The first experience with the EU projects dates back to 2000-2001, when Software Development Department and Translation Department pooled their knowledge and accepted an offer from one of the IDS partners to participate in the first project proposal (Dromeas) in order to spread activities to Europe and gain international experience.
A great experience was at work in the multicultural environment of international consortium where various cultural influences reflected various methods of work and communication between partners. A very positive finding was that verbal agreements could be trusted. However, to comply with EU requirements, Czech participants had to specify clearly in the consortium agreement the areas of decision-making, responsibilities, project costs, as well as patents and dissemination rights.
Besides projects’ technical outputs, the company’s benefits definitely included international contacts opportunities, information regarding European markets and the possibility to compare the level of professional knowledge with CR. Although the framework programme projects do not always lead to the development of a commercial product ready to be launched on the market (the outcome is usually a prototype), the company has gained and developed knowledge on the latest technologies, which can be exerted in other projects or commercial orders.
After having gained experience in two projects (DROMEAS, HEALTHY MARKET), the team decided to meet a challenge of being coordinator in the DICTATE project, which was submitted in the area of Systems for health professionals (creating a Health knowledge info-structure) and started in summer 2002. The four-year project reaches a budget of 3.5 million Euros. The objective is to develop a system intermediating a voice input of medical data via a pocket computer, transform it into a standard format and give an unambiguous interpretation to the health record of a patient.
Last year, another project proposal was approved with the participation of IDS Scheer in the 6th Framework Programme with the objective to design a system for planning surgical interventions based on a 3D model of the heart and the entire cardiovascular system of a patient. As a technical partner, IDS Scheer CR is responsible for the system functional specifications of the CARTIDIS project.
Besides the IST projects from the Framework Programmes, IDS Scheer CR has an extensive experience with project proposals for eTEN, eContent, CRAFT, FET Open, Interreg and Innovation programmes. The company would like to exploit its knowledge and experience and would like to reflect it in future cooperation with other international as well as local partners.
