In preparing for future health emergencies we will need to avoid solutions that overload the resourcing capacity of care providers and part of the solution lies in rebalancing the health care value chain by moving investment upstream to early prevention & prediction and also further downstream to support self and co-managed care. There is an opportunity here for industry but only if this is incentivised by governments and health insurers. But this also needs attention to reducing the time it takes to get a product and/or service from idea to use by consumers or institutions.

Over the last three years, Cross4Health has supported 58 innovative SME-led projects that are leveraging technology and know-how from Aerospace, Energy and Creative Industries sectors for the benefit of personalized healthcare. But we have also learnt lessons about how to reduce innovation lag.

For example, solutions for reducing innovation lag identified by Smart Specialisation Strategy contacts, SME owners and partner clusters include: understanding crossover opportunities better; developing consumer-facing solutions initially; earlier collaboration between care providers and industry; new approaches to innovation procurement. From the perspective of start-ups and SMEs who took part in our 2 accelerators a key success factor is pivoting the business model.

With a White Paper that is available for download;  C4H White Paper, we report on crossover collaboration (borders, sectors and markets) in the context of a COVID-19 world, its choke points and how to get through them, meeting people in ‘white space’ to generate ideas, taking ideas from mock-up prototype to large-scale demonstration and some of the success stories along the way. We end with a look into the future and a business plan that this consortium has put together to show how we can build on Cross4Health and a previous INNOSUP 1 project (INNOLABS) to generate more opportunities for start-ups and SMEs to be competitive with our support in a COVID-19 world.