PUBLIC PROCUREMENT NEWS

  

News

5 May 2020

Health-care procurers meet EIC companies to discuss innovative medical solutions

In response to the current public health crisis, EIC Accelerator and ICLEI Europe have organized an online market engagement event. On April 30, public and private procurers from the health sector discussed their needs in the current crisis with 23 selected EIC companies who pitched their solutions for providing medical supply, such as personal protective garments, medication, test kits, respiratory machinery as well as innovative technologies such as tele-medicine, remote solutions, artificial intelligence for date analysis and prediction. 

The 50 health procurers at the pitching event expressed a need for better personal protection equipment, reliable test kits, new telehealth devices, and more efficient ways of managing their supply chain. The event was considered a great success by both the procurers attending, and the companies that presented their solutions.

A representative from the University Hospital Halle in Germany shared concerns about the supply chain. “On the demand side, there is no general database for all hospitals. We don’t have a national health service. Every hospital is working on its own when it comes to databases,” he said. “We need something that makes it easy to take [an] Excel [spreadsheet] and to share it.”

A number of EIC-backed ideas looked to meet these requirements. Among them was EyeControl, a wearable device that uses eye tracking tech to enable communication between medical staff and ventilated patients, including those diagnosed with COVID-19.
Thanks to the high demand from procurers from across Europe as well as beyond, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Luxemburg, Slovakia, Spain and Romania, the UK, and Colombia, a follow up event will be organised in June.

Prior to the event, ICLEI collected and analysed the procurers’ needs and selected relevant companies from the pool of over 5,000 EIC companies based on the needs expressed by procurers. To make the start-ups and SMEs more familiar with public procurement, ICLEI also developed and conducted a procurement training.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) can connect public buyers with innovation needs with the community of more than 5000 top innovative SMEs and start-ups. All suppliers go through a demanding selection procedure and received EIC funding. ICLEI Europe supports partnership building between the EIC Community members and public procurers interested in working with EIC SME’s; and manages the on-boarding of private and public procurers interested in working with innovators on the EIC Community Platform and motivate their active participation in the EIC Community.