The project procure2innovate aims at improving institutional support for public procurers of information and communication technologies (ICT) and other product groups implementing innovation procurement by establishing or expanding competence centres for innovation procurement in ten EU Member States.

The potential of personalised medicine (PM) is to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases by taking into account individuals' genotypes and phenotypes as well as other biomedical, life style and environmental data. However, with some exceptions in cancer and rare diseases, PM has not yet arrived in clinical practice due to fragmentation, undefined legal and regulatory frameworks and its unclear economic value. To overcome these hurdles, ICPerMed was founded to initiate and support communication and exchange on PM research, funding and implementation. ICPerMed provides a platform to identify the requirements for a suitable framework in terms of infrastructures, resources and regulatory procedures to foster the development and implementation of PM. The ICPerMed Secretariat will continue to substantially contribute to the success of ICPerMed by efficiently coordinating all consortium activities. This includes supporting the ICPerMed governance and working groups as well as organising ICPerMed internal meetings and thematic events. A further important task of the ICPerMed Secretariat will be the implementation of an effective dissemination plan and the assistance in the development of a sustainability strategy. By monitoring ongoing research funding activities and collecting “Best Practice Examples”, the secretariat will provide the basis for evidence informed allocation of research funding and regulatory framework and standard development. The ICPerMed Secretariat will guide the dialogue with relevant stakeholders and initiatives. It will support training measures in PM in order to facilitate implementation of PM into practice. The organisational and logistical support of a secretariat will maximise the unique and long-term impact of ICPerMed by strengthening Europe's leading role in the successful implementation of PM in the global context.

J-AGEII, the Coordination Action for implementation and alignment activities of the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) 'More Years Better Lives – the Challenges and Opportunities of Demographic Change', will support and foster the overall management of the JPI, update the Strategic Research Agenda and support implementation through joint activities between Member States. Furthermore, the work plan will include dissemination and information exchange with scientific and societal stakeholders, policy makers and research funders as well as an evaluation and monitoring exercise. Ultimately, the project and the JPI seek to stimulate the alignment of relevant national programmes and EU initiatives, strengthen the base of multi-disciplinary and holistic ageing research in Europe and to provide scientific evidence for policy responses to demographic change.

Dementia has become a high priority in the 21st century as OECD estimates 9.6 million people live with some type of dementia in EU countries and WHO reports the economic costs of dementia to be higher than the expenditure in cancer, heart diseases or depression. The support and care for dementia patients has been delivered by public and private health sectors, but there is also a great number of informal caregivers (family, friends, neighbours or other relative who provide care for a patient, usually at home) who take this role on their own – more than 15% of people aged 50 refers to have taken care of an older person. Although informal caregivers, also called carers or family caregivers, feel benefits from caring, such as increased self-esteem, society has not yet been able to tackle its disadvantages – difficulties on balancing work and caring, burnout and stress, drop-out from labour market, increased risk of poverty and social exclusion. There is a need for interventions with informal caregivers, providing them with effective support. This support has been reached over the years throughout training programmes, psychoeducational programmes, support groups and mutual aid groups, information-technology based support or other formal approaches delivered by healthcare professionals.Mutual aid (or support) groups are being more and more used with dementia caregivers to support them dealing with the disease and ease up their burden and stress. Mutual aid groups are commonly associated with several benefits, including mental and social well-being, by increasing self-confidence, resilience and knowledge. Mutual aid groups are a powerful opportunity for non-formal learning, as they help caregivers cope with difficulties, by sharing of experiences, interaction with peers, building connection and affectivity. Nevertheless, it seems that caregivers have not yet considered mutual aid groups as a priority. One possibility can be the lack of information about the advantages of the participation on a mutual aid groups, as well as the recognition of what it really stands for. The organisations who provides this type of psychosocial interventions also feel that absent in mutual aid groups might be due to lack of opportunity to participate (no other person to take care of patient, far distance, …). In this sense, «ICT Tools can support the social integration of carers, provide them with social, emotional and peer support, facilitate their participation in aspects of life outside the home and thus supporting carers’ quality of life» (Eurocarers, 2016).The CARE4DEM project aimed to develop a new and innovative model of mutual aid groups which promotes caregivers’ involvement by introducing web-based tools and integrating it with other type of interventions, in order to enhance caregivers’ satisfaction with care and reduce burnout. It also intended to expand the professional development of mutual aid groups’ facilitators by recognizing and developing their skills creating a network for mutual and peer learning across Europe. The specific objectives were: 1-Design and develop a new and innovative web-based model of mutual aid groups for informal caregivers of people with dementia, to enhance caregivers’ satisfaction with care and reduce burnout, including learning materials for caregivers; 2-Identify the suitable profile and competences to perform the facilitator role of mutual aid groups; 3-Develop a multimedia training course to enhance the competences of mutual aid groups’ facilitators to perform a better role and address caregivers’ needs; 4-Pilot a web-based mutual aid group model to support informal caregivers to better care of their relative, including the training courses for facilitators; 5-Create a network of professionals across Europe who work towards better informal caregivers of people with dementia.The project has involved over 2000 persons, including: informal carers, academic and professionals experts, professionals willing to experiment the model, professionals interested in getting to know more about the model and policy makers. On the completion of project, we have contributed to reach the following results: 1-Enhanced competences of mutual aid groups’ facilitators participating to the project, taking evidence from the comparison on the initial, ongoing and final self-assessment; 2-Increased number of organisations and/or professionals implementing mutual aid groups for dementia caregivers, with at least 6 professionals taking part of the piloting per country; 3-Increased number of caregivers attending mutual aid groups, with at least 1 group for 6 caregivers per country; 4-Enhanced caregivers’ satisfaction with care and reduce caregivers’ burnout, taking evidence from the effectiveness assessment.After the project, we expect a rise in the implementation of web-based mutual aid groups as the outputs will be available and the process mapping is described in the step-by-step implementation guide.