February at Lemons 🍋
This month: real hospital data, deeper product work, Europe in motion, and AI reshaping how we build.
Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to Lemons in the Room, the XR digital-therapy startup reshaping the quality of care in hospitals.
We want to share what’s happening in immersive health and inside our lab of Lemons 🍋
Lemons Journal is where we explore how virtual reality, product design, and neuroscience are redefining healthcare.
In this edition:
Data Driven Execution 🔢
Tech Team Growing 👨🏽💻
Make Europe Lemons Again 🍎
Angels Round 👼🏽
Before we deep dive into this edition, we want to speak a little bit about AI and Agents, since Sanremo is too mainstream.
We are cooking something at the intersection of AI automation and startup management, using agents and tools that put us at the forefront of how modern startups operate.
AI agents that run 24/7 on our infrastructure: not just reading emails, managing memory, drafting documents. Not a chatbot. Not a Notion plugin. A system that connects the dots and keeps the machine running while we sleep.
Under the Hood, our engineering team has been moving fast across the full stack.
We shipped Lemo v0.1.1 to all public channels. We migrated our audio architecture to FMOD, enabling dynamic, multilingual voiceover delivery powered by ElevenLabs.
Our 3D pipeline is producing clinical-grade immersive environments built entirely in-house. A new Breathing VFX system is in prototyping, real-time visual feedback tied to patient interaction.
And we’ve broken ground on something new. More soon. We’re not optimizing the product. We’re optimizing the machine that builds it.
1. Execution Density
Q1 is moving fast. We activated 2 new regions, with 38 new hospitals entering the pipeline. Not just new contracts closed, but strong upselling in hospitals where we’re already active.
The private healthcare sector is concentrated in a few major groups. We’re now working with both of the largest: pilot launched at Palazzo della Salute, part of Gruppo San Donato, activated during GAET. Humanitas Rozzano has confirmed interest on paper for clinical validation.
Healthcare is shifting from volume to value. From procedures to outcomes.
For the fourth consecutive year, hospitals are being evaluated on the implementation of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures, standardized questionnaires measuring functional wellbeing, quality of life, and real clinical impact from the patient perspective. This is exactly where immersive digital therapy fits.
In the latest World’s Best Hospitals 2026 ranking by Newsweek, Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS is #33 worldwide and Niguarda is #43. Both are already in our pipeline.
After Milan in January and Rome in February, March’s target is Naples. Momentum is regional. Strategy is national.
Health Economics
Data is step one. Money is step two.
If immersive care is going to scale inside healthcare systems, it has to speak their language. Not outcomes. Budgets.
So we started building the economic case.
Every session logged, every procedure supported, every anesthesiologist hour saved. It’s all evidence. We’re now structuring that evidence into a health economics framework: cost reduction, workflow efficiency, system-level impact.
This is the bridge between “hospitals love it” and “hospitals pay for it at scale.”
In Germany, DiGA already reimburses digital therapeutics at €541 per prescription. That’s the market we’re building toward.
Usage → Health Economics → Regulatory → Market Expansion.
The chain is logical. And we’re walking it.
2. Product Deepening
The team is not just growing. It’s specializing.
Sound Design. Human Computer Interface specialist. 3D & Animation. Concept Art. A new dev joining. Each role exists because a generic product can’t win in hospitals. Clinical environments are unforgiving. The audio has to work, the interaction has to be intuitive under stress.
We’re not adding headcount. We’re adding depth.
The clearest example is our pediatric app now in full redesign together with Links Foundation. Not a visual refresh. A rethink of the entire interaction model: anxiety reduction as a design variable, adaptive logic, UX built around the clinical moment not around the screen.
Over a year of real deployment in pediatric hospitals. Now it becomes a proper clinical tool.
3. European Legitimacy
Italy is the proof. Europe is the plan.
Next week we’ll be at the health.tech Global Summit in Basel, the largest health tech conference in Europe. We have our booth, 26 meetings already booked with hospital directors, NHS leads, and HealthTech investors. Day 3 takes us inside Kantonsspital Baden and Roche HQ.
Europe isn’t a plan anymore. It starts Tuesday.
We started the MDR Class I path. Because without it, no serious institutional adoption in Europe is possible. It’s the ticket. We’re buying it now.
On Germany: we’ve opened the first conversations. The strategy is deliberate: soft landing with selected hospital pilots, then DiGA pathway for digital therapeutics reimbursement. No rush. The groundwork laid in 2026 becomes the beachhead in 2027.
4. The Bridge
We’ve been working on something we’d like your input on.
We’re structuring an angels round via SAFE. Before we finalize the terms, we want to hear from the people who know us best.
Context: we’ve secured €200k in non-dilutive grants, with €300k more unlocking over the next months. Non-dilutive capital validates the model. But grants don’t buy speed, and speed is what the next 12 months require.
The round is happening. The question is how to structure it well. We have our thinking. But we’d rather stress-test it with people who’ve seen this before than move fast and get it wrong.
If you have a view on the instrument, on the strategy, on the milestones, we’d genuinely value the conversation.
Reach out if you want to hear where we’re going. Momentum is real.
From Lemons with Love