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Healthcare and its transformation towards new technologies depend heavily on the currently negotiated new EU budget perspective and funds earmarked for digitisation, social measures and healthcare. A portion of EUR 9 bn under the “Digital Europe” programme is likely to be invested in the healthcare sector. Reinier Schlatmann, Philips CEO for Central & Eastern Europe, emphasised that in order to meet the challenges faced by healthcare, it is essential to develop eHealth services, make decisions supporting their development and establish cooperation between entities from the healthcare sector.

As assessed by Krzysztof Krystowski, Deputy President of the Board of Leonardo Helicopters, the company which owns PZL-Świdnik, the Polish army and defence industry should undergo simultaneous modernisation. The participation of domestic entities in the army equipment tenders announced by the Ministry of National Defence (MON) is a huge opportunity. Given the scale and complexity of such contracts, their implementation will be based on strict cooperation between various Polish companies, with the potential cooperation between PZL-Świdnik and Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (Polish Armaments Group) in building a combat helicopter being an accurate example.

For six years the customer satisfaction index in Poland has grown by over 17 percentage points to nearly 78 percent, and it currently exceeds the customer satisfaction levels recorded in the USA and the United Kingdom. Service quality and its growing significance among businesses have had a tremendous impact on customer satisfaction. For the eleventh time the Customer Service Quality Star titles have been awarded to entrepreneurs recording the best results in this field.

More and more devices are becoming part of the ‘smart home’ concept. No longer limited to TVs or tablets, they now also include laundry machines, vacuum cleaners and even refrigerators. New ways to communicate with household appliances connected to the Internet are currently being brought to us by voice assistants. Now all that it takes to turn on the TV or switch between channels is a single voice command. A group of secondary-school students from Poland have decided to try and merge the ‘smart home’ concept with voice controllability. ‘DAREK’, the project they’re working on, is addressed to disabled users to help them move around the house. Using voice control, not only will they be able to open the door or roll the blinds down but even stock up the fridge.

Medicine is one of the fields recording the fastest technological development. Virtual reality unravels new possibilities, enabling the performance of telemedical procedures and advanced training courses without experimenting on actual patients. Physicians specialising in plastic dermatology and clinical dermatology will soon have an opportunity to undergo training using a VR simulator. The equipment is to ensure a high level of realism thanks to double immersion. The market launch of the simulator is planned for 2020.

Inventiveness is not the exclusive domain of start-ups or large corporations - more and more frequently, innovative projects are devised even by secondary school students. They construct equipment and design applications not only for fun – often, they are inspired by higher objectives, such as removing barriers. It is upper-secondary school students who invented such objects as a smart GPS vest which recognises objects in the way of a visually impaired person, a Braille reader with a speech synthesizer, or an inductive loop for people with hearing impairment. An increasing number of brilliant inventions in the service of mankind are introduced by the youngest generations.

The Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technology is planning to create a technological campus to cluster all Polish cybersecurity specialists in one place. This autumn, the project’s operator is going to be selected. The business accelerator is based on solutions applied in Israel and its role is to reinforce Poland's security and attract investors from the IT sector to our country.

More than 80 percent of investment in the development of Polish start-ups is state-funded. The reason for this is the still underdeveloped private-funds market. The Polish market for high-risk start-ups is slowly catching up with the world in professionalism. About 10-20 percent of venture-capital funds in Poland can already be considered as top-performing funds. However, the percentage of those that aren’t working well is still too high.

When compared to the European market, the Polish market for fairs and exhibitions is rather small but well-developed, and it has been steadily growing for several years. More and more events organised in Poland are congresses and fairs with a global reach, attracting foreign exhibitors and guests. This drives business tourism and commercial real property market. Additionally, the fairs and conferences contribute to the development of companies and the entire economic sectors, which become popular thanks to such events. The base of trade fair and conference centres, however, requires extension and modernisation with a view to ensuring the further growth of this market.

The Polish priority National Space Programme, to be implemented over the coming 2-3 years, is going to be ready in the second half of the year. Poland is also in talks regarding the accession to the European SST Consortium which performs space surveillance and tracking. “The domestic sector has an opportunity to participate in the new financing perspective after 2021,” the President of the Polish Space Agency said. The Agency itself is also due to undergo major changes in the upcoming months. These events might elevate the use of satellite technologies in the country to a new level.

“The activity of foreign investors on the Polish real property market is still growing. In their view, Polish cities stand for stability and guaranteed profit, especially when compared with Western Europe. On the Polish investment market, and more specifically in the commercial property sector, Q1 2018 ended with a record-breaking volume of transactions, reaching EUR 2 bn. The demand is, however, much greater than the supply of good-quality structures, which causes a price hike. When coupled with the increasing construction costs and the shortage of qualified staff, this can slow down investors’ activity,” said Beata Latoszek from Deutsche Hypo.

Nearly 40 percent of Poles read at least one book per year. Although the reading level is low, we buy books increasingly often. The number of published titles is also growing, and since 1991 it has seen an almost threefold increase. For the printing industry this is a favourable situation, especially on the market of hardcover books, which guarantee the highest mark-ups. At the same time, the average circulation of the published titles is decreasing, which is why more and more companies choose digital publishing, which is much less expensive than traditional printing.

Business angels are increasingly active in Poland. According to the Startup Poland foundation, 33 percent of Polish start-ups took advantage of the services of domestic and foreign business angels. The EBAN data shows that the three most frequently chosen industries are technology, ICT and healthcare. The Vice-President of the largest European organisation of business angels believes that the next five years will be promising for the whole CEE region, and Poland will be the first choice among investment locations.

“In Poland there is a need for providing financing not only to small start-ups but also to larger projects, which require the involvement of greater sums of money,” said Krzysztof Domarecki, Founder of the Fidiasz investment fund. According to one of the richest Poles and the man behind the success of the Selena group, investors should apply more stringent criteria to the projects they support. One should search for the first Polish unicorn among fintech or e-commerce companies; however, in the longer term, it can also be found in industry or biotechnology.

Piracy is on the decline, but in Poland still nearly half of all the software in use is illegal. Private users use pirated software, as well as music and films from illegal sources, even more frequently, being oblivious of the associated risks. Combating piracy has many forms, which include tightening up the anti-piracy regulations. The examples of imposing greater restrictions show that piracy is growing even more quickly.