4D Cities Project discusses how to capture business in the field of health

The common goal of this transnational meeting was to detect strategies to create jobs and business opportunities for companies, and also improve the quality of services offered to citizens. In this regard, all members recognised the key role of the local government in helping to create the conditions that have made it possible. For example, facilitating the interaction between the different actors operating in the field of health, being more responsive to the demands of the companies, providing knowledge through clusters, using more efficiently the tools and the existing system, making more attractive the market for both companies and skilled professionals wishing to settle in the city and develop their potential there, coping with the unmet needs of the population, etc. In short, engaging more actively allow health becoming not a spending stream, but a loophole that generates wealth.

The Deputy Mayor for Economic Promotion of the Municipality of Igualada and 4D Cities Project Lead, Ms. Àngels Chacón, has stressed the importance of linking knowledge with attracting businesses because "companies are established and work in areas where there is specialized knowledge". So she has said the need for elements that generate innovative knowledge and, therefore, they become a magnet.

The meeting in Eindhoven has been the starting point for the 4D Cities thematic meetings, wich will be dealing with dimensions of Business, Citizens, Healthcare System and Knowledge, the four main cornerstones of health innovation as a driver of economic and social growth. In each of these workshops, experienced partners present their best practices and models of success are identified.

The meeting in the Netherlands, focused on business, featured the presentations of Novara, Leeds, Jena and hostess Eindhoven. They explained their projects, respectively: a research and training centre in emergency medicine and disaster as well as a science park on autoimmune diseases; a hub that allows the meeting and interaction of the different actors in the health and innovation; a service that allows discriminating eye diagnosis treatment prior to public attention and, finally, a service remote surveillance and monitoring of patients that partners were able to visit on site. Eindhoven also presented business attraction agency that promotes investment in the Brainport region.

After sharing this series of initiatives, each city showed their concerns and identified cases of study that might be useful to apply or adapt to their territory.

The next meeting of 4D Cities will take place in Baia Sprie on 18 and 19 June 2013 and will focus on the links between citizens and health. This time, the model cities are Igualada, Tartu, Plunge and Baia Sprie.

Read more:

• 4D Cities - URBACT website
• 4D Cities Project, 2-Year Road Map for Promoting Health Innovation - URBACT website