Network of Health Science Innovation Incubation Programs

Smart specialization in many regions of European Union is not functioning due to the lack of innovation capacity and disconnection between the actors on local and transnational level. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) shall become seedbeds for innovation by understanding the market needs and providing innovation knowledge, business contacts and support for students, who will later implement RIS3 as entrepreneurs, employees or decision makers. HEIs are unable to meet these requirements and are not sharing best practices of knowledge & technology transfer. This challenge is particularly present in the area of public health, medicine and life sciences, where several key enabling technologies emerge, such as biotechnology, nanomedicine, e-Health, biomaterials, 3D printing, big data. The objective of NetHIIP is to connect members of the innovation system to enable them to interact and strengthen their innovation capacity. The consortium will develop a transnational and digital incubation process that allows innovation to emerge by a bottom up process at HEIs in interaction with RIS3 actors. Through IIProgramme&IIPlatform developed in the project HEIs will be able to modernize their teaching techniques with digital solutions and will have higher impact on the professional life of the students. Beside their teaching skills and abilities, their knowledge and competence becomes more marketable by expanding their professional opportunities and also by providing new impulses to their research activities.To achieve continuous market validation of the innovative ideas of students, market actors will be involved as mentors, judges, guest speakers. All incubation activities will be channelled through an online ‘incubation platform’ allowing continuous interaction among the students and regional innovation actors, creating transnational transparency of capacities, and boosting transnational co-creation, co-learning and validation. Partners with different levels of knowledge will strengthen their competences, reduce their disparities and promote the cooperation of RIS3 actors in the CE area. Strong links will be created to local/national/EU public administrations by the state-owned HEIs and by the ASPs, such as EIT Health. The pilots wll support students boosting their innovation capacities, validating their ideas by market and public actors, which will make the quadruple helix and smart specialization work.Overall, the expected impact of NetHIIP is to enhance the open innovation space of the EU, enhance the high growth potential of SMEs, facilitate the interaction, co-learning, co-creation between different actors of the socio-economic environment, and enable HEIs to achieve their third mission, while the establishment of the entrepreneurial ecosystem is also a vital outcome for the modernisation of higher education agenda of the EU. This way, all the involved stakeholders will benefit from a well developed/ established ecosystem that will enable mutual growth.