Dear Sir/Madam,

Rosia letter of interest

We are glad to inform you that Departamento de Sanidad de Aragón (Spain), National Rehabilitation University Hospital (Ireland) and Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra (Portugal) are part of the European project ROSIA. The project aims to design future rehabilitation services for remote rural areas, making sure those who live in the least populated areas, furthest from cities, have access to intelligent telerehabilitation services. These designs will take advantage of new technologies. They will integrate social and health services. They will even integrate whatever community resources are available in patients’ villages and towns. But they will be prescribed and supervised by rehabilitation specialists in central healthcare facilities.

We hope that the platform we offer to support the project will validate these new telerehabilitation devices and technologies, so that health professionals may place their trust in them and can include them in their prescriptions.

What do we mean by telerehabilitation?
Today, telerehabilitation is at risk of being dismissed as mere consultations via webcam, but we want to make sure it integrates artificial intelligence, augmented reality, gamified exercises (or video game workouts): anything that will foster remote care and self-care.

How do we kick-start it?
We use a PPI, a public procurement of innovative solutions, an instrument to convoke intelligent solutions to problems citizens face; solutions that the market does not currently provide. It has been used in Europe for a few years now, and it is also sometimes known as pre-commercial procurement.

In a PCP, the state is involved in the co-creation process, together with private bidders, and in competition with them. The process will inspire a good number of new solutions and prototypes and the most interesting among them are going to be implemented and tested with live subjects in those European regions participating in ROSIA (Portugal, Ireland and Spain).

With all this, we hope to accomplish a triple victory: Patients, Healthcare and Entrepreneurship. Patients in rural areas will be empowered; they will be able to work through their rehabilitation programs from home. The healthcare system will be empowered; it will be able to meet its patients’ needs without requiring them to travel long distances. And the European business community will be empowered; it will have a chance to invest in new ideas and, above all, to find a way to market them.

What kinds of solutions are we looking for?
We are thinking of disruptive technologies in the field of rehabilitation incorporating virtual reality, depth cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence, etc. But there are also solutions related to integration of social and health services, municipal in most cases, with community resources. A fitness hour in the municipal sports centre, for instance, or a swimming class at the local pool may be included in a patient’s rehabilitation file and followed up by the rehabilitation specialist at the central healthcare facility. Still other solutions may be more closely related to motivating the individual to carry out prescribed exercises and programs at home.

What kinds of companies are we looking for?

• • Companies developing technological solutions that could be useful in telerehabilitation.
  • Companies that provide open platforms able to support these kinds of services.
  • Companies that manage community services related to telerehabilitation.
  • Companies that monitor engagement and motivation.

How can you get involved in this first phase of the project?
Both to broadcast the opportunities ROSIA offers as a project, and to get to understand the market’s attitudes towards it, ROSIA partners are setting up an Open Market Consultation (OMC), where companies interested in contributing solutions to the project will be given a chance to present their ideas.

The OMC is going to be launched 12 July and four online events, organised, respectively, by the buyers in this project (Salud Aragón, National Rehabilitation Hospital of Ireland, and Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Coimbra).

Registration for speakers closes five days before launch day, and can be done following this link.

Once you register, you will receive all the information you need regarding setting up your presentation (depending on the number of presenters, speakers will have between 5 and 10 minutes for their presentation). All events will take place on the second half of June.

ONLINE, 18-19 January 2021 – The launch of ROSIA project “Remote rehabilitation service for isolated areas” was officially marked this week at a kick-off event held online. This project represents 12 partners across 5 countries, and it is funded by the EU with an amount of EUR 5,5 million.

ROSIA project will deliver a comprehensive service to patients in need of rehabilitation, enabled by edge technology, new care pathways and community support.

Chaired by Mrs Sandra García (Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud, IACS), more than 30 participants shared their views about the significance of this project in improving the health and care systems in their respective regions. Sandra energised the Partners by stating that “we would be trailblazers as currently, there is no public health and care system that has implemented supported self-management rehabilitation on a large scale and facilitated by leading-edge technology. Our innovative approach to co-design and development of the integrated tele-rehabilitation care model and pathways will ensure ROSIA promotes equity in the provision of social and health care services throughout Europe.”

Health and care systems in Europe are facing the combined challenge of an increasing demand because of a rising burden of chronic conditions, and of limited resources. This situation is intensified in depopulated areas where there is often a high proportion of elderly people, and long distances to access some health and care services. Rehabilitation is a key component of care, treatment and support for many patients living with particular pathologies such as neurological, cardiac, and respiratory orthopaedic conditions. Patients often must travel to a specialist centre far from their homes in order to access rehabilitation services and this can be problematic for people, especially those with limited mobility, lack of their own or access to suitable transport, and informal carers. If a patient requires assistance with transport such as an ambulance, the inconvenience to the patient and their family is exacerbated with the result that some patients do not complete the rehabilitation programme and their recovery is suboptimal as they are unable to transition to the self-directed complementary exercise therapy that sustains the rehabilitation improvements.

The appearance of new disruptive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, depth cameras, sensors, IoT, or artificial intelligence has allowed the development of devices and applications capable of accompanying people in their rehabilitation process, proposing exercises in gaming environments, supervising their execution, correcting, and motivating the patient. ROSIA seeks to take full advantage of these developments for the benefit of patients, enabling more patients to receive rehabilitation services and increase the rehabilitation period through the extensive use of these disruptive technologies together with the supervision and support of their care team members.

Mr Claus Flemming Nielsen, CEO of PPCN, explained that “ROSIA will ensure each patient the privacy of their own data, while translating the valuable data into value-added knowledge to enhance shared decision-making, in an ethically, responsible, and safe environment”.

ROSIA will initially focus on seven pathologies: Chronic spinal cord injury, acquired brain injury, pneumology, arthroplasty, cardio-vascular disease, hip fracture and COVID. Rehabilitation services are a core component of the care pathway, when these services are accompanied with moderate exercise, the care and experience outcomes are increased alongside improvements in patients’ quality and life expectancy.

ROSIA plans to create a catalogue of technology-based products and solutions that can be recommended for the targeted conditions. Currently there are many innovative digital solutions that have not yet reached the market because there are no efficient ways to enable the commercialization of such products. This catalogue will be one of the components of the ROSIA ecosystem and it works in two ways: it will make available high-tech innovations with positive clinical evidence and impact to patients and will open opportunities to the European industry to develop a GoToMarket strategy.

Professor Aine Carrol (NRH, Ireland) stressed that “technology is not enough; you have to understand the needs of people and the complexity of the health and care systems in order to design and develop solutions that can be effective and able to be scaled-up”. This is the reason why the ROSIA project has four key work areas: integrated model of care to provide care continuity for patients, high-tech telerehabilitation devices and services, improved patient experience and sustainable business modelling.

ROSIA addresses a need not currently covered by existing solutions, with the aim of a future scale up and therefore it uses a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) approach. This sort of project establishes and guides a research and development competition between 5 selected suppliers along 3 phases, with the last one consisting of the two finalists who will validate in real life the comprehensive, integrated solution.

The three public administrations investing in the development of the solution by industry and the validation are: Aragón (Salud) in Spain, Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra in Portugal, and the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Ireland. The project is coordinated by IACS and supported by another eight entities with complementary profiles: VALDE (Spain), Instituto Pedro Nunes (Portugal), The International Foundation for Integrated Care (The Netherlands), The Decision Group (The Netherlands), Instituto para la Experiencia del Paciente (Spain), PPCN.xyz Aps (Denmark) and the Municipalities of Penela and Soure (Portugal).

Mr Alexandre Lourenço (CHUC) drew the attention to the fact that “the telerehabilitation model and digital solution designed, developed and tested in ROSIA should provide the basis for many more people living with Chronic conditions to receive rehabilitation services in the future”.

ROSIA has a planned duration of 54 months, starting from 1st January 2021 until August 2025. For further information please contact:

Alicia Feliciano
Press Officer alicia@valdeinnova.es

Press release of ROSIA-PCP

ONLINE, 18-19 January 2021 – The launch of ROSIA project “Remote rehabilitation service for isolated areas” was officially marked this week at a kick-off event held online. This project represents 12 partners across 5 countries, and it is funded by the EU with an amount of EUR 5,5 million.

ROSIA project will deliver a comprehensive service to patients in need of rehabilitation, enabled by edge technology, new care pathways and community support.

Chaired by Mrs Sandra García (Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud, IACS), more than 30 participants shared their views about the significance of this project in improving the health and care systems in their respective regions. Sandra energised the Partners by stating that “we would be trailblazers as currently, there is no public health and care system that has implemented supported self-management rehabilitation on a large scale and facilitated by leading-edge technology. Our innovative approach to co-design and development of the integrated tele-rehabilitation care model and pathways will ensure ROSIA promotes equity in the provision of social and health care services throughout Europe.”

Health and care systems in Europe are facing the combined challenge of an increasing demand because of a rising burden of chronic conditions, and of limited resources. This situation is intensified in depopulated areas where there is often a high proportion of elderly people, and long distances to access some health and care services. Rehabilitation is a key component of care, treatment and support for many patients living with particular pathologies such as neurological, cardiac, and respiratory orthopaedic conditions. Patients often must travel to a specialist centre far from their homes in order to access rehabilitation services and this can be problematic for people, especially those with limited mobility, lack of their own or access to suitable transport, and informal carers. If a patient requires assistance with transport such as an ambulance, the inconvenience to the patient and their family is exacerbated with the result that some patients do not complete the rehabilitation programme and their recovery is suboptimal as they are unable to transition to the self-directed complementary exercise therapy that sustains the rehabilitation improvements.

The appearance of new disruptive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, depth cameras, sensors, IoT, or artificial intelligence has allowed the development of devices and applications capable of accompanying people in their rehabilitation process, proposing exercises in gaming environments, supervising their execution, correcting, and motivating the patient. ROSIA seeks to take full advantage of these developments for the benefit of patients, enabling more patients to receive rehabilitation services and increase the rehabilitation period through the extensive use of these disruptive technologies together with the supervision and support of their care team members.

Mr Claus Flemming Nielsen, CEO of PPCN, explained that “ROSIA will ensure each patient the privacy of their own data, while translating the valuable data into value-added knowledge to enhance shared decision-making, in an ethically, responsible, and safe environment”.

ROSIA will initially focus on seven pathologies: Chronic spinal cord injury, acquired brain injury, pneumology, arthroplasty, cardio-vascular disease, hip fracture and COVID. Rehabilitation services are a core component of the care pathway, when these services are accompanied with moderate exercise, the care and experience outcomes are increased alongside improvements in patients’ quality and life expectancy.

ROSIA plans to create a catalogue of technology-based products and solutions that can be recommended for the targeted conditions. Currently there are many innovative digital solutions that have not yet reached the market because there are no efficient ways to enable the commercialization of such products. This catalogue will be one of the components of the ROSIA ecosystem and it works in two ways: it will make available high-tech innovations with positive clinical evidence and impact to patients and will open opportunities to the European industry to develop a GoToMarket strategy.

Professor Aine Carrol (NRH, Ireland) stressed that “technology is not enough; you have to understand the needs of people and the complexity of the health and care systems in order to design and develop solutions that can be effective and able to be scaled-up”. This is the reason why the ROSIA project has four key work areas: integrated model of care to provide care continuity for patients, high-tech telerehabilitation devices and services, improved patient experience and sustainable business modelling.

ROSIA addresses a need not currently covered by existing solutions, with the aim of a future scale up and therefore it uses a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) approach. This sort of project establishes and guides a research and development competition between 5 selected suppliers along 3 phases, with the last one consisting of the two finalists who will validate in real life the comprehensive, integrated solution.

The three public administrations investing in the development of the solution by industry and the validation are: Aragón (Salud) in Spain, Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra in Portugal, and the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Ireland. The project is coordinated by IACS and supported by another eight entities with complementary profiles: VALDE (Spain), Instituto Pedro Nunes (Portugal), The International Foundation for Integrated Care (The Netherlands), The Decision Group (The Netherlands), Instituto para la Experiencia del Paciente (Spain), PPCN.xyz Aps (Denmark) and the Municipalities of Penela and Soure (Portugal).

Mr Alexandre Lourenço (CHUC) drew the attention to the fact that “the telerehabilitation model and digital solution designed, developed and tested in ROSIA should provide the basis for many more people living with Chronic conditions to receive rehabilitation services in the future”. 

ROSIA has a planned duration of 54 months, starting from 1st January 2021 until August 2025. For further information please contact:

Alicia Feliciano
Press Officer alicia@valdeinnova.es

Press release of the ROSIA-PCP