Scaling-up of ICT Solutions in Active and Healthy Ageing through Twinning Actions

Despite an increase in life expectancy in today's rapidly ageing society, unhealthy life years still make up a big portion of a person's life. Digital innovations in health and care services need to be scaled up to enable more citizens to access and lead healthy, active and independent lives while ageing. Under the EU funded ScaleAHA study, a twinning scheme was conducted to scale up ICT solutions in active and healthy ageing. Forty-three organisations from thirteen European countries have successfully participated in financed twinning actions ranging from knowledge exchange and training to full adoption and acquisition of an innovative practice. Twinning topics included EHRs, ePrescription solutions, integrated health and social care ICT service platforms, and homecare and telemonitoring solutions, among others. The twinning scheme was a new concept that aimed to de-risk investment in innovative ICT solutions by financing small but concrete ideas with high potential for replicability and scaling up. The twinnings led to benefits for the participating organisations themselves as well as various stakeholders such as patients and their carers, healthcare providers and regional authorities. This paper presents the results and lessons learnt from the twinning scheme and recommendations to further refine future twinning actions.