Workshop on Biomedical Technology/ Engineering and Living Labs (Thessaloniki, Greece on March 1st)

Digital services and ICT solutions seem to be one of the most important factors in the transformation of healthcare systems. However there are still many challenges and barriers for those solutions to reach the market and scale, and for citizens and society to perceive their value: fragmentation of markets, technology push instead of pull, lack of new business models, governance and policies, procurement, etc; this complexity calls for new co-creation, non-linear approaches for Health services transformation.

“ICT provides Europeans with better and cheaper tools to improve the quality and delivery of social care, health monitoring and electronic health records. Europeans live longer, hence the costs of health and social care will rise substantially to about 9% of EU GDP in 2050. ICT can be our most powerful ally to maintain cost efficient and high quality health and social care, as it empowers people of every age to better manage their health and quality of life, in any place.” (Source EC Digital agenda eHealth and Ageing) https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/ehealth-and-ageing

Based on the Digital Single Market, and in alignment with the EIP_AHA*, open Living Labs and the Living Lab network (ENoLL) offer a platform for pan-European experiments and prototypes for new markets, an open engagement platform where new business models and new innovation policies can be experimented and developed all based on a quadruple helix approach.

Developments are still needed in the health domain to develop flexible and open co-creation and experimentation environments for quick tests in the field of health to support businesses in Europe, bridging the gap between research and market, demand and supply.

In relation to this topic, our next stop to advance in conversations with European stakeholders is Thessaloniki. On March 1^st ENoLL and some ENoLL Living Labs will contribute to the Workshop on Biomedical Technology/ Engineering and Living Labs. The workshop, organized by the Hellenic Society for Biomedical Technology (www.elevit.org.gr) and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, aims at advancing in the role of Living Labs in the Biomedical Technology/ Engineering domain, where the opportunities of living labs networks for pan-European experiments and prototypes will be presented along with the need for such networks towards distributed pilots.

 Find more about the agenda here and follow live web-streaming.

* In 2011, the European Commission launched the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) with the aim of bringing together policy makers, care professionals, the industry that develops solutions and end users in order to reduce the gap in between demand and supply side.