On 12 April 2022, the European Innovation Council (EIC) partnered up with Health Proc Europe and the European Health Public Procurement Alliance (EHPPA) to conduct a dedicated matchmaking event between EIC beneficiaries and procurers in the fields associated with health and elderly care. Integrated in the EIC ePitching with Procurers, six EIC-backed SMEs presented innovative solutions related to these matters while focusing on smart and efficient solutions for patients’ needs and potential future challenges.
With a clear purpose of finding innovative solutions for health and elderly care, the EIC, Health Proc Europe, and EHPPA challenged the participating SMEs to present optimising and pioneering ideas to face the current adversities of the health sector and the elderly. All of this while considering the importance of having more efficient procurement related to medical devices, medicines, medical equipment and IT solutions for elderly care centres and hospitals.
To achieve these goals, this initiative allowed some of the most innovative SMEs to step in and showcase their worth. After the event, we met with Antoni Gilabert Perramon (Innovation and Partnership Director at the Catalan Health and Social Care Consortium) from the Procurers side who explained that their “aim is to promote innovation and collaborative work focused in five areas:
1) promote a culture of innovation through training courses and organising innovation days.
2) facilitate tools to incorporate innovation in all the activities developed (like design thinking methodology, giving guidelines to identify ideas, to develop projects, or define business models).
3) generate collaborations in our ecosystem (e.g., working with the EIC).
4) identify projects and give support to our associates in the consortium (e.g., via an innovation hub we created).
5) find resources to implement our projects by looking for investors or participating in public groups”.
He explained: “Working with the EIC allowed us to collaborate and broaden the scope of our collaborations. Mainly for having access to a large database of companies from other European countries. It allows us, of course, to see different solutions and approaches from companies that think outside of the box. Thus, we look for experienced companies with a good portfolio of solutions that have transparency, versatility, adaptability, and good communications skills. That’s why these types of initiatives are a valuable opportunity because it enables us to have an open dialogue between buyers and companies while launching a specific challenge that offers us the chance to see firsthand solutions for healthcare with a more modern approach”, Antoni Gilabert Perramon explained.
On the SME’s side, we met with Lorena Sánchez (Project Manager at Making Genetics), that saw this as a valuable opportunity to present the company’s solution. She explained to us: “Our company identifies, develops, implements, and licenses accurate, accessible, flexible, effective, efficient, and safe genetic and epigenetic-based solutions for early precision medicine. This is our way of helping and reaching the best outcomes for patients, healthcare, and society. In this light, the solution we pitched involved a digital platform for accurate prognosis and patient follow-up with auto-immune diseases”.
The motivation to apply to this EIC initiative? She explained that, apart from this initiative being directly in line with their business, it was an easier way to have “direct contact with procurers collaborating with the EIC in the Business Acceleration Services (BAS) programme”.
Regarding the event itself, Lorena Sánchez said that it was a valuable opportunity and “clearly facilitated the direct contact with the procurers. Also, it was perfectly organised and the preliminary training very useful”.
Are you looking for opportunities to connect with some of the largest procurers in Europe? Keep a close eye on our events calendar and the EIC Community for upcoming events throughout the rest of the year.
DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.