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We’ve recently recruited Prof Johan Van Eldere of UZ Leuven university hospital in Belgium to join a panel on how best to partner at Strategies for University Hospitals, a forum on day 1 of HBI 2023. The day also looks at how best to partner with these huge organisations – the flagships of health care in Europe.
Van Eldere points to two big initiatives. First, we have EUCCAT, a new venture which brings together 10 of the largest university hospitals in Europe in the European University Alliance (EUHA) to launch their own gene therapies. “By pooling resources we will be able to conduct our own mass clinical trials on our own inventions. That means we can go through the valley of death of stage one trials and, I hope, launch treatments without the involvement of big pharma.”
Leuven University is also fascinating for its commercialism. Leuven Research and Development has created 150 spin offs from academia, many in healthcare, and has its own VC fund, which Van Eldere says has invested €100m itself. It is most unusual to come across such a fund in mainland Europe or in the UK, come to that!
The day includes a partnering workshop in which attendees are challenged to audit their own partnering potential as well as a presentation from Neil Wright, commercial director at Guys and St Thomas NHS Trust, one of the largest university hospitals in the UK. Click here to read an interview with Neil. And click here to see the new Strategies for University Hospital agenda and to book your tickets for HBI 2023.
