„Bone Innovation Summit 2019” – projects on bone healing joint forces

The Bone Innovation Summit 2019 took place at the Media Docks in Lübeck from 13 -14 February 2019. For the first time, the two Interreg projects BFCC and BONEBANK as well as the innovation-oriented Northopedics network jointly hosted a conference on the issues of fracture management. Interactive discussions and informative speeches led to a comprehensive knowledge exchange about fracture therapy, the optimisation of treatment processes, data processing and different research approaches.

While focusing on various fields of discussion alternately hosted by BONEBANK, BFCC and Northopedics, researchers and stakeholders from industry gave essential input on topics such as: diagnostics and treatment, stem cells and therapy, fractures.

The BFCC project partners made valuable contributions to subjects (beyond others) like

• the fracture registries’ IT infrastructure, patient data protection and lessons learned with regard to Big Data and eHealth,
• the registry and its provided data as a prime example of introducing innovative methods into fracture management, and
• the different approaches in treating implant related infections in the Baltic Sea Region.

Regarding the BFCC project’s achievements, the partners come to a promising conclusion: ‘In my opinion it is a great achievement to define a universal dataset to describe the complex and comprehensive field of fracture management including complications. The high number of already documented cases underlines the interest and engagement of the participating project partners as well as the clinical relevance of the BFCC registry,’ Dr-Ing. Christine Höfer, head of Office Registries and Research Coordination of the Academy of Trauma Surgery in Berlin praised the results of the BFCC project.

Beyond that, the project applied for an extension stage to continue the research on extant challenges and to further enhance fracture treatment processes. ‘Only those projects meeting all quality criteria will be proposed for approval. Regardless of the outcome of the extension stage selection, we believe that BFCC and the developed data registry will help to support hospitals also after the end of the project,’ Dana Hennings and Ilze Ciganska from the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Managing Authority/Joint Secretariat positively asses the prospects of BFCC.

All in all, the Bone Innovation Summit emphasised the importance of networking across projects. Inspiring discussions and speeches uncovered future challenges and stressed the innovative results each of the projects has already achieved for improving and simplifying fracture treatment processes for both patients and hospitals.

You can find further information on the Bone Innovation Summit and presentations provided by the speakers at: https://www.bfcc-project.eu/Bone-innovation-summit.html