A look back at 2024

The last 12 months have had a decisive impact on EIT Health in Austria, in particular thanks to the fact that we welcomed 5 new partners! decide Clinical Software, ecoplus, AustrianStartups, invest.austria and Future Health Lab have certainly extended our network of innovators tremendously and are a new force in our European community. But 2024 has not only been a year of expansion, it was also a year of new experiences, in-depth conversations and cross-border collaboration. We are proud to summarise some of the highlights of 2024 in this newsletter. If you want to dive deeper, just click on the links below!

The long list of EIT Health Austria’s 2024 activities is quite a remarkable one:

• Together with AUSSENWIRTSCHAFT AUSTRIA, we welcomed over 180 guests to the second HEALTH DAY where we dived further into the European Health Data Space and its importance for Austrian patients and Austria’s healthcare industry. You can already register here for the 2025 edition of this popular event series: Health Days 2025
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• We brought together experts from Austria, Italy, France and Germany at the “DMD Roundtable” to discuss the future of reimbursement of digital medical devices with the Austrian Federation of Social Insurances (Dachverband der österreichischen Sozialversicherungsträger).
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• We partnered with AustrianStartups to co-host the first Austrian CATAPULT pitch competition with a public audience, and celebrated Audience Award Winner Cellectric Biosciences, who also were announced European semi-finalists of the competition in the following months, together with BrightComSol and AI.
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• We collaborated with Health Hub Vienna (lead) and LISAvienna to host the ViennaUp’24 event with the best view in town! And isn’t the TUtheSky Lounge an appropriate environment to discuss AI in healthcare?
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• As the EU is on its way to establish the European Health Data Space (EHDS), we have summarised the outcomes of our EHDS Roundtable and a series of follow-up interviews in the stand-alone Austrian EHDS Report (in German). The 48-page report combines the personal expertise, experiences and perspectives from Austria-based scientist and researchers, healthcare professionals, health data managers, IT experts, (bio-)medical engineers as well as patient organisations and gives a comprehensive overview of opportunities, challenges and solutions regarding the establishment of the EHDS within Austria.
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• We were able to witness how our Austrian Partners have implemented outstanding health innovation projects and programmes, incl. DigiDiab/GlucoTab (decide Clinical Software and Medical University Graz amongst others), EDITH (University for Continuing Education Krems and Medical University Graz amongst others), Top Female Founders (Boehringer Ingelheim and INiTS amongst others) und SCI-FI (Boehringer Ingelheim amongst others).
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• We met at the EIT Health Summit in Rotterdam, as well as EIT Health Matchmaking events in Lisbon, Santander, Naples and the EIT Health Austria Speedmatching & Partner Day to connect with new potential project partners and to exchange project ideas in their early stages. And we added Austrian perspectives to events in Switzerland, Slovenia and Hungary.
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• We met at events of the Austrian healthcare and innovation communities, including the 9^th Vienna Innovation Conference, the Standortagentur Tirol Innovation Week, the Pfingstdialog Steiermark 2024, dHealth 2024, the MedTech Forum Vienna, the Austrian Health Forum, the 4th invest.austria Conference, the LGB Xchange 2024, the AustrianStartups Summit, the Biotech Summit Tyrol, the LISAvienna Regulatory Affairs Conference, the Praevenire Gesundheitstage, the 9^th ÖPGK Conference and many more!
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• We jumped into the third year of our Austria project which is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), the Federal Ministry of Labour and Economic Affairs (BMAW), the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection (BMSGPK) and the Vienna Business Agency. In parallel to countless networking activities and consultations, we have also piloted our clinical validation network concept: more on this in 2025!
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• We joined the consortium of the SmartFox project which aims to increase the efficiency of clinical research by improving the secondary use of health data with a special look at various aspects of health data donation (take a survey on this topic here!).
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• We promoted the Academia-2-Entrepreneurs video portal featuring seven short video interviews with Austrian start-up founders Oskar Smrzka (Ablevia), Barbara Sladek (BiomeDx), Tamara Gerbert (AI), Antonia Riva-Frizberg (Lumetry Diagnostics), Carsten Pfeffer (Neurolentech), Adrian Brodesser (Somareality) and Christian Bouda (Sqail) helping upcoming healthcare entrepreneurs with the first most important steps of starting a healthcare business in Austria!
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• And, last but not least, we have increased the followership of our own LinkedIn channel to over 2,200 people!

We want to thank every member of our community for their interest and contribution! Stay tuned on our LinkedIn page for all upcoming activities in the next year and register now for the next Health Days in March to ensure your spot at one of the key healthcare events in Vienna in the first quarter of 2025!

With this great outlook in mind: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!