Already structured to conduct international efforts, the cluster is now expanding its missions focus towards its members. Atlanpole Biotherapies is the lead partner in a new European project, CE4BIG (Cluster Excellence for Business Innovation and Growth in the Health sector), the only Healthcare project among the 13 winning submissions, and which is being funded by the European Commission.
This recognition is the cumulative result of actions undertaken over many years, in particular through the highly visible profile of the cluster and its members at a number of benchmark European trade fairs such as BIO Europe, or EANM, to name just a few… and through a strong commitment, both within networks such as CEBR and towards European interclustering projects, which has been growing steadily over the last fifteen years. These projects aim to play a role in structuring the European Healthcare Sector and, ultimately, in helping businesses grow and develop their competitiveness in order to foster collaborative efforts with European partners.
Current projects include:
- CE4BIG (Cluster Excellence for Business Innovation and Growth in the health sector)
Coordinated by Atlanpole Biotherapies, the project brings together 3 partner clusters (BioM-Germany, BioWin-Belgium, Life Science Klaster Krakow-Poland) and aims to promote business growth and raise the innovation capacity of SMEs.
- Boost4Health,
Boost4Health has enabled businesses to access training programmes and networking initiatives while also providing support and advice for partner searches; it has distributed vouchers for initiating collaborations with other members of the Boost4Health network, conducting market surveys or for product validation. The project consortium comprises 10 partners from 6 different countries (United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain and France).
- Atlantic KET Med,
This project is designed to integrate key generic technologies into biomedical products, with a strong focus on medical devices. The consortium comprises 7 partners from a panel of 5 countries (Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Spain).
Earlier European projects with which Atlanpole Biotherapies was involved and that produced tangible results include Biomat-IN (from 2011 to 2015) which aimed to develop an innovation support network targeting over 250 SMEs in the biomaterials sector distributed over 4 EU regions; the TERM project, a European project coordinated by the cluster that brought together 13 European partners from the field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering; not forgetting the IN2LIFESCIENCES project that scaled up collaborative efforts between businesses and regional experts at partner clusters, that deployed over 30 cluster members between 2012 and 2014.
Outlooks:
The cluster is looking towards the future and has already committed to co-organising the 3rd edition of the Bioregate Forum (international forum of professionals in the regenerative medicine sector) in 2021 jointly with the Belgian BioWin cluster. The 2018 edition held in Nantes and co-organised by Atlanpole Biotherapies attracted 250 visitors from 14 different countries.
Atlanpole Biotherapies has also applied for the DIH (Digital Innovation Hub) programme initiated by the European Commission. Setting up local digital innovation clusters will allow SMEs to take full advantage of all the digital innovations on offer in order to help their products go upmarket, improve their processes, and redesign their business models to make the transition to digital technology. We’ll update you on the results in 2021!