Health TIES: Healthcare – Technological Innovations and Economic Success

Health-TIES is an example of an EU-funded project that brings together business, academia and government in regional organisations to improve innovation in health care. Its aim was to maximise the impact of innovation and RTD on healthcare, and to stimulate joint science, education and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Health-TIES also aimed to accelerate the Healthcare Technology Innovation Cycle, connecting engineers and medical professionals, scientists and entrepreneurs, developers and end-users. Finally, it also engaged policy makers in developing the RTD agenda.

Aims of the project

The Health-TIES project was developed to better understand the environment and opportunities for translating medical research to patient benefit. The specific objectives were to: (1) develop indicators and indexes for assessing knowledge and innovation capital and the functioning of the innovation cycle; (2) identify key stakeholders and collect data to operationalise the proposed indicators and indexes; and (3) propose joint and regional actions to improve regional performance through benchmarking and mutual learning. A specific focus was placed on ageing populations and the sustainability of the health care system, having recognised that the existing health system was not fit for purpose with a growing and ageing population, and that this was a cross-border challenge requiring international collaboration. Health TIES was a transnational consortium comprising four top regions in biosciences, technology and entrepreneurship – Biocat (Catalonia), Medical Delta (West Netherlands), Oxford/Thames Valley (UK), Canton de Zurich (Switzerland), and a mentoring region szak-Alföld (Hungary). The project was coordinated by the team in the Netherlands and developed strong ties between the academic centres and surrounding cities.

Project achievements

The primary output from Health TIES was the ‘Health TIES Index’ – which provides fairly basic observational data across the range of areas relevant to the project. It has shown that there are huge gaps in how health service delivery is approached, and therefore that investment could be massively wasted. It points towards the need for a universal controller with oversight to adjust the current system, however determining who this should be and what they should represent, is challenging. The main mechanism for dissemination was presentation of the Health TIES paper at a conference.

A key outcome of the project was to share best practice between the HealthTIES regions in terms of innovation cycles, which helped to strengthen their competitiveness. The HealthTIES indicators and indexes therefore provided practical tools to measure and benchmark innovation from university-industry-government collaboration in different European settings.

Project impacts, barriers and enablers

The Health TIES project, in its aim to consider and support innovation in research and development, and in its benchmarking and comparison of different regions, was inherently interested in the broader impact of biomedical research, and how to maximise this impact beyond the primary objectives of research. It is likely that the project catalysed the creation of the Oxford Bioescalator (which is a biotech incubator that provides providing lab space and entrepreneurial support for high growth start-ups), and it is possible that it was relevant in catalysing the establishment of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology programme[1], with a focus on health.

Realising impact within the project was facilitated by engagement with patients and members of the public and raising awareness for the role that research plays in addressing existing societal challenges. From Oxford’s perspective the project had excellent engagement from the University and surrounding area, with a high level working group including representatives from the university, relevant health technology companies, and broader infrastructure. In terms of barriers to realising impact, while the project incorporated dissemination and engagement activities, there is still considerable room to improve targeted engagement with patients at innovation and adoption stages.

[1] EIT Health | European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) (europa.eu)