On Wednesday 22 March was Paul Iske, on behalf of the Institute, speaker at the final of the E-health Relay in Amsterdam. The event was hosted by the ‘Amsterdam health and technology institute’ (WATER GOD) and with the core theme 'Age friendly city', the theme was Amsterdam technological initiatives that encourage older people to continue to participate in society. The approach was not only to share all success stories, but above all to look at mistakes and obstacles and the valuable lessons that the initiators have learned from this.
The afternoon started with an introduction by Dik Hemans, CEO of VitaValley, a healthcare innovation network that connects organizations to jointly contribute to innovations in healthcare. Then the word went to Eric van de Brug, alderman of Amsterdam. He not only discussed his own experiences as an alderman, but also the complexity of making decisions and the large number of parties involved. Martijn Kriens, director business development AHTI took over and talked about an emergency landing he once had to make. He said that aviation is very transparent about making and sharing mistakes. The lessons learned are almost always incorporated into existing protocols to prevent repetition. Then it was Paul Iske's turn who matched up nicely with the story of Martijn Kriens with his story. He tried to get the public to take a positive look at innovations and projects that have gone differently.
During the second part of the afternoon, a number of workshops were given on the themes of living, mobility, loneliness/participation, public space, health and care. Each workshop consisted of two short pitches about age friendly tools and Brilliant failures followed by a discussion.
At the end of the afternoon, Dik Hemans handed over the relay cup to Erik Gerritsen, Secretary-General VWS. He only had the cup for a few seconds. There was already a new group waiting to continue the relay.