BFCC: Pan-Baltic fracture healing project receives 3.6 million euros

Fifteen partners in the “BFCC – Baltic Fracture Competence Centre” project aim to discover opportunities for innovation in fracture healing and to support collaboration between industry and hospitals. The BFCC and 34 further finalists were ultimately approved from 282 ideas that were initially submitted in the application round of the “Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme”. "BFCC is a model for successful cooperation between industry and hospitals," says Dr. Hinrich Habeck, Managing Director of Life Science Nord Management GmbH, the lead partner in the project application. "For the project's goal of promoting innovation in fracture healing in the best possible way, the combination and pooling of a range of strengths is the key to success."

Combining know-how in the cross-country project

Initially, therefore, a pan-Baltic cooperation platform will be established linking hospitals, industry, research institutes and networks. In the BFCC, patient data or information about treatment methods and successes can for example be recorded and analyzed in a joint fracture register across countries. Existing fracture registers, from Sweden and Denmark, will serve as a model or will be integrated (Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia). In this way, the BFCC will highlight proven methods in everyday hospital treatment in fracture management and point out the potential for innovation and where innovation is needed. Building on that basis, the project will seek to implement three transnational innovation projects to test cooperation arrangements between industry and clinics in which the six participating hospitals and four companies will be involved.

Excellent project partners

With the lead partner Life Science Nord Management GmbH and 14 further project partners from the Baltic Sea region - including University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Campus Lübeck and Stryker Trauma GmbH from the Life Science Nord Cluster - as well as 26 associated organizations, the BFCC already has an excellent basis on which to build a pan-Baltic platform für future collaboration and foster innovation in fracture management.

Further information

about the BFCC: http://www.lifesciencenord.de/aktivitaeten/projekte/bfcc-bone-fracture-competence-centre/
about the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme: http://www.interreg-baltic.eu