Representatives from all five partners of the consortium, that is, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), European Network of Living Labs (Belgium), Anthology Ventures (Bulgaria), Sploro (Spain) and ViLabs (Cyprus) gathered to set the foundation for our initiative, which aims to create a people-centric experimentation ecosystem to support innovation in healthcare with a particular focus of the transitional care sector. The event was hosted by AUTH’s Lab of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation (iMedPhys Lab in short), whose team acts as our project coordinators. The agenda of the 2-days meeting featured in-depth discussions on project objectives, work packages, and coordination strategies.

Day 1 began with a general introduction to the project by AUTH. Professor Panagiotis Bamidis, head of the the iMedPhys Lab gave the welcoming speech followed by a brief round of partners’ introduction to break the ice and familiarise all the team members. Then, presentations were made by project coordinator, Associate Professor Evdokimos Konstantinidis and Despoina Petsani, who covered the project’s management framework, ethics requirements and financial control. Having addressed the modalities, we delved into the work packages on the experimentation spaces (WP1, WP2). AUTH and Sploro partners led the sessions to provide a comprehensive overview of the background review on the barriers and drivers of innovation in the healthcare sector that interests the project and to inform the team about the planned activities and responsibilities for the upcoming months. Our primary goal is to collectively understand the innovation capacity existing in the transitional care use cases that the project plans to implement. Such finding are going to feed into the actions envisioned within WP3 as this was presented by AV partners. The first day, concluded with the session of WP4. VIL led the Product Box exercise to have partners share ideas and synthesise together what shall be the basis of our outreach activities and materials.

After a vibrant social dinner hosted at the Thessaloniki’s Museum of Modern Art premises, partners met for Day 2 during which the discussions focused on validating the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the project’s roll-out, and on reviewing the defined use cases that will be essential part of the project’s open calls to match healthcare innovators with certified Living Labs. The plan for the open calls of the project seeks to to engage with innovators and researchers and leverage the AccelUp platform to liaise the engaged stakeholders with Living Labs across Europe that demonstrate a credible capacity to act as the testing environments for concepts and innovations that will advance the HealthTech in the transitional care.

With each partner bringing unique expertise, EVOLVE2CARE aims to foster a sustainable ecosystem that will drive healthcare advancements across Europe!

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