Basel, 19 November 2014 – The CELTIC HIPERMED research project, a European endeavor in health and telecommunication technologies, received today the prestigious EUREKA Innovation Award 2014 during the EUREKA Innovation Event in Basel, Switzerland.
(original article posted http://www.eurekanetwork.org/press/)
The prize, which rewards research projects financed and supported by national funds and agencies from different European countries developed in the frame of the EUREKA initiative, is attributed every year to European consortia of companies, universities and research institutes making significant headway in the development of a new innovative product, service or process.
Spanning nearly three years, the CELTIC <link http: www.hipermed.org _blank link-extern>HIPERMED project brought together researchers from France, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. HIPERMED stands for HIgh PERformance low cost teleMEDicine platform. It is the first cross-domain project in the fast growing e-health sector to be initiated within the Celtic Cluster including partners from both the ICT and the health sector. The final result was the design of a common, open and high-performance telemedicine platform. The system is low-cost and provides services over the Internet, including low cost HD-video. HIPERMED’s huge potential has already been translated into commercial deployments.
HIPERMED’s partners have submitted several proposals to the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) expert group, especially on the standards that should be adopted for compressing video to make it lighter to send while offering a safe enough quality of image on which doctors can base clinical decisions.
Mr. Oscar Chabrera Villareal, Co-founder and VP Europe at MERKUM-Vilynx, representing the partner companies united in the project, was handed the award by Johann Schneider-Ammann, the Swiss Federal Councilor of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. The prize comprises the sum of €10,000, offered by the Swiss EUREKA Chairmanship (2014/2015)and Norwegian Chairmanship (2013/2014), and a media package of the same amount.
Mr. Chabrera Villareal said 'we are very happy to receive the award. All finalists are winners. We expect to have more success in this project not only in research but also in its deployment. We have already started a follow up to the project.‘ The second prize, €7,000 and a €10,000 promotion package went to the PRO-FACTORY+ LRF project, led by a four-employee company which has established itself as the leading supplier of ‘light weight production technology’ in both the automotive and aerospace industries.
Finally, the third prize, the EUREKA Innovation Award media package and €3,000 was awarded to the Eurostars EMSAT project , which has developed a technology which will play a key role in making possible the construction of 2000 kilometers of new tunnels for road, rail and subway by 2030.
The Innovation Event, which was the setting for the EUREKA Innovation Award Ceremony was one of the first highlights of the Swiss EUREKA Chairmanship. For one year, and in the frame of the Chairmanship, Switzerland is setting the agenda for transnational collaboration in research in Europe.
Federal Councilor Johann N. Schneider - Ammann stressed in a speech the great importance of transnational collaboration in research and innovation: “EUREKA is an appropriate framework for international cooperation, in particular for small and medium enterprises ( SMEs )” .
More than 500 participants from over 30 countries attending the event havebeen able to meet and launch new initiatives in transborder cooperation for market-oriented R&D. Project ideas resulting from the event can be described in a project outline template and submitted before 15 January 2015. All applicants will receive a feedback on their project idea from their national EUREKA project coordinators. If their project idea qualifies for funding, support will be provided to prepare the submission of a full application in the first semester of 2015 and maybe, at a later stage, become the next EUREKA Innovation Award.
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