European support for innovative SMEs against COVID-19

In 2019 the European Commission launched an innovative, pan-European concept to boost innovation in strategic sectors - including Medical Technologies - under the umbrella of the Open Innovation Test Beds (OITBs). These Test Beds, currently constituted by the three projects MDOT, SAFE-N-MEDTEC and TBMED, gather outstanding expertise, knowledge and equipment from relevant scientific and industrial partners to give synergistic support to all European Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), startups, companies, spin-offs, innovators, and particularly SMEs to pave their way from research to market.

The pandemic COVID-19 has caused a state of emergency in both the society and the economy. Within the economy, especially SMEs are put at very high risk, especially those who ensure the development of innovative solutions urgently required for counteracting the impacts of COVID-19 and help to control possible future outbreaks alike. This requires at the short, medium and long term an answer from research, innovation and technology development. In this context, the OITB projects MDOT, TBMED and SAFE-N-MEDTECH are opening their services at no cost to the best technology developers in the field, giving them support to boost and accelerate their developments while helping them to fulfill regulatory standards and accomplish certification.