External and internal Events Management within EIT Health communications strategy.
EIT Health Communications will drive proactive press and media relations in 2019 and beyond. Particular expertise is sought in this area to really elevate and amplify our media relations expertise and capability to ensure our content is newsworthy, and where appropriate, that media engagement opportunities and milestones are identified to ensure a newsfeed/press office throughout the year.
Events are an important component of EIT Health"s communications strategy and play a pivotal role and channel for disseminating the success and impact of EIT Health. Relevant events range from internally organised events such as the annual EIT Health Summit, a key strategic, high visibility event involving hundreds of stakeholders from within the internal community; our partners, as well as high profile external guests, to smaller, governance and business cycle generated meetings such as the Partnership Assembly. A number of core events are organised from HQ; those that relate to our Business Cycle of project development, others by our CLCs and those belonging to programme activities, in most cases, by our partners. EIT Health will provide the latest view of the events calendar which detail all the internally developed events and when they take place.
Specific examples of the internally driven events include ideation workshops to generate ideas to meet the healthcare priorities defined in our business plan, or matchmaking sessions which aim to provide networking opportunities between our membership, to create new working partnerships, identifying skills sets and expertise to forge alliances. These events will often take place over 2 days, take place at a European venue provided by partners and will usually be attended by 250–300 representatives of partner organisations and other external speakers.
These internally driven events are "set" as they form a fundamental component of our organisation's operations, but we are always seeking new and innovative ways to make these interactions, between our partners and the outside world, highly engaging, memorable, content relevant and valuable. The agenda for the recent Matchmaking session that took place in Berlin (partner provided venue, over the course of 2 days, with 275 participants, is attached for your information).
For such internally generated events, the service provider will undertake the full planning and delivery of each event, from delegate management, logistical oversight, on-site management and, critically, content and programme development including the development of associated materials such as slides. Technical capabilities, such as the live streaming of select events should also be considered.
EIT Health has recently deployed Aventri event management software, for improved user experience and to enable the better exploitation of data analytics.
Moreover, EIT Health engages with events organised by other entities, in which EIT Health can have a stand, be part of the programme or other collaboration formats. One example will be the European Patient Organisation Forum in November in Brussels. In 2018, EIT Health supported a Hackathon at the European Health Forum Gastein, a key health policy event.
The objective of the engagement with other events is to position EIT Health as thought-leader and to increase its external visibility and messaging, as well as to support to outreach of EIT Health supported successful projects or start-ups.
Therefore, in addition, the service provider will based on its expertise and experience assess, identify and recommend external events that are of potential strategic value and benefit to EIT Health and EIT Health should sponsor or take part in, as key players within the healthcare space, supporting the establishment of EIT Health as thought leader in healthcare innovation to drive debate, discussion and dialogue on key healthcare trends and topics. The service provider shall ensure that there is communications expertise evident in the planning and execution of these events to ensure appropriate content, messaging, speakers and attendees.