An extended and improved version of the report of the State of the Art of health R&I describing the present situation of health R&I across EU regions and countries by means of statistical and visualization techniques has been generated. This report has also analysed common patterns, specificities and determinants of EU regions and countries, and includes a set of final policy-oriented conclusions and recommendations.
Within the Work Package 2, which is devoted to networking activities, the project consortium organized three workshops to debate on different topics:
- Madrid Workshop (18-19 June 2015 – Madrid, Spain): "Analysis of Health R&I in less performing EU regions: Present situation, possible causes and influencing factors".
- Trieste Workshop (26-27 November 2015 – Trieste, Italy): "Horizon 2020: Synergies with European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIFs) and new ways for widening the participation".
- Trieste Workshop (30-31 May 2016 – Zagreb, Croatia): “New approaches for bridging the divide in health R&I in the EU regions”.
These events has served to facilitate the interaction among participants from different sectors, the exchange of ideas and knowledge and finally to promote potential actions to bridge the divide in EU health R&I. Furthermore, the networking activities developed within the project has given rise to RHInG-Net, a multidisciplinary network currently formed by over 100 experts representing organizations from all over Europe, such as universities and health research institutes, national and regional authorities, pharmacy and biomedical companies, health clusters, H2020 National Contact Points (NCPs) for health, etc., in order to discuss on the main problems affecting health research and innovation of less-performing EU regions and countries. To promote the interaction among network members and promote the exchange of ideas and knowledge, an online networking platform [http://rhing-net.eu/] has been implemented on the basis of open source software, including many functionalities and services like statistics, videoconferencing, document repository, blog and posting, etc.
Most of project stakeholders and members already registered in the network have been engaged by fitting dissemination activities (Work Package 4) defined at the beginning of the project in the dissemination plan, a master document including the targeted groups, the means of dissemination to be used, the responsible for carrying out the dissemination tasks, the schedule, etc. Apart from the network platform, an embedded specific website for RegHeahtl-RI project has been created to provide main information, objectives and outputs of the project. All the dissemination materials, such as Newsletters, Press Releases, Deliverables or Workshop Presentations, are available in the section “Outputs” of the project website:
http://rhing-net.eu/reghealth-ri/outputs.html(opens in new window)The project concluded with the celebration of the Final Conference (Work Package 3) “Bridging the Divide in European Health Research and Innovation”, which was held in Brussels on 20 October 2016. The conference was an essential tool for disseminating the major project results and conclusions together with a series of policy messages and recommendations. It was attended by around 80 experts and representatives from organizations from Europe, including EU/national/regional policy and funding agencies, business and industry, universities and research centres, non-profit organizations, etc.
