ProVaHealth: "PRODUCT VALIDATION IN HEALTH — Evaluating Transnational Testing"

The project "Product Validation In Health” (ProVaHealth) comes to an end. In the report "PRODUCT VALIDATION IN HEALTH — Evaluating transnational testing" the Health Innovation Center of Southern Denmark evaluates the part of ProVaHealth that focuses on creating opportunities for SME’s to use Living Labs a testbeds for testing, evaluating and improving health technology in realistic settings while involving real users.

For three years from 2017-2020, the European Union Regional Development Fund co-financed the project, ProVaHealth under the Baltic Sea Region program.

The project focused on strengthening collaboration between Health Living Labs and companies in the Baltic Sea Region.

The Health Innovation Centre of Southern Denmark was a central partner in ProVaHealth. Our main role was to, lead the efforts to facilitate matchmaking between 14 small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) and the 14 Living Labs in the project and report on the value created for SME in the process.

Furthermore, we contributed our expertise and experience to efforts aimed at e.g. improving the operation of Living Labs through the development of new policy-recommendations to the scope, structure and operation of Living Labs.

Now the project draw to close

In the report "PRODUCT VALIDATION IN HEALTH — evaluating transnational testing." The Health Innovation Center of Southern Denmark evaluates the 14 cross-border pilot collaborations between Living Labs and SME’s executed within the ProVaHealth project.

Living Labs contributes to better market access

Overall, the project shows that Living Labs contributes to clarify, through qualification, testing and validation, whether a health product or a health service are ready for market access.

Further, if one looks into the SME’s involved in the project, almost none of them had experience in working with Living Labs. But after the relatively small test executed in the project, most of the SME’s state that they will turn to Living Labs the next time they have a health product or solution, that need refining before entering the market.

Jens Strandbech from The Health Innovation Centre of Southern Denmark, and local project manager for ProVaHealth,

- ProVaHealth was an important project, which addressed central aspects of how Living Labs can assist companies in the development of new health and welfare technology that meets the needs of users clearly and does so with speed and precision. I am also very satisfied, that we succeeded in identifying some of the challenges for SMEs in the EU which hinders health solutions can be brought to the market with quality and speed.

About ProVaHealth

The project brought together 17 organizations from 8 Baltic Sea countries for three years to focus on creating better collaboration between Health Living Labs in the Baltic Sea Region. Thereby ensuring smooth access to Living Lab services for SMEs, improving market uptake of new products and services in health, enforcing innovation, creation of new enterprises and growth of SMEs and improving health, well-being and quality of life in the society.