BFCC enhances capacity building within the hospitals

At the last project meeting on April 17-18, 2018 in Krakow, Poland, the project consortium presented the major steps that were taken by the BFCC partners to further engage in fostering knowledge exchange and capacity building among involved hospitals and companies. The BFCC partners, along with the key stakeholders, have conducted a series of tasks to strengthen and further develop the project’s R&I infrastructure and resources.

Thus, the project meeting showed that the BFCC already contributed a range of instruments that have a positive impact on the work regarding transnational fracture management. These instruments include:   

• Innovation Reports
  monitoring and analysing registry data to gain insights on best practices within the hospitals – the partner’s own hospital and compared to other clinics in a national and international context
• Innovation dialogue events
  seeking the dialogue amongst clinicians and with industry about clinical needs for innovation and process optimisation
• Pilots in general
  showcasing and optimising R&I collaboration between hospitals and industry, and setting up standards for future collaboration
• Medical Device Regulation (MDR)
  developing path ways for industry to easier fulfil the requirements defined by the MDR within clinical trials, and, thus, contributing to the R&I collaboration with the clinical partners
• Sustainability concept
  defining long term structure and use of the registry for hospital related purposes, e.g. quality management, research, starting points for innovation and product development

In detail, the UKSH develops a system, data mining tools and automatised methods for the on-going monitoring and analysis of the registry data. This process allows to compare the quality and health outcome of fracture management at the hospitals with regard to needs and potentials for innovation. It is one key step to increase the knowledge among hospitals and clinicians in view of new treatment procedures. The almost completed first innovation report showcases the potentials of such an analysis.  

The presentation by Šarūnas Tarasevičius, Lithuanian University of Health Science, showed the preliminary results of the pilots on infections and diagnostics. While the pilot on infections is almost completed, the pilot on diagnostics has already gathered relevant data to measure the impact of bone density measurements in hip fracture treatment. The results of both pilots provide necessary information to hospitals and companies within the Baltic Sea Region. Consequently, they can form the basis for defining R&I collaborations between hospitals and industry, and identifying novel starting points for innovative product and service development in the context of fracture treatment.

As one of the project’s aims is also to accelerate an effective transnational collaboration for innovation within fracture management in the Baltic Sea Region, the attendees of the project meeting discussed the collaboration manual – a guidance with information about framework conditions for R&I collaboration.

Moreover, Imke Schneemann from lead partner Life Science Nord Management GmbH introduced a sustainability concept for the BFCC, including a model for the lasting organisation and financing.

Altogether, the project meeting highlighted once again how the BFCC partners took the initiative to enhance knowledge transfer and used existing resources to establish greater capacities in conjunction with the project stakeholders. This results also in the numerous innovation dialogues und stakeholder workshops (see overview of events).