Occupational health and safety, unveiled the 17 technological innovation projects funded by the Bit announcement

The headquarters of Artes 4.0, a highly specialized national competence center funded by the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, this morning in Pontedera (Pisa) hosted the presentation event of the 17 projects funded by Inail through the Technological Innovation Call (Bit), managed in synergy with the Tuscan competence center with the aim of improving health and safety conditions for workers.

"The Bit call," explains Edoardo Gambacciani, central director of Research atInail, "is a measure aimed at boosting innovation in occupational health and safety to create social value by focusing on business competitiveness, quality work and better protection for workers. This is a pilot experiment in the direction of establishing and consolidating the Institute's role as a hub for innovation and technology transfer in occupational health and safety. The results of the research projects come out of the drawers of the laboratories to give rise to sustainable and effective solutions to be applied in companies, which accompany the digital and technological transition of the production fabric by putting the worker's person at the center of innovation."

Launched at the end of 2022, the Bit call has made a total of two million euros available to start-ups, micro-enterprises, SMEs and large companies to carry out innovation, industrial research and technology transfer projects aimed at reducing occupational accidents and diseases or developing positive spillovers for the protection of workers through the use of Impresa 4.0 technologies. Issues related to occupational health and safety, in fact, are one of the application focuses of the skills and tools that Artes 4.0 makes available to develop within companies concrete and innovative solutions useful for improving the levels of worker protection.

As pointed out by Paolo Dario, scientific director of Artes 4.0 and coordinator of the European hub for digital innovation Artes 5.0, "safety at work is also a crucial issue for business development and on which it is necessary to focus all energies to ensure, first and foremost, protection for human health. Technologies 4.0 and 5.0 can also and primarily be applied to occupational health and safety, which are the pillars on which a modern, responsible and, above all, safe working environment is built. Investing in innovative solutions means creating an enterprise in which technology not only improves the efficiency of production processes, but also starts from the premise of protecting and supporting the workforce, contributing to the world of work not only in terms of new and more qualified employment, but also to make it safer, healthier and more sustainable."

The presentation of the 17 innovative projects launched since last June thanks to the Bit announcement, with a contribution for each intervention ranging between 100 thousand and 140 thousand euros, was also an opportunity to address the sensitive issue of worker health protection in an extremely concrete way before a selected audience of referenced guests, stakeholders, journalists, institutions, and representatives of the business and labor worlds.

After the institutional greetings, with speeches by, among others, Antonio Mazzeo, Labor and Security coordinator of the Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces, the characteristics of the industrial research and experimental development projects selected under the Bit call were illustrated by representatives of the companies that were awarded the funding.

In the second part of the event, the theme of technological innovation from an anthropocentric, sustainable and inclusive perspective applied to occupational health and safety was the focus of a panel discussion moderated by the editor of the newspaper Il Tirreno, Cristiano Marcacci, which in addition to Dario and Gambacciani also involved Antonio Frisoli, president of Artes 4.0, Francesca Posarelli, president of the Small Industry of Confindustria Toscana, Riccardo Sabatini, head of Environment and Safety Cna Toscana, Alessio Giovarruscio, trade union manager of Confcommercio Pisa, Federica Montaghi, head of the Regional Coordination on Occupational Safety of Uil Toscana, and Cinzia Ferrante, Tuscany regional secretary with responsibility for central functions of Cisl FP.