The extension of HoCare project was requested in order to map the response of regional/national policies to the impact of COVID-19 crisis in the field of Home Care Innovative solutions by strengthening quadruple-helix cooperation in regional innovation chains. Utilizing innovative ICT solutions became even more important and urgent and regions have adapted their relevant policies accordingly to effectively respond to the unexpectedly emerged needs. Partners have examined these developments and prepared a regional analysis report describing the evolution of the political context in each partner's region, in particular with regard to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and at least one new good practice in each region was indentified.
To bring the project to a successful conclusion, all partners and their stakeholders met at the Interregional Seminar and Workshop "Regional responses to COVID-19 crisis on Home Care ICT sector" in Bucharest, Romania on 20-21 Sept., where the identified good practices, the regional analysis report and other achievements of the project were presented to the wider public.
The Interregional Seminar and Workshop was organized by the Romanian partner National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics – ICI Bucharest. In the first part, welcoming speeches were made by PhD Eleftherios Loizou, managing director of Nicosia development agency ANEL, Mrs. Cristina Dumitru, Comercial director of ICI Institute, Dr. Marius Geantă, President and Co-founder of Center for Innovation in Medicine and Prof. Dr. Gabriel-Ioan Prada, Chair of Geriatrics and Gerontology on National Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics "Ana Aslan" and they highlighted the signicative relevance of the ICT-based innovative solutions, legal framework and interregional cooperation in the field of home care .
The seminar was structured on dedicated sesssions. The first one addressed the evolution of HoCare project partners' regional policy context especially in relation to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis . Each partner presented her/his regional report describing how the policy context is evolved or impacted the region,.
The last session of the first day was dedicated to the presentation of good practices identified by the partners in relation to new innovative projects emerged as a result of the COVID-19 impact in the sector of home care solutions.
The second day of the interregional seminar and workshop was focused on presentations of Innovative Romanian Good Practices in the field of remote health monitoring digital solutions.
vINCI project, which provided an integrated technological platform for an assistive monitoring of the older adults aged 65+, together with the analysis of the patients’ needs & requirements and the follow-up of the acceptability of the technology with the testing of the user's satisfaction throughout the development of the technology, was presented by Prof. Eng. Ciprian Dobre, vINCI Project Coordinator and PhDLidia Băjenaru, vINCI Project Partner Manager at ICI Bucharest Institute.
The second part was followed by a presentation of the RO_SmartAgeing project, which addresses non-invasive monitoring and health assessment of the elderly in a smart environment. The project was presented by Eng. Marilena Ianculescu and Eng. Elena Paraschiv from ICI Bucharest Institute.
We are proud and delighted to have successfully brought to a conclusion another extremely productive year at HoCare. But that's not the last you'll hear from us. The project partnership has created strong bonds that will continue to weave through the project ideas in the future. Until then, stay tuned.
