Know-how transfer: from InnoStars to EIT Health RIS Hubs

The main aim was to prepare innovators from regions within RIS programme for the 2019 innovation call for projects and to create the right knowledge environment for the EIT Health RIS Hubs to participate as consortium Partners in EIT Health 2021 Business Plan. Trainers worked closely with local innovators – academic and non-academic – as well as RIS Hubs, providing them support and specific feedback to develop high quality, solid and balanced projects targeting the six focus areas of EIT Health. At one of the workshops, one participant summarized the event by saying “The best on-site training I’ve ever been to.”

In May, EIT Health InnoStars visited all the EIT Health RIS Hubs clustering them in three meeting points in Palermo, Ljubljana and Prague. The training was designed not only to meet the needs of the local community of innovators, but also to prepare them to successfully submit and develop innovation projects.

Daniela Dias-Santos, Innovation Project Analyst at EIT Health InnoStars and one of the trainers, explained: “EIT Health InnoStars coordinates the Regional Innovation Scheme Programme in Europe. Today, we cover almost half of Europe, embracing modest to moderate innovation regions to level out their healthcare innovation systems. We focus on education and sharing the best practices, together with training based on local asset mapping.” She adds: “This series of training was devoted to build an understanding of patient-orientated innovation, common pathways from unmet needs to generating solutions as well as business model design, commercialization basis and regulatory hurdles.”

“The structure of the programme and the way you were able to bring us from the basic idea of the project to thinking about every aspect of the business and the solution was mind-blowing,” says Vida Groznik, PhD, from Neus Diagnostics. “I also admired the way you were able to give each and every one of us relevant comments about our solutions and what we should be watching out for.”

EIT Health InnoStars creates a unique link between those geographically remote hubs and the European innovation ecosystem. More information about the programme can be found here.