Together Again: TBMED Progress Meeting in Hannover, Germany

It still seems unreal, but it actually happened: After more than two long years of online meetings, the TBMED consortium finally met in person again between June 28 and 29, 2022.

Despite some travel problems, including flight cancellations, on short notice, most partners could attend the 7th Progress Meeting, which was kindly hosted by ITEM in Hannover, Germany. Those who could not make it in person this time could connect remotely so that discussions with the entire consortium occured.

One of the main outcomes of the TBMED project is the establishment of an Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB) for the development of high-risk medical devices. With only slightly over a year to go, it was crucial at this point to get an overview of the current status of the OITB's development process. Equally important was the progress with the TBMED use cases as well as those use cases included in the project via the TBMED Open Call to validate the future OITB services. Overall, the feeling was optimistic that it would be possible to overcome some minor problems arising with the use cases and make the OITB's virtual platform available to external users by the end of this year. Partners also discussed their individual exploitation pathways in a short workshop held by Eurice.

It was a brief but vivid meeting that all partners enjoyed very much. Being able to continue discussing in coffee and lunch breaks was considered a great advantage over the past online Progress Meetings. And even if online meetings will still be held regularly in the upcoming months, the TBMED partners definitely hope that they will be able to come together again before the end of the project!