Project partners of the Interreg HELIUM (Health Innovation Experimental Landscape through Policy Improvement) project visited Hungary with the aim to get acquainted with several Good Practices within the framework of the ”Let’s Blend it” workshop organised by the Hungarian project partners, the Semmelweis University – Health Services Management Training Centre and the National Health Care Services Centre. The workshop took place between 13th-15th November 2017, partly in Budapest and in the countryside.
Foreign guests started their programme with the 4th Regional Multi-Stakeholder Group (RMG) meeting in Budapest, where they made acquaintance with members of the Hungarian RMG and with several invited innovation experts experienced in the living lab field. Presentations were given by Trebag innovation lodge and well-being living lab from Nagykovácsi; Clavicont start up specialised in research and early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease; and one of the student groups (vITathon) of the first Hungarian hackathon competition on health data analysis.
The following day project partners continued their visit at the Health Promotion Office (HPO) of Sarkad (operating within the framework of the Micro-Regional Outpatient Medical Care Centre). Besides listening to lectures the delegation also participated at a practical course on reanimation. Dr.Katalin Dózsa, expert of Semmelweis University’s Health Services Management Training Centre, introduced the primary care development model. Her lecture was followed by a practical course on reanimation that took place at the local secondary grammar school and was presented by the head of the ambulance service of Sarkad. This way participants could learn about basic level rules and various equipment of reanimation, and could participate in an on spot health status survey. In the afternoon Lajos Debreczeni, executive director of HPO of Sarkad spoke about the operation and scope of tasks of the HPO in the micro-region. Participants had an active debate and discussed parallelism and challenges between the micro regional HPO network and the GP clusters developed in the region of Northern Hungary.
Delegation’s visit ended in Budapest, where Design Terminal hosted our project partners at their Kálvin Square premises. 3 health care start up companies gave their presentation and spoke about the process of how they had managed to realise their ideas and were enabled to take their products to the market by the help of the Design Terminal’s mentoring programme. In the afternoon project partners kept their 4th Steering Committee meeting and liaised about experts’ staff exchange programme planned at the beginning of next year, as well as discussed preparations and elaboration of national action plans.
