The fifth thematic area under the “Space for Infrastructure” thematic call for proposals is health infrastructure. Health infrastructure refers to the physical and organisational structures and facilities that are necessary for the delivery of healthcare services. This can include:
- hospitals
- clinics
- medical equipment
- trained healthcare professionals
- laboratories
- pharmacies
- health insurance organisations
This also includes the systems and policies in place to manage and coordinate the various components of the healthcare system that ensure the delivery of quality healthcare, such as:
- health information systems
- quality assurance systems
- healthcare financing systems
The Value of Space
Satellite technology and data have a significant part to play in the development of potential services. This section lists (and applications are not limited to) the following examples.
Satellite Communications (Satcom) can enable new solutions in the following areas:
- providing ubiquitous connectivity in disaster response situations in which terrestrial cellular mobile networks have been knocked out
- enabling real-time, long-range communications. This could possibly be used in providing remote operations.
- bringing about the next stage of the digitalisation of health services. I.e. for use in remote locations
- enabling a greater range of tele-medicine applications
- promoting wider access to quality healthcare
Satellite navigation and timing services (GNSS) is pivotal to providing services to emergency response vehicles. These services include:
- tracking and routing to emergency locations.
- ensuring the resilience of navigation services in emergency situations against jamming and spoofing - this must be robust when dealing with life-critical services in a crisis.
GNSS is also pivotal in the use of UAVs/drones. These UAVs could be used for both drug/transplant organ delivery but also for situational awareness in disaster situations.
Finally, positioning services are useful in geo-locating and geo-fencing health infrastructure assets. This is especially important to avoid theft or tampering with medical equipment. Timing services offered by GNSS can be used for the synchronisation of infrastructure equipment and can also enable the time-stamping of medical records to ensure transparent traceability.
Satellite Earth Observation (SatEO) services offer the monitoring of the Earth monitoring on a regional level. SatEO can possibly enable the following applications:
- situational awareness in the planning of disaster relief efforts.
- proactive monitoring of the environment to ensure that disease outbreaks are avoided.
- air quality monitoring and the mapping of this onto health services.
What we are looking for
We look for teams who have identified an attractive market opportunity with real potential to engage customers. Motivation, business experience and domain expertise are all important features. We want to hear about your ideas that involve the utilisation of either space technology or space data.
In particular we are looking for those opportunities which are going to become market disruptors in the healthcare infrastructure market and which offer a high level of innovation.
About the Opportunity
As part of this call for proposals, ESA will support Feasibility Studies and Demonstration Projects under this ‘Announcement of Opportunities’:
- Feasibility Studies allow successful teams to analyse, design and plan their intended service
- Demonstration Projects allow successful teams to put their intended service into practice. Teams will test their service in the market by running a pilot with significant users and, by the end of the project, the service should be operational.
How to Apply
- Register your team on esa star Registration (https://esastar-emr.sso.esa.int) today.! If your team is made up of more than one company or organisation, each entity will need to register.
- Scroll down to the ‘Downloads’ section of this webpage to download all the official documents. Official documents include a document explaining the scope of this opportunity and the past two webinars hosted by ESA.
- Download the Activity Pitch Questionnaire template and submit your pitch as instructed in the Activity Pitch Questionnaire guidelines, through the form online.
- ESA will evaluate your pitch. Teams whose pitches are positively evaluated will be invited to prepare an Outline Proposal and then a Full Proposal. Teams must obtain a Letter of Authorisation from their respective National Delegation before submitting a Full Proposal. Contact details of all National Delegates can be found here: National Delegation(s).
Authorisation of Funding
For this call, companies residing in the following Member States will be eligible to apply: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The ‘Space for Infrastructure – Health’ thematic call is issued under the ARTES BASS programme line.