Project description
Preparing to meet the urgent needs of the next pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a lacking response to elevated demand for medical products and services. This has necessitated a new approach to meeting demand spikes during health crises. The EU-funded RESERVIST project will address this issue by establishing a core network of manufacturing and distribution centres to meet urgent supply needs within 48 hours. It will achieve this by connecting the necessary companies, optimising production and distribution while collaborating with the global maker community to meet increased demand. The goal is to make use of the latest innovations and increase production flexibility, ensuring timely delivery of supplies and services for the next health crisis.
Objective
RESERVIST aims to establish ‘reservist cells’ that in times of crises can be activated within 48hrs to switch to manufacturing medical products and services that are spiking in demand. Such a ‘reservist cell’ will consist of (i) a backbone network of core companies for manufacturing and testing; (ii) an extended network for further capacities (eg local provision, packaging, distribution, customization,…); (iii) a digital coordination platform and (iv) a pool of experts from the companies of the network. These cells will become operational in case of an emergency/pandemic but to make economic sense, the same approach of rapid flexibility and adaptability will be used to deal with surging demand in ‘normal circumstances’.
To realise this concept, we will first work on three levels individually: network level, connected manufacturing/digital manufacturing level and technical level, the latter referring to tweaking manufacturing lines, developing required materials and establishing links with testing/certification. Next, we will demonstrate the repurposing of 5 existing manufacturing lines within 48hrs towards manufacturing of ‘textile PPE’ (surgical and respiratory face masks, medical aprons) and ‘respiratory ventilators’ (invasive and non invasive) that comply with necessary testing and certification and proceed with the embedment of the reservist cells at the partners in the network. We will develop blueprints for further take-up and replication of the concept to other sectors. Within the project we will develop two replication demos: ‘disinfection equipment’ and ‘emergency medical equipement’. To support the Cells we will tap into the worldwide maker community and into relevant OITBs and networks.
The consortium is strongly industry-driven, including 4 LE and 7 SMEs coming from 7 EU countries. To maximise impact, we will extend our partner network and our Impact Support Group (18 Support Letters provided at proposal stage).
Fields of science
- medical and health scienceshealth scienceshealth care serviceseHealth
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineemergency medicine
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologypandemics
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationstelecommunications networksdata networks
Keywords
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
H2020-SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2
See other projects for this callSub call
H2020-SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2-NMBP
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
1070 BRUXELLES
Belgium
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.