Johanniter International and Johanniter Austria will collaborate with eight other European medical organisations to implement the granted project ‘iProcureSecurity’. The aim is to foster the cooperation and the response capacities of the European emergency medical service systems. The current pluralistic landscape and systems’ diversity constitute challenges to work together at European level. iProcureSecurity will seek to identify the major issues that make transnational cooperation difficult, to tend to increase standardisation of operations across Europe and to contribute to the creation of European medical emergency teams that could work as homogenous units. The ten consortium partners will combine their broad geographical representation, conglomeration of skills and experience, legal competence, IT and technical developments to meet the project implementation goals.
The European Medical Corps (EMC) was launched in 2016 as a result of the Ebola virus outbreak. Johanniter Germany played a prominent role in the creation of the EMC, which is constituted of specialized teams that fulfil international medical standards set out by the World Health Organisation. As the EMC is still in its initial stage, the number of teams, as well as their capacity and effectiveness, are an issue. iProcureSecurity will seek to tackle these challenges regarding both international disaster responses and responses at local level.
The role of Johanniter International will be to create a networking and engagement strategy aiming to involve all stakeholders in the field of medical emergency services, leading them to engage in a pan-European knowledge exchange process. Furthermore, the JOIN Office will seek to establish strong synergies among existing networks and research projects to create a sustainable environment for knowledge exchange. In this regard, Johanniter International will try to involve as many of its member associations as possible, beside Johanniter Austria.
The overall project will start on 1 May 2019 and run for twenty months. iProcureSecurity will be funded by the European Commission under the program ‘HORIZON 2020’, the most significant EU Research & Innovation initiative. Specifically, the project responds to the EU’s call for ‘Secure societies – Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens’.
