DIGI-B-CUBE Sectoral Workshop 4 in Oslo, Norway

The coordinator of DIGI-B-CUBE project, Oslo Cancer Cluster (OCC), co-organised the last DIGI-B-CUBE sectoral workshop on 12-13 November 2019. The workshop was held as conjunction with EHiN 2019 conference, and aimed at connecting, educating and influencing health IT leaders across academia, industry, clusters and policymakers. 

First day of the workshop comprised of presentations from academia and industry followed by discussion on digital innovation challenges & barriers across the value chains. In the afternoon session, the participants took part through the Digital Transformation Services journey facilitated by ‘DigitalNorway‘. Second day of the workshop focused more on networking and matchmaking of the organisations targeting the Horizon 2020 funding, especially the cluster facilitated projects.

Dr. Gupta Udatha, coordinator of the DIGI-B-CUBE project explained the aims of the project towards creating cross-border and cross-sectoral ecosystem that combines digital innovations from the IT sector with the health sector, in lockstep with the Smart Specialisation Strategies. He also presented information on the funding available to the SMEs via the equity-free voucher scheme of the project. Other prominent speakers included Anna Sobczak, Policy Officer for clusters & emerging industries at the European Commission. She presented about “Cluster facilitated projects for new industrial value chains – Policy background and expected results”. Furthermore, a presentation on “Personalized Diagnostic in the Era of nanotechnology, AI and Cloud” was presented by Deborah Zanforlin, CEO & Co-founder of ConquerX. She also presented the cross-sectoral innovations that are helping them to achieve Poly-Analyte Cancer Test (PACT).

Representatives from approximately 20 SMEs (from various sectors) and other organisations (including intermediaries) participated in the discussion about the challenges and needs of the medical diagnostics value-chain. Based on the feedback that the project team received from all sectoral workshops, the DIGI-B-CUBE open call will be defined for funding the SMEs.

In continuation to the workshop, a matchmaking session was held. The matchmaking session moderated by the Oslo Cancer Cluster (OCC) focused on creating draft concepts and consortia for the four upcoming calls with deadlines for proposal submissions during April 2020. The participants of the DIGI-B-CUBE sectoral workshop were also provided with an opportunity to display their respective promotional materials at the Expo area of EHiN conference. This enabled them to network as well with other participants.

It is relevant to mention that the project has now moved into the cross-sectoral workshops phase. Out of the two foreseen, the first one was held on December 4^th in Badalona, Spain. The second cross-sectoral workshop is scheduled for January 22^nd. It will be organised by the DIGI-B-CUBE partner INFOPOLE in Charleroi, Belgium. Interested SMEs can access this link to find out more and register for the upcoming workshop.