UNITE European Digital Health Valleys

ongoing

The project partners share a vision of a borderless European digital health innovation ecosystem, deeply rooted in the UNITE regions. A European ecosystem that can tackle the challenges and capture the opportunities of the demographic transitions and the emerging “silver economy” in full. A borderless ecosystem which brings together key stakeholders from a diverse set of regions, from the private sector, the public sector, academia and the civic society. An ecosystem encouraging and enabling entrepreneurship, and pushing the local start-ups to scale up, and importantly an ecosystem that naturally facilitates and opens up new interregional European value chains. The project brings together a wide and diverse group of regional and national ecosystems that reach the borders of European geographical, economic, cultural and care system diversities. A group of regions with a complementing bundle of challenges and aspirations to reach, assets to mobilise and barriers to overcome together. It makes use and builds upon the EIT Digital Strategic Innovation Agenda for Digital Wellbeing, which is directly aligned and supports the regions’ RIS3 and long-term strategies, serving as the basis for the UNITE cofunding commitments and joint activities plan. The partners’ vision to unite the open, borderless, regionally-anchored European digital health innovation ecosystem calls for an UNITEd intervention that: - Connects the fragmented value chains, dispersed ecosystems and pockets of excellence and regional specialisation ambitions; - Fosters the co-learning between the ecosystems and enables growing together; creates strategic and tactical examples of interregional value chains and digital solutions; and - Elevates the nexus of strategies between the regional ecosystems and the global digital health networks and opportunities in long-term.