Officially, UNICOM started on 01 January 2020. In view of the upcoming Christmas Season and New Year break, already on 17 December 2019 this innovation action held its online kick-off meeting assembling all 40 consortium partners.

Moderated by the coordinating partner empirica GmbH, the teleconference served to briefly introduce each one of the 40 partners, to present initial objectives and upcoming work in all 13 workpackages, as well as to identify early interdependencies across work to be performed in year one. It was a brainstorming platform, welcoming members of the consortium sharing the common vision of improving patient safety and the quality of healthcare through univocal identification of medicinal products and the seamless global flow of interoperable data on patient medication records and ePrescriptions.

The opening meeting was also a platform for exploration of key coordination, management and administrative issues. In spite of the rapidly approaching vacation break – and the need to meet the timing challenge of assembling across 7 time zones (partners span time zones from Finland or Greece to the east cost of the USA), virtually all partners were present. Such dedication makes all partners believe that their common efforts will lead to exciting outcomes and UNICOM to become a great success.