Netherlands, Karnataka to co-develop tech solutions in healthcare and IT

This will be a technology partnership and three pilot projects will be jointly selected for co-funding opportunities. The Netherlands government will part fund the initiative, which will be a seed funding in the range of €25000-75,000, Akanksha Sharma, Senior Policy Advisor, Holland Innovation Network, told BusinessLine. Letter of Intent This development comes in the backdrop of a Letter of Intent (LoI) the Karnataka government signed during the visit of Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade Sigrid Kaag, and Dutch Minister for Medical Care Bruno Bruins to Bengaluru in May 2018 to set up Living Lab here. The objective is to ‘improve access to affordable healthcare via means of eHealth & medical devices’. Living Lab is a growing ecosystem that connects government, industry and academia to co-create innovative solutions for shared societal challenges. The Living Lab initiative has been under way in other emerging economies such as China, Brazil, Indonesia and Bengaluru will be the latest one to join this network. One of the reasons for choosing Bengaluru, according to Sharma, was the ecosystem that exists within the city. “From research being done in universities to companies such as Philips, along with being the startup hub of the country are the main factors that the government considered while making this decision,” she said. Pilot project The pilot project involves development of Generic tool box to create health literacy application for the use in India and the Netherlands, Point of Care tool for fast diagnosis of ailments like urinary tract infection and creating a framework for identification of biomarkers for mass screening of population at risk of development of neurodegenerative disorders. In the coming months, the two sides will also explore opportunities for student exchange under the three joint projects to begin research work. Centre for Human Genetics (CHG), which is the anchor institute for Living Lab in Bangalore will assist the process, together with Nuffic Netherlands Education Support Office (NESO) in Bangalore and Taskforce for Applied Research (SIA) in the Netherlands. Source: Business Line