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Public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI) is a powerful tool to boost innovation. The public sector demands innovative solutions that are not yet available or not at large scale on the market and thus forces providers to innovate. PPI2Innovate targets directly public procurers on all administrative levels in central Europe with the aim to build regional capacities in PPI, to change attitude towards PPI, to strengthen linkages among relevant stakeholders in regional innovation systems and to finally boost usage of PPI. The project will achieve this change by delivering innovative outputs such as 3 thematic PPI2Innovate tools for smart health, energy and ICT fully customized to 6 national institutional frameworks and translated.

Europe’s population is growing older, leading us into many societal challenges which those changes are bringing. In the future there will be higher absolute numbers of elderly people, a larger share of elderly and longer healthy life expectancies. International Thematic Workshop on home care R&I organized on 27th January 2017 in Funchal (Madeira) offered many opportunities to exchange experiences and good practices from the field of innovative solutions for home care. More than 100 participantsattended the event which was organized by Business Development Institute of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (IDERAM).

The workshop was part of European project “HoCare” which deals with the issues of ageing population and focuses on boosting creation of innovative solutions for home care through quadruple-helix cooperation. Partners from Portugal, Cyprus, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic attended the event bringing with them also the relevant stakeholders from the field of home care. Current situations regarding home care research and innovation support and good practices from participating countries were presented at the workshop. 3 interactive working groups enabled discussions on possibilities for transferability of good practise projects or management / strategic focus of Operational programmes. The focus was especially on generation of innovation in home care by addressing unmet needs identified by formal and informal providers of health care.

New project Accelerator of which DEX IC became a partner has just started. If you are a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) who needs a capital and has no or lack of skills to get it, if you are business support organization, stakeholder, investor or other financing institution, it is targeted right at you.

The second Startup Europe Week (6th- 10th February) is over, having had the participation of +280 co-organisers spread across 40+ countries. DEX Innovation Centre was SEW17 co-organiser and held our own event in Liberec, Czech Republic for the initiative last week.

On 6th February 2017, a second edition of the event „Startup Europe Week“ took place in Liberec. Liberec, as well as Prague and Brno, became one of three Czech cities which was given the opportunity to organize this European initiative for start-up businesses. This event was held in the same week in more than 220 cities from 40 European countries.

The 2nd edition Startup Europe Week Liberec 2017 that will take place on 6th of February in Krajská vědecká knihovna in Liberec. Startup Europe Week has been created to include all the European regions in a startup focused program.

November and December 2016 signalled 2 significant steps for DEX Innovation Centre in the development of the SMART4MD application for patients with mild dementia – a test of the developed clickable prototype among target groups and the ethical approval of trial of the application on real patients and carers.

On Monday, 21th of November 2016 an international conference called  „Society – ICT – Economy – Industry 4.0”, focused on digitalisation and its effect on the economy and society took place in Budapest, Hungary.

Industry 4.0 describes the organisation of production processes based on technology and devices autonomously communicating with each other along the value chain: a model of the ‘smart’ factory of the future where computer-driven systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralised decisions based on self-organisation mechanisms.

Evropský dům in Prague hosted the first meeting of the members of the Czech regional multi-stakeholder group of the project HoCare on 02.12.2016. The representatives of business, research, public and health/social (services providers) sphere got together in one place, in order to discuss the current issues and obstacles in the field of development of innovations in home care area.

The meeting was organised by DEX Innovation Centre within the project HoCare, which aims to boost creation of new innovative solutions in the area of home care by strengthening cooperation of actors in regional innovation chains with the use of the approach based on quadruple-helix model.

In the framework of the project PPI2Innovate, 3 general thematic PPI2Innovate Tools for SMART Health, SMART Energy and SMART ICT are going to be developed.

European project for cooperation on innovative solutions for Home Care

Partners from Cyprus, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal and Czech Republic have met on 2^nd project meeting within the HoCare project - “Delivery of Innovative solutions for Home Care by strengthening quadruple-helix cooperation in regional innovation chains”. The meeting took place in Varna, Bulgaria from 15^th -17^th September 2016 and was hosted by Business Agency Association from Varna.

The final event of the RS&RC project took place in Evropský dům on 21 September 2016. An inspirational and interactive seminar and workshop with the topic: Use of storytelling in work with communities/groups of people sharing a common problem.

We would like to invite you to the final inspiration and discussion seminar and workshop under the RS&RC project with the topic “Use of narrative and storytelling in work with communities / groups of people sharing a common problem.” This seminar and workshop will be held on 21.9.2016 at the Evropský dům in Prague from 10:00 to 15:30 and the entry is free for all participants. 

Public procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI) is a powerful tool to boost innovation. The public sector demands innovative solutions that are not yet available or not at large scale on the market and thus forces providers to innovate. PPI is well supported on EC level (i.e. H2020), there exist also various guidance and training tools already for few years. So far they didn't boost the PPI usage in majority of CE regions, because available tools are not customized to national frameworks and regional knowledge hubs are missing.

This is the reason why DEX Innovation Centre facilitated the preparation and submission of project PPI2Innovate – Capacity building to boost usage of PPI in Central Europe, which includes together 10 partners from Central Europe (Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia). The project was successfully approved in the 1^st call of Interreg Central Europe Programme with budget 1,6M EUR.

The project with duration 3 years will be implemented from June 2016 till May 2019 and will target directly public procurers on all administrative levels in CE with aim to build regional capacities in PPI, change attitude towards PPI, strengthen linkages among relevant stakeholders in regional innovation systems and thus boost usage of PPI.

All partners met at the Kick-off meeting of the PPI2Innovate 8^th – 9^th June in Székesfehérvár, in one of the most ancient towns in Hungary. The meeting was hosted by the Lead partner – Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency Nonprofit and moderated by DEX Innovation Centre. Partners will start the work on the Identification of institutional frameworks relevant for PPI in all participating countries.

European population is getting older which means that the number of people over 65 is increasing. Ageing trend presents numerous social changes and challenges, for which adequate solutions need to be found. At the same time it also means opportunity for growth and jobs as there is great potential to deliver innovative solution for home care.

8 partners from Cyprus, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal and Czech Republic have launched the HoCare project – “Delivery of Innovative solutions for Home Care by strengthening quadruple-helix cooperation in regional innovation chains”. The partnership is led by the Nicosia Development Agency (ANEL) from Cyprus.

DEX Innovation Centre is proud to present the official logo of the SMART4MD project. The logo reflects the topic of the project - Support, Monitoring and Reminder Technology for Mild Dementia.

DEX Innovation Centre has the pleasure to invite all community workers, social workers, informal network members, non-formal trainers, consultants, coaches, NGO representatives and other people working with groups of people sharing the same problem to Training days with narrative and storytelling approaches, that will happen in Gouda, the Netherlands, on June 13-15th, 2016.

DEX Innovation Centre is proud to announce that it will be able to support PPI processes and their awareness in the Czech Republic and the whole Central Europe area through a new project called "PPI2Innovate". Implementation in the Central Europe will be coordinated totally among 10 international partners and 8 strategic partners from various countries. In the Czech Republic, DEX Innovation Centre activities will be further supported by its associated strategic partner, Technology Centre ASCR.