During the two years of project implementation the PPI4MED consortium, composed of partners from Spain, Italy, Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt, has been working on implementing Innovation Procurement as an instrument for knowledge transfer, at the national level as well as cross-border one. The partners have been meeting with public procurers and companies and SMEs in the Living Lab framework, to get to know the needs and challenges of the former and the capacities of the latter. All the work done in the Living Lab is aimed at the development of Innovation Procurement pilots, which will be the focus of the consortium during this new year of project implementation.

Another focus of the consortium during this new year will be the capacitation programme. PPI4MED will organize training that will allow around 100 people working in the area of public procurement to participate in a capacitation programme to improve their technical, financial and legal capacities regarding public procurement of innovation. Before the training takes place, it will also be ensured that the trainers delivering the course have adequate knowledge of public procurement of innovation and are ready and capable of delivering a such training course. To do so, a call for trainers will be launched to select for three trainers specialized in legal, financial and technical public procurement from each country. The selected trainers will take part in a 3-day long workshop in Madrid in October and will run the course during the months of November and December 2022.

Another activity that the PPI4MED has been greatly involved with, is the analysis of its technological offer in order to find the technologies that could match any of the necessities reported by the public procurers that are – as of now, taking part in the project. After this analysis, each partner will organize some workshops within the Living Lab framework. For example, the Lead Beneficiary, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), has prepared three sessions that will take place during the months of September and October, through which the researchers will present the different technologies to both public procurers and companies. The aim of these4 meetings is that relationships can be established between scientists and private enterprises, and they can work together towards a PPI pilot.

Overall, this second year of project implementation has been characterized by hard work and by learning how to overcome challenges. PPI4MED  is looking forward to the next steps of the project and is focusing on establishing new horizons to reach and goals to achieve.