Policy learning workshop on investing in health and wellbeing

Workshop

06 July 2017

By Platform

The Policy Learning Platform (PLP) on Research and innovation brought together a selection of Interreg Europe project partners and key European stakeholders, including representatives of the European Commission to discuss the latest developments in health and wellbeing policy support measures and how Interreg Europe Projects can contribute to developing opportunities to create growth and jobs while providing better services and strengthen the ties between the project stakeholders.

At the workshop were present a core group of six Interreg Europe projects (HoCARE, HELIUM, TITTAN, ITHACA, ELISE, ERUDITE), the European Commission Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology (DG CNECT), and some relevant European stakeholders (ERRIN, ENoLL, AER) as well as representatives of the Interreg Europe joint secretariat and experts from the Policy Learning Platform on Research and innovation.

Participants discussed challenges and opportunities to facilitate the take-up of new services and speed up changes in the innovation ecosystems by implementing new policy instruments within the current (2014-2020 Cohesion policy programming period.

Main outcomes from the workshop

The importance of the “buy in “from managing authorities to mobilise resources and policy support from the current cohesion policy programming period;
The impact in the design of new policies and instruments of the diversity of stakeholders involved and the shift of power requested given the bottom-up nature of the topic;
The key role played by a new generation of innovation actors like the Living Labs to ensure a true quadruple helix approach and the engagement of intermediaries such as clusters to access to SMEs;
The importance of synergies with other programmes, like the ones launched by DG CNECT;
The contribution that European Association like ERRIN, ENoLL and AER to boost external capitalisation.

The workshop was also the first opportunity to start planning the support the Platform will provide to the Interreg Europe projects to build the momentum toward capitalisation by providing opportunities to interact, access knowledge, and showcase good practices while at the same time while building the critical mass need to impact with policy makers.

Next services to come: the launch of the online platform by July and networking event in Milan the 19-20 October 2017 on Research & Development and SME competitiveness.

A snapshot from the day: Mapping regions’ needs - opportunities to interact and share

Solutions to co-develop	Solutions to access	Practice to share.
Policy instruments that allows the right time span to understand needs and demonstrate benefits; Actions to promote change management.	Examples of links between new instruments and S3; Innovative pre-commercial public procurement schemes; Measures to engage with the private sector.	Tool to assess the socio-economic return of investments; Innovative public procurement scheme; Measure to foster collaboration between SMEs and RTD actors (clusters); Quadruple helix approach to support policy making.
Interregional support action for living labs; training scheme for co-creation coaches/mentors.	Support to engage end users in rural living labs; Experience in running living labs at transnational level.	Living labs set up and certification/labelling processes; How to exploit Investment in infrastructure (broadband networks).