The Future Health Lab joins EIT Health Austria!

The Future Health Lab has joined EIT Health Austria as a Network Partner this month. The Future Health Lab is a new innovation centre advancing the public provision of healthcare in Austria. Since 2023, key stakeholders have been joining forces to develop solutions to challenges that no organisation can overcome alone. Public institutions, leading companies, interest groups and patient representatives, healthcare professionals, innovators and research institutions have thus come together in new collaboration formats – without bureaucracy, in a protected space, and at eye level.

One of the core elements of the Future Health Lab are multi-stakeholder innovation programmes organised along strategic areas (the “Health Missions”): The first ones have been centred on the optimisation of patient pathways according to the motto “digital before outpatient before inpatient”, for example, e.g. on topics like type 2 diabetes and COPD lung diseases.

The Vienna-based Future Health Lab is managed in collaboration with the Impact Hub, offering more than 500 m² of flexible, open and high-tech space for events of stakeholders and other interested organisations.

It was founded based on long-term commitments by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection, the Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK) and the Vienna Business Agency.

„We want to address and overcome stakeholder positions in order to jointly realise innovative solutions for the urgent problems in the Austrian healthcare system,” says Romana Ruda, Managing Director of the Future Health Lab. “In this regard, we see ourselves as a space of opportunity to create tangible results that reach the population quicker and relieve the healthcare system as soon as possible. Hence, it’s obvious for us to partner with EIT Health Austria, which shares the same ambition with a European perspective.”

Both organisations are flagship projects of the City of Vienna (“Leitprojekte”), which support the “Vienna 2030 Economy & Innovation Strategy”. Together with other health-related flagship projects, such as the Health Hub Vienna or the Eric Kandel Institute, the new partnership will lay the foundation for new activities aimed at strengthening Vienna’s role as a “metropolis of health” – one of six Vienna 2030 Areas of Leadership.

“We are delighted to welcome the team of the Future Health Lab to our European community!”, says Dr. Astrid Kaltenböck, Managing Director of EIT Health Austria. “We share an ambitious mindset to advance innovation in healthcare and always keep the immediate outcome for patients in mind. This is a great basis for a fruitful collaboration!”

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Future Health Lab