Amazing how time flies. It seems barely a few moments since the last summit. The European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing held its last summit in Brussels on December.9-10, 2105 (see our report in the news feed 16 Dec. 2015). Strictly speaking the Summit event occurred in March of that year, but the December event was the fourth conference of partners, which we attended.
The agenda for this year’s event is here. A noticeable presentation during the opening session was that from Jeroen Tas, CEO of connected care and health informatics at Philips. Of relevance to his talk is the recently published Future Health Index report 2016, commissioned by Philips ‘capacity to care’, attached here.
Another important agenda at the Summit was further discussion of the draft ‘Digital Blueprint for innovation in health and care.’ In his keynote speech, ‘Commissioner Oettinger noted that Digitisation of health and care is inevitable, necessary and has already started; but further opportunities await. Going digital for better health and care services is also a component of Europe’s Digital Single Market (DSM), and ongoing actions, such as the Blueprint and the Digitising European Industry strategy, are essential for ensuring that digitisation of health and care moves forward at full speed, leading to better outcomes for people, healthcare systems and innovative companies (quoted from the Commission site)’. The latest version of the Blueprint is here.
As well as being an excellent venue for networking, the event also provided an opportunity for a meeting of the Reference Site Collaborative Network, which EHFF attended as an interested party. Over the last 18 months the group has lost John Farrell as Northern Ireland representative, as he is now retired but he has assisted, with others such as Joao Malva and Jean Bousquet in creating a not-for-profit company, and the meeting involved a presentation and invitation to those assembled to formalise their relationship with the new body.