The Medical Technology Cluster submitted the project proposal "Innovation transfer in the medical sector from clinics to companies" (IntraMED-C2C) within the Central Europe Programme, which is part of the European Regional Development Fund ERDF. In November 2009 the proposal was approved. Under the leadership of Forum MedTech Pharma and Bayern Innovativ a consortium of 10 partners from 7 European countries will transfer ideas of the clinical routine to the industry.
Background
Clinics have a high potential for innovations in product, process and service development in the overall medical industry. There are a lot of reasons, why this innovation potential is insufficiently transferred into results such as product development for companies, Intellectual Property (IP) generation and better healthcare processes.
Concept of the Project
IntraMED-C2C will initiate, develop and provide tools for strengthening the access of SMEs European wide to this innovation potential in the clinics. This means to strengthen the economic power of SMEs, to create and safeguard employment and to open new markets for their products. SMEs are highly interested to get access and to be involved in this innovation transfer process and they have certain advantages to be successful at that interface from clinics to industry. SMEs can be continuously involved in this technology transfer process by providing adequate resources. SMEs also have the flexibility to develop labtypes, prototypes or small business solutions for bottom-up approaches out of the daily clinic work. Such a tool for the purpose of initiating the access of SMEs to the clinic could be a workshop. Pilot workshops will be organised by the project according to regional particularities.
Parallel to this first step IntraMED-C2C will monitor, analyse and compare the situation in the involved countries of the project resp. the project partners. This step includes not only the bilateral situation of the clinic and SME, but also the general environment concerning political restrictions of the health care sector in the country, the cost reimbursement system for financing this innovation transfer and the subsequent financing of providing the medical service or selling the products from the industry to the health care provider. In the next step of the project concepts will be developed, how these tools from the first steps can be transferred to transregional, national and transnational areas.
This project is part of the activities of the Bavarian Cluster Medical Technology.
Project budget: 2.13 Mio. €
Project duration: 36 months (04/2010 - 03/2013)
IntraMED-C2C project description
Homepage IntraMED-C2C Project
CENTRAL EUROPE Description IntraMED-C2C
www.central2013.eu