"The maker culture is a contemporary culture emphasizing learning-through-doing or active learning in a social environment. Maker movement puts power in the hands of the people to fund, design, prototype, produce, manufacture, distribute, market and sell their own goods. This new trendy movement impacts global manufacturing as creation shifts geographically to local, philosophically to sustainability and legally to force the adaptation of new IP laws as people move from consuming to creating and sharing. The Circular / Sharing Economy impacts core business models and higher education (HE) must be ready to address the change by developing relevant competencies of graduates in order to secure innovation and growth. Not only is 3D printing the main technology for prototyping, it is also hyped as the technology to bring about the next industrial revolution. According to Verified Market Research, the Global 3D Printing Market was valued at USD 8.08 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 49.74 Billion by 2025, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 25.5% from 2018 to 2025. The comprehensive research has been done by project consortium analyzing around 100 university makerspaces, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Aalto University and other partners. The conclusions showed that similar structures are emerging rapidly but they lack clear recognition frameworks, access guidance, strategic integration of university makerspaces into study process, networking between universities, public and private makerspaces and businesses. Thus, the aim of the HEI MAKERS project was to increase innovation and creativity through partnership of HEIs and technical spaces, leading to trans-disciplinary approaches and new teaching methods in HE, availability of open resources for formal and non formal education, better entrepreneurial and creativity skills of graduates. The specific objectives sought by the project were fostering collaboration of HEIs, university and private makerspaces, and other businesses; amplifying technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity as key competences; promoting innovative education methods; increasing open resources based learning opportunities; recognising competencies gained through active learning at makerspace as per programmes developed; testing the above-mentioned collaboration concept and ensuring sustainability of results; identifying and attracting new players to join the next stages of the HEI MAKERS initiative.Project partners developed 5 intellectual outputs. Guidelines for HEIs, analyzing how practically collaborate with technical spaces to increase quality of higher education, revealed internal challenges and lack of collaboration among faculties within the same HE institution. Training modules on technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity in 3D printing and rapid prototyping were made available on Moodle for HEIs to improve curricula and for technical spaces – use as self learning / non formal education materials. Intensive study programme as HEI MAKERS international summer school was organized to facilitate the uptake of collaboration concept. As a result, “Makers academy” was launched by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University inviting students to gain rapid prototyping skills already in Spring 2020. The plugin for open code software ""Blender"" allowing more efficient 3D printing was made available online for the Blender community with approx. 8 million downloads annually. Partners organised 6 multiplier events involving 200+ representatives of the target group with highly positive feedback. The direct target group of the project was HEIs, their students, and technical spaces. HEIs were represented in the consortium through LT, LV and RO universities, covering 50+ thousand students. These are the countries with less advanced HE (as per QS World University Rankings) in Europe who need to employ modern teaching strategies in order to catch up with the leaders. Association of technical spaces (TEA, LT) and a private makerspace Ludor (RO) represented technical spaces and ensured their involvement in the project through a number of stakeholders. Indirect target group was business and business support organisations, which employ skilled students or host startups in acceleration or business incubation programmes, represented by Inventya (UK) and SSVSTP (LT). Project HEI MAKERS will continue encouraging more HEIs to initiate collaboration with makerspaces, re-think their study programmes to employ innovative training methods and address the challenges of XXI century labour market. Project's outputs opened up new learning opportunities through practical application of entrepreneurial and prototyping skills, which can further on involve and lead to the commercialisation of new services and products, to attracting potential investors, to creation of global start-ups and spin-offs and thus growing economy."

Personal health systems for the management of chronic diseases have seen giant leaps in development over recent years. These systems offer vital sign monitoring and therapy delivery at home, focusing on the primary physical disease conditions. However, they do not provide support for early mood assessment or psychological treatment and lack a real-time comprehensive assessment of the patient’s mental status. Depression is the third leading contributor to global diseases, and depressive mood state is also considered to be strictly related to the onset or worsening of a severe primary somatic disease. Indeed effective preventive medicine related to the onset of depressive symptoms as a comorbidity and worsening factor of psychosomatic diseases such as myocardial infarction, leg-amputation, cancer, and kidney failure is lacking. NEVERMIND sets out to empower people who suffer from symptoms of depression related to a serious somatic disease by placing them at the center of their mental healthcare. Equipped with just a smartphone and a lightweight sensitized shirt, patients seeking care and treatment for their mental illnesses interact with these devices that collect data about their mental and physical health, to then get effective feedback. Lifestyle factors, i.e. diet, physical activity and sleep hygiene, play a significant mediating role in the development, progression and treatment of depression, and in NEVERMIND will be monitored by a real-time Decision Support System running locally on the patient’s smartphone, predicting the severity and onset of depressive symptoms, by processing physiological data, body movement, speech, and the recurrence of social interactions. The data will trigger a response encouraging the patient to conduct or alter activities or lifestyle to reduce the occurrence and severity of depressive symptoms. The final aim is to bring this system to the market, giving people the tools to control their depression and unburden their minds.

A national service in support of recipients of the H2020 SME Instrument and for the improvement of innovation management in SMEs, with the purpose of more companies with growth potential achieving global scaling. Innovation is a vital ingredient of growth and an important element of the future success of the UK. With some 95% of R&D and innovation conducted outside of the UK and many major and lead market shaping companies being of non-UK origin, access to knowledge, markets, skills and partners is increasingly taking place on a global basis. To ensure UK business stays competitive it is important that it is able to effectively access and exploit the growing global investment in research and innovation. Through EEN ENIW activities we will help businesses build collaborations and partnerships and access the finance, knowledge, skills, networks and customers to more rapidly move a concept through to commercialisation and to scale their business.

A national service in support of recipients of the H2020 SME Instrument and for the improvement of innovation management in SMEs, with the purpose of more companies with growth potential achieving global scaling. Innovation is a vital ingredient of growth and an important element of the future success of the UK. With some 95% of R&D and innovation conducted outside of the UK and many major and lead-market shaping companies being of non-UK origin, access to knowledge, markets, skills and partners is increasingly taking place on a global basis. To ensure UK business stays competitive it is important that it is able to effectively access and exploit the growing trend towards global investment in research and innovation. Through our fully integrated EEN ENIW activities we will help businesses build collaborations and partnerships and access the finance, knowledge, skills, networks and customers to more rapidly move a concept through to commercialisation and to scale their business.