Interactions Between EIP on AHA Reference Sites and Action Groups to Foster Digital Innovation of Health and Care in European Regions

The article describes some of the achievements of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA), after eight years in operation. These results were achieved thanks to the collaborative work of the action groups (AGs) and reference sites (RSs). RS regional ecosystems include key organisations committed to investing in innovation to foster active and healthy ageing. The AGs are groups of professionals committed to sharing their knowledge and skills in active and healthy ageing. This article reports on the approach used by the EIP on AHA to bring together experts and regions in identifying and addressing these challenges. Synergies between AGs offered substantial support to RSs, allowing regional health and care priorities and challenges to be identified and pursued through AG commitments. Building upon the experiences of the EIP on AHA, the Reference Sites Collaborative Network has set up a number of thematic action groups that bring together multidisciplinary experts from across Europe to address the main health and social care challenges at regional, national and European level

Unlocking medical leadership’s potential:a multilevel virtuous circle?

Background and aim: Medical leadership (ML) has been introduced in many countries, promising to support healthcare services improvement and help further system reform through effective leadership behaviours. Despite some evidence of its success, such lofty promises remain unfulfilled. Method: Couched in extant international literature, this paper provides a conceptual framework to analyse ML's potential in the context of healthcare's complex, multifaceted setting. Results: We identify four interrelated levels of analysis, or domains, that influence ML's potential to transform healthcare delivery. These are the healthcare ecosystem domain, the professional domain, the organisational domain and the individual doctor domain. We discuss the tensions between the various actors working in and across these domains and argue that greater multilevel and multistakeholder collaborative working in healthcare is necessary to reprofessionalise and transform healthcare ecosystems

Comparitive assessment of the vulnerability and resilience of 10 deltas, synthesis report

The proposed framework for delta assessment and especially the scorecards are intended to enhance awareness raising, discussion and prioritization on most relevant delta issues, in each delta but also in comparison with other deltas. This should lead to more efficient and effective (multi-sectoral) policy formulation, management design and implementation, in concrete Delta plans, pilot-projects and (research) programmes. The target groups are all stakeholders who are involved in delta management at different levels and with different interests (government, private companies, NGOs, public), and who wish to contribute to the resilience of their own delta and other deltas worldwide

The Role of Collaborative Networks in Sustainability

http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-3-642-15960-2#section=791431&page=1International audienc

Kennisbasis WOT Fisheries 2011 - what is in the Programme?

The KBWOT Fisheries programme is core to the maintenance and development of the expertise that underpins the statutory obligations of fisheries monitoring and advice for the Netherlands. The structure of the KBWOT Fisheries programme for 2011 changed to reflect the recent discussions on the research direction between IMARES, CVO and EL&I. One of the strengths of the structure of the KBWOT Fisheries programme was the bottom up approach to calls for projects to fulfil the research priorities. This however was seen as giving the programme the potential to miss strategic needs of both the science development within IMARES and the research questions of EL&I, thus the programme now also contains a specific project request on an research subject relevant to IMARES and EL&I needs. The KBWOT Fisheries programme will fund 12 projects in 2011. The projects will investigate competition in exploited fish communities, long term changes in eel populations, the spawning habitat of mackerel, sub-stock structure in fish, trawling impact on benthic communities, quality assurance in fish aging, surveys of shellfish, maturity staging of fish and acoustic methods. Plus a targeted project specifically designed to research needs of IMARES and EL&I will be carried out into the trade-offs in FMSY targets for North Sea flatfish fisheries

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Universities as Living Labs for sustainable development : a global perspective

Walter Leal Filho, Baltazar Andrade Guerra, Mark Mifsud and Rudi Pretorius use case studies from Brazil, Malta and South Africa to reflect on how the Living Labs approach can contribute towards a more sustainable futurepeer-reviewe

Report of the KB-WOT fisheries programme carried out in 2009

This report documents the activities of the KB WOT fisheries programme carried out in 2009. It gives the results, products and documents the experience gained by staff through the programme

APS200 project – the place of science in policy development in the public service

The report aims to achieve better government outcomes through facilitating the effective use of scientific input in policy development in the public service. The Australian Public Service (APS) is increasingly tasked with solving complex policy problems that require significant input from science in order to address them fully and appropriately. Policy making within the APS needs to be based on a rigorous, evidence‐based approach that routinely and systematically draws upon science as a key element. The Australian Government’s investment in science, research and innovation capacity supports a long‐term vision to address national challenges and open up new opportunities. This investment is also significant, with the Commonwealth providing $8.9 billion to support science, research and innovation in 2012‐13. There is an opportunity to harness this investment to address complex societal challenges, by ensuring that scientific research and advice is more effectively incorporated in the development of evidence‐based policy. There is an opportunity for policy makers to make better use of the science capacity provided by our science institutions, including publicly funded research agencies and other science agencies, universities, Cooperative Research Centres and Medical Research Institutes. There is also an opportunity to capitalise on the willingness of scientists to contribute their research results to the policy making process