Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI)
Juana Sánchez
CELTIC-NEXT representative
Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI)
The Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology is the main R&D funding agency in Spain.
CDTI is a public business entity, answering to the Ministry of Science and Innovation, which fosters the technological development and innovation of Spanish companies. It is the entity that channels the funding and support applications for national and international RDI projects of Spanish companies. Therefore, CDTI contributes to improving the technological level of the Spanish companies by means of implementing the following activities:
› Financial and economic-technical assessment of R&D projects implemented by companies.
› Managing and fostering Spanish participation in international technological cooperation programmes.
› Fostering international business technology transfer and support services for technological innovation.
› Supporting the setting up and consolidating of technological companies.
CDTI employs over 350 people, three quarters of whom are engineers and graduates. Even though the bulk of the CDTI infrastructure is in Madrid, the Centre offers to Spanish companies a strategic network of CDTI SOST (Spanish Office for Science and Technology) offices in ten countries: Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco and the USA to promote the Spanish technology at international level, mobilize global financial resources and detect international market opportunities for Spanish high-tech companies with the aim of fostering the transnational technological cooperation in International Programs at bilateral or multilateral level, with special focus in the European programs, like Horizon Europe or Eureka.
CDTI premises in Madrid
Commitment with Eureka and CELTIC-NEXT – new funding procedure implemented
Addressing its international orientation, CDTI has strong support with the Eureka programme in general and with Eureka Clusters in particular. The bottom-up orientation of Eureka is fully aligned with CDTI’s philosophy.
CELTIC-NEXT, focussed on the telecommunications area, has become a Eureka Cluster with high interest in Spain. The Spanish CELTIC community ranges from large companies to small and medium-sized companies that regularly participate in its calls to improve their competitiveness. The impact of Celtic projects encourages Spanish companies to use this way to accelerate their potential business establishment in the telecommunications area.
In order to accelerate the time to contract of CELTIC projects, CDTI has a new funding procedure that forces Spanish companies to apply for funding as soon as Celtic projects are labelled. Spanish funding application is done in two phases: First, the leader of the Spanish sub-consortium applies a ‘Eureka request’ after the deadline of each CELTIC-NEXT call (margin: 15 days). Second, once the projects are labelled, each company involved in labelled projects presents the full memory (national request) with a margin of 20 days. This improved process will avoid long-term funding procedures for CELTIC projects and will shorten time-to-contract.
E3 medical test video sequence
Successful Spanish CELTIC project E3
The E3 project is a good example of CELTIC success based on three principles: OPEN platform that guarantees access EVERYWHERE for EVERYBODY. E3 has designed, implemented, tested and validated with final users (patients and professionals) an E2E (End-To-End) videoconference platform able to allow EVERYBODY (low-cost high-quality video conference & e-health services reusing in-home infrastructures) access to e-health services EVERYWHERE (both rural & urban areas, both patients and professionals) thanks to bandwidth adaptation techniques that allow simultaneous multipoint conferences with SD and HD.
These developments were tested and validated by doctors in 15 use cases over one common OPEN platform (adapted to point-to-point videoconferences and STB/HDTV functionalities), able to reuse in-home infrastructure (professional-to-patient scenarios and patient-to-patient scenarios).
E3 is a cross-domain project that uses Open Innovation to allow external partners (6 Spanish SMEs, 1 Polish SME, 1 Polish medical institution and 3 French medical institutions) to collaborate from project definition to test and validation easing go-to-market fit that has allowed to generate 12 new products and improve 14 products generating over 26.5 million euro revenue with 5.2X ROI since end 2020.
The main impact on Spanish partners has been on CALBOQUER SL (ASMEDIT) which launched Face-to-face+E3 developed solution to its 10 million customers with a 3 million euro revenue yearly increase. ASMEDIT is using STARFLOW (CLEVERNET) WAN Optimization solution to guarantee its professionals working from home connectivity, reliability and data in motion security.
Three start-ups have been created to commercialize E3 project developments, including SMART Health TV solutions in Spain which is participating in the ESA Space COVID19 Response Initiative as provider of telecare technology for CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche).
E3 project: User-friendly experience / Videoconference at Home TV
The E3 project has received 8 awards including: CELTIC-NEXT Innovation Award Winner (Heidelberg, 2020), EUREKA Excellence Award Winner (EUREKA Stakeholders Conference Amsterdam, 2019) and CELTIC-NEXT Excellence Award Winner (CELTIC-NEXT Event at EuCNC in Valencia, 2019).
Conclusion
CELTIC-NEXT is a strategic Eureka Cluster for Spanish companies that offers an excellent framework to improve their competitiveness in the telecommunications area at international level. Spain has many successful projects that have helped companies to establish as a reference in such competitive markets. CELTIC’s support is key for participants. Besides, its Core Group offers high level orientation to participants.
CDTI, aligned with CELTIC-NEXT and with Eureka Clusters in general, has optimized the funding procedure with CELTIC calls to accelerate the time-to-contract of CELTIC projects. This new procedure has already been implemented in the CELTIC-NEXT Spring Call 2021.
› Further information
› CDTI website – https://www.cdti.es
› E3 project page – https://www.celticnext.eu/project-e3/