Health care is part of a transition due to increasing healthcare costs and evolving (ICT) technology developments: from generic to personal, from curation to prevention with an increasing control role and self-reliance of the citizen. The new European legislation on privacy and data processing creates more rights for citizens and imposes more strict conditions on the processing of special personal data. Prevention is also a key word in the new coalition agreement. In short, a major societal challenge with substantial economic opportunities for existing and new companies. Northern Netherlands, which has been committed to “healthy ageing” since 2006, has strong strengths to lead this development and to deliver on the ambitions of the RIS3 and Northern Innovation Agenda (NIA). However, these opportunities are not easy to redeem for SMEs. It is almost untapped work for SMEs to ensure product development with clinically validated data and sufficient scale, requiring explicit and specific consent from stakeholders (the so-called “informed consent”). The aim of the project is to develop an ecosystem on existing strengths in the North of the Netherlands, which will make it possible to build the lead position and create an environment for the next decade where SMEs can take advantage of opportunities and where social impact is created at the same time. A strong consortium of public parties (UMCG, Lifelines) and private parties (Certe, Inter-Psy, We and Target Holding) have the lead in creating these conditions. The focus is on innovation, health and prevention, with which the end-user is every citizen rather than the smaller group of only patients or healthcare users. The consortium will create, feed and drive an open innovation ecosystem for businesses (SMEs, start-ups, and large companies) focused on Personalised &Amp; Connected Health (PCH). In essence, the ecosystem 5 zaken:1.Het ensures that critical conditions are regulated in the form of an innovative PCH infrastructure. This base offers: scale (number of citizens participating), a wide scope (clinically validated health data in full width and over a longer period of time), safety &Amp; security, compliance with all privacy laws and regulations including explicit consent for the data processing of affected citizens (so-called “informed consent”). 2.It offers energy, creativity, business challenges, business cases, help, knowledge, access, support etc. for every startup, SME and company that wants to become active with (online) services, connected devices and services aimed at prevention and health. As a result, the environment acts as an innovation engine for others. 3.It offers organisational capacity and governance in terms of laws and regulations, safety and security, coordination with stakeholders (i.e. representatives of citizens, governments, healthcare institutions) etc.4. It works with regional parties on innovative deepenings of the basic system. First of all, these deepenings offer business opportunities for companies as well as a tailor-made approach to their own add-ons, services, apps, etc..5.Bringing together health knowledge and initiatives that play a role in exploiting economic opportunities and generating societal impact (e.g. pilot yards, Venture Lab, innovation workshops, business development capacity, funders such as Carduso, G-force capital) diagnostics, Bioclear, Spark Holland, Inter-Psy, Lode, ZiuZ, as well as start-ups NESS/VT Med Systems, ParaMedir and Evidencio. KPN is also interested in becoming active. All these entrepreneurs want to develop (online) services and tangible products that are related to diagnostics and treatment, but also prevention, fitness, exercise, sports, nutrition, (customer) lifestyle, mental health. HANNN also supports this initiative. The ecosystem aims to introduce Personalised &Amp; Connected Health applications in the Northern Netherlands and is open to any initiative that leads to a PCH application on the left or right. To boost innovation in the region, actions will be initiated to reach, engage, challenge, inspire and facilitate as many SMEs and start-ups as possible. The ecosystem will work closely with the PCH-regulatory group (established on the basis of advice from the SER North Netherlands) which is part of the Healthy Ageing Network Northern Netherlands (HANNN), which brings together healthcare institutions, companies, governments, patient organisations and scientists to build the (economically) healthiest region.