An app assisting anglers with an innovative fish radar and an AI-based medical history summarization tool: VRG Tackle and LifeSync Pro represented Széchenyi István University in the final of the Hungarian Startup University Program (HSUP), where Hungary's 15 most promising university startups displayed their ideas to investors, partners and experts. The Győr-based teams, mostly composed of students from Széchenyi István University, performed excellently, with LifeSync Pro securing a collaboration opportunity from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, which supports health-related developments.

The goal of the Hungarian Startup University Program (HSUP) is to foster the development of Hungary's knowledge economy, aiming to create more internationally successful Hungarian companies by commercializing university-born ideas as spinoff enterprises, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of the Hungarian economy. At Széchenyi István University, the program has been launched for the fourth time, guiding hundreds of students into the world of the innovation economy. In the first semester of the two-semester, e-learning-based course, the focus is on understanding innovative thinking and the startup ecosystem, while the second semester emphasizes practical training in business development. During this time, students must design a business model, which could potentially become a real startup.

The spring semester concluded with an institutional "demo day," where the top three teams were awarded. Ultimately, the teams developing the smart fish radar and app for anglers, VRG Tackle, and LifeSync Pro, focusing on AI-based patient profiling, went forward to the national finals. There, they presented their products and business models to an audience of experts alongside 13 other projects. The national "demo day" does not rank the participants; instead, the goal for the startups is to "sell themselves" and find investors or professional partners to support the realization of their ideas. Equally important is gathering feedback and building connections.

The two Győr-affiliated participants performed excellently in the finals, with both presentations being highly successful—LifeSync Pro even found a professional partner in the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

"I work as a medical assistant at a private gynaecology clinic, and it came up how cumbersome it is to map patients' medical histories from documents stored in various systems. How much easier it would be to read a single summary of the patient's condition. This is where our idea started: to create a visually easy-to-review, organized, and searchable profile of patients based on available documents using artificial intelligence (AI) to support the doctor's decision," explained Anna Hepp, a student at Semmelweis University in Budapest. She embarked on realizing the idea with two engineering informatics students from Széchenyi István University, László Tornyossy and Zsombor Töreky, later joined by Tamás Takács, a doctoral student at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, who specializes in AI research.

"We participated in the Ideathon ideas competition, then in the 'Start It @K&H' incubation programme organized by StartITup Győr, and subsequently in the HSUP at Széchenyi István University. It was significant that I took the 'Sectoral Information Systems' course, where I could learn about healthcare informatics from excellent professionals who later provided us with many pieces of advice as mentors. Eventually, we reached the institutional and then the national HSUP final, where the European Institute of Innovation and Technology noticed us and offered us a partnership. We also received promises of cooperation from operators of hospital information systems," said team leader László Tornyossy, adding that the next step is to develop the prototype, which they have already started working on.

László Tornyossy, Zsombor Töreky, Tamás Takács and Anna Hepp are the members of the LifeSync Pro team.

VRG Tackle developed two products: an app with educational materials and short videos for beginner anglers, and, for more experienced sportsmen, a smart fish radar offering a more compact solution than existing devices.

"The idea came from real life. As an amateur angler, I initially had difficulty learning various techniques, and it was cumbersome to extract the essentials from the instructional videos. There was no platform to obtain useful information easily and quickly. Our goal was to create an app that bridges these gaps, tailored specifically to the needs of beginners. The innovation lies in the unique educational content designed to help those just getting acquainted with this hobby," revealed project leader Bence Varga, a mechanical engineering student at Széchenyi István University.

"The boys have known each other since freshers’ camp with all three taking the 'Startup Business' course simultaneously, but I only joined the team in May," added Judit Beszprémi, responsible for the project's economic and marketing aspects. "During the programme, we attended numerous useful workshops that facilitated our work. We owe a great deal of gratitude to our mentor, Viktória Csik-Nemes, without whom we could not have reached this point. We received a lot of valuable feedback at the Budapest final, which we will consider as we continue our work," she concluded.

The VRG Tackle team includes Zsolt Árgyélán, Bence Varga, Judit Beszprémi, and Bence Budahegyi, with their startup mentor, Viktória Csik-Nemes, in the centre. (Photo: National Innovation Agency, Hungarian Startup University Program)