Bilateral exchange on “Development of digital technologies”
Austria – Germany | November 22, 2019
Thanks to Dr. Walter Mattauch from DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt) a German-Austrian exchange was coordinated in November 2019 in Berlin (Haus der Wirtschaft). The focus was on the development of digital technologies involving
- the German bmwi (Federal Ministry for economic affairs and energy) and
- the Austrian bmvit (Federal Ministry for transport, innovation and technology)
From both countries, a delegation of 30 representatives from Ministries, Research Institutions, Austrian Research Promotion Agency and companies participated in this meeting.
Mag. Michael Wiesmüller (bmvit), Dr. Stefan Schnorr (bmwi) and Dr. Herbert Zeisel (bmbf) gave an overview of their current technology policies. High relevant topics like artificial intelligence, cloud and edge-cloud approaches and trustworthy data were presented and discussed in a bilateral knowledge exchange.
In focus of several discussions and presentations was the project GAIA-X, “A Federated Data Infrastructure as the Cradle of a Vibrant European Ecosystemas” a bmwi project with a concept of future data-infrastructure in our digital economy.
From Austria, current initiatives, projects and ongoing research from Austrian Institute of Technology, SYNYO GmbH, Software Competence Center Hagenberg as well as the implementation of ELGA (electronic health record), an Austrian success story was presented and discussed . An example for Active and Assisted Living Technologies as a digital solution to support health management and care was brought by Daniela Krainer, who presented results of the Carinthian Pilot Region Smart VitAALity .
With a visit of the Health Reality Lab Network, which enables the transmission of data from Health-Apps to electronic health records a long, interesting and informative day ended. One take away from the Lab visit, which was quite amazing was the next step that will be implemented in 2020: Health Apps on prescription and payed by health insurance!
Day 2 focused on Artificial Intelligence, in the Forum Digital Technologies different exponates with smart data applications (e.g. support in case of environmental disasters), easy to understand Blockchain demonstrators, or sex and age estimation based on AI face analysis.
During the day, research institutes and companies presented their solutions and the bilateral (German-Austria) FFG program IKT der Zukunft, focusing on focusing on Artificial Intelligence Platforms was introduced.
Yes, there are many common challenges, best practices to share and definitive a high potential for German-Austrian future collaboration on this high relevant topics.