The Capital Region of Denmark on 6 February 2020 in Copenhagen, Denmark held its Medtech4 Europe project study visit for health policy makers and practicioners, representatives of medical technology companies of the partner regions, in a circle of a short 40 participants.
The morning visits were focusing on how to provide incubation/support to medical technology start-ups and university students who work on inventing novel medtech solutions. For the first group, the start ups, Futurebox, the incubation and acceleration programme was showcased at the Science Park of Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Innovative and already market-proven companies such as Measurelet (intelligent toilet), MedTrace (myocardial perfusion imaging) and OptoCeutics (advancing non-invasive light technologies) were introduced by their founders.
As for the university innovative ideas of the new generation, the Institute of Health Innovation and DTU Science Park co-operates. The Skylab programme of the Institute supports entrepreneurship for students and researchers by prototyping and testing facilities. In such a spirit the Copenhagen Healthtech Solutions (cooperation between the DTU and the Copenhagen Healthtech Cluster) and some private partnerships were showcased. As a closure of the morning, Medtech Bridge introduced experience based solutions on how to scale up medical technology devices to the US market.
Given the fact that Righospital is the biggest university hospital in Denmark, this facility work closely with Greater Copenhagen Health Science Partners and Clinical Academic Groups (in short, CAGs) as these latter are drivers for research and innovation. The typical health research groups, the composition of the board and the lessons learnt from the operation of CAGs were all in detail introduced.
A higher education curricula and lecturer-students’s skills development initiative called Coppenhagen Health innovation was also presented during the study visit. The aim of this initiative is that it links the health care providers with the strongest knowledge and educational institutions within the health and medical sciences. By doing so, it simultaneously develops the market actors and knowledge providers within the medical technology innovation-education value chain.
Medtech4 Europe project partners and their numerous stakeholders being present also visited the location of Copenhagen Academy for Medical Education and Simulation (CAMES). CAMES laboratories provide world class simulation and training facilities in favour of professional education, prototyping and related simulations.
The late afternoon presentations focused on the introduction of Trial Nation (this is a public and private partnership consisting of Ministry of Health, Ministry of Business, pharma and medtech companies within Denmark, being accessible in the whole territory of the country), on ESS + MAX IV (next generation syncronothron radiation) and the detailed presentation of the European level interest articulation lobby organisation gathering big medical device providers called MedTech Europe.
