In a period of 39 months, the NOBEL Project succeeded in transposing and upscaling translational services originally dedicated to the Nanomedicine community to a much larger bandwidth of technologies having all in common their contributions to healthcare innovation. NOBEL built up a platform at the cross-section of nanotechnologies, electronics, advanced (bio)materials, textiles, photonics, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to foster cross-fertilisations and to efficiently support technology providers on the path from the lab to the patient.
Concretely NOBEL addressed 3 major aspects of Coordination and Support in the HealthTech sector:
1. A framework for mutual understanding, common vision and joint strategy: the concept for a Continuum of Integrated Care highlights the need for a holistic approach of healthcare provision in a changing environment. Decentralising healthcare implies that data are becoming the spinal cord of healthcare. HealthTech as defined below is essential to create, transfer, and treat data in a way that they are available and understood at all phases in the healthcare process and by all types of stakeholders. An article and a meta-roadmap, both elaborated by the project partners are now available to support research and industrial communities and decision-making bodies.
2. A platform for technology providers in the HealthTech area to speak with one voice and shape the technological solutions to answer to current and future medical needs: The HealthTech4EU Alliance is currently being founded by seven European Technology Organisations. In addition to its mission to act as a think tank, this alliance is the place to discuss future strategic orientations, adaptation to and adoption by healthcare systems as well as to shape new projects.
3. Translation of promising HealthTech toward the market: Although the ground principle remains the same, the former Nanomed TAB (Translation Advisory Board) underwent a profound redesign to be able to provide advice to different technological sectors and to highlight the potential of combining expertise from different technological field to create a final product. With 55 cases supported by the new HealthTech TAB, it is obvious that the objective has been reached.
These tremendous results have been achieved through the consortium’s efforts to federate a large community of stakeholders, addressing each type with targeted communication activities, dedicated events and workshops. It is worth to mention here the organisation of showcase events by NOBEL Partners, in the first place the HealthTech Award or the pan-European HealthTech World Cancer Days, to underline the capability of the project to mobilise start-up and SME communities and local networks respectively.
The ambitious working plan of the project could be rolled out despite the COVID-19 pandemic and its negative impact during the last year of the project on all activities involving physical interactions, such as meetings, workshops, events and conferences. Nevertheless, this disrupted environment has called for innovative design to rethink some of our key-initiatives and promotion actions. A dedicated COVID-19 taskforce, regrouping experts within the NOBEL Consortium, was set up to provide strategic inputs and publications explaining how health technologies should enable a better preparation for the next pandemic. Finally, the NOBEL Consortium was able to define an appropriate mitigation plan, including a 3-month extension of the project, and to alleviate the effects of the pandemic. The overall performances of the project partners did finally only marginally suffer from the current situation. Instead, the last months of the NOBEL Project have been extremely efficient to prepare and start implementing its heritage, notably in the embodiment of the long-lasting HealthTech4EU Alliance.
