• Published on 29 Nov 2016
• Events

ARTEMIS-IA visited the European Nanoelectronics Forum 2016

In line with activities of other ECSEL private partners, AENEAS is focusing on cooperation and collaboration. As a result, the association extended its invitations beyond previous years’ parties. ARTEMIS Industry Association was one of the parties invited to be present at the so-called “funding street” at the European Nanoelectronics Forum.

Name change in the making

ENF 2016 kicked off with a speech of Marcel Annegarn, Director General of AENEAS. He explained more about the AENEAS Industry Association and how last year the focus of AENEAS changed from solely Nano-electronics to the whole Electronics Value Chain, by supporting the PENTA Eureka programme. Due to this change, the current name of the event: ‘European Nanoelectronics Forum’ does not cover the content anymore. Annegarn explained the audience that a name change may be expected to match the event with the AENEAS vision and agenda. Annegarn suggested that collaborations with other parties might be a way to actually reach the whole value chain at next year’s event.

ECSEL & EC participation

In the project village, 64 project from Eureka, ECSEL and H2020 showcased their project results. For ECSEL - one of the official sponsors of the event - the exhibition was a perfect way to show the contents illustrated in the recently released Book of Projects, via pitches and live demos at the exhibition.

Two of these ECSEL projects, MANTIS and SWARMs, are also showcased in the December 2016 issue of the ARTEMIS-IA Magazine.

Günther Oettinger, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, spoke at the European Nanoelectronics Forum about working on a strong Digital Industry in Europe. ”Technology matters and Europe is strong in Technology”. The Digital single market strategy must realise the digital transformation, to create one Digital European Union. Commissioner Oettinger concluded his speech by saying that: “Europe holds the technologies that will unlock the future, assuring security, privacy and energy-efficiency.”

Digital Health Revolution: the future of Healthcare

At ENF2016, several speeches were given on technological themes.

In the afternoon of the first event day, one of the most interesting presentations of the event was given by Shahid Ali, Professor at the University of Salford, on ‘Digital Health Revolution: the future of Healthcare’. He explained that patient engagement on health services is needed. Digitising health or - as Ali calls it - ‘working towards Telemedicine’, will help to create sustainable healthcare services. Eventually, on sight consults can be reduced by 40%; 1000 £ per patient per year can be saved, which sums up to a saving of £1M in a practice of 10.000 patients.

So what is coming and what kind of technology will be needed according to Ali? 

• Personalised holistic care in ‘real time’, enabled by personal monitoring devices e.g. biosensors, integration platforms, tailored treatment and advice using telemedicine.
• ‘People like me’, which means data integration and correlation, turning data into actionable information to manage population health. Artificial intelligence and medicine actually learning to revolutionise healthcare by better organizing patient pathways and treatments. This results in the ability to provide physicians the information they need to make a good shared decision. He calls this ‘precision medicine’.
•  ‘Virtual reality and Regenerative medicine’. According to Ali, in 10-15 years we will be able to print 3D organs, such as a kidney. Printing will enable tissue and organ construction from cells harvested from the patient, providing the ability to produce personalized organs on demand.

Ali ended his presentation by explaining that the challenge in the future will be the complexity of a disease, which means that no single technique we have at this point will be powerful enough to measure across a range of variables. This will require multi-parameter testing techniques and diagnostics that still needs to be developed. Personalised health support units might be an affordable solution. We must ensure interoperable health information technology environments for integration.

Ali concluded: “Despite these challenges, in my view, micro and nano-electronics will continue to contribute safe products to enable personalised and effective healthcare to transform the way we live, improve our lives and interact with the world.”