The EIT has repurposed activities to contribute to the fight against Covid-19 with connections, hackathons and innovative solutions from its vast community.
While the European Commission (EC) is stepping up efforts to support research targeting Covid-19 and launching special calls (see SwissCore article), research and innovation in many other areas came to a halt, due to the lockdown in European countries. The situation also affects the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Several research and entrepreneurial training projects of the EIT health research hub ‘EIT Health’, one of the EIT’s Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) connecting business, research and education, are severely impacted either because hospitals and clinics need to focus their work towards Covid-19 or because lab work can simply not be moved to people’s homes.
EIT Health thus took the decision to refocus some of its services to support the frontline workers. It is using its tight multidisciplinary network of universities and industry to connect researchers in life sciences with computing power or data analysts, or facilitate their links to diagnostics and medtech companies. While normal operations came to a stop, the KIC has launched an exchange platform on its website connecting companies or hospitals in need of solutions in relation to Covid-19 with researchers who may have them. In addition, EIT Health is also looking at repurposing its upcoming funding round in fall. It is likely to include a special call for projects aimed at tackling the aftermath of the current Covid-19 crisis. Projects may target the preparation for future pandemics including the improvement of healthcare facilities. Particularly dear to the EIT, with its culture of fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, are start-up companies. The EIT is trying to find ways to support them through the crisis. With the ‘Headstart’ programme, EIT Health is providing companies support for the development of innovative healthcare products and services to bridge the gap until a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 is found. The call closed on 14 April. Finally on 27 April, EIT Health pledged more than EUR 6 million towards Covid-19 solutions by supporting 14 specially selected health innovation projects. These so called ‘Rapid Response’ projects shall support health care services with better solutions to navigate the pandemic.
EIT Health is not the only of the KICs taking action; the entire EIT community is endeavouring to support the fight against Covid-19 with innovative solutions. The EIT has set up a dedicated website collecting the activities and solutions provided by the EIT as a whole and the eight individual KICs. Apart from shifting the health related activities, the EIT community wants to focus its response also on its beneficiary groups affected by the crisis: the students, entrepreneurs and innovators.
EIT Digital wants to accelerate healthcare solutions that allow for the remote screening and monitoring of patients. Telemedicine could help address healthcare shortages and expand the care capacity for Covid-19 patients who do not need urgent treatment in hospitals. Such solutions can also help minimize the infection risk for healthcare workers and triage and manage patients in their homes. Apart from this, digital solutions are of course also helpful to keep businesses running, which are not directly linked to the Covid-19 response. To further foster data-driven solutions for epidemic and pandemic lifecycle management, EIT Digital has launched the ‘Data against Covid-19 DeepHack’, which will take place on 1-3 May. The event is open for teams of individual students, entrepreneurs as well as start-ups, scale-ups, SMEs and corporates who will go through a pre-selection. The hack specifically seeks data-linked solutions.
In order to look beyond the current crisis, EIT Food has launched a call for a Lead Expert to support them in the analysis of the impact of Covid-19 on the agri-food sector. The KIC aims at providing its industry partners and public authorities with potential scenarios of how the current situation will influence the agri-food system in Central and Eastern Europe in a longer run. The crisis will change our lives in many ways, and some things may never get back to normal. With a collection of articles and news from its community, EIT Urban Mobility is looking at the impact on the transport sector and cities.
In addition to coordinated actions by the KICs themselves, the EIT KICs collect actions contributed by their individual partners and the community. A good example is EIT RawMaterials. One of their partners, the Finnish company VTT, together with Helsinki University and Helsinki University Hospital, is working on a new Sars-CoV-2 testing method based on the detection of viral antigens to enable a fast and early diagnosis. Other solutions include the 3D printing of protective face shields supporting hospitals, the emergency manufacturing of alcohol-based solutions for hospitals in France or the certifying and testing of personal protective equipment by Politecnico di Milano, another EIT RawMaterials partner. A similar list of community activities was created by EIT Manufacturing. According to an announcement on the EIT website, EIT Manufacturing will also take coordinated measures across its network to shorten supply chains and relocate manufacturing production sites to Europe.