Network is decisive.

For .lumen, the true value of VR Health Champions can be summed up in one word: network. Beyond mentoring, the programme connects startups to people who enable real-world testing, adoption, and institutional trust. At a stage where healthcare innovation must move from promise to deployment, that kind of network becomes decisive. 

Innovation alone is never enough when operating at the intersection of healthcare, regulation, and public systems. Meaningful impact only happens when technology aligns with reimbursement logic, procurement realities, and institutional decision-making. This is precisely where VR Health Champions creates tangible value. 

Over the past year, the programme has supported five flagship SMEs in moving beyond proof-of-concept and towards real-world deployment. For .lumen, a developer of assistive smart glasses for visually impaired people, VR Health Champions played a critical role in transforming innovation ambition into a deployment-ready strategy. 

From innovation-first to deployment-ready 

“VRHC shifted our perspective. We started to truly understand how healthcare systems work, from reimbursement and procurement to public decision-making,  and that changed how we think about our go-to-market strategy and bringing .lumen to the people who need it.” explains Cornel Amariei, CEO & Founder of .lumen. 

While public reimbursement pathways were already part of .lumen’s original business plan, VR Health Champions significantly strengthened and de-risked this strategy. Access to structured data, market intelligence, and comparative insights across European healthcare systems directly influenced how the company prioritised target markets, sequenced certification and pricing, and translated its technical value proposition into language aligned with public healthcare decision-makers. 

As a result, .lumen’s go-to-market roadmap became more evidence-based and execution-focused, enabling faster and more confident discussions with public institutions. 

Navigating complexity without shortcuts 

The past year also brought high-intensity operational challenges. The company simultaneously embarked on its first B2G sales process in Romania, completed demanding medical device certification, and iterated on second-generation hardware while continuing pilots and communication activities for the first generation of the product. 

“At times, regulatory and public-sector processes moved more slowly than initially anticipated,” Amariei notes. “But these challenges ultimately strengthened both the product and the team’s operational maturity.” 

Peer learning within the VR Health Champions ecosystem proved especially valuable at this stage. Exchanging experiences with other healthcare innovators helped normalise the complexity of scaling regulated technologies and reinforced a key lesson: success in healthcare is driven less by speed and more by sequencing. Certification, validation, pricing, and trust must evolve together. 

Why network matters more than ever 

When asked what truly distinguishes VR Health Champions from other innovation support initiatives, Amariei’s answer is unequivocal: 

“VR Health Champions stands out through the quality and relevance of its collaborator network. It connects startups to people who can unlock real-world testing, adoption, and institutional trust. At this stage of our journey, that kind of network is decisive.” — Cornel Amariei, CEO & Founder, .lumen 

For .lumen, this network translates directly into market access. As the project enters its second year, the company’s priorities focus on first-market execution: advancing pilots and testing programmes, validating reimbursement and procurement pathways in selected markets, and building early institutional references that can be replicated across Europe. Continued support through partner-driven outreach, including collaboration with universities and medical faculties willing to test and champion the technology, remains critical. 

In healthcare innovation, progress rarely comes from isolated breakthroughs. It emerges from alignment across systems, stakeholders, and institutions. As .lumen’s journey within VR Health Champions demonstrates, network is not a slogan. It is the mechanism that turns innovation into impact.