INKplant’s consortium launches its Second Open Innovation Program to create the first European virtual community for promoting open science and innovation in the tissue engineering and biofabrication fields.

Purpose

External users, healthcare professionals, and potential collaborators will be able to use INKplant’s expertise and technologies through a series of periodic calls and focus group workshops. We understand that innovative materials, technologies and resources, aimed at transforming healthcare, should be researched, developed and applied following user centered approaches, involving healthcare professionals, patients and their associations, scientists and technology developers. To this end, INKplant opens its expertise to external users for developing next generation implants.

Download documentation

Participation conditions

• Access to INKplant’s expertise and resources will be asked by submission of the experimental template for open science & innovation calls, in which the aims and potentials of the proposed study and the need for INKplant’s support will be described. Proposals will be treated confidentially and will be evaluated by an independent international board. Experiments considered feasible and relevant with the will be selected according to open call’s conditions.
• Access to INKplant’s expertise and resources is free of charge but the obtained results will be reported and jointly published in high impact open access journals and presented in conferences, with external users and involved INKplant’s partners as co-authors. Acknowledgement to the EU Commission’s H2020 INKplant project (GA nº953134) is required in dissemination and communication actions. The use of special materials may involve some operational costs.
• INKplant’s participation in the external proposals is limited to design, simulation and manufacturing tasks, from a conceptual idea, up to a printed prototype for preliminary validation of the idea through in vitro studies. External users will be responsible for obtaining the needed permissions, for complying with ethical and legal requirements and for fulfilling GDPR, in case patients’ information is used as input. No studies in animals or humans will be carried through INKplant’s open calls. INKplant is not responsible for the in vitro testing of the manufactured prototypes, which should be managed by users according to EU’s legal and regulatory framework.

‍

Submission procedures and dates

October 1st – November 30th, 2023: Submission of experiments using INKplant’s template for open innovation calls.

December 1st – December 15th, 2023: Evaluation, gathering of additional information, and communication of decision to participants.

January 1st – April 30th, 2024: Development of the project, including design, simulation, prototyping and testing, in collaboration between proponents and INKplant’s partners.

May 1st – September 30th, 2024: Reporting of results, preparation of joint publications.

‍

Evaluation criteria

The evaluation board will be formed by 5 members of INKplant’s open innovation board, and 5 members of INKplant’s External Advisory Board. They will consider the following aspects, each one being scored with a maximum value of 2 points:

• Relevance of medical need addressed
• Degree of innovation
• Utility of INKplant’s technologies
• Technical viability
• Ethical, legal and social aspects

‍

Contacts

Elena Guillén Rodríguez (elena.guillen@profactor.at)

Andrés Díaz Lantada (andres.diaz@upm.es)