On 1 October 2026, the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator ran a one-hour workshop, “Open innovation: from challenge to international partnership”, at the European HealthTech Forum 2026, held at the Centro de Arte de Alcobendas, in the Madrid region.
Its starting point was that artificial intelligence can address healthcare challenges such as emergency department optimisation, automated reading of clinical reports and remote patient monitoring.
The workshop set out to show how to turn that technology into solutions that work in real conditions.
Paco Prieto, Co-Director of the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator, and Alberto Camarero, Open Innovation Consultant, from its acceleration team, led the session.
It brought together corporates and startups from the healthcare and technology sectors. Working in groups, participants practised defining a challenge and structuring a viable solution around it:
- They started by formulating the problem.
- They then set the technical and regulatory parameters, along with the impact metrics for a test in a real environment.
On the regulatory side, that meant accounting for the General Data Protection Regulation and the European Union Medical Device Regulation.
The exercise reproduced the first step towards joining the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator’s acceleration programme: defining the challenge.
Without a clear problem, a regulatory frame and agreed metrics, a pilot has nothing to be judged against.
The facilitators also presented how the programme supports partnerships between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean:
- Partner scouting and matching, free of charge
- A catalogue of 14 specialised acceleration services, including proof-of-concept validation, intellectual property and investment readiness
- Grants of up to €10,500 for startups: €7,000 to develop the proof of concept, and up to €3,500 for travel and equipment transport to the corporate’s premises
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