To develop synergies in ecosystems, it is vital to build solid relationships among European projects, Digital Innovation Hubs, and relevant reference repositories.
Background: Creating team efforts among project partners is becoming key. The European Commission has recently placed particular emphasis on the need to better support effective dissemination and exploitation of projects results. The objectives are to accelerate the transition from innovation to market and to make an active societal contribution.
In this context, it is really relevant to organise and support synergies among projects at an early stage of project development.
EHTEL’s experience with synergy-building: The coordination and support action, OPEN DEI CSA, focuses on digitising every European industry. The health and care industrial sector is one of the core sectors in Europe. During the life-course of OPEN DEI, EHTEL has successfully facilitated the development of synergies across no fewer than 14 European projects. It has also helped to build connections with other initiatives and projects (such as the Platform Uptake CSA).
| As a result of these activities, the EHTEL Match-making platform provides Members with access to premium content such as opportunities for collaboration and open calls on various digital health-related topics. |
A key success factor in building synergies is to develop a win-win approach, which pays attention to the following four principles:
- Clustering: Grouping the projects according to both technical (e.g., reference architecture, building blocks) and clinical or societal criteria (e.g., use cases) with a view to establishing both transversal and concrete collaboration among projects.
- Identifying other added-value projects: Pinpointing projects – which have early inputs on specific topics with important added-value – in order to invite them to share their expertise with other projects in the same cluster.
- Identifying topics where a cooperative consolidation of knowledge can be achieved: Do this with a view to improving dissemination and exploitation.
- Supporting the cross-participation of projects to thematic workshops: These thematic workshops will be organised by different, individual projects.
Overview: EHTEL is well placed to bring together three initiatives in a single whole the work of European projects, digital innovation hubs, and collections of data (often called “reference repositories”). These three wheels can be drawn together to form a synergistic whole.
Meanwhile, EHTEL continues to amalgamate and consolidate its knowledge, experience, and expertise through its successful engagement with the market in an initiative to achieve impact.
The experience gained by EHTEL in engaging with different projects will be developed and extended, in particular, in future health-related digital innovation hub activities.
A likely outcome is a single over-arching hub. More information on this ambitious objective soon.
