There was of course a lot to discuss among project partners and in particular the pilot regions at the start of such a major project, with the pilots starting in spring 2014 already and with first reports to be submitted to the European Commission quite soon.

Apart from a range of discussions that were organized in plenary sessions, the meeting in Trieste was seen as a good opportunity to arrange a series of workshops and working groups that focused on the most important and urgent topics to discuss and progress at this stage of the project.

One of the most urgent and complex issues was the agreement on a common evaluation framework for the pilot regions. A first working session thus focused on presenting the draft framework and, in smaller working groups, exploring the main evaluation objectives and expected impacts for the pilot sites.

In a second working session, pilot regions further worked on the regional adaptation of the two generic pathways commonly developed in the weeks prior to the meeting. This was done in small working groups and results of the working groups were presented to all project partners afterwards. Based on that, a roadmap towards the finalization of the pathways was jointly developed.

Further to this, the meeting set grounds for the development of a successful dissemination and communication strategy as first plans for large scale dissemination were presented and discussed. Draft project logos were shown to the project partners and feedback collected to finalize the logos, which will in turn contribute to a visual identity of the project.

The whole consortium is now looking forward to the coming months and to all successes and challenges (that will for sure also come along) in the next three years of joint work in SmartCare.
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