2 April 2020

COVID-19 : Italian and EU initiatives to face the emergency

The Italian government has extended its lockdown in place to combat the Coronavirus emergency until 13 April and MESAP will continue its activities remotely (#smartworking): feel free to contact the team!

Here below some useful information about the national and the European measures to mitigate the socio-economic impact of the CORONA VIRUS (COVID-19) EMERGENCY.

The Council of Ministers approved  the “maxi-decree” entitled “Cura Italia” which will have the task of supporting the economy following the current Coronavirus epidemic. The measure, as a whole, provides for a series of exemptions from tax payments and a series of measures to support small and large businesses.“Cura Italia” should inject 25 billion of fresh money into the system, which in turn should allow 350 billion to be moved. (details in english here)

In parallel the Ministries  for Innovation, technology and digital , together with the Ministry of the Economic Development and the Ministry of Education, University and Research  launched “Innova per l’Italia” a call  for companies RTOs, Academic, associations (..) to realise tools and products able to provide prevention devices, diagnostics equipments, monitoring devices to contain the spread of the CORONA VIRUS. (details in Italian here)

EUROPEAN INITIATIVES

AI-ROBOTICS vs COVID-19” The European Commission launches an initiative to collect ideas about deployable Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics solutions as well as information on other initiatives that could help face the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. AI in fact are useful in several applications like virtual healthcare assistants (chatbot) to provide reliable information and clear guidelines, recommend protection measures, check and monitor symptoms, or facial recognition and fever detector (Thermal cameras) for detecting people with fever that have been deployed in airports, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. details here .

AMable, the consortium supported by the European Commission under the framework of I4MS (H2020 framework program) published an open Call for Solution Ideas to fight COVID-19 adopting  additive manufacturing. The proposal needs to be short – only about two pages, and it will need to be submitted within two weeks. The selection of such proposals will be done quickly and support of up to 10.000 Euros will go to the applicant to experiment on the realisation of the “solution idea”. This call opens on April 1st 2020 and will close on October 1st 2020. Call Details & Guide for Applicants here.

CECIMO, as the European association of the Machine Tool Industries and related Manufacturing Technologies, including Additive Manufacturing has been invited by the European Commission to address its membership in helping to produce equipment (valves or ventilators). CECIMO has decided to expand the call for action to all companies, urging everybody who has the possibility to do so, to assist the needs of hospitals all over Europe. Details here.

#stayathome

#smartworking

#ilpolononsiferma