EIT Health (part of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology) and the Biomedical Alliance in Europe (BioMed Alliance) have signed an MoU signalling moves towards closer collaboration between the healthcare innovation sector and leading medical societies across Europe.
There are synergies and complementarities that exist between EIT Health, which represents academia, industry, research and healthcare delivery as well as start-ups and entrepreneurs and BioMed Alliance, which represents more than 400,000 researchers and healthcare professionals within 35 European medical societies. The groups aim to work together to improve the leadership and entrepreneurial culture of the medical community in the identification and research and development of innovation, as well as bolstering the continuing medical education available to healthcare professionals on implementing and using innovative products and services (i.e. digital and data literacy).
Delivering safe, effective and efficient healthcare solutions requires the strong involvement of the medical community alongside entrepreneurs to ensure that clinical and patient needs are the driving force. The medical community has a large role to play alongside patients and citizens in the needs assessment for health innovation, as well as the development, testing, adoption and post-market evaluation of products and services. The partnership between EIT Health and BioMed Alliance aims to further a culture of collaboration and co-creation in healthcare research and innovation, ensuring that the right people are involved at all stages.
Jan-Philipp Beck, EIT Health CEO, said: “In order for innovative healthcare solutions to have true impact, we must build them directly in response to, and alongside, the healthcare professionals who will use them and the patients who will benefit. Likewise, the upskilling and continuing education of healthcare professionals is crucial to the broad adoption of innovative solutions - this can only be achieved when people are ready and willing to use them. We are very pleased to collaborate with the BioMed Alliance and eager to work together on bringing the medical community even closer to health innovation.”
Innovation is inevitably linked to change and therefore education for healthcare workforces must be continuous, particularly in response to the rise in digital solutions such as artificial intelligence within healthcare settings. A report published in 2020 by EIT Health and McKinsey & Company, highlighted a large gap in digital skills amongst existing healthcare workforces, and outlined the need for holistic digital education to be embedded into medical curricula, as well as continuing medical education (CME).
Prof. Wilfried Ellmeier, BioMed Alliance president, said: “The BioMed Alliance and its members very much look forward to working with EIT Health based on our new MoU. We believe that by joining forces on issues of common interest, we can have an even bigger impact on catalysing excellent health research and innovation in European healthcare. A key example is CME. Medical societies are among the most important providers of high-quality and objective CME and there are key opportunities to cooperate with EIT Health when it comes promoting innovation through education.”
The MoU will be in place for a period of two years, and immediately facilitates the joint working of the organisations
