A ‘brain drain’ happens when a large number of highly-skilled, well-educated people emigrate from one region in pursuit of better pay or conditions. But what recourse can a region take when this drain happens? In the cross-border region of Italy and Slovenia, when the healthcare system experienced a drain of doctors, researchers and health practitioners, the response was the creation of a network of experts from across fields and regions to provide them with the connections, training and tools needed to “upscale” their specific knowledge and skills into a broader innovation mind-set.
- 28 November 2016
This synergistic interaction is aimed at creating new products and services that will enhance the diagnostic, preventative and treatment instruments for the most frequent pathologies in the cross-border area involved, with the objective of having a positive impact on the health of local citizens and, consequently, raising the overall level of well-being and prosperity.
Trans2Care created a cross-border network of healthcare professionals, researchers, academics, hospitals and business leaders and tasked them with developing innovative products and services to improve the regional healthcare system.
What it did was to reengineer a brain drain into a brain gain. Its network turned scientists into entrepreneurs, taught academics the basics of business management, and helped transfer the technology needed to link ideas and create solutions. In the end, nine products and services were launched that the network’s partners are currently developing into more mature prototypes.
Building a network
The underlying premise of the Trans2Care project was simple: in order to facilitate innovation, you start by bringing together regional experts in medicine, technology and business. Thus, the Trans2Care network involved 13 partners from Slovenia and northeast Italy and was coordinated by the University of Trieste, along with 14 post-doctoral researchers engaged fulltime to translate research results into innovative applications for the diagnosis and treatment of common diseases.
However, achieving this was no easy task. First, as the project brought together experts not only from different regions, but also different countries, it had to find methods for overcoming cultural and linguistic challenges. Furthermore, the project also had to manoeuvre around traditional divisions that existed between fields and experts who were used to operating independently and having little communication outside their own sector.
Communicating innovation
Trans2Care overcame these obstacles to successfully facilitate communication between specialists and across borders by building procedures and creating a shared interdisciplinary language. This allowed the participating experts to thoroughly understand the principles, methods and achievements of colleagues working in other fields.
For example, the project’s dissemination procedure included both internal initiatives, such as training sessions on how to use available communication tools, and external ones, such as academic conferences and meetings among specialists. As one of the project’s top priorities was to develop highly-specialised biomedical techniques that would improve public health services and projects, it was essential to be able to transfer technology across fields.
To facilitate this, a key accomplishment was the establishment of direct relationships between research and industry. This not only allowed the project to easily transfer new knowledge to entrepreneurs and between SMEs, but also to better leverage available skills and knowledge for research needs.
Lasting legacy
Last but not least, Trans2Care also worked to ensure that its knowledge transfer system would continue beyond the scope of the project. In line with this aim, the Trans2Care website serves as a technology database that gives partners and stakeholders free access to, for example, information on what products and services are already available. This allows users to avoid duplicating their efforts and to instead focus their resources on developing solutions for problems for which relevant products and services are not available.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “TRANS2CARE – Transregional Network for Innovation and Technology Transfer to Improve Health Care” is EUR 2 551 533, with the EU’s European Regional Development Fund contributing EUR 2 168 803 through the “Italy-Slovenia” Operational Programme for the 2007-2013 programming period.