A new government-funded initiative officially launched in Belgium this year to help medtech and eHealth projects get access to the support needed to advance their work, called HealthTech.Belgium.

The project is a collaborative effort of three industry associations: the Belgian Federation of Technology Companies (Agoria), the Belgian Federation of the Medical Technology Industry (beMed-Tech), and the Belgian Association of Hospital Managers (ABDH).

“Too often new projects fall into death valley and never become available to patients,” Carole Absil from Agoria told the HIMSS Insights team earlier this year.

“Technology start-ups often have fantastic products but no plans to get them funded. It takes time for them to get approved by the authorities and in the meantime they can have difficulties and go bankrupt or end up not putting the product on the market because they made the wrong decisions and are slow to implement something,” Absil added.

The new initiative is showcased in the recently repositioned HIMSS Insights eBook, a bi-monthly series featuring global examples of projects aiming to foster the development of a digital health ecosystem.

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MobiHealthNews is a HIMSS Media publication.