The purpose of the IDIH project (International Digital Health Cooperation for Preventive, Integrated, Independent and Inclusive Living) is to promote and increase international cooperation to advance digital health in the EU and five Strategic Partner Countries (USA, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea) to support active and healthy aging through innovation.

To this purpose, IDIH is identifying shared priorities and has set up a Digital Health Transformation Forum (made of 4 Experts Groups ) as a long-lasting and expert-driven catalyst to foster collaboration between the EU and the Strategic Partner Countries, ensuring the involvement of research, technology, innovation, policy stakeholders, and user associations. A User Consultation Group (UCG) guides the Experts Groups to adopt a user’s-centered perspective in the development of a Roadmap to enhance international cooperation in the field of Digital Health for Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA), addressing policy makers and relevant Funding Agencies in the concerned regions. As representatives of the needs and expectations of users and patients in the field of Digital Health for AHA, UCG members will benefit from the participation in the IDIH Forum, then, by contributing to better align the policy orientations set at country/regional level to the users’ needs and to the related RTI landscape and trends.
Sawarabi Group (IDIH Partner in Japan) has interviewed Yasuko Akutso, member of the IDIH UCG, representing Japan as Aging 2.0 Tokyo chapter ambassador. Here, how she told about her international cooperation experience with IDIH:

“Collaborating with international groups is always widening my horizons. Both health and ageing issues are universal and common worldwide, however, as you may know well, it’s deeply rooted in the cultural differences and so, international comparative approach would help me to understand any issues and thinking about the solutions much better. (…) I would like to introduce to Japanese people what IDIH has been doing and is trying to do. By connecting people and people, people to projects, and projects to projects, inspiring people to challenge better is my work as a designer.”
To read the full interview, have a look at the IDIH Magazine N°4.

Published: December 2021