DigitalHealthEurope Call for Twinnings!

A twinning scheme that supports digital transformation in Europe!

DigitalHealthEurope is funding a twinning scheme that supports the Digital Single Market’s three priorities for the Digital Health and Care Innovation initiative:

• citizens’ secure access to and sharing of health data across borders
• better data to advance research, disease prevention and personalised health and care
• digital tools for citizen empowerment and person-centred care

More than 45 twinnings opportunities – between more than 90 organisations – will be organised. Funding will be provided to carry out twinning activities. The activities will take place between September 2019-August 2020. You can get involved by clicking here.

What are twinnings?

Twinnings are a mechanism for facilitating the transfer and implementation of digitally-enabled innovative practices from one region to another. The approach has been successfully tested in a number of EU projects and studies, including the ScaleAHA study.

The region that offers the innovation is called originator, and the implementing region is the adopter. In some cases, an external facilitator may be needed. Funded activities include the ventures needed to carry out the twinning (e.g. organising hosting meetings or technical groups, and financing travel expenses, licenses, or fees for professional services). Twinnings will typically last for a whole year.

Twinning archetypes

Twinnings can be grouped into five archetypes. Each archetype is very specific. It has different conditions for its budget, deployment timeframe, and the experts required.

The five archetypes start from ‘knowledge exchange and training’ and range to ‘acquisition’:

• Knowledge exchange and training: This type of twinning mainly targets local authorities: they can be authorities that are not too experienced in EU networking, but are eager to learn from other regions in Europe. Here, the twinning provides a first step to discuss a concrete solution (product, service, methodology) and its transfer to the adopting region(s). The twinning is used to build capacity. This includes identifying staff, setting up a process roadmap, and defining Launche outcomes
• Adaptation: This type of twinning is suitable for multiple adopters (i.e., one originator can work with several adopters). The adaptation process across adopters is expected to be very similar. Well-established solutions are adapted to the local context (e.g. translating the contents of a mobile app, introducing a prevention programme).
• Partial adoption: This type of twinning is suitable for local authorities that wish to implement aspects of an originator’s innovative approach. Twinnings that perform a partial adoption will have to provide concrete evidence on the potential impact of the adoption, as well as the reasons why a full adoption is not possible (e.g. because they have different healthcare systems, organisations, or reimbursement schemes).
• Full adoption: This type of twinning mainly targets local authorities that have well-established relationships with other authorities in Europe (e.g. through memorandums of understanding or involvement in past EU project partnerships or they may have already planned some collaboration on a specific topic/solution). The twinning aims to achieve a full adoption of the solution in the adopting region(s) using local infrastructure.
• Acquisition: Twinnings in this category target local authorities that will benefit from the innovation of other EU authorities by acquiring their integrated care solutions. The twinning will achieve a full adoption of the solution in the adopting region(s) using the originator’s infrastructure (e.g. servers, maintenance). Appropriate business models need to be specified (e.g. different service licenses or pay-per-use).

Important dates

Launch: 11^th June 2019

Webinars for the applicants: 14^th and 25^th June 2019

Deadline to submit applications: 7^th August 2019

Evaluation of the applications:August 2019

Notifications of award of twinning actions: end of August

Twinning implementation: between September 2019 and August 2020

How to get involved

The first important step towards applying for twinning in DigitalHealthEurope is to find suitable twinning partnerships. Head to the DigitalHealthEurope market place to look for twinning originators with offers that interest you, or post your own offer as an originator. Get in touch with partners and start planning your twinning together!

Digital Health Europe (DHE) is a Coordination and Support Action co-funded by H2020, coordinated by empirica and that brings 17 partners working together to support and enable the digital transformation of health and care in the Digital Single Market.

In DHE, ECHAlliance has, as main highlights, the leadership on tasks around data governance and data donation, as well as analysing technical barriers that necessitate mobilisation of investments towards the implementation at scale of person-centred care solutions.

For more information visit the DigitalHealthEurope website.

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