News Story

KMis Successful Twinning Event within the GATEKEEPER Project

Iman Naja, Tuesday 5 Sep 2023

The GATEKEEPER project is a European multi-centric large-scale pilot on smart living environments. Funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020, the project focuses on smart data-driven solutions for personalized early risk detection and intervention. As part of the project, the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) hosted a three-day twinning event, a mechanism which facilitates the transfer of innovation and knowledge and contribution to the scaling up of best practices and key outcomes from the GATEKEEPER project to other regions and adopters in Europe. The report to the Reference Site Collaborative Network was submitted yesterday detailing the success of the event, highlighting outcomes, and spotlighting few collaborations.

The event took place between the 20 and 22 June 2023. Eleven participants visited from five countries and nine institutions: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Atendo, Ayuda a Domicilio – Centro Intergeneracional (Spain), Bangor University (UK), Connected Health and Wellbeing Cluster Ireland (Ireland), Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (Greece), Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Valdecilla (Spain), Technische Universitaet Dresden (Germany), Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (Greece), Health and Social Care Northern Ireland (UK), Connected Health and Wellbeing Cluster Ireland (Ireland), Health Region Cologne Bonn (Germany), and Atendo, Ayuda a Domicilio – Centro Intergeneracional (Spain)., Health and Social Care Northern Ireland (UK), Health Region Cologne Bonn (Germany), and Technische Universitaet Dresden (Germany).

The twinning revolved around digital healthcare and wellbeing, upscaling community support, and robotics and AI for healthcare and facilitated knowledge sharing and exchange, international cooperation, and showcasing KMi’s innovative and cutting-edge research with the adopters. Activities ranged from presentations about the research and lessons learned on stakeholder-centred design and robotics in GATEKEEPER. They also included a workshop on leveraging robotic interventions and visits to Woughton Community Council and Smart City Consultancy.

The attendees also joined the LHCS-KMi research collaboration workshop on 20 June and the KMi-FBL research fest at the OU library on 22 June, where they had the opportunity to learn about ground-breaking research at the OU and discuss potential collaborations. During the research fest, the visitors had the opportunity to control the TIAGo robot (developed by the PAL robotics) using virtual reality and make it move around and manipulate objects.

Also making use of the opportunity of having visitors from leading organisations in the UK and the EU, the attendees, along with other OU staff, participated in a networking event on 21 June which aimed at developing project ideas and fostering future international collaborations. One attendee summed it up by stating "A very well organised event that allowed Open University/KMi to leverage its European contacts and promote international collaboration"

Feedback from participants about this twinning event was overwhelmingly positive indicating high satisfaction, with one attendee commenting "Thank you to all the team involved in the twinning exercise. It was a brilliant experience, well organised and informative."