The Health & Sports Technology Initiative project aims to meet societal challenges in health, linked to increasing lifestyle diseases and an aging population, while at the same time creating the conditions for regional innovation and growth in health and sports technology by establishing a collaboration platform that can enable integration and utilization of knowledge effectively. from health sciences, computer sciences and technology sciences.
By creating a platform with coordination between these activities and close cooperation with regional accelerators and companies, there are very good opportunities to be able to establish a new regional ecosystem for sports and health technology with great growth potential. By appointing a principal, so-called champion, with international research and entrepreneurial ability, it contributes to creating synergy effects across various subject areas where utilization and innovation can be done in collaboration with collaborating parties in business. This champion contributes with both national and international contacts as well as already established networks in both the sports world and business
In the development strategy for Blekinge, during working life you can read about the area of digitization that has changed the conditions for companies as well as other organizations. In order to remain competitive, it is important that companies and organizations adapt and develop their working methods to constantly raise the technological level and take advantage of digitalization’s opportunities for innovation in new product / service solutions. The project will contribute to the needs analysis and concept generation regarding digital products and services for both sports and preventive health, which will benefit the regional population through increased technological innovation and will create the conditions for the regional business community to be able to compete with technological innovations for sports. and health in a global market.
Innovation is another area mentioned in the regional development strategy. Statistics show that most projects related to both digitization and innovation end up in the project cemetery, i.e. implemented on a small scale but never reach wider use. The collaboration platform Health & Sports Technology Initiative will work to increase both demand-driven innovations and implementation to a broad user base. An often-overlooked area for both development and growth is the implementation of existing technology and the utilization of research. Through our organization consisting of both academia and business, we ensure the entire chain from needs to finished products and services. Within the project, a perspective is applied to spread effects, which means that development of needs-motivated solutions in, among other things, sports where commercial provision for prototypes can be found at the elite level can help to gradually reduce implementation costs as the solution matures.
In the same way, experiences from sports technology at the elite level can be disseminated to exercise athletes and on to everyday physical activity that has bearing on the general public health. For example, heart rate monitors from the beginning were military tools that were then used by elite athletes who could pay the high costs, but are today available at a low cost to everyone. By consciously working on the innovation model for technology implementation developed at BTH, which is used partly as a workshop model (https://www.10xprototyping.com/) and partly as research is developed in several projects (https://www.productdevelopment.se/?tag= ie) and now being implemented as a technology accelerator in collaboration with Blue Science Park (https://www.bluesciencepark.se/digital/article/blue-concept-lab/), a platform for innovation and development of sports and health technology solutions will be created as one of the main objectives of the project.