09 Jan NO-FEAR strategic foresight exercise: Framing the project vision and activities
The EU Funded NO-FEAR project works towards bringing together two networks: 1) a practitioners, decision and policy makers network, and 2) a suppliers and academia network, so as to enhance the response to security-related incidents. To facilitate collaboration between the network members, the project hosts networking events every six months.
The NO-FEAR consortium hosted the project’s first networking event, a foresight exercise designed to frame the project vision and activities over the next five years, on 26-28 November 2018. The foresight exercise, hosted by partner Nice-Sophia Antipolis University (UNS), took place in Nice, France and brought together 53 participants, from over 15 countries, including non-medical, paramedical and medical first responders, medical practitioners, and representatives from industry, SMEs, research and other H2020 projects.
The Foresight Exercise included a combination of working sessions, panel discussions, and presentations to provide participants with the opportunity to consider and reflect on the immediate, and mid-to-long term trends that have the potential to impact EU emergency medical care such as new emerging threats, security issues and societal changes. The first day of the exercise saw participants working together in groups of diverse stakeholders during six exercises focusing on horizon scanning to identify trends, historical analysis and trend analysis. The second day included a round table on the lessons learnt from recent security related events in the EU (e.g., terrorist attacks in France) and participants working together on a futures analysis to identify and examine the most pertinent trends. Foreseeing and weighting the impact of the different trends will enable the consortium to work with stakeholders to prepare for and anticipate the changes expected in EU emergency medical care in the coming years. These will be considered in relation to the project’s three main thematic pillars: 1) acute care of the patient, 2) acute care operations in security related incidents, and 3) training and education of personnel and volunteers.
During the trend analysis working sessions, participants identified many trends of high importance for emergency medical systems and critical care. The identified trends include (but are not limited to):
- Increased need and demand for psychological support
- An aging population
- 5G
- Violence against medical personnel
- The growth of artificial intelligence applications
- New technologies and big data
- Government instability
- Social media
- E-health services
- More frequent large scale attacks
Based on the findings of the foresight exercise, a strategy has been designed to follow up on the evolution of the trends over the next five years.
The value that the Foresight Exercise has played in framing the NO-FEAR project vision has been hightlighted by Morgan Abily from UNS who organised the event:
“The foresight exercise will support the NO-FEAR project’s ongoing and future activities to address the immediate, mid-to-long term paradigms and trends related to dilemmas of new emerging threats, security issues, and societal changes in EU emergency medical care. The NO-FEAR Consortium and UNS as the host and organization team of the foresight exercise would like to thank the participants for their enthusiastic state of mind during the exercise.”
The next NO-FEAR networking event will take place in April 2019 in Madrid and will involve an analysis of the lessons learnt and gaps identified from recent security incidents in Europe.
For further information on the NO-FEAR project, please visit: https://no-fearproject.eu. For information about joining one of the NO-FEAR networks, please e-mail: info@no-fearproject.eu.
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