Innovation transfer in the medical sector from clinics to companies
  • English
  • Polski
  • Deutsch
  • Magyar

FOCUS

InTraMed-C2C in front of National and International Audience

 

In May 2013 InTraMed-C2C was presented by István Valovics, the project manager of PP10 (BME EMT) at two events in Budapest. The first one, the 11th National Conference on Medical Informatics  was sponsored by InTraMed-C2C as well, drawing the attention of the nearly two hundred participants to the fact: they can make good use of the tools supporting the innovation transfer from clinics to companies, developed by the project.

Nearly 20 presentations in the plenary session at this conference dealt with the sectorial infocom developments, the practical applications of infocom technologies and the hospital information systems. Research, development, innovation and the presentation of an IT cluster project were in the focus of the three section blocks.

 

The presentation on the InTraMed-C2C project was delivered in the R+D+I section moderated by the experts of BME EMT. István Valovics outlined the concept, the goals, the working practices and the tools of the project, and reported on a few Hungarian innovation ideas, as well. He called the audience’s attention to the website and the innovation database of the project. Concerning the database, it has been emphasized: it functions as an internet-based marketplace, serves for linking the clinical and the company side, and is open for everyone by the mediation of regional agents. In the roundtable of the afternoon program BME EMT and the InTraMed-C2C project, respectively – in the person of István Valovics – was also represented. The codification and funding issues of the telehealth services, the problems of the personal health care and the difficulties of the long term sustainability of the R+D+I projects were the focus of the discussion.

 

The second event was organized within the frame of the Hungarian-Italian Cultural Season. It was a special thematic international workshop on e-health and info biomedical technologies. After the introductory thoughts the program of the Hungarian-Italian thematic workshop at the Óbuda University was carried out in four sections. The main topics: the importance of bilateral relations in e-health and telemedicine; results of the research projects; WABT (World Academy of Biomedical Sciences and Technologies) contribution to the bilateral meeting, international cooperation; results of young researchers. The afternoon program was closed by a roundtable.

 

In his presentation István Valovics underlined the transregional aspects of the innovation transfer. He emphasized: the project partners of InTraMed-C2C – as agents assisting the innovation transfer – are delighted at the requests from any European country with innovation ideas or business and manufacturing competence. The InTraMed-C2C medical innovation database is the main tool in the project for the transregional matching of innovations and production capacities.

 

The participation in these conferences as well as a long article about the project activities, which has been published in the periodical IME (the professional journal of health managers) aimed to promote InTraMed-C2C and disseminate the results.

Welcome to InTraMed-C2C!

InTraMed-C2C is a European project, with the participation of 7 countries and 10 project partners.


The project idea was born by the project partner Clusterland Upper Austria. They experienced that clinics have a high potential for innovations in product, process and service development in the overall medical industry, but this innovation potential is insufficiently transferred into results such as product development for companies, Intellectual Property (IP) generation and better healthcare processes.

 

InTraMed-C2C will initiate, develop and provide tools for strengthening the access of small and medium enterprises (local and European wide) to the innovation potential in the clinics.


One of the reasons for the insufficiently transferred results is that clinics and companies have different missions concerning handling innovative ideas. Clinics are “end-users” of innovations and clinics are also driving forces for bottom-up approaches of innovation transfer into the industry and their products. Companies, especially global players, are highly interested in providing their existing range of products to the clinics, new innovations are interesting only regarding the economic aspects. Moreover, these global players have established adequate access to the key functions in the clinics, supported by their distinctive marketing resources. As a result, global player dominate the supply of products and services in the clinics. Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and developments initiated by the clinic staff often do not have the resources and chances to transfer their ideas and knowledge into adequate product developments.

 

InTraMed-C2C develops an innovation transfer system (“framework”) as an exchange and coordination mechanism for innovations in the medical/clinical sector between key players of the regional innovation environment. This innovation transfer system will be embedded in the regional innovation framework. With its trans-regional approach InTraMed-C2C will extend this framework beyond the regional approach in order to provide innovative ideas to companies for realizing these ideas within the system developed by the project. It is in the scope of the project to initiate a European network for Innovation transfer as an open exchange structure for innovations and their realizing companies and institutions within the Central Europe area.