The aim of the working group is to perform and report on material testing, give recommendations, position papers about technologies already available on the market, about new materials, techniques and devices that appear on overall health technology market concerning the extracorporeal life support. Further aims are to support the ongoing education and scientific exchange with active participation on the annual EuroELSO congress and to have an ongoing exchange with the industry to communicate needs from the clinical as well as the industry side to support further improvements in the technology.

To achieve these aims the working group needs to gather experts from different specialities. Current members of the group are intensivists, pediatric intensivists, cardiovascular surgeons, perfusionists and engineers from multiple European countries.

The working group membership is totally free and without any payment by sponsor industries. The WG is endorsed by EuroELSO and supported by some Industries with unrestricted grants only for logistics, meetings’ expenses or for publishing costs.

An official meeting of the working group is held at the annual EuroELSO congress, the meeting can be joined by interested colleagues.

Obviously the “Innovation WG” cannot reach important results without the active involvement and participation of other colleagues from other European ECMO centres, for that reason the WG is glad and honoured to accept any suggestions for collaborations by other specialists.