Open Discussion Friday

Last weekend Rome was presenting its fifth Maker Faire, which is currently the biggest edition in Europe with around 100,000 visitors.

To celebrate and open this highlight of makers from around the world, IAAC organized a public event at Spazio Chirale, one of the main Fab Labs dedicated to innovation and interactive arts processes in Rome, to discuss the European projects dedicated to the Maker movement with the local and national Maker community. Open to the entire city of Rome the event represented an opportunity to meet creatives, makers, artists, scientists and inventors from over 27 countries. The event featured presentations of DDMP (IAAC – Polifactory), DSI4EU (WeMake), OpenMaker  (LAMA), Careables (Opendot), SISCODE (IAAC), showing how both Creative Europe (DDMP) and Horizon 2020 projects (DSI4EU, OpenMaker, Careables, SISCODE) can work with the Maker movement, improve it and connect it with society, industry and policymakers.

Polifactory from Politecnico di Milano announced the winners of the FABCARE initiative, which focuses on the development of open source healthcare solutions. A design challenge was calling local designers and makers to submit innovative ideas and solutions related to healthcare in order to present the prototypes of selected ideas at the Maker Faire Rome 2018.

The local initiative was launched during the European Maker Week to connect makers and designers with the healthcare sector system and to discuss about the pragmatic future with focus on patient innovation design, making and med-tech system.

DermAware, Dermap, Mole Mapper, Palpatine and Zero2 are five projects selected within an Open Call to be developed and prototyped with the help of Polifactory. During the time of July to October 2018 the projects and their designers have been supported by a network of technicians, professors and researches in their phases of designing, prototyping and digital fabrication. In order to provide the technical-medical know how to support the talents during the FABCARE-launch and the prototyping phase, Polifactory is collaborating with Centro Medico Santagostino. 

The initiative demonstrates how designers, makers and independent innovators design, produce and distributed open healthcare solutions with a real market potential, while interacting with patient, caregivers and their associations.

The projects of FABCARE were exhibited at Maker Faire Rome and the young creators from Politecnico di Milano presented their projects individually as part of the faires program.

Find out more detailed info and download links for the FABCARE projects online here.