About this Event
For the first time, the @Hôtel-Dieu "Apéro Innovation" goes European.
From November 3 to 6, 2026, AP-HP hosts EUHA's week in Paris, as the hospital is currently holding the presidency of the "European University Hospital Alliance" (EUHA). The week includes working groups, a Crisis Preparedness symposium and the General Assembly of EUHA. This special edition of the "Apéro Innovation" is the week’s only event dedicated to innovation, and it is open to the whole innovation community.
The evening is co-organised by AP-HP’s @Hôtel-Dieu initiative and the EUHA Innovation Network.
Why this evening?
Looking ahead to 2030, Europe’s university hospitals share the same challenges:
- health needs that are growing and becoming more complex
- medical practices and technologies that change fast
- organisations to rethink so that care stays sustainable, with quality and safety still non-negotiable and strong financial pressure on top
No hospital can invent everything alone. Open innovation means looking for solutions outside, from start-ups, industry and researchers. It also means co-designing those solutions with caregivers and patients.
Working at European scale helps solutions emerge faster. Hospitals can share their needs, their test sites and feedback from real use. It is also a question of sovereignty: tomorrow’s solutions in data, AI and medical devices should be designed, tested and controlled in Europe.
University hospitals are both a major source of innovation and a vast reservoir of unmet needs. So how do they open their doors to start-ups? Where should an innovator knock first? How do hospitals connect with national and regional funding and support ecosystems?
Who will you meet?
Innovation leaders from seven of EUHA’s eleven university hospitals take the stage. They are joined by members of the EUHA Steering Committee and of the working groups meeting in Paris that week.
- Rafael Navajo, Director of Innovation and Business Development, Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), Barcelona. He opens the session on behalf of the EUHA Innovation Network.
- Mozhgan Sadr, Head of Business Strategy and Innovation Management, University Hospital Vienna (AKH Wien)
- Johanna Lammi, Director of Innovation, Helsinki University Hospital (HUS)
- Jenn Owen, Programme Director (Haematology, Surgery) and EUHA Lead, King’s Health Partners, London
- Robert Al, Director, Technology Transfer Office, and Aileen van der Neut, Senior Corporate Strategist, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam
- Miranda Delmotte, Coordinator of the Hub Innovation, and Nina Rognon Vael, @Hôtel-Dieu innovation platform manager, AP-HP, Paris (host)
Program: Open innovation in European university hospitals: how to work with startups?
📣 6:00 pm – Welcome
- Étienne Gayat, Deputy CEO of AP-HP,
- Christophe Tallec, Biolabs Hôtel-Dieu site director
6:15 pm – Open innovation across Europe
- Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (Barcelona, Spain)
- AKH Wien (Vienna, Austria)
- HUS (Helsinki, Finland)
- King's Health Partners (London, UK)
- Erasmus MC (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
7:00 pm – Open innovation at AP-HP
- AP-HP’s innovation vision and its strategic roadmap for innovation and AI
- AP-HP’s innovation platforms
7:15 pm – Wrap-up and invitation to continue the conversation
🍻 From 7:15 pm – Networking cocktail at Biolabs Hôtel-Dieu
Speakers and hospital innovation teams stay for the cocktail, so bring your questions.
Running order may change.
What you’ll take away
- Entry points: who to contact in each hospital, and how
- What to expect: timelines, regulatory and procurement hurdles
- Success factors and lessons learned from real start-up collaborations
- Cross-border opportunities for testing and scaling across European university hospitals
Who is it for?
- Start-ups and entrepreneurs
- AP-HP professionals: doctors, nurses, midwives, managers and others
- Researchers
- Industry and innovation ecosystem partners
Organizers
About @Hôtel-Dieu AP-HP
@Hôtel-Dieu is a flagship innovation initiative of Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP – Paris University Hospitals), Europe’s largest university hospital system. At its core, @Hôtel-Dieu operates an integrated innovation platform, enabling startups, clinicians, researchers, and industry partners to identify unmet clinical needs and co-develop, test, and validate solutions within real-world care environments. Backed by AP-HP’s scale—38 hospitals, 100,000 professionals, and more than 8 million patients cared for annually—and anchored in the historic Hôtel-Dieu hospital in the heart of Paris, the oldest hospital in Europe, @Hôtel-Dieu is set to become Europe’s largest hub for health innovation. Every month it hosts the Apéro Innovation, a friendly meeting point for everyone working on innovation in health. https://www.aphp.fr/hotel-dieu-1.
About EUHA
The European University Hospital Alliance brings together 11 leading academic medical centres:
- AP-HP (Paris)
- Aarhus University Hospital
- Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus
- Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
- Helsinki University Hospital (HUS)
- UZ Leuven
- King’s Health Partners (London)
- IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele (Milan)
- Erasmus MC (Rotterdam)
- Karolinska University Hospital (Stockholm)
- University Hospital Vienna (AKH Wien) and Medical University of Vienna
Practical information
📅 Wednesday 4 November 2026. Talks from 6:00 to 7:15 pm, followed by a networking cocktail
📍 Hôtel-Dieu, Amphithéâtre Dupuytren (wing A1, ground floor), 1 place du Parvis Notre-Dame, 75004 Paris
🚇 Metro: Cité (line 4). RER B/C: Saint-Michel Notre-Dame
🗣 Session in English
🎟 Free and open to all, registration required
Event venue & nearby stays
Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu AP-HP, 1 Parvis Notre Dame - Place Jean-Paul II, Paris, France
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.