The advent of advanced mobile sensing and data processing technologies is a major driver in the transformation of many verticals including the healthcare sector. This shift is further accelerated due to societal changes including ageing populations and increasing global healthcare expenditures.
The three-year CELTIC project Health5G ran from 2019 to 2021, and it successfully aimed to discover healthcare scenarios that could bank on technological advancements especially in 5G mobile technologies.
Eureka Clusters like CELTIC-NEXT traditionally support high technology readiness level (TRL) outcomes. Obtaining results with a successful technology-market fit was ensured by the diverse skillsets of the 26 partners from 6 countries.
Approach
There can be a multitude of scenarios in healthcare. The project team started out by splitting all potential scenarios into three groups:
1. Healthcare at hospital: Advancements in sensing, connectivity, and AI lead to improvements in existing hospital-based patient treatments, resulting in more accurate, personalised, and trackable treatments for patients. Here, we worked on several interesting hospital use case scenarios.
2. Healthcare at home:Technological developments and ageing populations are enabling all patients, especially the elderly and the vulnerable, to be taken care of – not only at hospitals, but also at the comfort of their homes. In Health5G, we addressed this set of scenarios under what we called ‘Healthcare at home’.
3. Emergency healthcare:Ubiquitous connectivity and improved sensing & AI technologies were used in emergency scenarios to improve impacts of first aid and reduce fatalities. The results were studied in Health5G under emergency scenarios.
Such a discrete and upfront split provided a more systematic way by generating unique focal points to the consortium partners. Consequently, all the undertaken work would fit into one of the three categories of healthcare, whereby the pilots would also be designed accordingly.
These scenarios were considered with three different priorities in mind, the three pillars:
1. Patient healthcare:Medical centres and scenarios in which healthcare service is given and/or where healthcare workers are.
2. 5G wireless technology:The combination of several technological layers that leads to a commercial 5G signal, making the services available anywhere at any time to anyone.
3. Healthcare technologies:All the tech companies and researchers that do not necessarily provide healthcare but are the cogs in the healthcare machine, as they provide the underlying applications, data management, and security & privacy technologies.
Illustration of the Health5G conceptual architecture
Achieved results
Typical CELTIC projects deliver results close to market. Hence, creating use cases with a storyline supported by partners in a meaningful value chain was considered key to success. Indeed, Health5G concluded with six country pilots and a seventh demo on the overarching topic of cybersecurity:
› Swedish Country Pilot: Patient Home Care – Integrated Swedish Demonstration › German Country Pilot: Zero Touch Infrastructure Orchestration for Emergency Services › Korean Country Pilot: Wireless Patient Monitoring Inside Hospitals › Turkish Country Pilot: Healthcare at Hospital and at Home › Spanish Country Pilot: Gait Monitoring System and Automatic Deployer by Experis › Irish Country Pilot: Wearable Video from Paramedic to Hospital › Cybersecurity Pilot: Sirena – Security and Cybersecurity Tool
With the addition of smaller scale PoC demonstrations, the project generated 34 public demo videos.
On the exploitation front, Health5G outcomes already started turning into further R&I projects, postgraduate subjects, field trials, or in some cases purchase orders. As for dissemination, the statistics reveal 67 journal and conference papers, 10 conference, session or track organisations, 37 stakeholder value workshops, 2 standardisation contributions, and 5 press releases. So far as standardisation goes, the main emphasis was on compliance. Standards for wireless technologies (5G), security & privacy, and medical devices were carefully studied and understood by the consortium. Of secondary priority, contribution to standards was a topic where preparations were completed for proposing changes to the O-RAN standard.
Conclusion and outlook
During Healht5G, the consortium took valuable steps to reap rewards of 5G wireless technologies and advanced medical applications that rely on ubiquitous sensing and computing. A careful analysis of the needs of patients and healthcare providers will help pave the way for healthcare services of the future.
Collaboration for faster terrestrial and non-terrestrial convergence
On 4th April 2022, Eureka Cluster CELTIC-NEXT and the 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which aims at establishing synergies and complementary activities in collaborative ICT research. The MoU will help foster economic growth and jobs through coordinated R&D&I activities and the commercial exploitation of generated results. The collaboration aims to leverage the complementarity of 6G-IA and CELTIC-NEXT and build on synergies to maximise the return on investment and to support achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
ICT has become, more than ever, a pillar of sovereignty and resiliency in the rapidly changing social, political and economic environment of today and its regional battlefields. The Russian war against Ukraine as well as the measures against the COVID-19 pandemic have shown how critical it is to count on both terrestrial and non-terrestrial ICT services, as together they constitute one of the critical infrastructures of a country, especially considering the digitalisation of the society and the vertical industries.
Therefore, it is mandatory to increase and leverage to its maximum the European and allied countries’ funding to reach a critical mass of R&D&I and a faster time-to-market for the European countries and their allies’ ICT industry.
This Memorandum of Understanding provides the platform for leveraging on each signatory’s strengths and cooperation, to support sovereignty and resiliency for Europe and allied countries.
The purpose of this MoU is to set out a simple framework where the signatories can identify the complementary nature of their respective objectives and to identify and implement shared activities that benefit both initiatives and contribute to the achievement of their goals.
The signatories aim to leverage the diversity of 6G-IA and CELTIC-NEXT as well as the fact that their projects are somewhat sequential in terms of their Technology Readiness Levels (TLRs), to maximise the return on the respective investments and increase the impact on the Sustainable Development Goals.
The signatories will focus on encouraging cross-programme discussions and workshops on potential technology pathfinders and solutions, with a view to stimulating a pipeline of new projects for both initiatives and sharing reciprocal contributions to each other’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) documents.
The focus of the cooperation is to stimulate the respective communities to consider the issues in a holistic way considering the “end-to-end” perspective of the new communications services being enabled by 5G and 6G technologies, as well as developing an understanding of the economic, environmental, and societal benefits.
How the MoU will be implemented
To support the achievement of their common objectives, the signatories intend to:
› Create awareness and promote opportunities for collaboration within and across the respective communities › Consult mutually on their SRIAs › Collaborate on the organisation and execution of activities with a view to reaching the common objectives identified › Participate in and support suitable events organized by the other signatory › Plan and manage joint activities in areas of common interest in line with the signatories’ respective legal frameworks › Undertake joint communication, as appropriate › Leverage their relevant resources and expertise necessary to ensure the success of the common objectives › Regularly review the effectiveness of this collaboration, with reference to the priorities agreed
Conclusion
This MoU is the second of a series of new collaborations for CELTIC-NEXT. This fulfils the objectives set by CELTIC-NEXT’s Core Group to develop CELTIC-NEXT’s support to and impact for the ICT community by enriching its DNA with new verticals and communities. The 6G-IA community is also eager to collaborate more with the CELTIC ICT community. This MoU offers the perfect playground for both communities to meet and work together on strategic topics and projects.
Enabling the faster convergence and development of terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks & services
On 22 November 2021, Eureka Cluster CELTIC-NEXT and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed a Memorandum of Intent (MoI) in Porto, Portugal, which aims to bring their respective communities closer together. The MoI will help to foster economic growth and jobs through coordinated R&D&I activities and the commercial exploitation of integrated space and terrestrial systems enabled by 5G and 6G. The collaboration aims to leverage the complementarity of ESA and CELTIC-NEXT and build on synergies to maximise the return on investment and to support achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In today’s rapidly changing political and economic environment and its regional battlefields, Space ICT has become, more than ever, a pillar for sovereignty and resiliency.
Space ICT is currently at the centre of attention for global industry and governments. On the economic side, new non-European entrants are currently disrupting the sector with Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellites and High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites (HAPS). On the political side, satellites, with all their potential missions and services, have shown to be essential assets for countries, not only for media broadcasting and observation, but also for connectivity to individuals and objects.
European industry and countries must defend their economic and political shares in Space ICT. European industry must be able to support European countries’ ICT & data sovereignty. Sovereignty cannot be achieved by purchasing and deploying equipment and services from foreign vendors that could fall under or are already under control of non-trustable governments.
Recent events in Eastern Europe have shown, how critical it is to count on both terrestrial and non-terrestrial ICT services, as together they constitute one of the critical infrastructures of a country, especially considering the digitalisation of the society and the vertical industries.
Therefore, it is mandatory to increase and leverage to its maximum the European and allied countries’ funding to reach the critical mass for R&D&I and a faster time-to-market for the European countries and allies’ ICT industry.
Eureka Chairman Miguel Bello Mora, Elodie Viau – Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications and Head of ECSAT at the European Space Agency (ESA), and CELTIC Office Director Xavier Priem
The central role of space and satellites
Space, satellites and alike play an extended and increasingly critical role in 5G, 6G and overall ICT services enabling the digital society.
Space and satellites had already an important role in the global ICT world for the economy, industry, and the people. They have already provided media broadcasting (TV), geo-positioning (GPS, GONASS, etc.), data links (backhauling and access), and telephony (satellite phones). For data links and telephony, they were mainly meant to provide those services in areas not well or at all covered by terrestrial networks, and recently also where high-data capacity was not needed. LEO fleets have somehow changed this perception by providing high-peak capacity over the coverage of one LEO satellite, with the foreseeable de-facto limitation of the maximum number of simultaneously attached users, as those share the same total LEO satellite bandwidth.
Since 5G and reinforced with 5G-Advanced, and the planned 6G, more industry verticals are getting digitalised, automated and autonomised, wireless connected instead of wired connected, or simply “connected”. People will expect that services delivered by those vertical industry sectors will be ubiquitous, always on and resilient. A good example is Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), being cars, trucks, terrestrial drones but also flying objects like future flying taxis, delivery drones, and more. 3GPP has now opened wider doors for the inclusion of SatCom besides the traditional backhauling role.
Space ICT remains a complex field with specifics in terms of operational conditions for R&D&I as well as field deployment.
Entry barriers to the Space ICT sector
Several factors create an often too high barrier to entry for new or small players originating from the terrestrial ICT sector to move their technologies and products to the space or third dimension:
› The specific space environment for radiations, dimensions and weight, power supply limitations (level and duration) implying very costly special hardware platforms, if they even exist › The satellites‘ launch costs › The inherent inaccessibility after launch in case of outages or upgrades poses challenges not existing for terrestrial network players › And, moreover, the space and satellite technologies (platform, payload, antennas…) knowledge itself
For the existing actors from the space sector, they seek for more competencies in 3GPP technologies and closer integration with terrestrial actors.
What CELTIC-NEXT and ESA bring to the collaboration
ESA TIA ARTES and CELTIC-NEXT provide various funding instruments: Open Calls, ITT, PPP for ESA, and bottom-up, flagship and joint ECP calls for CELTIC-NEXT. By exposing those instruments to each other’s community and together, both organisations will provide a privileged forum for cross-fertilisation and collaboration of both communities, leveraging the different TRLs, funding schemes and public funding agencies across the large sum of their respective geographical coverages: the Eureka countries for CELTIC and the ESA countries, some being common and some being different. Some stakeholders are common to ESA and CELTIC-NEXT, but most are new to the other. Both organisations see high complementarity in joining forces to leverage the association of their respective assets, forces, and communities.
As Elodie Viau said at the MoI Signature ceremony in Porto: “ESA`s strategic programme line Space for 5G & 6G demonstrates the essential nature of satellites for 5G and 6G. It sets the standards and frameworks for systems and services interoperability, as well as the base for integrating terrestrial networks with satellites. We draw technology and product roadmaps; we support and foster the development of integrated satellite terrestrial systems and value-added services.”
What this collaboration will enable and what it will target
This MoI and the attached collaboration will enable the faster convergence and development of terrestrial and non-terrestrial network and service technologies in the innovative field of Space ICT, i.e., three-dimensional networking.
The MoI will focus on technology pathfinders and solutions to develop and validate research & development projects initiated by ESA and CELTIC-NEXT. In addition, the MoI includes the organisation of joint events as well as the dissemination of relevant information to terrestrial, non-terrestrial, and combined operators and vertical market stakeholders.
More specifically, the MoI will encourage terrestrial ICT and Space ICT industry collaboration with other industry verticals to facilitate the adoption of advanced Space ICT technologies in the business models and processes of all industry sectors. The focus of the cooperation is to consider the issues in a holistic way by considering the end-to-end perspective of new communications services enabled by 5G and 6G technologies, including an understanding of the economic, environmental, and societal benefits.
How it will be implemented
In a first phase, each organization will run its own funding instruments, with its own processes. This cooperation does not replace their respective funding programmes and instruments, but leverages them for identified synergies in terms of topics of interest or strategic goals for their communities.
Coordination on specific themes will be put in place. These themes, include, but are not limited to:
› Multi-layered Space ICT and Flying Objects Convergence › Design and development of systems, subsystems and technology › Networks and services conformance and interoperability tests › Viable business ecosystem models › Convergence and integration of terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks › Frequency spectrum sharing between satellite networks and other satellite/terrestrial networks › Network timing and synchronisation technologies › Edge cloud computing › Data driven (AI enabled) management › Data curation technologies › Digital twins
To support the achievement of their common objectives, the two organisations intend to:
› Share knowledge, ideas and lessons learned › Create awareness and promote opportunities for collaboration › Utilise and leverage their relevant resources and expertise necessary to ensure the success of the common objectives, in support of the activities initiated in the context of this cooperation › Plan and manage jointly relevant activities in areas of common interest in line with the signatories’ respective legal frameworks › Collaborate on the organisation and execution of activities with a view to reaching the common objectives identified › Regularly attend meetings concerning the effectiveness of the collaboration, with reference to the priorities agreed › Participate in suitable events organized by the other signatory › Undertake joint communication, as appropriate, addressing the cooperation domains
Joint actions will be developed such as:
› Roadmapping › Joint cross-community technology and strategy advisory boards › Exchange on call dates and processes to anticipate best conditions for calls and participants › Knowledge network creation and animation › Joint working groups on specific topics across funded projects › Joint webinars and workshops › Promotion and provision of testbeds and trials platforms (R&D, integration, launch) › Mutual advertisement of calls and bringing communities to jointly apply
The strategic technology calls and actions roadmaps are currently under development. CELTIC-NEXT is happy to receive your input and feedback to enrich its contribution to the joint work.
The new Space-ICT Programme – Targeting the global 3D Internet
Outlook
This MoI is the first of a series of new collaborations for CELTIC-NEXT. This fulfils the objectives set by CELTIC-NEXT’s Core Group to develop CELTIC-NEXT’s support to and impact for the ICT community by enriching its DNA with new verticals and communities. The space community is also eager to collaborate more with the terrestrial ICT community. This collaboration offers the perfect playground for both communities to meet and work together on strategic topics and projects. CELTIC-NEXT welcomes greatly the space community’s contribution to this strategic programme in terms of inputs to the roadmaps, participation to joint events and meetings, and proposals in the coming Space-ICT and 3D-NET focused calls to be announced soon.
The public event of AI-NET in Berlin on
28 April 2022 presented the first-year results of the CELTIC flagship project. In addition, the half-day event hosted by Fraunhofer HHI provided the opportunity to discuss topics of strategic relevance related to the work of AI-NET.
The event, moderated by CELTIC-NEXT Chairman David Kennedy from Eurescom, started with high-level presentations by representatives of the four public authorities funding the project.
The attentive audience on site – A larger number of participants attended remotely
Public authorities stress digital sovereignty
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ina Schieferdecker, Director-General for Research for Digitalization and Innovation at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, set the tone, when she explained the relevance of AI-NET: “AI-NET is an important step for Germany and Europe towards resilient and secure network infrastructures for technological sovereignty.” She highlighted that a peaceful Europe needs to be in the driving seat of the digital transformation as progressed by AI-NET. She put this in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on the economic and technological sovereignty of Europe.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ina Schieferdecker from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Andreas Aurelius, Head of ICT department at Swedish innovation agency Vinnova, stressed the importance of resilient societies enabled by resilient digital infrastructures in Europe. He particularly highlighted AI-NET’s contribution to enabling resilient networks infrastructures across Europe by making them more secure and autonomous – characteristics he considers critical for our future society and economy.
In the same vein, Heikki Uusi-Honko, Head of International Networks at Business Finland, underlined the high relevance of AI-NET, as industrial sovereignty is more topical now than ever. He added that in order to get innovations fast to the market, it requires a native digital mindset, which AI-NET has demonstrated. He highlighted the expected impact for Europe and its fast step change in the digital transformation.
Christian Dubarry, Head of European Affairs at Bpifrance, explained how France considers cloud computing as a future champion of sovereignty, and expects a doubling of the number of companies for trusted cloud computing already by 2025. He said that AI-NET ANTILLAS could contribute to these goals with its concept of edge and fog infrastructure.
All four public authority representatives acknowledged the intermediate results of the three AI-NET sub-projects.
Presentation of project results
After a demonstration tour of selected results achieved by AI-NET, the event continued with presentations of AI-NET and its sub-projects. Coordinator Achim Autenrieth, Director Advanced Technology at ADVA, started by providing an overview on AI-NET as a whole before handing over to the leaders of the three sub-projects. Azimeh Sefidcon, Research Area director for Cloud at Ericsson, presented AI-NET-ANIARA and its achievements to date. AI-NET-PROTECT was presented by Jörg-Peter Elbers, Senior VP Advanced Technology at ADVA. And finally Olivier Audouin, Director of external affairs at Nokia, gave an overview on AI-NET-ANTILLAS and its results.
Huge interest in the AI-NET results at the demo tour
Panel discussion on digital sovereignty
The final highlight of the event was a panel discussion on the geopolitical, economic and technological challenges Europe is facing on its way digital sovereignty. The six panel participants provided a diversity of industry views on the subject. Panel participants included Johan Sandell, CTO of Waystream, Christoph Glingener, CTO of ADVA, Timo Lehnigk-Emden, CTO of Creonic, Olivier Winzenried, CEO of WIBU systems, Jim Dowling, CEO of Logical Clocks, and Jonathan Rivalan, R&D Director of SMILE.
The lively discussion, moderated by CELTIC-NEXT Chairman David Kennedy, identified numerous challenges that need to be addressed, from supply-chain risks to critical dependencies in the areas of key technologies and raw materials required for Europe’s digital infrastructure. The panel participants and the audience joining the discussion could not converge on the best path to achieving digital sovereignty, but achieved a higher level of insight on the challenges to be tackled.
Lively panel discussion on digital sovereignty (sitting, from left): Timo Lehnigk-Emden, CTO of Creonic, Jim Dowling, CEO of Logical Clocks, Olivier Winzenried, CEO of WIBU systems, Jonathan Rivalan, R&D Director of SMILE, Johan Sandell, CTO of Waystream, Christoph Glingener, CTO of ADVA, and moderator David Kennedy (standing)
About AI-NET
CELTIC flagship project AI-NET was officially launched on 1st June 2021. AI-NET aims at ‘Accelerating Digital Transformation in Europe with Intelligent Network Automation’. The project is addressing the challenge that the current centralised cloud infrastructure is not adequate for serving the requirements of the digital transformation in Europe. AI-NET is built on the premise that three technologies need to be combined to shape a new secure service and application platform: 5G/6G, edge-centric computing, and artificial intelligence.
The main goal of the AI-NET project is to provide enablers and solutions for high-performance services deployed and operated at the network edge. AI-NET is using artificial intelligence for complementing traditional optimisation algorithms, in order to manage vastly increased network complexity.
CELTIC-NEXT and its strategic partnering Cluster Xecs held a joint booth at EuCNC 2022 in Grenoble, France, and at EuCNC 2023 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Both events were very good occasions for both Clusters to meet with the European ICT community members and exchange on inter-governmental funding opportunities offered by the Eureka network of countries within and beyond European borders. AINET Flagship was also present to display the excellence of the CELTIC-NEXT projects.
Xavier Priem, CELTIC Office Director and Nadja Rohrbach, Xecs Director
Eureka HLG/HLR Meetings under Portugese Chairmanship
Four times per rotating chairmanship, the Eureka High Level Group and High-Level Representatives of the Eureka country members meet to check the status of the Eureka Programmes (including the Clusters). CELTIC-NEXT’s Director attended several Portugal led meetings to represent the interests of the CELTIC-NEXT community, discussing funding, alignment of topics and strategies, timelines of national calls, etc. One of the targets of those meetings is to attract new countries of the Network to fund CELTIC-NEXT projects. Canada has become a full member of Eureka, Chile as joint member
As an example, the ESA partnership with CELTIC-NEXT and Eureka got signed during the Porto meeting. Also during those meetings the United Kingdom representatives announced their increased support to the Clusters.
Group photo of the Eureka Network meeting in Porto, Portugal
Eureka HLG/HLR Meetings under Turkish Chairmanship
CELTIC-NEXT’s Director attended the Brussels’, Ankara’s and Izmir’s meetings. Both meetings were important for the Clusters and thus for CELTIC-NEXT. At CELTIC-NEXT’s level, very fruitful discussions took place with over 20 countries, including Chile as new country for CELTIC-NEXT but also with Brazil that will be an associated Eureka country starting mid-2024. This reinforces one of the CELTIC-NEXT’ unique selling points: the ability to have cooperative innovation with countries outside of Europe. Actions have been defined with both countries to introduce CELTIC-NEXT to their national eco-systems.
Group photo at the Eureka HLG/HLR Network meeting in Izmir, Türkiye
Due to and during COVID-19 Pandemics, CELTIC-NEXT took the decision to stop all CELTIC-NEXT’s regularly organised physical events such as Proposers’ Brokerage Days and CELTIC-NEXT annual promotional events. Even if COVID-19 is still present, it is now better mastered and physical meetings have rebooted all over the world. Recognising this, CELTIC-NEXT organised its first post-COVID-19 event at “le Hub by BPIfrance” in Paris, with the support of the French Public Authority in Eureka: BPIfrance. Despite the strikes blocking half of our registered attendees, the event was a success, with keynotes from the Industry and from BPIfrance.
› Further information
https://www.celticnext.eu/past-proposers-days/
CELTIC-NEXT Proposers’ Brokerage Day at the BPI Le Hub in Paris
Memorandum of Intent signed with ESA to enable faster convergence and development between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks & services
On November 22, 2021, Eureka Cluster CELTIC-NEXT and the European Space Agency (ESA) formalized a partnership through the signing of a Memorandum of Intent (MoI) in Porto, Portugal. This collaboration aims to strengthen ties between their respective communities and drive economic growth and job creation by coordinating research, development, and innovation (R&D&I) activities in integrated space and terrestrial systems enabled by 5G and 6G technologies.
This MoI emphasizes leveraging the synergies between ESA and CELTIC-NEXT to maximize investment returns and contribute towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In today’s dynamic political and economic environment, Space ICT has emerged as a critical pillar for sovereignty and resilience. The growing importance of Space ICT is evident as it becomes central to global industry and government agendas. From an economic standpoint, new non-European players are disrupting the sector with innovations like Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellites and High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites (HAPS).
The collaboration between CELTIC-NEXT and ESA aims to address these challenges by fostering cross-fertilization and collaboration between their communities. This partnership will facilitate the convergence and development of terrestrial and non-terrestrial network and service technologies, including three-dimensional networking.
Signing the Memorandum of Intent (from left): Eureka Chairman Miguel Bello Mora,
Elodie Viau – Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications and Head of ECSAT
at the European Space Agency (ESA), and CELTIC Office Director Xavier Priem.
To implement this collaboration, both organizations will leverage their respective funding instruments, processes, and expertise while coordinating on specific themes such as network convergence, system development, business ecosystem models, and spectrum sharing. Joint activities will include roadmapping, advisory boards, knowledge networks, webinars, workshops, and testbeds/trial platforms to support common objectives and priorities.
Further collaboration to expect
This MoI marks the beginning of a series of strategic collaborations for CELTIC-NEXT, enriching its support and impact within the ICT community. The collaboration offers an ideal platform for the space and terrestrial ICT communities to collaborate on strategic initiatives and projects. CELTIC-NEXT looks forward to the space community’s contributions and engagement in upcoming joint initiatives focused on Space ICT and three-dimensional networking.
Memorandum of Understanding signed with the 6G-IA to establish synergies and complementary activities in collaborative ICT research
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on ICT research between Eureka Cluster CELTIC-NEXT and the 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA) is now signed for a year now. As its aim is to enhance economic growth and job creation through joint R&D&I activities and the commercialization of outcomes, this collaboration leverages the strengths of both organizations to maximize investment returns and support the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In the context of today’s rapidly evolving social, political, and economic landscape, information and communication technology (ICT) plays a crucial role in ensuring national sovereignty and resilience. Recent global events such as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the critical importance of both terrestrial and non-terrestrial ICT services as essential components of a country’s infrastructure. To address these challenges, there is a pressing need to increase and optimize funding for R&D&I initiatives in European, with the goal of accelerating innovation and enhancing the competitiveness of the ICT industry.
This collaboration is for now facilitating cross-program discussions and soon workshops and joint projects will be organised to aim at advancing technology readiness and addressing key societal challenges outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals. It encourages cross-program discussions, workshops, and collaborative projects to advance technology readiness and achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Consultations on Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas (SRIAs), organize joint activities, and leverage resources to achieve common objectives are in discussion. Regular reviews will ensure effective collaboration and alignment with each community priorities.
Opportunities for the future
This MoU represents a new collaboration for CELTIC-NEXT and expands its impact within the ICT community. It provides a platform for the 6G-IA and CELTIC-NEXT communities to collaborate on strategic topics and projects.
To operationalize the MoU, the signatories have committed to several actions, including promoting collaboration within their respective communities, consulting on Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas (SRIAs), organizing joint activities, and leveraging their combined resources and expertise.
Outlook
These two memorandums signed with two different big organisation in their domains are a significant milestone for CELTIC-NEXT, representing a strategic expansion of its impact within the ICT community. By fostering closer ties and cooperation, they provide valuable platforms for both communities to collaborate on critical strategic initiatives and projects that will shape the future of ICT.
They will also allow knowledge exchange and SRIA’s cross collaborations in the years to come, will help levering funding schemes across low TRL topics, support an easier pipelining for proposals and offer innovative entities the full panel between top-down programs and bottom-up spaces for their collaborative projects.
