'Three stars' for a Catalan project on active ageing
The European Commission has chosen the Nexes project of the HUBc campus of excellence as a good practice and incorporated it into the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing.
By Biocat
The Nexes project promoted by the University of Barcelona international campus of excellence in health (HUBc), the body that is working with Biocat to coordinate work to create a Catalan bid for one of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KIC), has been selected by the European Commission as one of the best practices in the field of active and healthy ageing.
The European Commission invited all of the regions carrying out initiatives in this area of health to submit bids as reference sites. After the call, a total of 32 regions submitted projects as candidates for best practices. The process to select the winners was similar to that used in scientific publications, through peer review. The Nexes project, representing Catalonia, not only won but obtained the highest score of three stars.
Nexes is a European project carried out from 2008 to 2012 with a budget of more than €4 millions to promote cooperation among regions and develop an integral patient-care system based on innovative services and technology. At the end of the project, during a meeting held in Barcelona, the viability of new ways of connecting with patients, mainly through telemedicine, was shown. Dr. Josep Roca, director of the Lung Function Unit at Barcelona’s Hospital Clínic and researcher at the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (Idibaps), is the coordinator of the project.
During the awards ceremony, held on 1 July in Brussels, the work done by reference sites was recognized and their models were shared to be replicated around Europe. The good practices recognized are part of the areas of strategic action under the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing.
HUBc joins together the potential of seven international research centers of excellence: Idibaps, Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona (IIBB-CSIC), Barcelona Center for International Health Research (CRESIB), Esther Koplowitz Biomedical Research Center (CIBEK), Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (Idibell), Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). In total, HUBc has 1.271 researchers and 2.765 postgraduate students.
More information is available on the HUBc website.