On 16 and 17 May 2023, Luxembourg will host a conference aimed at bringing together European digital healthtech hubs. This first edition focuses on how national and regional healthtech hubs can optimise their support to help companies successfully launch new digital medical devices on the market. Initiated by Luxinnovation and the Ministry of the Economy, the first edition is co-organised with the German healthtech cluster Medical Valley and EIT Health, a knowledge and innovation community of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. Around 250 participants from across Europe are expected at the event which will be held at the Chamber of Commerce.
Digital medical devices – solutions using software, sensors and connectivity to monitor health-related conditions – are essential for digitalising the healthcare sector and contributing to making it more efficient and accessible to patients. "Luxembourg has the ambition to host a constantly increasing number of healthtech companies with a digital focus, working on all aspects of health and the patients' medical journey and developing smart health products and services centred on personalised and digital medicine," says Minister of the Economy, Franz Fayot. "Stimulating innovation in this field and supporting companies in their efforts to bring new digital medical devices to the market is a priority, in particular in the context of the development of the future HE:AL Campus."
However, although innovation abounds in the field, in Luxembourg as well as all over Europe, introducing digital medical devices on the market is a challenge. This is mainly due to the complex regulatory requirements that such devices must fulfil, as well as to the variations in the organisation of healthcare and in the ways of covering healthcare costs in different EU countries.
The aim of the European Digital HealthTech Hub Conference is to bring together the best experts in Europe and jointly define the optimal way of supporting digital healthtech device companies all the way from idea to successful market launch. Representatives of healthtech hubs – organisations which, similarly to Luxinnovation, support digital health ecosystems in their regions and countries – will come to Luxembourg together with start-up market acceleration experts, opinion leaders and healthtech start-ups from across Europe to provide their input.
The event will be officially opened by Luxembourg Minister of the Economy, Franz Fayot. High-level keynote speakers will present European initiatives aimed at supporting the development and market uptake of digital medical devices. National and regional representatives from all over Europe will contribute to sessions focused on funding, business models and clinical validation trial design for digital medical devices.
"If we want to ensure that European patients are among the first to benefit from new digital healthtech innovations, we need to align the approaches of different countries. The objective of the conference is to pool and document the experience and knowledge from across Europe on how to best help companies bring their digital medical devices to the market," says Jean-Philippe Arié, Cluster Manager – HealthTech at Luxinnovation.
Press release by the Ministry of the Economy and Luxinnovation