The final conference took place on 10 February 2022 in a virtual meeting. Project results and their integration into the Access & Acceleration platform were presented. Participants received ideas for the development of new business ideas and cooperations in the fields of education, research and innovation.

All presentations of the speakers can be found here: https://www.accessinnovation.eu/final-conference.html

Due to the currently increasing level of Covid19, we need to refrain from our planned network meeting on 24 November, unfortunately.
We thank you very much for your interest and would like to offer you to meet up individually with our partners instead. In order to schedule an appointment, please contact Katharina Rubahn (kru@tek.sdu.dk; T +45 65 50 12 24).

On 24. November 2021 the project partners cordially invite you to a network meeting at the University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg. Now that the pandemic situation allows personal meetings again, Access & Acceleration would like to take the opportunity to enter into a further personal dialogue on health innovation.

The meeting shall be used as an advisory platform on the Access & Acceleration project activities and provide you with:

• an update on the project’s outcomes, especially on the platform on health innovation,
• insights into ongoing industry-academy and clinic-academia collaboration projects,
• the possibility of a guided tour to the SDU’s premises as well as
• a dialogue on future joint initiatives.

The meeting will take place from 10.0-12.30 at Alsion, Sønderborg.

Please click on the following link for programme details and registration: https://www.conferencemanager.dk/network-meeting

Although Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) causes a large amount of morbidity, mortality and injuries every year, many patients suffering from AUD never undergo specialist treatment during their addiction due to a variety of reasons. How can this problem be solved? What is the best solution to build a predictive model for classifying patients into Normal, Harmful, and Hazardous drinkers? And how can patients with AUD be detected at an earlier stage? Project partner Ali Ebrahimi from the SDU Health Informatics examined these and other questions in his doctoral thesis with the title Predictive Models to Identify Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder, which has now been successfully defensed. Ali Ebrahimi studied at the SDU and researched on the topics Health Care, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Data Analysis and Natural Language Processing. Congratulations to Ali on his successful defense!

How can innovative medical products be brought to market? What are the market entry barriers in Germany and Denmark? The project partners from the Center for Innovativ Medicinsk Teknologi, the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute and the University of Lübeck have published a roadmap to help users successfully enter the market.

Go to roadmap

The Access & Acceleration partners have been working on a German-Danish innovation platform for the health sector. In different teams, the partners have taken a closer look at the different stages of the innovation cycle: from developing new ideas in the health sector, to testing the development of products and services on the basis of two pilots and the market entry.

The platform enables users to network with each other and enter into cross-border collaborations to jointly implement innovative ideas and technologies in the health sector. Now the platform is published and freely accessible.

"The Access & Acceleration platform was built and developed to use the existing innovation potential from the two different health systems more effectively. Our platform accompanies the user along the innovation cycle and provides him with methods for the specific management of innovation processes," says project partner Katharina Rubahn from the University of Southern Denmark.

Learn more about the Access & Acceleration platform by clicking the following link:
https://www.access-platform.eu

In the following video Katharina Rubahn explains how the platform can be used:

During a virtual opening of the Centre for Clinical Artificial Intelligence (CAI-X), project partner Ali Ebrahimi from the SDU Health Informatics presented his study A Predictive Machine Learning Model to Determine Alcohol Use Disorder. The study covers an iterative exploratory methodology to develop an accurate predictive model to identify patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) from historical electronic health records (EHR). The study demonstrates how machine learning algorithms are employed to diagnose a disorder based on EHRs of 2,534 patients admitted at the Odense University Hospital in the region of Southern Denmark. The main goal of this research is to develop a predictive model that can be used in the hospital decision support system platform empowering hospital staff to take early action against alcohol-related problems in patients. To achieve this goal, several predictive models will be developed and tested to make the use of already collected patient data better accessible for medical staff. This study has been developed within the Access & Acceleration project. Learn more about the study at doi: 10.1109/ISCC50000.2020.9219685

The project partners from Access & Acceleration have developed an online survey to find out how to facilitate the entry to the healthcare market for German and Danish companies.
The survey is available in German and Danish and addresses companies of the healthcare industry to find out more about possible market entry barriers. Click on the following link to participate in the survey:

German survey https://www.survey-xact.dk/LinkCollector?key=RW5FXADPL615&lang=3.0
Danish survey https://www.survey-xact.dk/LinkCollector?key=RW5FXADPL615&lang=2.0

The survey has been created by the project partners Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, Centre for Innovative Medical Technology and University of Lübeck, Clinic for Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery.

Click here to download the interim report of our project partners on market entry barriers for medical products in Germany and Denmark.

On 18 August 2020, our network partner Life Science Nord will host a virtual seminar entitled “The ‘New Normal’ within the healthcare system”. During this seminar, Prof. Dr Carsten Schultz from Kiel University and project partner Dr Nils Reimers, Stryker Trauma GmbH, will discuss the development of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it will influence our future healthcare system. The seminar is free of charge and takes about one hour (11:00 - 12:00 h). You can join it via the following link: https://www.edudip.com/de/webinar/lsn-spotlight-das-new-normal-im-gesundheitswesen/387548

The project advisory board supports Access & Acceleration during the whole project lifetime. With its expert knowledge and constructive impulses from the perspective of potential users and stakeholders, the advisory board members contributes to the strategic development of the project. We have talked to Anna-Marie Bloch Münster from the Hospital of South West Jutland and Jonas Drefeld from Health Innovation Center of Southern Denmark – both members of the project advisory board- about the perspectives and potentials of the Access & Acceleration.

What would you say are the most interesting aspects of the Access & Acceleration project?

Anna-Marie Bloch Münster: For me, this includes: The development of new technologies that could offer a broader spectrum of treatment options (e.g. the treatment of smaller tumors which are difficult to access); greater safety during treatment through increased precision and the development of less invasive techniques that minimise complications for patients.

Jonas Drefeld: I am glad that the project intends to increase the focus on user needs by redesigning existing development processes in way that users (such as patients, employees from various areas of the health sector, companies) become an integral part of development activities. I especially look forward to see new insights and methods on how public and private actors can co-create user-centered medical technology without compromising current legislation. I am furthermore confident that the strong project partnership develops a sustainable innovation platform that can run without subsidies after the project period.

What do you hope will be the impact or added value from the Access & Acceleration project? Who will benefit from the project?

Anna-Marie Bloch Münster: In my opinion, it is the patients who benefit the most. The added value for them should be an increased safety during the therapy of diseases and minimised side effects. Ultimately, it should also be a goal to develop new techniques that enable the treatment of previously incurable diseases. In addition, the project will of course add value for physicians as they will be able to get new treatment techniques on hand and will be able to offer patients safer and less invasive therapies.

Jonas Drefeld: I hope that the project creates new methods for how implementation can be an integral part of the development processes of new health care technologies. In my opinion, the project would be a success if it manages to develop methods and strategies for effective adoption and scaling of technologies globally. This knowledge would enable companies and healthcare providers to implement the suitable technology that benefits healthcare workers and citizens.

Are there also other German-Danish projects you are currently involved in or were involved in? If yes, which ones?

Anna-Marie Bloch Münster: No, not yet.

Jonas Drefeld: The Health Innovation Center was a part of the German-Danish health project Demantec during its first phase. The project aim was to develop, test and implement e-Health solutions that addresses user needs for persons suffering from dementia, their relatives and healthcare workers. The Health Innovation Center tested, redesigned and implemented two technologies that improved the care and quality of life for nursing home residents suffering from dementia. Insights from the project are gathered in a go-to implementation guide for assisted living technologie

How to support medical staff in evaluating patient data? The project partners from the Centre for Innovative Medical Technology (CIMT) want to tackle this issue by developing a software which can store patient data and, based on that, predict the course of a disease. As a case study, CIMT uses patient data related to alcohol use disorder (AUD). In this context, CIMT published a review of literature which focused on the prediction of AUD.  A link to an abstract of this review can be found in the publication’s section of the project website at: https://www.accessinnovation.eu/publications.html  

On November 19th, 2019 a workshop with the topic on market access for medical device in Germany and Denmark took place. The participants from clinics, research and industry discussed their own experiences and got inputs from the healthcare project Digital Health & Care 4.0, led by the Danish cluster organisation WelfareTech. Digital Health & Care 4.0 focused on questions about the organisation of the German healthcare sector and useful strategies for companies to enter the German market. Generally, the results of the workshop indicate that diverging national regulations and laws as well as completely different structured healthcare systems in Germany and Denmark are major obstacles when it comes to entering the German market. Solutions to tackle this issue and to support relevant stakeholders of the German and Danish healthcare sectors to overcome these obstacles will be a crucial aim of the Access & Acceleration project.
The project partner Centre for Innovative Medical Technology (CIMT) organised this workshop in Odense, Denmark. Within the project they are responsible for identifying barriers of entry on the market regarding new health technologies and products, but also for developing strategies to overcome these barriers.

Click here to stay tuned for the next workshop!