The Ministry of Culture and Innovation (previously the Ministry of Science and Technology) has judged the ministerial grants awarded to KinaviX Kft. as professionally unjustified and problematic. KinaviX is partly owned by Merkely Gergő, the son of Semmelweis University rector Merkely Béla. Despite the ministry's findings, the company has not received any formal notification about the review or any potential recovery of funds.
The funding and the project
The sports‑medicine initiative called "Digital avatars" received special ministerial grants in three consecutive years following decisions by former minister Hankó Balázs. Over a period of one and a half years the project obtained nearly 600 million forints from the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH), and these funds were allocated not through standard competitive calls but solely via individual ministerial decisions.
KinaviX CEO Tóth György told Telex that the development has been running for four years, involving researchers from Harvard and Semmelweis University, and that they have so far recorded movement and physiological data from fifty athletes. From this data they are developing an AI‑based software that, by creating digital profiles, could help predict injuries and optimize performance for amateur and elite athletes. Tóth emphasized that previous project reports were fully accepted and given excellent evaluations by the authorities.
Conflict of interest issues
The most sensitive aspect of the case is the conflict of interest around the grants. Merkely Béla is not only the head of the institution but also a member of the board of trustees of the Nemzeti Egészségügyi és Orvosképzésért Alapítvány (NEOA), the foundation that maintains Semmelweis University. That role carried strict rules and reporting obligations given his son's significant ownership stake. When the university and the company won state funds as a consortium, this conflict was already clearly present, yet an official declaration was absent for a long time.
Only recently did the foundation publish a decision on its website that establishes Merkely Béla's conflict of interest regarding decisions affecting KinaviX Kft. and bars him from participating in related decision‑making and preparation of decisions. The wording of that document, however, applies only prospectively and does not address that the irregular situation had existed for a long time at the moments when ministerial grants were awarded.
Reactions and current status
KinaviX's management rejects the criticisms and continues to defend the project's professionalism. Semmelweis University and the company it owns stated they have not received information about the outcome of the ministry's review either. Because the ministry has expressed concerns while the affected organizations have not been formally notified, the situation remains unresolved.
Why it matters
The case touches on transparency in state funding, procedures for research financing, and how conflicts of interest in public institutions are handled. Given the scale of the resources involved and the atypical route by which they were allocated, the ministry's assessment could carry significance for how similar financing decisions are managed in future.
