{"id":22758,"date":"2020-06-10T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T04:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/?p=22758"},"modified":"2020-06-16T13:49:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T08:19:21","slug":"transparent-face-mask-startup-inhales-1m-seed-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/development\/transparent-face-mask-startup-inhales-1m-seed-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Transparent Face Mask Startup inhales $1M seed round"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Swiss startup named HMCARE, spun from this \u00c9cole polytechnique f\u00e9d\u00e9rale de Lausanne, has increased a thousand Swiss Francs (equal to approximately $105 million) to commercialize its transparent and comparatively ecofriendly surgical masks.<\/p>\n

The founders were motivated by health care employees in the 2015 Ebola outbreak and in children’s hospitals across the globe working closely with patients however not able to demonstrate their faces. Likewise relatives and parents of immunocompromised men and women who have to make a human relationship with two-thirds of the face covered.<\/p>\n

There were transparent masks readily available, however they were only regular masks using a plastic window in them, which could fog up and is not breathable.<\/p>\n

Thierry Pelet, currently CEO of the business, approached his EPFL colleagues using a prototype of a transparent mask substance meeting the stringent demands of a medical environment. It has to permit atmosphere through but not viruses or germs<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n

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The group worked with Swiss substances centre Empa to make a new kind of textile. Employing biomass-derived transparent fibers put 100 nanometers apart to form sheets after which triple-layered, they left a flexible, breathable material that is also almost transparent — somewhat like gently frosted glass. They call it the HelloMask.<\/p>\n

The substance can be produced in bulk and shaped into mask shapes exactly like ordinary cloth, but there’s the matter of turning up manufacturing for this.<\/p>\n

Luckily, the entire world is distressed for masks, and also the notion of a transparent one was obviously catnip for investors. HMCARE readily raised a million-franc seed around, the R&D work was done using nonprofit grants and contributions.<\/p>\n

While the HelloMasks could launch as early as the start of 2021, they\u2019ll be primarily for the medical community, though public availability is certainly a possibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Swiss startup named HMCARE, spun from this \u00c9cole polytechnique f\u00e9d\u00e9rale de Lausanne, has increased a thousand Swiss Francs (equal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":22759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[133],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22758"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23036,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22758\/revisions\/23036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/22759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-next-tech.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}