dRural overall goal it to co-develop and implement a digital solution that delivers multiple services to rural citizens while creating opportunities economic growth and quality of life improvements. Then, to ensure the successful exploitation and sustainability after the project’s lifetime and its replication in other European territories. As such, our aspiration is to become the service marketplace of reference for European rural areas. dRural will build a service network for rural areas and communities based on four rural regions of Europe, namely: Extremadura (ES), Dubrovnik-Neretva County (HR) and Region Gelderland Midden (NL). Each of these settings are called regional demonstrators. The solution building will follow agile methodologies and ensure end-users co-creation and validation in each regional demonstrator. Besides, dRural will be developed with a 'by-design' approach to ethics, privacy, and data protection. An internet coverage optimization in the demonstrators will be done to guarantee a smooth deployment. Then, the solution will be set up in each region, guaranteeing its personalization and customization to the regional needs, and integrating with the local service providers. In parallel, an ecosystem of relevant players surrounding the dRural solution will be created in each region by identifying the key stakeholders, current problems and designing a value proposition for each of them. The ecosystem building exercise will be supported by an open call in each demonstrator leveraging financial support to third parties to incentivize the solution take up and expand the ecosystem of players involved. This will offer opportunities for entrepreneurs by promoting new market openings allowing also smaller and newer players to capture value. An evaluation of usage and impacts will be performed to ensure on-going support in the region after the project completionend.

Overcoming the challenge of finding initial customers is a significant obstacle for the commercialization of innovative solutions developed by SMEs, particularly EIC awardees (EICs). This challenge is especially pronounced when the target market involves public administration or large private corporations (Buyers). To mitigate these challenges and broaden the scope of innovation procurement in Europe, InnoMatch will facilitate the co-creation and proof-of-concept demonstration of EIC innovations, focusing on addressing the unmet needs of selected buyers. InnoMatch will achieve this by fostering collaboration between EICs and buyers, with a specific focus on ensuring successful solutions are adopted by the buyer following the pilot phase, which may not always be the case. The offered support includes not just the identification of needs and the facilitation of connections between EICs and buyers for pilot deployment, but also strategies to enhance the likelihood of adoption by buyers and accelerate the commercial advancement of EICs. To fulfil this vision, InnoMatch will invest €2.28M in grants to EICs (76% of project budget), supporting 38 pilots which will be distributed through two types of open calls: OC#1: Call for EIC+Buyer: EICs apply together with pre-identified buyer; OC#2 EICs: EICs apply with a solution to a pre-defined challenge, which has been identified by at least 2 separate and independent buyers. The identification of the Buyers challenges will follow a specific methodology which includes a OC#2 Buyers, capacity building, workshops that aim to aggregate individual needs & expectations into a common challenge definition and, ends up with the signature of a sub-grant agreement. The team -F6S, ICLEI, TBM and CIV- 1) has wide network of buyers; 2) worked with EIC community & corporates; 3) experience in FSTP (+€80m, +180 calls & +7k awardees), 4) Innovation Procurement with +10 EU projects in the domain; 5) delivered business & mentorship programmes.

Five INCAREHEART public procurers from five countries will jointly procure an ICT-enabled integrated care solution to effectively support the management of a multidisciplinary care and support model for people living with Chronic Heart Failure (CHF). Building on the partial advances seen in integrated healthcare delivery, for the first time a range of features will be integrated into a modular solution to effectively bring different care providers, family carers, and patients into a shared CHF care pathway cutting across diagnosis, acute care and jointly managed long term care. INCAREHEART will profoundly improve the quality of care and support for CHF patients as well as the cost-effectiveness of European health and social care systems by radically improving, integrating, and coordinating care. Introducing seamless transitional care processes are expected to effectively reduce emergency care needs, hospitalisation rates as well as increase treatment adherence. The INCAREHEART solution will at its core seamlessly integrate into existing ICT systems, but also into processes and working practices. The procurers have developed a comprehensive framework for setting out the design requirements to be addressed by an integrated ICT-enabled heart failure care solution. Suppliers will be rigorously evaluated after each of the procurement phases, comprising (I) an open market consultation, (II) specification of architecture and system aligned to requirements of patients, peers, and providers, (III) prototype development and testing with end-users and (IV) effectiveness proven in a trial with 500 patients and 125 professionals. INCAREHEART will serve 1,320,000 million patients with heart failure once it is fully rolled out in the procurer countries. Proven ability to cover the different health systems promises INCAREHEART suppliers’ easy entry into other EU markets and beyond, a very strong contribution to overcoming fragmentation of demand and fostering the global market.

The business opportunities in eHealth are equally as important as the health care challenges they are trying to solve. Therefore, the participation of this emerging industry in building a strong EU economy is potentially proportional to the impact it will have on the health of our citizens. If the eHealth market is accelerating globally, it is still up and coming in Europe and has not accelerated to its full speed. The number of EU eHealth SMEs is on the rise, investments are starting to flow, insurance companies are starting to reimburse digital solutions, and the rest of the stakeholders in the ecosystem are getting increasingly involved. NOW seems like the perfect time for a big push to support the growth of our eHealth SMEs. Europe counts a number of support initiatives for eHealth SMEs. However, they are usually local or regional, short-term, not supporting eHealth SMEs at various stages of development, lacking a strong vertical focus and never addressing all the challenges facing European eHealth SMEs. Incubators and accelerators are popping up here and there but with a limited impact: their support is short term, targets early stage start-ups, usually requires a relocation and is costly in terms of equity for SMEs. Regional development agencies are also helping start-ups in their respective backyards but they usually lack a vertical focus and a cross-border reach into 28 complicated health systems. This proposal describes the creation of a support system that is cross-border, sustainable, highly specialized on the eHealth vertical, providing long-term support at various stages of development, and addressing all the challenges facing European eHealth SMEs: finding the right business model, accessing finance, connecting with the demand side and accelerating their commercialization, getting legal and regulatory guidance to develop their solution in compliance with a multi-layer complicated framework.