarget, a platform that interprets the multitude of data from various sources in operating rooms and intensive care units in real time, providing caregivers with tailored advice based on the patient and the situation.
The startup was founded in 2022 by astrophysicist, engineering student, and anesthesiology trainee Dr Henri Van Overmeire.
Graduating cum laude in astrophysics and medicine, later specialising in anesthesiology, and also pursuing civil engineering — alongside jazz drumming and business economics training is a rather unconventional path. During Dr Van Overmeire’s time in the operating room and intensive care unit, he realized that hospitals can sometimes function in surprisingly archaic ways. This insight prompted him to consider how things could be improved.
“Critical care is integrated care. Providing care in the OR or ICU involves many components, and the effects of one aspect of treatment often have far-reaching consequences for others,” explains founder and CTO Dr Overmeire.
Critical care departments are filled with high-tech devices generating massive data streams. But data alone doesn’t save lives: the key is to take the right action based on that data. And that’s exactly where PointCaré comes in.
Dr Overmeire contends that while new IoT technologies and communication protocols allow these devices to exchange information, without central interpretation, they contribute little to the care process.
“Existing equipment often fails to take the individual context of each patient into account — each case, situation, and person is different.
This leads not only to diminished care quality and suboptimal treatments but also puts a heavy burden on healthcare workers, contributing to alarm fatigue and its consequences.”
The OnTarget platform gathers and centralizes all available information in real time, with full contextual awareness, and supports doctors and nurses with AI to make accurate, informed decisions based on the complete picture — factoring in as many variables as possible.
“Beyond the clear benefits for the individual patient, by avoiding complications, we can also reduce costs in a healthcare system under immense pressure,” says CEO Veronique Pattyn.
For OnTarget, PointCaré uses not only classical NLP techniques and LLMs, but mostly their proprietary agentic AI methods, which offer full transparency in decision-making.
“Unlike many AI models today, the OnTarget platform is not a statistical ‘black box’ with hidden logic: every recommendation must be clearly traceable through a reasoning process expressed in understandable language” expanded Dr Van Overmeire.
PointCaré aims to become a benchmark in the future international healthcare landscape. A first patent application has already been submitted, and preparations for European MDR (Medical Device Regulation) approval are underway.
With the newly secured funding, Van Overmeire plans to further develop and clinically validate the platform. By 2028, PointCaré plans to commercialise the platform internationally.
Lead image: Henri Van Overmeire, co-founder and CTO, Veronique Pattyn, co-founder and CEO, and Robbe Claeys, graph data scientist. Photo: uncredited.
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