The final report of the Scale AHA Study recommends to continue promoting the European reference sites and their collaborative work to innovate services for active and healthy ageing (AHA). The study also champions the twinning support scheme as part of the Digital Single Market initiative.
Key conclusions and recommendations of the Scale AHA Final Study Report include:
Since 2016, 74 Reference Sites from 24 European countries are part of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) – a number that almost tripled compared to the previously recognised 32 Reference Sites in 2012.
The Reference Sites represent ecosystems, delivering creative and workable solutions that improve the lives and health of older people through the involvement of different players, including regional and/or local authorities, cities, integrated hospitals/care organisations, industry, SMEs and start-ups, research and innovation organisations.
Together the partnership has committed over €4 billion in investments (2016-2019 period) which will benefit an expected five million people until 2020.
Next to facilitating the 2016 Call for Reference Sites, the European Commission funded ScaleAHA initiative also conducted the Twinning Support Pilot Scheme.
This new concept supports European regions to learn from one another and scale up innovative ICT solutions for active and healthy ageing. The scheme finances small but concrete ideas with high potential for replicability and scaling up, this way it ‘de-risks’ investment in digital solutions.
In total, 43 organisations from 13 different European countries were involved in the Twinning Scheme. First results of the twinnings show successful implementations.
The twinning activities covered a wide range of topics, including:
Each twinning action has accomplished levels of scaling-up that ranged from knowledge exchange to partial or full adoption of the innovative practice.
According to the study experts, the Twinning Support Scheme is in line with the objectives of the Digital Single Market’s mid-term review report, in particular the priority related to large-scale deployment of innovations in Europe.
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