Nano4Health - Creating New Value Chains in “Nanotechnologies for Health” in Flanders

Submitted by Alina Danieles… on 18 June 2016

The goal of Nano4Health is to stimulate cross-sector innovation by creating an open learning and interactive environment to support the emerging industry of personalised healthcare applications at the cross roads of nano- and biotechnology through a value chain approach. By addressing the necessary policy support mechanisms for emerging industries at the crossroad of nano- and biotechnology for personalised care and cure, the Nano4Health ambition is fully in line with the general objective of the CIP call to facilitate the reshaping of existing industrial value chains and to create new value chains by capitalising on the transformational power of service innovation to stimulate cross-cutting technologies.

Information on the project Nano4Health Programme: Clusters and entrepreneurship in support of emerging industries Call identifier: CIP – EIP - GEN Project full name: Creating New Value Chains in “Nanotechnologies for Health” in Flanders Acronym: Nano4Health Duration: from 1 March 2014  till 30 June 2016

Consortium composition:

Participant No Participant Organisation Name Country       
1 (Coordinator)  Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship Belgium       
2 FlandersBIO Belgium       
3 FlandersDC Belgium       
4 DSP Valley Belgium     

Objectives: The core objective is to support entrepreneurship and cluster building in Flanders in the emerging industry of personalised healthcare. 

Sectoral/industrial focus: Nanotechnologies and biotechnologies in personalised healthcare applications

Executive Summary  Flanders has a long and successful tradition and track record in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry and is housing two world renowned strategic research centres in the domains of Life sciences (Flemish Institute of Biotechnology or VIB) and of micro-electronics (Institute   - IMEC) respectively. The growing life sciences hubs near the 5 universities house most of the biotech companies, research centres and bio-incubators, located on highly infrastructure sciences parks. Flanders houses over 146 life sciences companies with biotech activities. In these life sciences companies, over 13,000 employees are active. On the other hand, Flanders also has a world leading position in the development of micro/nanoelectronics technology platforms, used as key enabling technology (KET) for the development of smart electronic systems, with a special focus on health care and life sciences potentially leading to game changing solutions in terms of sustainable personalised healthcare.  The goal of Nano4Health is to stimulate cross-sector innovation by creating an open learning and interactive environment to support the emerging industry of personalised healthcare applications at the cross roads of nano- and biotechnology through a value chain approach.

The reality is that different players in these new value chains sometimes have the tendency to remain within their traditional boundaries for reasons of focus or because of other limiting factors that stand a cross-over in the way (regulatory, different payer systems, different development timelines…). The visionary entrepreneurs operating in this cross-over field need to be identified, supported and stimulated in their initiatives through a supportive policy aiming again at the next phase in scientific and industrial leadership By addressing the necessary policy support mechanisms for emerging industries at the crossroad of nano- and biotechnology for personalised care and cure, the Nano4Health ambition is fully in line with the general objective of the CIP call to facilitate the reshaping of existing industrial value chains and to create new value chains by capitalising on the transformational power of service innovation to stimulate cross-cutting technologies. The policy landscape in Flanders is going through changes. Generic frameworks need to be refined to support emerging industries at cross sectoral levels. Together with the Nano4Health consortium partners we aim for a sustainable approach to support the SME’s in an effective manner. We believe that the development of a structural collaboration model and a derived policy stimulating the development of a novel cross-over industry between life sciences and micro-electronics, can form the basis for the development of novel cross-over industries between other combinations of knowledge platforms.

Expected Results: The Nano4Health project works on 3 interactive levels: Developing a new Fast Track To Innovation (FTTI) programme for SME support, at the crossroads of nano-and biotechnology, ‘the Spider model’, where cluster organisations, creative industries and competence providers work together around specific needs of the companies.  Strengthening of the cluster organisations and (cross border) cross-sector collaboration Developing a cross sectoral policy model and defining the outlines of a large scale demonstrator     Events organized by the project:

Fast Track To Innovation Programme

Nano4Health is developing a systemic and interactive innovation approach – The N4H Fast Track to Innovation - enabling collaboration between stakeholders from different sectors and disciplines on specific, concrete challenges. 

The Fast Track to Innovation is divided into 3 phases:

  • Challenge phase: Through a call procedure project owners who are actively developing innovative products or services in the N4H domain are invited to participate in the N4H Fast Track to Innovation and to submit concrete challenges which they want to have solved by a ‘competence’ team. An international jury will select, based on the information submitted, maximum 5 project owners who can participate into the N4H Fast Track to Innovation.
  • Competence phase: Based on the information from the selected project owners and their challenges, the N4H team launches a request for competences to a broad range of competence providers. With this request, N4H invites competence providers to participate into the Fast Track to Innovation and to make a proposal on how they can help project owners to overcome their challenges. The proposals from the competence providers will be shared with the project owners to prepare the next phase.
  • Solution phase: During the solution phase N4H will organize 3 workshops to facilitate cooperation between project owners and competence providers. The objective of this solution phase is to deliver 3-5 documented value propositions which are supported by a multidisciplinary competence team and are ready for implementation.

During this solution phase a number of workshops will be organized:

  • A ‘Get acquainted’ workshop to launch the Innovation track. During this workshop project owners and competence providers can meet up and evaluate collaboration. The objective of this workshop is to form multi-disciplinary project teams which work throughout the Innovation track on solutions for the project owner’s challenges.
  • Follow-on meetings allow project teams to interact behind closed doors and discuss next steps. Cross fertilization and learning from peers are key to this follow on workshops.
  • Final meeting to present progress made during the Fast Track to Innovation and to set goals for the future.

The N4H team will tailor the different workshops to the needs of the different projects and will closely interact with the project owners during the different workshops. 

Collaboration will be catalysed by the Nano4Health Voucher scheme (6.500 Euro/voucher) and complementary financial support schemes available in the Flemish region (e.g. KMO-portefeuille. Project owners can apply for multiple N4H vouchers: one for each competence provider the project owner wants to involve in the Fast Track to innovation.

Coordinator contact details: Name: Lieve Apers         Organisation and position: Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Coordinator Contact Point Health Economics Address: Diestsepoort 6 – 31, 3000 Leuven      Phone number: +32 2 212 94 21 Email: lieve.apers [at] vlaio.be Website: www.nano4health.be