vCare contributes to Innovation Sprint regulation workshop

On 7th November 2018 at the Brussels Life Science Incubator in Brussels, three vCare partners took part in a workshop organised by Innovation Sprint. It was about: “Innovation uptake in eHealth with patient-centeredness and gamification. Regulatory challenges and opportunities”.

The scope of the workshop was to brainstorm the status of regulatory and ethical scenarios in eHealth, and how to get to market. State-of-the-art European Horizon 2020 eHealth projects (vCare, COUCH, GOAL) got feedback on their work from a mixed disciplined audience.

Sofoklis Kyriazakos – Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Innovation Sprint, coordinated the project presentations that showcased best practices and lessons learned in European projects.  Alfredo Cesario, Chief Scientific Officer of the company, moderated a “crash test” session with the three projects – its goal was to help the projects make good decisions and avoid bad ones.

vCare, like the other two projects, was offered feedback on its status and the barriers it will face when dealing with regulations at its exploitation stage. vCare technical coordinator, Dr. Hannes Schlieter said, “It is really great for us to consider, even a year into the project exactly what legal and regulatory challenges we will face going ahead.”

Lucia Pannese – CEO of Imaginary, presented “Savings and better QoL: Gamifying Rehab“ from her experiences in research and development (R&D), and commercialisation. Marc Lange, Secretary General of EHTEL, spoke about the expected transition of vCare from R&D into practice: “Virtual Rehabilitation Coach: a journey from the proof of concept to routine care“.

The workshop outcomes will be summarised in a White Paper with contribution from all the three partners. The ultimate aim is to create impact on the part of research-based projects at this critical point of regulation in R&D.

Co-designing serious games – their use throughout Europe and wider

Serious games are taking off. They are being used in Europe and beyond.

REHABILITY is one such suite of serious games. Co-designed by patients and specialists, it facilitates rehabilitation therapy. Both cognitive and physical therapies can be individually personalised, and take place in the home as well as in clinics or hospitals. The games can be played by people with neurological difficulties who are recovering from a stroke or who have conditions like multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. A huge benefit is that the application is based on off-the-shelf affordable consumer technology: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/repository/game-based-neurological-tele-rehabilitation_en. See also: http://www.rehability.me.

Based on proven European Seventh Framework Programme research and piloting, REHABILITY is today the solution of choice in over 20 locations in Italy and Europe and as far afield as Malaysia and Singapore. In 2018 alone, it has won three awards for its innovation and excellence.

Imaginary srl – a small company based in Milan, Italy – is one of vCare’s industrial partners. REHABILITY is one of the components aimed to be brought under the vCare service umbrella.

Imaginary srl reports its innovative practice online at the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIPonAHA) repository: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/repository/. The application shows excellent maturity, impact, and transferability.

The EIP on AHA encourages more announcements like that of REHABILITY. Knowing about these kinds of developments will encourage the scaling-up of rehabilitation solutions for active and healthy ageing throughout Europe!