Looking back at the Innovation Challenge market consultation

On 4 November there was an opportunity to exchange views with the P3Dx team on the Innovation Challenge for Decentralised Test Innovations. The aim of the market consultation was to better align the Innovation Challenge with the parties that will respond to it. Ahead of the meeting, interested parties could submit suggestions for improvement, and during the consultation we discussed the topics that those parties felt could be improved.

Despite technical problems during the online meeting, the P3Dx team looks back positively. Participating parties clearly described what could be improved and how they would most like to work on decentralised test innovations. Concrete suggestions for improvement included: simplifying the contracting process, formulating the programme's needs more clearly, and being even more concrete about the IP clauses. Industry parties offered to share examples of IP clauses to help.

Based on the consultation, the P3Dx team has already prepared several steps to sharpen the process and the scope of the Innovation Challenge. By narrowing the scope to specific research areas with well-defined innovation directions, we are creating focus and clarity for the companies developing solutions. We expect that this will simplify the process while still keeping the ecosystem of innovating parties intact. We are considering removing the panel-interview phase. We will also drop the submission fee without adjusting the contract values — so in total the same amount of funding remains available for the Innovation Challenge.

At the moment the P3Dx team is thinking about the following three research areas:

1. New methods for pathogen detection: Innovations in biochemical, molecular, or biophysical assays that make it possible to detect (pandemic) pathogens quickly, reliably, and affordably on-site. This is specifically about the techniques that perform the detection itself — the chemical or biological reactions.

2. Lab-on-a-chip technologies: The development of platform technologies that can process samples and enable testing — for example compact systems for carrying out biochemical, molecular, or biophysical assays. This is about the technical carriers that support the running of tests, such as chips or small automated devices.

3. Data delivery for decentralised test innovations: Solutions that can efficiently deliver and make available the test results and metadata generated by at-home or on-location testing for national use.

Our thanks to all interested parties for their constructive feedback! With these refinements, we expect to be able to deliver on the objectives of the Innovation Challenge for Decentralised Test Innovations and to build a worthwhile collaboration programme for industry parties and for future users of decentralised test innovations. In the coming period, the P3Dx team will continue to develop and define the Innovation Challenge in detail.

Questions?

For questions on the process, contact Joram Nauta (joram.nauta@tno.nl). For questions about the content of the Innovation Challenge for Decentralised Test Innovations, contact Frank Simons or Bart Keijser.