Public Private Partnerships
Get Together Event leads to valuable new contacts
Common ground for Life Sciences & Health SMEs and Health Foundations.
Providing new solutions and improving patients' lives is the aim of both innovative SMEs and the Dutch Health Foundations. However these two parties do not yet collaborate on a structural basis. Therefore Top Sector Life Sciences & Health and the Association of Dutch Health Foundations organised the first 'Get Together Event' between the two.
On 12 May almost seventy companies were present and took the opportunity to present their innovative solutions to twenty different Dutch health foundations. Innovations varied from personalised medicine, to serious gaming for revalidation purposes and new diagnostic instruments for use at home.
The main goal of this event was to bring the two parties together and let them make acquaintance with each other. Why? Because the Top Sector believes that realising innovative solutions for patients in the healthcare system can best be done together. In collaboration with the health foundations the Top Sector has therefore designated 15 million euro TKI allowance for new public-private partnerships. Chairman Rein Strijker even referred to the bringing together of these two parties as an 'historic moment'.
The programme started off with a plenary session in which both health foundations and companies presented their core business. Director of the Top Sector’s executive office, Nico van Meeteren, and director of the Association of Dutch Health Foundations, Tom Oostrom, presented some prejudices that both parties have. This was followed by six thematic round table sessions. At the end of these sessions the participants' main conclusion was that companies and health foundations have to get to know each other better and should learn a lot from one another (for example, development processes, patient perspective and national and international networks).
The day ended with almost 120 speed dates in which companies and health foundations spoke one-on-one to explore opportunities for cooperation. Business cards were exchanged and the first personal contacts were made.
Most participants favoured a follow-up of this event. The most important take-home message was the need to continue the conversion between industry and the health foundations. This will definitely be boosted by the 15 million euros of TKI allowance for public-private partnerships between SMEs and health foundations.
Are you interested in the funding opportunities that the Dutch Health Foundations and Top Sector LSH have to offer? Then please visit the Health~Holland website for the latest information on calls from the foundations and funding opportunities from Top Sector LSH.
Nico van Meeteren: 'Dutch Health Foundations and entrepreneurs explored new exciting options for cooperation: all to innovate products and services, primarily for patient’s vital functioning and, at the same time, for economic growth. Not just for this afternoon, but as a start of a process towards long-lasting of public private partnerships.'
