At a national policy level, Innovation 2020, Enterprise 2025 and IMPACT 2030 emphasise the importance of standards to the RDI community in supporting an innovative Irish ecosystem. Standards facilitate the introduction of innovative products by providing interoperability between the new and existing products, services and processes. Furthermore, standards bridge the skills gap and aid in knowledge transfer. This is recognised at a European level through the emphasis placed on standardisation as a vital part of EU RD&I funding mechanisms.
Standards help build consumers trust and confidence in new technologies, thereby enabling the accelerated mass-market diffusion and adoption of related products and services. In effect, standards help bridge the innovation gap between research and global markets by enabling efficient and effective knowledge and technology transfer, resulting in maximum socio-economic and environmental benefits and impact. The earlier a company or RDI centre engages in the standards development process – integrated within their overall innovation process, the sooner they can bring their standards-informed innovation to competitive global markets, resulting in greater rewards.
During the standards development process, new technical insights are gained as well as time-to-market advantage. Irish companies can add their own unique product or service innovations on top of the foundational standards. Hence, standardization leaders and fast-followers are fully prepared to successfully launch their standards-aligned products and services across international markets to meet the needs of consumers and society.
The New European Standardisation Strategy recognises the need for enhanced engagement in standards development by the RDI community, and to test the relevance of their results for standardisation. Through EU initiatives such as the recently launched "Standardisation Booster’, there are significant opportunities for the Irish RDI community and associated Startups and SMEs, to aid in the co-creation process of standardization, supporting open innovation and cross-industry research development and industry activities.
The Commission has recognised the importance of standards through the publication of a Recommendation on a Code of practice on Standardisation, this code of practice proposes a set of recommendations on how to best identify opportunities and techniques to increase the uptake of R&I results through standardisation. Furthermore it supports and lays the foundations of the guiding principles for knowledge valorisation.
For further information on the standardisation process please watch the HS Booster Presentation below, for training material developed for the HS booster EU project, which facilitates and streamlines the dialogue between Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe Research & Innovation projects with the Standardisation landscape and its main actors, namely corresponding Standards Developing Organisations (SDOs) to increase the European impact on (international) Standardisation and strengthen the European competitiveness.
Contact NSAI Standards Business Development, Research & Innovation
New Standard for symbols used for information supplied with a medical device
Posted: 20th October 2021
A new edition of I.S. EN ISO 15223-1:2021 – Symbols to be used with information to be supplied by the manufacturer - has been published by NSAI.
This standard specifies symbols used to express information supplied for a medical device. The symbols can be used on...
Consultation to withdraw I.S. 380:2007 – Have your say before November 26th
Posted: 15th October 2021
NSAI is currently proposing to withdraw I.S. 380:2007 – Beauty and holistic therapy management of training centres, and is carrying out consultation on this proposal.
The development of this standard began in 2004 when NABTET – the National Agency for Beauty Therapy Education and Training approached NSAI to develop a...
Do you have an instrument or system that requires a Module F EU verification to support the placing on the EU market and first putting into use of this system or instrument?
Requests for Module F EU verifications should be made to modulef@nsai.ie.
Please include in your request...
NSAI celebrates a Shared Vision for a Better World on World Standards Day 2021
Posted: 14th October 2021
This World Standards Day, the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) is celebrating the importance of standardization to the global economy and the environment among regulators, industries, and consumers.
NSAI recognises the collaborative efforts of thousands of experts worldwide who volunteer their time to develop the technical agreements that are...
New ISO standard published to accelerate world-class automotive cybersecurity
Posted: 28th September 2021
The capabilities of modern technology are rapidly accelerating, digitalising aspects of our lives far beyond the computer screen. Today, our phones, home appliances and health devices can monitor, communicate with, and control each other - unfortunately this has resulted in our devices and their data becoming increasingly vulnerable to hackers.
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