Final Report Summary - HEALTH-2-MARKET (From Health Research to Market – Advanced Services and Training Actions for the IPR Management and Business Exploitation of the EU-funded Research Results in Health/life sciences)
Executive Summary:
Health-2-Market (www.health2market.eu; H2M) was a coordinating action funded by the EC that aimed at developing the Health researchers' entrepreneurial skills to support the market exploitation of their research results, via a portfolio of high-level services, training actions and tools in a variety of topics: IPR and asset management, entrepreneurship and business planning, launch of a successful start-up and knowledge transfer, etc. The project focused primarily on Health/life sciences researchers, but also achieved to address the needs of various relevant target groups (European Health research institutes, Technology Transfer Organizations, EU Health-related companies, entrepreneurs, Health / Life Sciences European networks, NCPs).
The main outcomes of H2M are:
- H2M trainings and curricula: 16 regional training seminars, 1 webinar and 7 highly intensive international business academies were provided free of charge for more than 600 participants in the frame of H2M, on various topics.
- E-training web-platform and e-learning courses: A valuable e-training web-platform was developed during H2M and is available for free on elearning.health2market.eu providing knowledge on a broad range of topics centred on bringing research results to the market. More than 400 active users already benefit from the H2M e-learning courses, which are also accessible through mobile devices via the free of charge H2M mobile app.
- H2M Advanced Services. A key offer of H2M was the provision of twenty free of charge, advanced, individually tailored commercialisation services to selected Health / Life Sciences research projects to assist researchers in bringing their R&D results a step further towards successful commercialisation.
- “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” Massive Open Online Course, available on Udemy: Based on the Entrepreneurship and Business Planning Venture Academy (hosted by the SKEMA Business School in the frame of H2M), a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was developed combining the curriculum of the academy and the H2M e-learning offering. The MOOC, with over 1,800 students already signed-up, is open to any researcher, coach and professional interested in grasping a better understanding of business development in the domain of Health / Life Sciences.
- H2M Innovation Guides: the “Step by step” guide on “Innovation Strategy in R&D projects” employs practical examples taken from real life scenarios to explain why and when an innovation strategy is required in R&D projects as well as how it should be developed and implemented. The guide “ARIaT- Horizon 2020 Annotated Research and Innovation actions Template” provides meaningful advice on how to adapt a Business Model to a Horizon 2020 proposal. With comments from innovation experts and R&D exploitation specialists, this guide specifically focuses on sections in which business aspects should be explained in more details. Both H2M Innovation Guides are available free of charge through the H2M web portal and app. They were downloaded more than 1000 times just in the first month after their publication.
- H2M Mobile Application: An attractive mobile app was developed in order to make H2M assets (e.g. e-learning courses, Innovation Guides, etc.) conveniently accessible on mobile devices (both iOS and Android). The application is available for download free of charge on Google Play and the Apple Store.
- Training Needs Analysis (TNA) open data and findings: Based upon several sources of information –including an online survey of 637 respondents- the TNA report provides suggestions with respect to the training concept and topics that would be most suitable for researchers willing to bring their R&D results closer to the market. Report and anonymised data can be accessed through the web portal of the project and open access via OpenAIRE – zenodo platform.
- Case studies: 19 case studies, both pedagogical and mini case studies employing real life examples were developed in the frame of H2M in order to enrich the training offering of the project.
- H2M Policy Brief: Lessons learnt and policy recommendations derived from H2M, were integrated into a concise policy brief, accessible on www.health2market.eu.
Project Context and Objectives:
“The European innovation system produces the best research results in the world. Unfortunately, we have had bad luck for decades and, thus, couldn’t turn research results into values to the same degree as the US...”
This paraphrases what 20 years ago was described as the European Paradox by the European Commission’s Green Paper on Innovation. However, it is not bad luck that is causing the “European Paradox”, but, among other things, compared to the US a fundamentally different importance placed on transferring technologies from research into industrial use.
Research exploitation activities play a crucial role in paving the way from lab to store-shelf. The Commission has accepted the task and addressed it with a continuous series of policies focussing on innovation and research. Most recently, the Innovation Union is one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, with over 30 action points, some of them aiming to remove obstacles to innovation – like expensive patenting, market fragmentation, slow standard-setting and skills shortages – which currently prevent ideas getting quickly to market. But in the end, it comes down to how researchers, companies and intermediaries cooperate and how successfully each of those countless research consortia can implement effective exploitation efforts into their projects.
The importance of exploitation or technology transfer has been stressed numerous times. Exploitation of research and its transformation into industrial innovation not only strengthens Europe’s global competitiveness and productivity in the long run, thus making us step by step a little less susceptible to low-cost competitors or helping us to live more resource sustainable and environmentally friendly. Innovation from research also fosters SMEs and supports regionally distributed economic development, since successful exploitation often helps strengthening the regional economy.
Unfortunately, neither the research community nor commercial actors could be easily influenced by political actions and policy. Particularly the public research system shows significant inertia to outside effort to change it.
Most of the reasons for this are not specific to research funded by European programs, but lie in the character and traditions of scientific work, its core values and beliefs, and its public character. For many decades the idea of commercializing one’s own research had a stale flavor to it. Applied research was considered science of a lesser degree; real scientists would work “l’art pour l’art”.
In this context, Health-2-Market was designed as a three-layer platform: Training and Advanced services intertwined by what we dubbed as the learning evidence base.
Learning Evidence Base – Because the target group –although specific– could not be treated as homogenous and because its needs were changing faster than literature or trainers’ perceptions, relevant evidence (success cases, researchers needs, preferences and behaviours, training insights) were collected and analysed through market research (survey, interviews, focus group). The evidence base and resulting insights were used throughout the project for continuous improvement, validation, and conclusively as a mean for project sustainability. They were also used in e-learning courses developed by the project. It also allowed delivery of an efficient blend of innovative means, simplified yet educative content, standardize-able yet fully tailor-made services, and all that under a validated and sustainable programme.
Training – The training activities were designed with a multimodal approach: Case-based learning, Web (e-learning) courses for broader audience, one to two-day workshops on specific topics and advanced training courses (week-long highly intensive training ‘Academies’). Topic selection varied from Intellectual Property Rights and intellectual asset management, ways of technology transfer, certification, legal framework, etc. to opportunity spotting (business awareness), business planning, commercialization and ethics.
Advanced Services – Health-2-Market advanced services included hands-on support, counselling, coaching and advice and escalated to address the different needs of the potential target groups as well as offered under different settings and contexts (i.e. both through face-2-face / personalised consulting services as well as through respective services offered on-line (e.g. Helpdesk)). Overall, the provided services were targeted to address requests for support in the following innovation management topics: IPR and asset management, certification issues, legal issues, negotiation techniques, formulation of concrete business and exploitation plans, preparation for the launch of successful new ventures as well as on demand, case specific, and knowledge transfers.
More specifically, Health-2-Market addressed the following objectives:
Objective 1: Perform definition of End Users (Health/ Life Science researchers) and analysis of their needs, refine and validate outcomes in order to set up the conceptual framework for the Health-2-Market training programme.
Objective 2: Define and develop in detail the Health-2-Market training programme, its planning and training material for different contexts and settings.
Objective 3: Set up and deploy the project e-learning training facility (Health-2-Market e-infrastructure). Define the training concept and curriculum, adapt the material into e-learning modules, deploy web-base courses and provide an on-line helpdesk to End Users.
Objective 4: Deployment of regional and European training actions (15 topic-specific one to two day seminars and 7 week-long highly intensive training academies).
Objective 5: Set up and deploy the Health-2-Market Advanced Services.
Objective 6: Reassure proper dissemination of project activities and results – Facilitate post project exploitation and sustainability of the knowledge, the know-how and the assets created – Contribute to innovation policy.
In addition, the project involved and interacted with key intermediaries and decision makers in several levels of research & innovation policy in health (e.g. micro / organisational and macro level). The goal of this interaction was to set-up reciprocal mechanisms of exchanging ideas, experiences and views with key intermediaries and stakeholders, such as: (i) those that support Health researchers in the innovation and valorisation of their research results (e.g. staff of technology transfer offices); (ii) those that defined strategies, knowledge transfer policies and innovation support mechanisms at the organisational level (e.g. university / health institutes management, etc.); and (iii) innovation agents & decision makers affecting regional, national or European research & innovation policies in Health.
With respect to geographical coverage Health-2-Market addressed all EU Member States and Associated countries both through its broad partnerships as well as by adopting a regional, rather than a national approach (to maximise and combine geographical coverage with network’s managerial flexibility, efficiency and optimisation of the use of resources). Furthermore, the project complemented existing networks and services already available at European level such as the Enterprise Europe Network, the Fit for Health Network, the Health NCP network as well as other health-related initiatives, such as the Health Competence platform, etc.
Project Results:
Objective 1: Perform definition of End Users (Health/ Life Science researchers) and analysis of their needs, refine and validate outcomes in order to set up the conceptual framework for the Health-2-Market training programme
Result 1. Training Needs Analysis
The Health2market consortium conducted Training Needs Analysis (TNA) in order to adequately orient the support activities of the project towards fostering the development of an innovation and entrepreneurial mindset amongst health/life science researchers. The principal objective of the analysis was to determine the actual knowledge and skills of the researchers in terms of commercial exploitation of research results as well as to shed ample light on their training needs in order to overcome their knowledge/skills gap and any relevant perceived obstacles and risks.
The TNA was built upon 4 complementary sources of information:
• A bibliographic analysis of 22 relevant documents / studies.
• In-depth, phone / face-to-face interviews with 26 selected experts (including researchers, entrepreneurs, technology transfer officers, etc.).
• An online survey targeted at Health / Life Sciences researchers who have been involved in EU projects, which collected 637 completed responses.
• Two roundtable discussions which brought together experts in Health / Life Sciences research and commercialisation support (including researchers, entrepreneurs, technology transfer officers, Health National Contact Points (NCPs), Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) experts, etc.).
The combination of the abovementioned sources in a comprehensive approach to analyse the training needs of Health / Life Sciences researchers produced a wealth of valuable data and meaningful findings which were summarised in a dedicated report that served as a solid basis for the design and specification of the Health-2-Market training offer, focusing on the different target groups and their needs.
Indeed, the analysis concluded on these main needs in order to tackle the lack of knowledge of health researchers regarding entrepreneurship/ utilisation of research results:
• Financial and market analysis aspects
• Business Plan construction
• Intellectual Property Rights (for less experienced target groups)
• Mentoring
• Networking and contacts to experts (venture capitalists, IPR experts, etc.)
• Practical training
The Training Needs Analysis concluded that an important training element should be “to change the mind-set” of the researchers in order to make them perceptive to commercial exploitation activities and to give them an “outcome orientation” with regards to financial aspects.
The Training Needs Analysis can be found via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/H2M_D13_Training_Needs_Analysis_public.pdf
It has already been downloaded 448 times (30/10/2015).
In order to allow other specialists to benefit from these project’s results, and following the consultation and encouragement of the European Commission, open access has been provided to the anonymous statistical data of Training Need Analysis, via Zenodo, the repository of OpenAIRE managed by CERN:
• HEALTH-2-MARKET Dataset is available at https://zenodo.org/record/31270
• HEALTH-2-MARKET survey questionnaire is available at: https://zenodo.org/record/31272
Objective 2: Define and develop in detail the Health-2-Market training programme, its planning and training material for different contexts and settings.
Result 2. The Health-2-Market Training Programme
Based on the Training Needs Analysis, the Health-2-Market training programme was detailed and took into account all required specifications for the actual modules/ topics that were offered as well as the plan for their deployment. It was concluded that the most efficient training offer should contain the following elements:
• Academies: weeklong training courses on specific topics at the location of the three Business Schools involved in the project in order to ensure a wide geographical coverage along with the possibility to offer services of specialist trainers and successful entrepreneurs
• Seminars: in-depth courses on expertise topics during one to two days all over Europe, open to a large group of beneficiaries, as well as one webinar with online discussion amongst researchers, entrepreneurs and other beneficiaries
• E-learning courses: free online access to material specifically developed for a wide panel of users and based on face-to face training courses, as well as additional material such as case studies, exercises/quizzes and a highly valuable Massive Open online Course (MOOC) (See Results 3, 4 and 6)
• Advanced Services: personalized expert consultancy support for specific analysis offered to selected high-potential cases (See Result 10)
More specifically for academies and seminars:
Academies
The Curriculum and material were developed for the topic-specific academies.
Curricula and training material were developed and utilized in the 7 highly intensive, week-long academies held in the frame of the Health-2-Market project on the following topics:
• Intellectual Property, Ethics, and the Utilization of Academic Research in Health / Life Sciences (organised and taught by the University of Gothenburg).
• Entrepreneurship and Business Planning in Health / Life Sciences (organised and taught by SKEMA Business School).
• New Venture Creation and Marketing in Health / Life Sciences (organised and taught by IE University).
The primary target group were Health / Life Sciences researchers. However, potential entrepreneurs as well as individuals that support and coach entrepreneurial ventures (e.g. technology transfer office, incubator and accelerator staff) in other scientific fields and sectors especially those with healthcare applications (e.g. nanotechnology, ICT, etc.) could also find great value in these trainings.
The training curricula is summarised in the document “curriculum for highly intensive academies”, available via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D2.3_Curriculum_for_highly_intensive_academies.pdf.
Testimonials collected after the different courses confirmed the high attractivity of the academies to the participants: “I was able to develop a mini business plan and to learn what entitles a market study. Such introduction into the entrepreneurship world was very exciting for me and encouraged me greatly to further develop the application of my project.”
Training seminars
Curricula and training material were developed and utilized in the frame of the 17 Health-2-Market seminars/webinars focusing on a wide range of specific topics with regard to the process of entrepreneurship in the Health / Life Sciences sector as well as to relevant challenges. In particular, Health-2-Market training curricula and respective material for the seminars covered the following topics:
• Introduction to Knowledge-Based Business (developed and taught by UGOT).
• Intellectual Property Management & Open Innovation in Health / Life Sciences (developed and taught by UGOT).
• Essentials of Negotiation Behaviour (developed and taught by SKEMA Business School).
• Marketing of Innovation & Effectual Entrepreneurship (developed and taught by SKEMA Business School).
• Cutting-Edge Decision Making Tools for Entrepreneurs (developed and taught by IE).
• Marketing for Innovative Products in Health/Life Sciences (developed and taught by IE).
• Identifying Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Understanding Modes of Financing (developed and taught by IE).
• Access to Risk Finance in the 2014-2020 EU Funding Programmes (webinar)
Most of the training material for academies and seminars was created by the Business School partners outside the frame of Health-2-Market. Within the context of the project, they developed the curriculum for their respective academies/seminars, assembled and adapted the aforementioned material in order to fit the specific target groups of this Health-2-Market training activity.
The training curricula is summarised in the document “curriculum for topic-specific seminars”, available via the following link http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D2.2_Curriculum_for_topic-specific_seminars.pdf.
Result 3. Case studies
A total of 19 case studies were developed in the frame of Health-2-Market in order to support “theoretical” teaching of the specific training topics covered by the project's training academies and seminars as well as its e-learning programme. This asset encompasses pedagogical as well as mini case studies which employ actual case examples that training participants can easily identify with, illustrating the different steps of commercialization activities with a focus on health/life sciences related subjects. Five different topics were covered:
• Marketing of Innovative Products in Health/Life Sciences
• Intellectual Property Management and Open Innovation in Health/Life Sciences
• Identifying entrepreneurial opportunities and understanding modes of financing in the field of Health/Life Sciences
• Cutting Edge Decision Making Tools for Entrepreneurs
• Entrepreneurship & Business Planning
In addition, open access case studies were made available to users via the online project platform.
Feedback from training participants confirmed the attractiveness of such concrete case examples which helped them visualize theoretical background and identify themselves with case examples: “After the two-day seminar I know how I can offer my invention and to who I can offer it. This is a very important starting point to build a well-defined business model and plan because I'm well focused.”
The case studies are available via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D2.4_Set_of_case_studies_H2M.pdf
Objective 3: Set up and deploy the project e-learning training facility (Health-2-Market e-infrastructure). Define the training concept and curriculum, adapt the material into e-learning modules, deploy web-base courses and provide an on-line helpdesk to End Users.
Result 4. e-training course
The Health-2-Market e-training web-platform provided prospective trainees with access to e-learning courses on a broad range of topics revolving around the following thematic areas:
• Business ventures and marketing (author: IE University).
• Entrepreneurship and business planning (author: SKEMA Business School).
• Intellectual property and ethics (author: University of Gothenburg).
Each e-learning course consists of a mix among presentation(s) and supporting documents and tools (e.g. case studies developed by Health-2-Market partners, webinars, quizzes, etc.) which along with a helpdesk as well as section with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) constitute the Health-2-Market e-training infrastructure.
Over the period more than 400 active users (Researchers in the health, life science field interested to start their own business as well as all other people involved in life science research (e.g. technology transfer officers, incubators staff, etc.)) have benefitted from the Health-2-Market e- training services. This sustainable platform remains open for 5 years after the project completion in order to allow access to users.
The training curricula is summarised in the document “e-training curriculum concept”, available via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D31_e-training_curriculum_concept_submit.pdf.
The definition of the e-learning infrastructure is available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D32_Definition_of_e-learning_infrastructure_submitted.pdf
E-learning course is available via the following link: http://elearning.health2market.eu/
Result 5. Mobile application
In order to provide even larger access to our course as well as widening the target audience, a comprehensive mobile application compiles Health-2-Market project results and e-training courses, making them accessible free-of-charge on mobile devices (e.g. smart phones, tablets, etc.) which run on both IOS and Android. In particular, prospective users can easily navigate through five tabs to find out more about news and events in the health business field, as well as read all documents uploaded on the Health-2-Market web portal, including the project’s main results, visually presented through graphs and statistics. Users are also able to conveniently follow Health-2-Market e-learning courses.
The mobile application has proved high acceptance among users who appreciated both the informative and educative character of the tool. Up to now (30/10/2015), 62 downloads have been conducted.
The app can be download free of charge from Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.useappility.H2M) or App store (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/).
Result 6. MOOC “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit”
With a view to disseminating the educational and training benefits of the Entrepreneurship and Business Planning Venture Academy (hosted by SKEMA) and translating the training offer into a sustainable asset open to a Europe-wide audience, a free of charge Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) https://www.udemy.com/entrepreneurial-mindset-and-toolkit/ was developed combining the curricula of the respective Health-2-Market training academy and e-learning content.
In particular, the MOOC provides an integrated and systemic toolkit that SKEMA Business School has tested on many projects over the past 15 years in postgraduate and executive programs, which includes:
• Building the scope of the project with ISMA 360.
• Business model design.
• The business plan.
• Financial objectives.
• Business plan pitching.
In order to deliver this toolkit in the best way possible, the MOOC titled “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” consists of several hours of video and supporting slides that allow the virtual student to gain valuable knowledge on the topics addressed (i.e. over 34 lectures and 3 hours of content). Additionally, each video is followed by a set of questions allowing the students to test their competences and finally evaluate (i.e. via self-assessment) whether they are ready to pitch their idea to investors.
This highly innovative asset has particular sustainable value. Almost 1 800 students have already registered for this MOOC from all over Europe within three months of its opening.
Result 7. Helpdesk
Finally, the deployment of the Helpdesk function was an integral part of the Health-2-Market e-infrastructure and provided a supportive function. The objective of the Helpdesk was to deliver tailored support related to intellectual assets management, entrepreneurship, business planning, new venture creation, fundraising and other issues related to valorisation of the research results. The target group for helpdesk’s activities were the researchers prone to commercialisation of their research results. The service was provided free of charge and was available to everyone interested. The service was accessible online via the main project’s web page (www.health2market.eu/ask_the_expert). This service was provided continuously throughout the project by UGOT as activity coordinator with support from other partners. A large part of questions and inquiries of researchers/entrepreneurs were however directly discussed during face-to-face courses or in its follow-up by the training experts, and allowed to benefit from the expert advice and personal experience. .
The results of helpdesk are summarised in the document “Report on helpdesk operation”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D3.4%20Report%20on%20Helpdesk%20operation.pdf
Objective 4: Deployment of regional and European training actions (15 topic-specific one to two day seminars and 7 week-long highly intensive training academies).
Result 8: 16 training seminars and 1 webinar (500+ participants)
The purpose of seminars was to provide high quality, topic-specific and accessible trainings tailored to health researchers’ needs. As a result, experts from the business schools of the project (SKEMA, UGOT, IE) and innovation consultants delivered the trainings covering specific topics focused on health, and directly addressed the commercial exploitation of research results. With this approach, and differently from academies, the seminars were designed to last one to two days, providing a short but highly intensive training with a balanced mix of theory and practice based on regional and national needs and focused on specific topics. They were a successful platform to access in-depth theoretical knowledge, as well as to discuss concrete cases and to learn also from external experts from the field.
In total 16 seminars were organised during the project from September 2013 to July 2015 throughout Europe in order to allow wide-spread access: Sweden, Spain, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Cyprus, Italy, United Kingdom, Portugal, Poland. The total number of participants in face-to-face seminars, as well as a webinar reached 512. This high interest in the training actions has shown the value of such programme to health/life sciences researchers and young entrepreneurs.
In order to assess the quality of seminars delivered, a feedback form was also elaborated by partners and then distributed to participants at the end of each seminar. Through these questionnaires, information related to what participants appreciated in seminars performed were collected.
Specifically, participants gave a positive feedback on the content and methodology of the trainings delivered and relating to the high quality profile of teachers involved. Networking opportunities as well as the training method based on teamwork practical cases studies were also greatly appreciated by participants.
The training seminars results are summarised in the document “Report about seminars”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D4%202%20Report%20about%20seminars_Final%20version.pdf
Result 9: 7 weekly-long Academies (130+ participants)
The aim was to organize intensive training, “academies” or “camps” for Health/Life science researchers from different EU countries. During the academies the researchers were given advanced one-week-long training where they acquired knowledge and skills required for further valorisation of their health research projects.
The project’s partners organised 7 training academies, starting from September 2013. In total, the academies were conducted in four European countries and attracted more than 130 participants with concrete commercialisation cases.
The pilot academy took place in September 2013 in France to test and validate the curricula as well as materials needed and processes involved. After that, several lesson-learnt were taken into consideration for the organization of future trainings.
The academies covered three key innovation-related areas:
• Entrepreneurship and Business Planning (IE)
• Intellectual Property, Ethics and Utilization of Academic Research in Health/Life Sciences (UGOT)
• New Venture Creation and Marketing in Health/Life Sciences (SKEMA)
The Academies were held in Sweden, Spain, France and Italy. The qualitative approach privileged small training groups to allow personal advice and work on individual cases, as well as direct exchange of beneficiaries with trainers and experts. In some cases external experts, coming from academia as well as industry, contributed with high-level expertise on specific elements of the training programme and provided a practical approach to the trainings. In regard to the training method, the academies were characterised by a mixed approach of theory and practice that included simulations of business games and work on case studies specifically related to health cases.
Feedbacks from participants were highly positive: “The Health-2-Market training was the chance to seriously confront our project to the reality of business. Very often we forget to ask ourselves the essential questions regarding business development... Or maybe we don't really want to face the reality. By focusing on the necessity to be "customer oriented", it reminded us all the business development basis: what is my value proposition, what are my clients, how can I catch them, etc. I'd say that the Health-2-Market training was a great opportunity to step back and redirect our project on the right way to avoid a crash!”
The academies results are summarised in the document “Report about academies”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D4%203%20Report%20about%20academies_VFinal.pdf
Objective 5: Set up and deploy the Health-2-Market Advanced Services
Result 10. Health-2-Market Advanced Services: Case outcomes and knowledge gained
In the framework of the Health-2-Market project a total of 20 advanced, individually tailored commercialization support services were provided free-of-charge, to selected health research projects. The aim was to help researchers bring their business ideas and research results a definitive step closer towards successful valorisation. All advanced services were delivered by experts of the project consortium and by design, covered different phases in the process of commercialization. In particular these advanced services encompassed:
• Application Mapping.
• Patent Evaluation.
• Market Analysis.
• Business plan formulation.
• Business plan evaluation.
• European legislation, standardization and certification issues related to medical technology.
• Support in obtaining further EU funds.
• Access to finance.
The projects partners wanted to deliver a significant impact and benefit to the largest possible audience, either by addressing and involving people directly or through a domino-effect, which passes the results and new information forward. In order to fulfil this objective, the Health-2-Market project partners designed and published a downloadable, free of charge practical how-to guidebook to explain why and when an innovation strategy is required in R&D projects, how it should be developed and implemented, with an emphasis on how to bring results to market (Result 14). The guidebook is a practical “how-to-do” guide to support R&D projects practitioners (either working on collaborative projects or on the projects internal to the company) to bring research results to market. Concrete, real life examples are provided to illustrate each topic. These examples were developed throughout the Health-2-Market project, including the Advanced Services, and are therefore related to health sciences.
Because of the highly confidential nature of the services, no public report are available; however, methodology and advices are presented in the “How to do” step by step guide: innovation strategy in R&D projects (result 14).
Objective 6: Reassure proper dissemination of project activities and results – Facilitate post project exploitation and sustainability of the knowledge, the know-how and the assets created – Contribute to innovation policy.
Result 11. Health-2-Market web portal
The project web-portal (www.health2market.eu) acting as the Health-2-Market virtual engine for dissemination constitutes a dynamic information and communication tool promoting project activities and knowledge to the EU and beyond. It provides public access to key Health-2-Market assets (e.g. “how-to-do” guide), valuable information and web resources, health related news, information, links and news stemming from Health-2-Market activities as well as from similar Coordination and Support Actions, information on Horizon 2020 Health as well as other useful links, reports, presentations, etc.
The web-portal was also the ideal tool for online registration to the project’s training events. In addition, access to the e-learning courses is provided via the web platform after users registration.
Statistics have shown that the Health-2-Market web-portal and its content has been visualised 104 277 times throughout the project course, giving access to 19 121 users to its informative content.
Result 12. Health-2-Market communication database
A substantial database containing over 2.500 contact details (i.e. e-mail addresses) of a wide range of Health / Life Sciences actors (e.g. researchers, technology transfer actors, entrepreneurs, etc.) across the EU formed and utilised for the purposes of Health-2-Market activities (e.g. online survey, promotion of Health-2-Market training events, etc.) was developed. It was initially based on a database of health professionals that had received – or applied to - FP-7 funding support, thanks to the communication done by the European Commission for the execution of the Training Needs Analysis conducted at the beginning of Health-2-Market. Many of these contacts confirmed their interest in the project activities and offer. The database was completed by subscribers to the newsletter, e-training and courses participants, various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions etc. This knowledge-base was essential for the dissemination of the Health-2-Market project to potential beneficiaries all over EU.
Result 13. Policy development and health initiatives with recommended courses of actions
The Health-2-Market policy brief is a concise document which was elaborated based on lessons learnt and policy recommendations derived from the Health-2-Market project and its multifaceted activities throughout its 3-year duration. It elaborates on the challenges and drivers for entrepreneurship and exploitation of research results as identified through supporting health/life sciences researchers and start-ups in the frame of the project and concludes on recommendations on how to improve entrepreneurship in the field of Health / Life Sciences and on how to support the exploitation of promising research results.
The policy brief targets European, national and regional policy makers in the field of Health / Life Sciences involved in the design, implementation and funding of initiatives and programmes aimed at supporting the translation of R&D results into novel products and/or services as well as university management executives and technology transfer offices across Europe.
Main findings of the policy brief can be summarised as follows:
• The European level is already implementing new measures to support the exploitation of research results and it is hopeful that it will bear fruits in the near future. However, implemented measures could go even further by providing specific exploitation support to funded collaborative projects performing well on their exploitation plan.
• At national and regional level, policy makers should address the mind-set of academic researchers to try to make them more business oriented with undergraduate courses for example or by providing more support and possibility for open access e-learning resources. They should also be extremely strict in their selection of young SMEs/startups to support in order to increase their efficacy and support the most promising ones.
• Universities can also play a role in the mind-set change of researchers by integrating entrepreneurship courses in PhD curricula and by supporting their research staff in training for strategic management of innovation. Academic’s systems could also provide incentives and actively support creation of startups with some time-off from “active duty”, positive support and an easy way back into academia if their startup failed.
• Finally, technology transfer offices and other support organisations need to provide tailor-made services to health researchers, especially regarding legislation/ regulation issues. They could also provide opportunities to match researchers with people from the business side. This includes people a researcher can team up with in order to create a venture.
The policy recommendations are summarised in the document “Report on policy”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/H2M_D6%204%20Report%20on%20policy_Final.pdf
Result 14. “How to do” step by step guide: innovation strategy in R&D projects
The need for such a step-by-step “How to do” guide was expressed by the participants of Health-2-Market activities, as it is not enough to start thinking about innovation strategy and exploitation roots at the end of an R&D project, in fact the process should be understood from the early stage of work. With the contribution of 19 project experts from all over Europe, the Health-2-Market team designed the “How to do” guidebook to explain why and when the innovation strategy is required in R&D projects, and how it should be developed and implemented. The “How to do” guidebook consists of five independent chapters:
• Key aspects of innovation strategy
• Innovation strategy preparation
• Innovation strategy implementation: Step by step “how to do” guide (Commercialization routes and business models, Intellectual Assets and Intellectual Property, Business Plan, Marketing Strategy, Financing, EU legislation, standardization and certification issues)
• Innovation strategy follow up and evaluation
Concrete, real life examples are provided to illustrate each topic, along with most FAQ, important points to remember and other learning tools. The guide is relevant to R&D practitioners working either on collaborative R&D projects – in health, but also in other areas -, or in company internal projects, and aiming to bring research results to market.
The “How to do” step by step guide has already been downloaded 387 times and is available at http://www.health2market.eu/results/step-by-step-guide
Feedbacks received included : “I’m very grateful for the very valuable and well-structured recommendations that have been presented in the guide.”
And: “I consider your guides and support tools very precious and valuable not only for researchers but also for company managers whether they are exploring possibilities to join European research projects or just having reflection on their current innovation strategies. I very much congratulate yourself and the partners of Health-2-Market project for producing these excellent reports and guides. I specially appreciate the “Innovation Strategy in R&D projects” guide which is not only inspiring but extremely well presented in an easy-to-read lay-out!”
Result 15. ARIaT-Horizon 2020 Annotated Research and Innovation actions Template
The “ARIaT-Horizon 2020 Annotated Research and Innovation action Template” guidebook aims to assist applicants to the Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) and Innovation Actions (IA) of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for 2014 – 2020 to better understand the requirements of the templates and better write innovation-related issues.
A successful project proposal needs to speakout convincingly to a broad readership encompassing experts from a wide range of fields. While the scientific/technical soundness of a proposal is central to its ultimate success, it is also essential that the problems to be addressed, opportunities to be exploited, and results to be achieved are clear and understandable to all readers, specifically to H2020 Evaluators! Moreover, the linkage between results to be achieved and their relevance for European policy orientations should be clear, as well as the economic opportunities they will provide for citizens. The “ARIaT” guidebook has been structured to guide project formulators in presenting information required especially by the criteria of excellence (criterion 1) and impact (criterion 2).
Authors are experts dealing with H2020 proposals, innovation, exploitation of R&D results, and generally with entrepreneurship and business development on day-to-day basis. Their recommendations are indicated in the document as “Expert recommendations” and also include feedback collected from evaluators of H2020 proposals.
An NCP has already given the feedback: “I would like to congratulate you on the excellent annotated template for innovation activities that you currently published: this is really excellent work!!! I did already get some first response from the community, so more than helpful for the researchers!”
The annotated template has been already downloaded 1 180 times and is available at http://www.health2market.eu/results/h2020-annotated-template
Result 16. Final conference: Tools to valorise research – 1 day to follow the road from research to market – 89 participants
The full day, market-oriented event had the purpose to present, discuss and share good practices and experience on how to exploit R&D results and bring research to the market. Project partners, as well as policymakers, Health specialists from public and private sector, and innovation support organizations highlighted through three different sessions –IPR, Entrepreneurship and business planning, Marketing in Health/Life Sciences-, the crucial elements to be taken into account during this process. In addition, the outcomes and tools of the Health-2-Market project were outlined by the project partners (Annotated template for Horizon 2020 proposals, Health-2-Market smartphone application, How-to-do guidebook on innovation strategy in R&D projects).
In the second part of the conference, a speed dating “Ask the experts” session was organized with the aim to provide high quality information and support to participants in health &business related topics. Through these scheduled B2B, 20 experts with a background in business, health sector, IPR, marketing and funding covered 11 topics of interest (IPR strategy, licensing strategy, entrepreneurship, how to finance your project/start up, how to meet VC, How to capture big pharmaceutical interest, marketing strategy, medical devices certification, management system’ certification, the use of web tools and social network for marketing purposes).
The event gathered 89 participants with a very wide and heterogeneous nature (academia, research centre staff, health specialists from the public and the private sector, innovation support organizations, start ups, SMEs, Big pharmas...).
Potential Impact:
Impact
The project was well perceived by the health/life science researcher community and many participants in the activities expressed their high satisfaction with the training or services they have received. They will be able to use their new knowledge or the results of the support service in their entrepreneurial endeavor.
The expected impacts of the project, planned at the time of the project start, were the following:
• Strengthen entrepreneurial mind-set & innovation spirit of health researchers.
• Promote innovation in Health care and support innovation Union Flagship Initiative.
• Contribute to an increase innovation culture in all member States.
These impacts have been achieved. During the project activities, several thousand health and life sciences researchers were reached through the regular project’s newsletter and several hundred participated in the project’s activities namely academies and training seminars, advanced services and e-learning courses. These participants definitely strengthened their entrepreneurial mind-set and innovation spirit. Furthermore, some of the outcomes of the project such as the annotated template ARIaT and the “How-to-do” guidebook have already received praises from the community as they support innovation in Health care and contribute to an increase innovation culture in all member states.
To further promote innovation in Health care, policy recommendations were formulated for European, national and regional policy makers as well as for universities and support organisations. They are presented below:
Recommendations to European policy makers
The change of non-exploitation and pure-science culture in many research organizations will most likely take many years to happen. Also, some of the traits of public administration will not go away anytime soon. And particularly universities’ focus on education and excellent research is actually in dire need in a society so dependent on new knowledge than ours.
Other needs, namely the one asking for more or other sorts of funding for exploitation efforts, have already started to being addressed. Horizon 2020 offers more and better tools to support even later-stage exploitation via e.g. the SME or the FTI instruments. Furthermore, the Horizon 2020 programme also emphasizes the importance of innovation and exploitation with notably a critical impact section in the evaluation of Innovation Actions and Research and Innovation Actions proposals where applicants need to clearly define their expected impacts .
Fortunately, there are a number of needs that can be addressed by supplying researchers and research consortia interested in exploitation of their research with professional advice and support. Not many programs address this problem yet: some instruments like the SME instrument of Horizon 2020 call for the involvement of a business consultant and pay for it. Yet, with professional exploitation support, a number of very concrete needs, which are available to short- and midterm measures, could be successfully addressed, such as:
• Exploitation Risk Analysis
• Brokerage and pitching events
• Exploitation Strategy Seminars
• Business Plan Development
Therefore, the Health-2-Market partners have noticed that support at European level is more exploitation oriented than previously. They totally support this shift in the “right” direction and further emphasize this with their recommendations to continue to:
• Give grants that are contingent on business-related objectives;
• Reinforce support of innovation actions;
• Provide specific exploitation support to funded collaborative projects performing well on their exploitation plan;
• Align research priorities with the market needs.
More specifically related to the implementation of Health-2-Market project, hundreds of organizations from European funded projects (FP7, H2020) were contacted several times over 3-years with free of charge offers of trainings and support services. It was unfortunate to notice that among these only a handful participated in the activities, demonstrating a very low interest (or awareness?) for the exploitation of their research results. Further discussions with some participants in FP7 projects shows the following (informal) feedback: (1) large industrial firms have resources to implement the exploitation efforts and do not need exploitation support; (2) SMEs with experienced staff believe that they know the exploitation routes better than anyone and they might be interested to get a very specific exploitation support from a specialist with in-depth knowledge of their sector; (3) researchers in many cases are willing to do research and are less interested in exploitation activities; (4) startups issued from the EU-funded projects are open to advice but their number is quite limited. As a result, there is a discrepancy between the European Commission efforts to provide the EC-funded projects with exploitation support, and capacity to absorb such support. Interestingly, many participants who took part in the Health-2-Market trainings did not originate from European funded projects. It is therefore advisable to be extremely careful when targeting solely exploitation support for European funded projects.
The recommendation “Provide specific exploitation support to funded collaborative projects performing well on their exploitation plan” requires particular attention and perhaps a study from the European Commission. Such support might be an incentive for the participants in the EU-funded projects to start exploitation activities earlier and to increase success and openness to external specialised advice. Options could be, for example, to allow (small) project extension, focusing on exploitation, to those performing exploitation activities well; to provide “vouchers” allowing purchase of exploitation support for this extension from very specialised exploitation providers, etc.
Recommendations to National and/or Regional policy makers
National and regional policy makers have a key role to play in the exploitation of research results. They already support technology transfer offices, universities and business schools, incubators, young SMEs, clusters, etc. The list is not endless but it is very large.
The first item they should address is the own mind-set of academic researchers who are not business oriented. However, it is difficult to change someone’s mind-set and it is easier to instil a business mind-set in younger people. There is a need to prepare future health scientists to the ambidexterity of exploring and exploiting opportunities. One way to do that is to include a mandatory teaching at undergraduate levels about entrepreneurial mind-set for exploring opportunities and capture value through business venturing.
Policy makers should also provide more support and possibility for open access e-learning resources and may give more visibility to the existing sources. A well informed and connected academic community will have a cascade effect on the entire region, indirectly benefitting also the whole country. It is important to offer locally specialised e-learning courses, which could also spread information on the existing local ecosystem. At a national level, the scope should be widened, so as to enlarge the amount of information to the nation-wide academic community, as well as the national market and funding opportunities.
National and regional policy maker should also be extremely strict in their selection of young SMEs/startups to support and how to support them. One way to do that would be to implement “crash test” sessions to validate the relevance and solidity of business models and BP of entrepreneurial projects. Such “crash test” could be a prerequisite to the allowance of public funding or public support. In so doing, policy makers would substantially save time in helping entrepreneurs to quickly allocate the right efforts to the right topics, thus leverage the survival rate of incubated projects and accelerate the growth of new ventures. Another way could be to organise innovation fairs where big pharmas and SMEs could meet.
Finally, many startups experienced a valley of death when they don’t have enough money to continue their technology development into a marketable product. They are past the seed investments and prior to growth capital. There is a strong need to bridge this valley of death and national and regional policy makers should strongly support bridge financing.
Recommendations for universities
In most academic’s systems, researchers are evaluated and promoted almost exclusively through their scientific achievements such as their number of scientific publications. For the past few years, their number of patents may also have been taken into account for their promotion; however, a patent is not the exploitation of research results, it is even an expense for the university. It is neither conductive of a change of mind-set (as mentioned above) neither conductive of an increase exploitation of research results. To remedy it, academic systems could adopt an incentives’ system that acknowledges successful exploitation in the same way that it acknowledges successful research. This requires the recognition that innovation is at least as difficult as research in terms of achieving results.
In the same line of thoughts, researchers could be trained to the essentials of strategic management of innovation (i.e. using innovation to achieve strategic objectives: new market opening, differentiation from existing solutions, price-competitiveness) using examples of success stories and failures but also via “startup coaching” experimentation where researchers would use their knowledge to coach other researchers. Teaching business modelling and business planning through action learning is key. Furthermore, entrepreneurship courses could be integrated with more depth in PhD curricula.
Finally, academic’s systems could provide incentives and actively support the creation of startups. This could be done with ways for researchers to have some time-off from “active duty” (research and teaching requirements) and positive support from the entire scientific community from his/her university (continued access to lab space/office space, support valorisation team....). Universities could also make it easier for a researcher whose startup just failed to get back into his research institution thus reducing the risk felt.
Recommendations for technology transfer offices and other support organisations
As seen above, technology transfer offices have many different jobs and need many different skills, yet they should find a way to provide tailor-made services to health researchers, especially regarding legislation/ regulation issues. Indeed, medicinal products and devices are amongst the most stringently regulated products in Europe and abroad. As complex as these regulations are, it is fundamentally necessary that researchers actively address them throughout their innovation processes. However, they cannot do this without support.
Another challenge researchers are confronted to when wishing to exploit their research results, is a general lack of knowledge and skills on how to exploit their research. It is often easier to support someone locally and therefore technology transfer offices and other support organisations should focus on the provision of customized training services. They could also provide opportunities to match researchers with people from the business side. This includes people a researcher can team up with in order to create a venture.
Often times, support organisation are focused on short term earnings as they have to justify their funding and activity but this is just unrealistic in health sciences. There is need for a long term view and long term gains.
Finally but not least, one of the main drivers for entrepreneurship within support organisations is to do their job! Yet, it is recommended that they be passionate when supporting someone!
Dissemination activities and exploitation of results
A major concern of Health-2-Market partners during the course of the project and following its completion was the sustainable continuation of its activities and exploitation of its outcomes. Indeed, several thousands stakeholders have been reached during the projects’ lifetime but it is not over. Taking into account the expertise, as well as the particular characteristics and interests of each partner, several plans were foreseen on how to keep the knowledge accumulated during the implementation of Health-2-Market up-to-date, ensure continuation of its activities and thus create a long-lasting impact on the project's targeted external stakeholders.
The Exploitation and Sustainability plan focuses on the main assets of Health-2-Market that have been developed and comprise of:
• The data that were collected and utilised for the analysis of the Health/ Life Sciences researchers’ training needs as well as the findings that emerged;
• The training curriculum and material for the seminars and academies;
• The e-training web-platform and e-learning courses;
• The MOOC titled "Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit";
• A set of 19 case studies;
• The two Health-2-Market Innovation Guides focused on the innovation dimension in Horizon 2020 (annotated template) and the innovation strategy in R&D projects;
• The knowledge gained from the provision of Health-2-Market advanced services as well as the actual outcomes of these real-life cases of personalised support and consulting services; and
• The assets that emerged from the dissemination, communication and policy-oriented activities of the project.
The following sections provide a concise description of the main exploitation routes undergone to ensure the sustainability of the Health-2-Market assets described previously.
Result 1. Training Needs Analysis open data and findings
Health-2-Market partners have already greatly exploited this asset of the project, by translating it into training terms that fuelled the development of the Health-2-Market training concept and programme. The report with the findings is currently disseminated to all interested stakeholders via the web portal of the project. Open access to the data is available. Further dissemination was realised via the project’s newsletter as well as a variety of well-targeted channels including: European networks and initiatives (e.g. the EBN, the Europe Enterprise Network, NCPs network, Fit For Health 2.0 ENTENTE, FI-STAR community, GET project, etc.), groups and communities in LinkedIn, (e.g. H2020 HEALTH Medical Research, Pharma, Drug Discovery, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Digital Health, Life Science Opportunities in EU, FFH, ENTENTE, Health-2-Market, etc.), various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions, etc. (e.g. European Society of Cardiology, European Dermatologist Network, European Alzheimer Network, Association of Science Parks, Career Office of the University of Athens, Hellenic Pasteur Institute, ASTP Proton, etc.), as well as direct mailing to participants in Health-2-Market project activities (e.g. online survey, trainings, advanced services, etc.). Moreover, in order to further enhance the impact of the TNA and ensure that its findings are properly disseminated to and exploited by its target groups, selected findings of the analysis were incorporated into the development of the Health-2-Market policy brief.
Result 2. Training curricula and material
Academies
The chosen exploitation path for the sustainability of the curricula as well as the training material developed specifically for the training academies of Health-2-Market, is integration into relevant existing or new programmes of the "Business School" partners of the project. The integration process started during the project, and is continued after its end. More specifically:
• IE operates an executive education course (i.e. "Management for Scientists and Researchers - MFSR"). The process of incorporating the Health-2-Market training asset into this program has already started. In addition, IE’s “Learning Innovation” department is considering further exploitation of this asset (e.g. development of new courses, incorporation in programmes other than MFSR).
• SKEMA offers an executive education programme (2 day and 5 day format similar to the Health-2-Market curriculum) and aims at incorporating some of the learning obtained from the Health-2-Market project in order to offer the best training possible. For instance, SKEMA has utilized some of the pitched business plans that were elaborated by attendants of the various Health-2-Market Academies in some of its already existing courses as they serve as pertinent examples of how pitched business plans are developed “in the real world”. The training offered appeared to be particularly appealing to the coaching community from incubators and accelerators. Therefore, offering the training to these users should allow for the best future sustainability of this project asset in the long run. SKEMA has also used part of the training material developed in the MOOC “Roadmap to entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit”.
• UGOT provides educational courses on academic research utilization. The process of incorporating this asset into these programmes has already started. For instance, a course given for PhD students at the Medicine Faculty will be renewed during 2015/2016. In addition, UGOT’s “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” unit is considering further exploitation of this asset (e.g. development of new courses and incorporation in programmes other than the aforementioned course).
Seminars
Similar to the training academies, the exploitation and sustainability plan for seminar curricula as well as corresponding training material involved their integration into relevant existing or new programmes of Health-2-Market "Business School" partners. The process begun during the lifetime of the project and will continue beyond its end.
Result 3. Case studies
Case studies will be used by project partners to enrich the content of the education and training services they provide. Such use of a case study implies a copyright note referring to Health-2-Market and will be possible only for case studies that were developed in the frame of the project and do not constitute background Intellectual Property of Health-2-Market partners. External stakeholders may also access and benefit from this asset through the Health-2-Market web portal and mobile app.
Result 4. E-training web-platform and e-learning courses
With a view to ensure the sustainability of the Health-2-Market e-training infrastructure and its components (including Health-2-Market publicly available assets), ownership of the web-platform itself will belong to Europa Media that will be responsible for its technical maintenance for 5 years following the end of the project. The respective authors of the e-learning courses (i.e. Business Schools partners) will respond to content update requests on an individual basis. The content of the web-platform has been protected by the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 .
Result 5. Health-2-Market mobile application
The application is available for download free-of-charge from Google Play as well as the Apple Store. Q-PLAN in cooperation with Europa Media will ensure the technical maintenance of the application for 2 years following the completion of the project.
Result 6. “Roadmap to entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” MOOC
The "Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” MOOC is now available on Udemy . It is free to use and accessible to anyone. In fact, over 1,800 students have already enrolled , securing lifetime access to a course that can improve their entrepreneurial ability and ideally enable them to successfully introduce their business ideas to market.
Result 10. Health-2-Market Advanced Services: Case outcomes and knowledge gained
The outcomes of the advanced services will be directly 'exploited' by the recipients of the tailored support in order to facilitate the introduction of their innovations into the market and thus are expected to contribute to long lasting impact. In parallel, project partners that provided the services will 'exploit' the knowledge and know-how acquired during the implementation of these cases in order to improve similar service offerings in the future. Finally, experience and feedback from various advanced services was integrated in the Health-2-Market Innovation Guides, therefore enabling a much bigger audience to benefit from the outcomes and learning of this type of project activities.
Result 11. Health-2-Market web portal
The Health-2-Market portal will remain in operation for a period of 5 years following completion of the project. Europa Media is responsible for its operation and maintenance, while its content will be periodically updated with content provided by the partners. In addition, the possibility of providing the content of the portal either to an interested existing project (e.g. Fit For Health 2.0) or even to a new HORIZON 2020 initiative in the field of Health / Life Sciences focusing on supporting the exploitation and commercialization of research outcomes will be considered if it emerges in the future.
Result 12. Health-2-Market communication database
The Health-2-Market communication database will serve as a valuable asset for all project partners for future communication as well as other activities in the EU health sector. The database has been provided to all interested Health-2-Market consortium partners in the form of an excel file that contains all e-mail addresses collected during the course of the project (with the exception of the contact data collected in the frame of the online survey so as to safeguard the confidentiality of the respondents). The personal data protection is ensured, as the database is only used internally by the consortium partners.
Result 13. Policy development and health initiatives with recommended courses of actions
The policy brief is freely disseminated and accessible through the Health-2-Market web portal. However, in order to ensure that it reached the maximum possible audience, in addition to social media and personal networks of Health-2-Market partners as well as direct mailing to Health-2-Market newsletter subscribers and participants in Health-2-Market project activities (e.g. online survey, trainings, advanced services, etc.), additional dissemination channels were foreseen including: European networks and initiatives (e.g. the EBN, the Europe Enterprise Network, NCPs network, Fit For Health 2.0 ENTENTE, FI-STAR community, GET project, etc.), groups and communities in LinkedIn, (e.g. H2020 HEALTH Medical Research, Pharma, Drug Discovery, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Digital Health, Life Science Opportunities in EU, FFH, ENTENTE, Health-2-Market, etc.) as well as various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions, etc. (e.g. European Society of Cardiology, European Dermatologist Network, European Alzheimer Network, Association of Science Parks, Career Office of University of Athens, Hellenic Pasteur Institute, ASTP Proton, etc.).
Results 14 & 15. Health-2-Market Innovation Guides: “How-to-do” guidebook and ARIaT
Both Health-2-Market Innovation Guides are freely disseminated and can be accessed by all interested parties without any financial requirements through the Health-2-Market web portal. Dissemination was also done via the following channels: European networks and initiatives (e.g. the EBN, the Europe Enterprise Network, NCPs network, Fit For Health 2.0 ENTENTE, FI-STAR community, GET project, etc.), groups and communities in LinkedIn, (e.g. H2020 HEALTH Medical Research, Pharma, Drug Discovery, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Digital Health, Life Science Opportunities in EU, FFH, ENTENTE, Health-2-Market, etc.), various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions, etc. (e.g. European Society of Cardiology, European Dermatologist Network, European Alzheimer Network, Association of Science Parks, Career Office of the University of Athens, Hellenic Pasteur Institute, ASTP Proton, etc.), social media and personal networks of Health-2-Market partners as well as direct mailing to Health-2-Market newsletter subscribers and participants in Health-2-Market project activities (e.g. online survey, trainings, advanced services, etc.). A very large and heterogeneous audience has thus received access to these Innovation Guides.
List of Websites:
The project’s web-portal ( http://health2market.eu/ ), as described above (sections 1.3 and 1.4 Result 11), was and can still be ‘exploited’ by the research and business communities in the EU as well as all other relevant stakeholders to find meaningful information on the field of Health / Life Sciences (e.g. programmes and initiatives, relevant events organised at national and/or EU level, etc.) as well as to access Health-2-Market assets available to the public.
As mentioned above, the web portal will remain in operation for a period of 5 years (2020) and will be updated if needed.
Some of the main pages include(d):
• Conference / Academies / Seminars
This section pointed out where the project Health-to-Market organised the academies and seminars. The visitors of the website could download some information about the events (ex: agenda) and the slides presented by the speakers. It also allowed direct registration of the participants.
• e-trainings
The e-learning courses were provided in a registered-section of the web portal to participants who were interested in receiving either standalone training, or supplementary training to the face-to-face trainings. The e-learning courses remain available until 2020. Users can have access to the e-training lectures, the cases studies or the quiz.
• Results
The most important page now that the project is finished is the results page showing the main results of the Health-to-Market project as well as links to the main sustainable assets such as the “how-to-do” guide, the ARIaT, the MOOC “Roadmap to entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” and the e-learning courses.
Finally, as mentioned above, a mobile application has been developed (android and iOS) allowing users to access project’s results and contents on the go!
Health-2-Market (www.health2market.eu; H2M) was a coordinating action funded by the EC that aimed at developing the Health researchers' entrepreneurial skills to support the market exploitation of their research results, via a portfolio of high-level services, training actions and tools in a variety of topics: IPR and asset management, entrepreneurship and business planning, launch of a successful start-up and knowledge transfer, etc. The project focused primarily on Health/life sciences researchers, but also achieved to address the needs of various relevant target groups (European Health research institutes, Technology Transfer Organizations, EU Health-related companies, entrepreneurs, Health / Life Sciences European networks, NCPs).
The main outcomes of H2M are:
- H2M trainings and curricula: 16 regional training seminars, 1 webinar and 7 highly intensive international business academies were provided free of charge for more than 600 participants in the frame of H2M, on various topics.
- E-training web-platform and e-learning courses: A valuable e-training web-platform was developed during H2M and is available for free on elearning.health2market.eu providing knowledge on a broad range of topics centred on bringing research results to the market. More than 400 active users already benefit from the H2M e-learning courses, which are also accessible through mobile devices via the free of charge H2M mobile app.
- H2M Advanced Services. A key offer of H2M was the provision of twenty free of charge, advanced, individually tailored commercialisation services to selected Health / Life Sciences research projects to assist researchers in bringing their R&D results a step further towards successful commercialisation.
- “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” Massive Open Online Course, available on Udemy: Based on the Entrepreneurship and Business Planning Venture Academy (hosted by the SKEMA Business School in the frame of H2M), a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was developed combining the curriculum of the academy and the H2M e-learning offering. The MOOC, with over 1,800 students already signed-up, is open to any researcher, coach and professional interested in grasping a better understanding of business development in the domain of Health / Life Sciences.
- H2M Innovation Guides: the “Step by step” guide on “Innovation Strategy in R&D projects” employs practical examples taken from real life scenarios to explain why and when an innovation strategy is required in R&D projects as well as how it should be developed and implemented. The guide “ARIaT- Horizon 2020 Annotated Research and Innovation actions Template” provides meaningful advice on how to adapt a Business Model to a Horizon 2020 proposal. With comments from innovation experts and R&D exploitation specialists, this guide specifically focuses on sections in which business aspects should be explained in more details. Both H2M Innovation Guides are available free of charge through the H2M web portal and app. They were downloaded more than 1000 times just in the first month after their publication.
- H2M Mobile Application: An attractive mobile app was developed in order to make H2M assets (e.g. e-learning courses, Innovation Guides, etc.) conveniently accessible on mobile devices (both iOS and Android). The application is available for download free of charge on Google Play and the Apple Store.
- Training Needs Analysis (TNA) open data and findings: Based upon several sources of information –including an online survey of 637 respondents- the TNA report provides suggestions with respect to the training concept and topics that would be most suitable for researchers willing to bring their R&D results closer to the market. Report and anonymised data can be accessed through the web portal of the project and open access via OpenAIRE – zenodo platform.
- Case studies: 19 case studies, both pedagogical and mini case studies employing real life examples were developed in the frame of H2M in order to enrich the training offering of the project.
- H2M Policy Brief: Lessons learnt and policy recommendations derived from H2M, were integrated into a concise policy brief, accessible on www.health2market.eu.
Project Context and Objectives:
“The European innovation system produces the best research results in the world. Unfortunately, we have had bad luck for decades and, thus, couldn’t turn research results into values to the same degree as the US...”
This paraphrases what 20 years ago was described as the European Paradox by the European Commission’s Green Paper on Innovation. However, it is not bad luck that is causing the “European Paradox”, but, among other things, compared to the US a fundamentally different importance placed on transferring technologies from research into industrial use.
Research exploitation activities play a crucial role in paving the way from lab to store-shelf. The Commission has accepted the task and addressed it with a continuous series of policies focussing on innovation and research. Most recently, the Innovation Union is one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, with over 30 action points, some of them aiming to remove obstacles to innovation – like expensive patenting, market fragmentation, slow standard-setting and skills shortages – which currently prevent ideas getting quickly to market. But in the end, it comes down to how researchers, companies and intermediaries cooperate and how successfully each of those countless research consortia can implement effective exploitation efforts into their projects.
The importance of exploitation or technology transfer has been stressed numerous times. Exploitation of research and its transformation into industrial innovation not only strengthens Europe’s global competitiveness and productivity in the long run, thus making us step by step a little less susceptible to low-cost competitors or helping us to live more resource sustainable and environmentally friendly. Innovation from research also fosters SMEs and supports regionally distributed economic development, since successful exploitation often helps strengthening the regional economy.
Unfortunately, neither the research community nor commercial actors could be easily influenced by political actions and policy. Particularly the public research system shows significant inertia to outside effort to change it.
Most of the reasons for this are not specific to research funded by European programs, but lie in the character and traditions of scientific work, its core values and beliefs, and its public character. For many decades the idea of commercializing one’s own research had a stale flavor to it. Applied research was considered science of a lesser degree; real scientists would work “l’art pour l’art”.
In this context, Health-2-Market was designed as a three-layer platform: Training and Advanced services intertwined by what we dubbed as the learning evidence base.
Learning Evidence Base – Because the target group –although specific– could not be treated as homogenous and because its needs were changing faster than literature or trainers’ perceptions, relevant evidence (success cases, researchers needs, preferences and behaviours, training insights) were collected and analysed through market research (survey, interviews, focus group). The evidence base and resulting insights were used throughout the project for continuous improvement, validation, and conclusively as a mean for project sustainability. They were also used in e-learning courses developed by the project. It also allowed delivery of an efficient blend of innovative means, simplified yet educative content, standardize-able yet fully tailor-made services, and all that under a validated and sustainable programme.
Training – The training activities were designed with a multimodal approach: Case-based learning, Web (e-learning) courses for broader audience, one to two-day workshops on specific topics and advanced training courses (week-long highly intensive training ‘Academies’). Topic selection varied from Intellectual Property Rights and intellectual asset management, ways of technology transfer, certification, legal framework, etc. to opportunity spotting (business awareness), business planning, commercialization and ethics.
Advanced Services – Health-2-Market advanced services included hands-on support, counselling, coaching and advice and escalated to address the different needs of the potential target groups as well as offered under different settings and contexts (i.e. both through face-2-face / personalised consulting services as well as through respective services offered on-line (e.g. Helpdesk)). Overall, the provided services were targeted to address requests for support in the following innovation management topics: IPR and asset management, certification issues, legal issues, negotiation techniques, formulation of concrete business and exploitation plans, preparation for the launch of successful new ventures as well as on demand, case specific, and knowledge transfers.
More specifically, Health-2-Market addressed the following objectives:
Objective 1: Perform definition of End Users (Health/ Life Science researchers) and analysis of their needs, refine and validate outcomes in order to set up the conceptual framework for the Health-2-Market training programme.
Objective 2: Define and develop in detail the Health-2-Market training programme, its planning and training material for different contexts and settings.
Objective 3: Set up and deploy the project e-learning training facility (Health-2-Market e-infrastructure). Define the training concept and curriculum, adapt the material into e-learning modules, deploy web-base courses and provide an on-line helpdesk to End Users.
Objective 4: Deployment of regional and European training actions (15 topic-specific one to two day seminars and 7 week-long highly intensive training academies).
Objective 5: Set up and deploy the Health-2-Market Advanced Services.
Objective 6: Reassure proper dissemination of project activities and results – Facilitate post project exploitation and sustainability of the knowledge, the know-how and the assets created – Contribute to innovation policy.
In addition, the project involved and interacted with key intermediaries and decision makers in several levels of research & innovation policy in health (e.g. micro / organisational and macro level). The goal of this interaction was to set-up reciprocal mechanisms of exchanging ideas, experiences and views with key intermediaries and stakeholders, such as: (i) those that support Health researchers in the innovation and valorisation of their research results (e.g. staff of technology transfer offices); (ii) those that defined strategies, knowledge transfer policies and innovation support mechanisms at the organisational level (e.g. university / health institutes management, etc.); and (iii) innovation agents & decision makers affecting regional, national or European research & innovation policies in Health.
With respect to geographical coverage Health-2-Market addressed all EU Member States and Associated countries both through its broad partnerships as well as by adopting a regional, rather than a national approach (to maximise and combine geographical coverage with network’s managerial flexibility, efficiency and optimisation of the use of resources). Furthermore, the project complemented existing networks and services already available at European level such as the Enterprise Europe Network, the Fit for Health Network, the Health NCP network as well as other health-related initiatives, such as the Health Competence platform, etc.
Project Results:
Objective 1: Perform definition of End Users (Health/ Life Science researchers) and analysis of their needs, refine and validate outcomes in order to set up the conceptual framework for the Health-2-Market training programme
Result 1. Training Needs Analysis
The Health2market consortium conducted Training Needs Analysis (TNA) in order to adequately orient the support activities of the project towards fostering the development of an innovation and entrepreneurial mindset amongst health/life science researchers. The principal objective of the analysis was to determine the actual knowledge and skills of the researchers in terms of commercial exploitation of research results as well as to shed ample light on their training needs in order to overcome their knowledge/skills gap and any relevant perceived obstacles and risks.
The TNA was built upon 4 complementary sources of information:
• A bibliographic analysis of 22 relevant documents / studies.
• In-depth, phone / face-to-face interviews with 26 selected experts (including researchers, entrepreneurs, technology transfer officers, etc.).
• An online survey targeted at Health / Life Sciences researchers who have been involved in EU projects, which collected 637 completed responses.
• Two roundtable discussions which brought together experts in Health / Life Sciences research and commercialisation support (including researchers, entrepreneurs, technology transfer officers, Health National Contact Points (NCPs), Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) experts, etc.).
The combination of the abovementioned sources in a comprehensive approach to analyse the training needs of Health / Life Sciences researchers produced a wealth of valuable data and meaningful findings which were summarised in a dedicated report that served as a solid basis for the design and specification of the Health-2-Market training offer, focusing on the different target groups and their needs.
Indeed, the analysis concluded on these main needs in order to tackle the lack of knowledge of health researchers regarding entrepreneurship/ utilisation of research results:
• Financial and market analysis aspects
• Business Plan construction
• Intellectual Property Rights (for less experienced target groups)
• Mentoring
• Networking and contacts to experts (venture capitalists, IPR experts, etc.)
• Practical training
The Training Needs Analysis concluded that an important training element should be “to change the mind-set” of the researchers in order to make them perceptive to commercial exploitation activities and to give them an “outcome orientation” with regards to financial aspects.
The Training Needs Analysis can be found via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/H2M_D13_Training_Needs_Analysis_public.pdf
It has already been downloaded 448 times (30/10/2015).
In order to allow other specialists to benefit from these project’s results, and following the consultation and encouragement of the European Commission, open access has been provided to the anonymous statistical data of Training Need Analysis, via Zenodo, the repository of OpenAIRE managed by CERN:
• HEALTH-2-MARKET Dataset is available at https://zenodo.org/record/31270
• HEALTH-2-MARKET survey questionnaire is available at: https://zenodo.org/record/31272
Objective 2: Define and develop in detail the Health-2-Market training programme, its planning and training material for different contexts and settings.
Result 2. The Health-2-Market Training Programme
Based on the Training Needs Analysis, the Health-2-Market training programme was detailed and took into account all required specifications for the actual modules/ topics that were offered as well as the plan for their deployment. It was concluded that the most efficient training offer should contain the following elements:
• Academies: weeklong training courses on specific topics at the location of the three Business Schools involved in the project in order to ensure a wide geographical coverage along with the possibility to offer services of specialist trainers and successful entrepreneurs
• Seminars: in-depth courses on expertise topics during one to two days all over Europe, open to a large group of beneficiaries, as well as one webinar with online discussion amongst researchers, entrepreneurs and other beneficiaries
• E-learning courses: free online access to material specifically developed for a wide panel of users and based on face-to face training courses, as well as additional material such as case studies, exercises/quizzes and a highly valuable Massive Open online Course (MOOC) (See Results 3, 4 and 6)
• Advanced Services: personalized expert consultancy support for specific analysis offered to selected high-potential cases (See Result 10)
More specifically for academies and seminars:
Academies
The Curriculum and material were developed for the topic-specific academies.
Curricula and training material were developed and utilized in the 7 highly intensive, week-long academies held in the frame of the Health-2-Market project on the following topics:
• Intellectual Property, Ethics, and the Utilization of Academic Research in Health / Life Sciences (organised and taught by the University of Gothenburg).
• Entrepreneurship and Business Planning in Health / Life Sciences (organised and taught by SKEMA Business School).
• New Venture Creation and Marketing in Health / Life Sciences (organised and taught by IE University).
The primary target group were Health / Life Sciences researchers. However, potential entrepreneurs as well as individuals that support and coach entrepreneurial ventures (e.g. technology transfer office, incubator and accelerator staff) in other scientific fields and sectors especially those with healthcare applications (e.g. nanotechnology, ICT, etc.) could also find great value in these trainings.
The training curricula is summarised in the document “curriculum for highly intensive academies”, available via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D2.3_Curriculum_for_highly_intensive_academies.pdf.
Testimonials collected after the different courses confirmed the high attractivity of the academies to the participants: “I was able to develop a mini business plan and to learn what entitles a market study. Such introduction into the entrepreneurship world was very exciting for me and encouraged me greatly to further develop the application of my project.”
Training seminars
Curricula and training material were developed and utilized in the frame of the 17 Health-2-Market seminars/webinars focusing on a wide range of specific topics with regard to the process of entrepreneurship in the Health / Life Sciences sector as well as to relevant challenges. In particular, Health-2-Market training curricula and respective material for the seminars covered the following topics:
• Introduction to Knowledge-Based Business (developed and taught by UGOT).
• Intellectual Property Management & Open Innovation in Health / Life Sciences (developed and taught by UGOT).
• Essentials of Negotiation Behaviour (developed and taught by SKEMA Business School).
• Marketing of Innovation & Effectual Entrepreneurship (developed and taught by SKEMA Business School).
• Cutting-Edge Decision Making Tools for Entrepreneurs (developed and taught by IE).
• Marketing for Innovative Products in Health/Life Sciences (developed and taught by IE).
• Identifying Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Understanding Modes of Financing (developed and taught by IE).
• Access to Risk Finance in the 2014-2020 EU Funding Programmes (webinar)
Most of the training material for academies and seminars was created by the Business School partners outside the frame of Health-2-Market. Within the context of the project, they developed the curriculum for their respective academies/seminars, assembled and adapted the aforementioned material in order to fit the specific target groups of this Health-2-Market training activity.
The training curricula is summarised in the document “curriculum for topic-specific seminars”, available via the following link http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D2.2_Curriculum_for_topic-specific_seminars.pdf.
Result 3. Case studies
A total of 19 case studies were developed in the frame of Health-2-Market in order to support “theoretical” teaching of the specific training topics covered by the project's training academies and seminars as well as its e-learning programme. This asset encompasses pedagogical as well as mini case studies which employ actual case examples that training participants can easily identify with, illustrating the different steps of commercialization activities with a focus on health/life sciences related subjects. Five different topics were covered:
• Marketing of Innovative Products in Health/Life Sciences
• Intellectual Property Management and Open Innovation in Health/Life Sciences
• Identifying entrepreneurial opportunities and understanding modes of financing in the field of Health/Life Sciences
• Cutting Edge Decision Making Tools for Entrepreneurs
• Entrepreneurship & Business Planning
In addition, open access case studies were made available to users via the online project platform.
Feedback from training participants confirmed the attractiveness of such concrete case examples which helped them visualize theoretical background and identify themselves with case examples: “After the two-day seminar I know how I can offer my invention and to who I can offer it. This is a very important starting point to build a well-defined business model and plan because I'm well focused.”
The case studies are available via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D2.4_Set_of_case_studies_H2M.pdf
Objective 3: Set up and deploy the project e-learning training facility (Health-2-Market e-infrastructure). Define the training concept and curriculum, adapt the material into e-learning modules, deploy web-base courses and provide an on-line helpdesk to End Users.
Result 4. e-training course
The Health-2-Market e-training web-platform provided prospective trainees with access to e-learning courses on a broad range of topics revolving around the following thematic areas:
• Business ventures and marketing (author: IE University).
• Entrepreneurship and business planning (author: SKEMA Business School).
• Intellectual property and ethics (author: University of Gothenburg).
Each e-learning course consists of a mix among presentation(s) and supporting documents and tools (e.g. case studies developed by Health-2-Market partners, webinars, quizzes, etc.) which along with a helpdesk as well as section with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) constitute the Health-2-Market e-training infrastructure.
Over the period more than 400 active users (Researchers in the health, life science field interested to start their own business as well as all other people involved in life science research (e.g. technology transfer officers, incubators staff, etc.)) have benefitted from the Health-2-Market e- training services. This sustainable platform remains open for 5 years after the project completion in order to allow access to users.
The training curricula is summarised in the document “e-training curriculum concept”, available via the following link:
http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D31_e-training_curriculum_concept_submit.pdf.
The definition of the e-learning infrastructure is available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D32_Definition_of_e-learning_infrastructure_submitted.pdf
E-learning course is available via the following link: http://elearning.health2market.eu/
Result 5. Mobile application
In order to provide even larger access to our course as well as widening the target audience, a comprehensive mobile application compiles Health-2-Market project results and e-training courses, making them accessible free-of-charge on mobile devices (e.g. smart phones, tablets, etc.) which run on both IOS and Android. In particular, prospective users can easily navigate through five tabs to find out more about news and events in the health business field, as well as read all documents uploaded on the Health-2-Market web portal, including the project’s main results, visually presented through graphs and statistics. Users are also able to conveniently follow Health-2-Market e-learning courses.
The mobile application has proved high acceptance among users who appreciated both the informative and educative character of the tool. Up to now (30/10/2015), 62 downloads have been conducted.
The app can be download free of charge from Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.useappility.H2M) or App store (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/).
Result 6. MOOC “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit”
With a view to disseminating the educational and training benefits of the Entrepreneurship and Business Planning Venture Academy (hosted by SKEMA) and translating the training offer into a sustainable asset open to a Europe-wide audience, a free of charge Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) https://www.udemy.com/entrepreneurial-mindset-and-toolkit/ was developed combining the curricula of the respective Health-2-Market training academy and e-learning content.
In particular, the MOOC provides an integrated and systemic toolkit that SKEMA Business School has tested on many projects over the past 15 years in postgraduate and executive programs, which includes:
• Building the scope of the project with ISMA 360.
• Business model design.
• The business plan.
• Financial objectives.
• Business plan pitching.
In order to deliver this toolkit in the best way possible, the MOOC titled “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” consists of several hours of video and supporting slides that allow the virtual student to gain valuable knowledge on the topics addressed (i.e. over 34 lectures and 3 hours of content). Additionally, each video is followed by a set of questions allowing the students to test their competences and finally evaluate (i.e. via self-assessment) whether they are ready to pitch their idea to investors.
This highly innovative asset has particular sustainable value. Almost 1 800 students have already registered for this MOOC from all over Europe within three months of its opening.
Result 7. Helpdesk
Finally, the deployment of the Helpdesk function was an integral part of the Health-2-Market e-infrastructure and provided a supportive function. The objective of the Helpdesk was to deliver tailored support related to intellectual assets management, entrepreneurship, business planning, new venture creation, fundraising and other issues related to valorisation of the research results. The target group for helpdesk’s activities were the researchers prone to commercialisation of their research results. The service was provided free of charge and was available to everyone interested. The service was accessible online via the main project’s web page (www.health2market.eu/ask_the_expert). This service was provided continuously throughout the project by UGOT as activity coordinator with support from other partners. A large part of questions and inquiries of researchers/entrepreneurs were however directly discussed during face-to-face courses or in its follow-up by the training experts, and allowed to benefit from the expert advice and personal experience. .
The results of helpdesk are summarised in the document “Report on helpdesk operation”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D3.4%20Report%20on%20Helpdesk%20operation.pdf
Objective 4: Deployment of regional and European training actions (15 topic-specific one to two day seminars and 7 week-long highly intensive training academies).
Result 8: 16 training seminars and 1 webinar (500+ participants)
The purpose of seminars was to provide high quality, topic-specific and accessible trainings tailored to health researchers’ needs. As a result, experts from the business schools of the project (SKEMA, UGOT, IE) and innovation consultants delivered the trainings covering specific topics focused on health, and directly addressed the commercial exploitation of research results. With this approach, and differently from academies, the seminars were designed to last one to two days, providing a short but highly intensive training with a balanced mix of theory and practice based on regional and national needs and focused on specific topics. They were a successful platform to access in-depth theoretical knowledge, as well as to discuss concrete cases and to learn also from external experts from the field.
In total 16 seminars were organised during the project from September 2013 to July 2015 throughout Europe in order to allow wide-spread access: Sweden, Spain, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Cyprus, Italy, United Kingdom, Portugal, Poland. The total number of participants in face-to-face seminars, as well as a webinar reached 512. This high interest in the training actions has shown the value of such programme to health/life sciences researchers and young entrepreneurs.
In order to assess the quality of seminars delivered, a feedback form was also elaborated by partners and then distributed to participants at the end of each seminar. Through these questionnaires, information related to what participants appreciated in seminars performed were collected.
Specifically, participants gave a positive feedback on the content and methodology of the trainings delivered and relating to the high quality profile of teachers involved. Networking opportunities as well as the training method based on teamwork practical cases studies were also greatly appreciated by participants.
The training seminars results are summarised in the document “Report about seminars”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D4%202%20Report%20about%20seminars_Final%20version.pdf
Result 9: 7 weekly-long Academies (130+ participants)
The aim was to organize intensive training, “academies” or “camps” for Health/Life science researchers from different EU countries. During the academies the researchers were given advanced one-week-long training where they acquired knowledge and skills required for further valorisation of their health research projects.
The project’s partners organised 7 training academies, starting from September 2013. In total, the academies were conducted in four European countries and attracted more than 130 participants with concrete commercialisation cases.
The pilot academy took place in September 2013 in France to test and validate the curricula as well as materials needed and processes involved. After that, several lesson-learnt were taken into consideration for the organization of future trainings.
The academies covered three key innovation-related areas:
• Entrepreneurship and Business Planning (IE)
• Intellectual Property, Ethics and Utilization of Academic Research in Health/Life Sciences (UGOT)
• New Venture Creation and Marketing in Health/Life Sciences (SKEMA)
The Academies were held in Sweden, Spain, France and Italy. The qualitative approach privileged small training groups to allow personal advice and work on individual cases, as well as direct exchange of beneficiaries with trainers and experts. In some cases external experts, coming from academia as well as industry, contributed with high-level expertise on specific elements of the training programme and provided a practical approach to the trainings. In regard to the training method, the academies were characterised by a mixed approach of theory and practice that included simulations of business games and work on case studies specifically related to health cases.
Feedbacks from participants were highly positive: “The Health-2-Market training was the chance to seriously confront our project to the reality of business. Very often we forget to ask ourselves the essential questions regarding business development... Or maybe we don't really want to face the reality. By focusing on the necessity to be "customer oriented", it reminded us all the business development basis: what is my value proposition, what are my clients, how can I catch them, etc. I'd say that the Health-2-Market training was a great opportunity to step back and redirect our project on the right way to avoid a crash!”
The academies results are summarised in the document “Report about academies”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/D4%203%20Report%20about%20academies_VFinal.pdf
Objective 5: Set up and deploy the Health-2-Market Advanced Services
Result 10. Health-2-Market Advanced Services: Case outcomes and knowledge gained
In the framework of the Health-2-Market project a total of 20 advanced, individually tailored commercialization support services were provided free-of-charge, to selected health research projects. The aim was to help researchers bring their business ideas and research results a definitive step closer towards successful valorisation. All advanced services were delivered by experts of the project consortium and by design, covered different phases in the process of commercialization. In particular these advanced services encompassed:
• Application Mapping.
• Patent Evaluation.
• Market Analysis.
• Business plan formulation.
• Business plan evaluation.
• European legislation, standardization and certification issues related to medical technology.
• Support in obtaining further EU funds.
• Access to finance.
The projects partners wanted to deliver a significant impact and benefit to the largest possible audience, either by addressing and involving people directly or through a domino-effect, which passes the results and new information forward. In order to fulfil this objective, the Health-2-Market project partners designed and published a downloadable, free of charge practical how-to guidebook to explain why and when an innovation strategy is required in R&D projects, how it should be developed and implemented, with an emphasis on how to bring results to market (Result 14). The guidebook is a practical “how-to-do” guide to support R&D projects practitioners (either working on collaborative projects or on the projects internal to the company) to bring research results to market. Concrete, real life examples are provided to illustrate each topic. These examples were developed throughout the Health-2-Market project, including the Advanced Services, and are therefore related to health sciences.
Because of the highly confidential nature of the services, no public report are available; however, methodology and advices are presented in the “How to do” step by step guide: innovation strategy in R&D projects (result 14).
Objective 6: Reassure proper dissemination of project activities and results – Facilitate post project exploitation and sustainability of the knowledge, the know-how and the assets created – Contribute to innovation policy.
Result 11. Health-2-Market web portal
The project web-portal (www.health2market.eu) acting as the Health-2-Market virtual engine for dissemination constitutes a dynamic information and communication tool promoting project activities and knowledge to the EU and beyond. It provides public access to key Health-2-Market assets (e.g. “how-to-do” guide), valuable information and web resources, health related news, information, links and news stemming from Health-2-Market activities as well as from similar Coordination and Support Actions, information on Horizon 2020 Health as well as other useful links, reports, presentations, etc.
The web-portal was also the ideal tool for online registration to the project’s training events. In addition, access to the e-learning courses is provided via the web platform after users registration.
Statistics have shown that the Health-2-Market web-portal and its content has been visualised 104 277 times throughout the project course, giving access to 19 121 users to its informative content.
Result 12. Health-2-Market communication database
A substantial database containing over 2.500 contact details (i.e. e-mail addresses) of a wide range of Health / Life Sciences actors (e.g. researchers, technology transfer actors, entrepreneurs, etc.) across the EU formed and utilised for the purposes of Health-2-Market activities (e.g. online survey, promotion of Health-2-Market training events, etc.) was developed. It was initially based on a database of health professionals that had received – or applied to - FP-7 funding support, thanks to the communication done by the European Commission for the execution of the Training Needs Analysis conducted at the beginning of Health-2-Market. Many of these contacts confirmed their interest in the project activities and offer. The database was completed by subscribers to the newsletter, e-training and courses participants, various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions etc. This knowledge-base was essential for the dissemination of the Health-2-Market project to potential beneficiaries all over EU.
Result 13. Policy development and health initiatives with recommended courses of actions
The Health-2-Market policy brief is a concise document which was elaborated based on lessons learnt and policy recommendations derived from the Health-2-Market project and its multifaceted activities throughout its 3-year duration. It elaborates on the challenges and drivers for entrepreneurship and exploitation of research results as identified through supporting health/life sciences researchers and start-ups in the frame of the project and concludes on recommendations on how to improve entrepreneurship in the field of Health / Life Sciences and on how to support the exploitation of promising research results.
The policy brief targets European, national and regional policy makers in the field of Health / Life Sciences involved in the design, implementation and funding of initiatives and programmes aimed at supporting the translation of R&D results into novel products and/or services as well as university management executives and technology transfer offices across Europe.
Main findings of the policy brief can be summarised as follows:
• The European level is already implementing new measures to support the exploitation of research results and it is hopeful that it will bear fruits in the near future. However, implemented measures could go even further by providing specific exploitation support to funded collaborative projects performing well on their exploitation plan.
• At national and regional level, policy makers should address the mind-set of academic researchers to try to make them more business oriented with undergraduate courses for example or by providing more support and possibility for open access e-learning resources. They should also be extremely strict in their selection of young SMEs/startups to support in order to increase their efficacy and support the most promising ones.
• Universities can also play a role in the mind-set change of researchers by integrating entrepreneurship courses in PhD curricula and by supporting their research staff in training for strategic management of innovation. Academic’s systems could also provide incentives and actively support creation of startups with some time-off from “active duty”, positive support and an easy way back into academia if their startup failed.
• Finally, technology transfer offices and other support organisations need to provide tailor-made services to health researchers, especially regarding legislation/ regulation issues. They could also provide opportunities to match researchers with people from the business side. This includes people a researcher can team up with in order to create a venture.
The policy recommendations are summarised in the document “Report on policy”, available via the following link: http://www.health2market.eu/downloads/H2M_D6%204%20Report%20on%20policy_Final.pdf
Result 14. “How to do” step by step guide: innovation strategy in R&D projects
The need for such a step-by-step “How to do” guide was expressed by the participants of Health-2-Market activities, as it is not enough to start thinking about innovation strategy and exploitation roots at the end of an R&D project, in fact the process should be understood from the early stage of work. With the contribution of 19 project experts from all over Europe, the Health-2-Market team designed the “How to do” guidebook to explain why and when the innovation strategy is required in R&D projects, and how it should be developed and implemented. The “How to do” guidebook consists of five independent chapters:
• Key aspects of innovation strategy
• Innovation strategy preparation
• Innovation strategy implementation: Step by step “how to do” guide (Commercialization routes and business models, Intellectual Assets and Intellectual Property, Business Plan, Marketing Strategy, Financing, EU legislation, standardization and certification issues)
• Innovation strategy follow up and evaluation
Concrete, real life examples are provided to illustrate each topic, along with most FAQ, important points to remember and other learning tools. The guide is relevant to R&D practitioners working either on collaborative R&D projects – in health, but also in other areas -, or in company internal projects, and aiming to bring research results to market.
The “How to do” step by step guide has already been downloaded 387 times and is available at http://www.health2market.eu/results/step-by-step-guide
Feedbacks received included : “I’m very grateful for the very valuable and well-structured recommendations that have been presented in the guide.”
And: “I consider your guides and support tools very precious and valuable not only for researchers but also for company managers whether they are exploring possibilities to join European research projects or just having reflection on their current innovation strategies. I very much congratulate yourself and the partners of Health-2-Market project for producing these excellent reports and guides. I specially appreciate the “Innovation Strategy in R&D projects” guide which is not only inspiring but extremely well presented in an easy-to-read lay-out!”
Result 15. ARIaT-Horizon 2020 Annotated Research and Innovation actions Template
The “ARIaT-Horizon 2020 Annotated Research and Innovation action Template” guidebook aims to assist applicants to the Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) and Innovation Actions (IA) of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for 2014 – 2020 to better understand the requirements of the templates and better write innovation-related issues.
A successful project proposal needs to speakout convincingly to a broad readership encompassing experts from a wide range of fields. While the scientific/technical soundness of a proposal is central to its ultimate success, it is also essential that the problems to be addressed, opportunities to be exploited, and results to be achieved are clear and understandable to all readers, specifically to H2020 Evaluators! Moreover, the linkage between results to be achieved and their relevance for European policy orientations should be clear, as well as the economic opportunities they will provide for citizens. The “ARIaT” guidebook has been structured to guide project formulators in presenting information required especially by the criteria of excellence (criterion 1) and impact (criterion 2).
Authors are experts dealing with H2020 proposals, innovation, exploitation of R&D results, and generally with entrepreneurship and business development on day-to-day basis. Their recommendations are indicated in the document as “Expert recommendations” and also include feedback collected from evaluators of H2020 proposals.
An NCP has already given the feedback: “I would like to congratulate you on the excellent annotated template for innovation activities that you currently published: this is really excellent work!!! I did already get some first response from the community, so more than helpful for the researchers!”
The annotated template has been already downloaded 1 180 times and is available at http://www.health2market.eu/results/h2020-annotated-template
Result 16. Final conference: Tools to valorise research – 1 day to follow the road from research to market – 89 participants
The full day, market-oriented event had the purpose to present, discuss and share good practices and experience on how to exploit R&D results and bring research to the market. Project partners, as well as policymakers, Health specialists from public and private sector, and innovation support organizations highlighted through three different sessions –IPR, Entrepreneurship and business planning, Marketing in Health/Life Sciences-, the crucial elements to be taken into account during this process. In addition, the outcomes and tools of the Health-2-Market project were outlined by the project partners (Annotated template for Horizon 2020 proposals, Health-2-Market smartphone application, How-to-do guidebook on innovation strategy in R&D projects).
In the second part of the conference, a speed dating “Ask the experts” session was organized with the aim to provide high quality information and support to participants in health &business related topics. Through these scheduled B2B, 20 experts with a background in business, health sector, IPR, marketing and funding covered 11 topics of interest (IPR strategy, licensing strategy, entrepreneurship, how to finance your project/start up, how to meet VC, How to capture big pharmaceutical interest, marketing strategy, medical devices certification, management system’ certification, the use of web tools and social network for marketing purposes).
The event gathered 89 participants with a very wide and heterogeneous nature (academia, research centre staff, health specialists from the public and the private sector, innovation support organizations, start ups, SMEs, Big pharmas...).
Potential Impact:
Impact
The project was well perceived by the health/life science researcher community and many participants in the activities expressed their high satisfaction with the training or services they have received. They will be able to use their new knowledge or the results of the support service in their entrepreneurial endeavor.
The expected impacts of the project, planned at the time of the project start, were the following:
• Strengthen entrepreneurial mind-set & innovation spirit of health researchers.
• Promote innovation in Health care and support innovation Union Flagship Initiative.
• Contribute to an increase innovation culture in all member States.
These impacts have been achieved. During the project activities, several thousand health and life sciences researchers were reached through the regular project’s newsletter and several hundred participated in the project’s activities namely academies and training seminars, advanced services and e-learning courses. These participants definitely strengthened their entrepreneurial mind-set and innovation spirit. Furthermore, some of the outcomes of the project such as the annotated template ARIaT and the “How-to-do” guidebook have already received praises from the community as they support innovation in Health care and contribute to an increase innovation culture in all member states.
To further promote innovation in Health care, policy recommendations were formulated for European, national and regional policy makers as well as for universities and support organisations. They are presented below:
Recommendations to European policy makers
The change of non-exploitation and pure-science culture in many research organizations will most likely take many years to happen. Also, some of the traits of public administration will not go away anytime soon. And particularly universities’ focus on education and excellent research is actually in dire need in a society so dependent on new knowledge than ours.
Other needs, namely the one asking for more or other sorts of funding for exploitation efforts, have already started to being addressed. Horizon 2020 offers more and better tools to support even later-stage exploitation via e.g. the SME or the FTI instruments. Furthermore, the Horizon 2020 programme also emphasizes the importance of innovation and exploitation with notably a critical impact section in the evaluation of Innovation Actions and Research and Innovation Actions proposals where applicants need to clearly define their expected impacts .
Fortunately, there are a number of needs that can be addressed by supplying researchers and research consortia interested in exploitation of their research with professional advice and support. Not many programs address this problem yet: some instruments like the SME instrument of Horizon 2020 call for the involvement of a business consultant and pay for it. Yet, with professional exploitation support, a number of very concrete needs, which are available to short- and midterm measures, could be successfully addressed, such as:
• Exploitation Risk Analysis
• Brokerage and pitching events
• Exploitation Strategy Seminars
• Business Plan Development
Therefore, the Health-2-Market partners have noticed that support at European level is more exploitation oriented than previously. They totally support this shift in the “right” direction and further emphasize this with their recommendations to continue to:
• Give grants that are contingent on business-related objectives;
• Reinforce support of innovation actions;
• Provide specific exploitation support to funded collaborative projects performing well on their exploitation plan;
• Align research priorities with the market needs.
More specifically related to the implementation of Health-2-Market project, hundreds of organizations from European funded projects (FP7, H2020) were contacted several times over 3-years with free of charge offers of trainings and support services. It was unfortunate to notice that among these only a handful participated in the activities, demonstrating a very low interest (or awareness?) for the exploitation of their research results. Further discussions with some participants in FP7 projects shows the following (informal) feedback: (1) large industrial firms have resources to implement the exploitation efforts and do not need exploitation support; (2) SMEs with experienced staff believe that they know the exploitation routes better than anyone and they might be interested to get a very specific exploitation support from a specialist with in-depth knowledge of their sector; (3) researchers in many cases are willing to do research and are less interested in exploitation activities; (4) startups issued from the EU-funded projects are open to advice but their number is quite limited. As a result, there is a discrepancy between the European Commission efforts to provide the EC-funded projects with exploitation support, and capacity to absorb such support. Interestingly, many participants who took part in the Health-2-Market trainings did not originate from European funded projects. It is therefore advisable to be extremely careful when targeting solely exploitation support for European funded projects.
The recommendation “Provide specific exploitation support to funded collaborative projects performing well on their exploitation plan” requires particular attention and perhaps a study from the European Commission. Such support might be an incentive for the participants in the EU-funded projects to start exploitation activities earlier and to increase success and openness to external specialised advice. Options could be, for example, to allow (small) project extension, focusing on exploitation, to those performing exploitation activities well; to provide “vouchers” allowing purchase of exploitation support for this extension from very specialised exploitation providers, etc.
Recommendations to National and/or Regional policy makers
National and regional policy makers have a key role to play in the exploitation of research results. They already support technology transfer offices, universities and business schools, incubators, young SMEs, clusters, etc. The list is not endless but it is very large.
The first item they should address is the own mind-set of academic researchers who are not business oriented. However, it is difficult to change someone’s mind-set and it is easier to instil a business mind-set in younger people. There is a need to prepare future health scientists to the ambidexterity of exploring and exploiting opportunities. One way to do that is to include a mandatory teaching at undergraduate levels about entrepreneurial mind-set for exploring opportunities and capture value through business venturing.
Policy makers should also provide more support and possibility for open access e-learning resources and may give more visibility to the existing sources. A well informed and connected academic community will have a cascade effect on the entire region, indirectly benefitting also the whole country. It is important to offer locally specialised e-learning courses, which could also spread information on the existing local ecosystem. At a national level, the scope should be widened, so as to enlarge the amount of information to the nation-wide academic community, as well as the national market and funding opportunities.
National and regional policy maker should also be extremely strict in their selection of young SMEs/startups to support and how to support them. One way to do that would be to implement “crash test” sessions to validate the relevance and solidity of business models and BP of entrepreneurial projects. Such “crash test” could be a prerequisite to the allowance of public funding or public support. In so doing, policy makers would substantially save time in helping entrepreneurs to quickly allocate the right efforts to the right topics, thus leverage the survival rate of incubated projects and accelerate the growth of new ventures. Another way could be to organise innovation fairs where big pharmas and SMEs could meet.
Finally, many startups experienced a valley of death when they don’t have enough money to continue their technology development into a marketable product. They are past the seed investments and prior to growth capital. There is a strong need to bridge this valley of death and national and regional policy makers should strongly support bridge financing.
Recommendations for universities
In most academic’s systems, researchers are evaluated and promoted almost exclusively through their scientific achievements such as their number of scientific publications. For the past few years, their number of patents may also have been taken into account for their promotion; however, a patent is not the exploitation of research results, it is even an expense for the university. It is neither conductive of a change of mind-set (as mentioned above) neither conductive of an increase exploitation of research results. To remedy it, academic systems could adopt an incentives’ system that acknowledges successful exploitation in the same way that it acknowledges successful research. This requires the recognition that innovation is at least as difficult as research in terms of achieving results.
In the same line of thoughts, researchers could be trained to the essentials of strategic management of innovation (i.e. using innovation to achieve strategic objectives: new market opening, differentiation from existing solutions, price-competitiveness) using examples of success stories and failures but also via “startup coaching” experimentation where researchers would use their knowledge to coach other researchers. Teaching business modelling and business planning through action learning is key. Furthermore, entrepreneurship courses could be integrated with more depth in PhD curricula.
Finally, academic’s systems could provide incentives and actively support the creation of startups. This could be done with ways for researchers to have some time-off from “active duty” (research and teaching requirements) and positive support from the entire scientific community from his/her university (continued access to lab space/office space, support valorisation team....). Universities could also make it easier for a researcher whose startup just failed to get back into his research institution thus reducing the risk felt.
Recommendations for technology transfer offices and other support organisations
As seen above, technology transfer offices have many different jobs and need many different skills, yet they should find a way to provide tailor-made services to health researchers, especially regarding legislation/ regulation issues. Indeed, medicinal products and devices are amongst the most stringently regulated products in Europe and abroad. As complex as these regulations are, it is fundamentally necessary that researchers actively address them throughout their innovation processes. However, they cannot do this without support.
Another challenge researchers are confronted to when wishing to exploit their research results, is a general lack of knowledge and skills on how to exploit their research. It is often easier to support someone locally and therefore technology transfer offices and other support organisations should focus on the provision of customized training services. They could also provide opportunities to match researchers with people from the business side. This includes people a researcher can team up with in order to create a venture.
Often times, support organisation are focused on short term earnings as they have to justify their funding and activity but this is just unrealistic in health sciences. There is need for a long term view and long term gains.
Finally but not least, one of the main drivers for entrepreneurship within support organisations is to do their job! Yet, it is recommended that they be passionate when supporting someone!
Dissemination activities and exploitation of results
A major concern of Health-2-Market partners during the course of the project and following its completion was the sustainable continuation of its activities and exploitation of its outcomes. Indeed, several thousands stakeholders have been reached during the projects’ lifetime but it is not over. Taking into account the expertise, as well as the particular characteristics and interests of each partner, several plans were foreseen on how to keep the knowledge accumulated during the implementation of Health-2-Market up-to-date, ensure continuation of its activities and thus create a long-lasting impact on the project's targeted external stakeholders.
The Exploitation and Sustainability plan focuses on the main assets of Health-2-Market that have been developed and comprise of:
• The data that were collected and utilised for the analysis of the Health/ Life Sciences researchers’ training needs as well as the findings that emerged;
• The training curriculum and material for the seminars and academies;
• The e-training web-platform and e-learning courses;
• The MOOC titled "Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit";
• A set of 19 case studies;
• The two Health-2-Market Innovation Guides focused on the innovation dimension in Horizon 2020 (annotated template) and the innovation strategy in R&D projects;
• The knowledge gained from the provision of Health-2-Market advanced services as well as the actual outcomes of these real-life cases of personalised support and consulting services; and
• The assets that emerged from the dissemination, communication and policy-oriented activities of the project.
The following sections provide a concise description of the main exploitation routes undergone to ensure the sustainability of the Health-2-Market assets described previously.
Result 1. Training Needs Analysis open data and findings
Health-2-Market partners have already greatly exploited this asset of the project, by translating it into training terms that fuelled the development of the Health-2-Market training concept and programme. The report with the findings is currently disseminated to all interested stakeholders via the web portal of the project. Open access to the data is available. Further dissemination was realised via the project’s newsletter as well as a variety of well-targeted channels including: European networks and initiatives (e.g. the EBN, the Europe Enterprise Network, NCPs network, Fit For Health 2.0 ENTENTE, FI-STAR community, GET project, etc.), groups and communities in LinkedIn, (e.g. H2020 HEALTH Medical Research, Pharma, Drug Discovery, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Digital Health, Life Science Opportunities in EU, FFH, ENTENTE, Health-2-Market, etc.), various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions, etc. (e.g. European Society of Cardiology, European Dermatologist Network, European Alzheimer Network, Association of Science Parks, Career Office of the University of Athens, Hellenic Pasteur Institute, ASTP Proton, etc.), as well as direct mailing to participants in Health-2-Market project activities (e.g. online survey, trainings, advanced services, etc.). Moreover, in order to further enhance the impact of the TNA and ensure that its findings are properly disseminated to and exploited by its target groups, selected findings of the analysis were incorporated into the development of the Health-2-Market policy brief.
Result 2. Training curricula and material
Academies
The chosen exploitation path for the sustainability of the curricula as well as the training material developed specifically for the training academies of Health-2-Market, is integration into relevant existing or new programmes of the "Business School" partners of the project. The integration process started during the project, and is continued after its end. More specifically:
• IE operates an executive education course (i.e. "Management for Scientists and Researchers - MFSR"). The process of incorporating the Health-2-Market training asset into this program has already started. In addition, IE’s “Learning Innovation” department is considering further exploitation of this asset (e.g. development of new courses, incorporation in programmes other than MFSR).
• SKEMA offers an executive education programme (2 day and 5 day format similar to the Health-2-Market curriculum) and aims at incorporating some of the learning obtained from the Health-2-Market project in order to offer the best training possible. For instance, SKEMA has utilized some of the pitched business plans that were elaborated by attendants of the various Health-2-Market Academies in some of its already existing courses as they serve as pertinent examples of how pitched business plans are developed “in the real world”. The training offered appeared to be particularly appealing to the coaching community from incubators and accelerators. Therefore, offering the training to these users should allow for the best future sustainability of this project asset in the long run. SKEMA has also used part of the training material developed in the MOOC “Roadmap to entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit”.
• UGOT provides educational courses on academic research utilization. The process of incorporating this asset into these programmes has already started. For instance, a course given for PhD students at the Medicine Faculty will be renewed during 2015/2016. In addition, UGOT’s “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” unit is considering further exploitation of this asset (e.g. development of new courses and incorporation in programmes other than the aforementioned course).
Seminars
Similar to the training academies, the exploitation and sustainability plan for seminar curricula as well as corresponding training material involved their integration into relevant existing or new programmes of Health-2-Market "Business School" partners. The process begun during the lifetime of the project and will continue beyond its end.
Result 3. Case studies
Case studies will be used by project partners to enrich the content of the education and training services they provide. Such use of a case study implies a copyright note referring to Health-2-Market and will be possible only for case studies that were developed in the frame of the project and do not constitute background Intellectual Property of Health-2-Market partners. External stakeholders may also access and benefit from this asset through the Health-2-Market web portal and mobile app.
Result 4. E-training web-platform and e-learning courses
With a view to ensure the sustainability of the Health-2-Market e-training infrastructure and its components (including Health-2-Market publicly available assets), ownership of the web-platform itself will belong to Europa Media that will be responsible for its technical maintenance for 5 years following the end of the project. The respective authors of the e-learning courses (i.e. Business Schools partners) will respond to content update requests on an individual basis. The content of the web-platform has been protected by the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 .
Result 5. Health-2-Market mobile application
The application is available for download free-of-charge from Google Play as well as the Apple Store. Q-PLAN in cooperation with Europa Media will ensure the technical maintenance of the application for 2 years following the completion of the project.
Result 6. “Roadmap to entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” MOOC
The "Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” MOOC is now available on Udemy . It is free to use and accessible to anyone. In fact, over 1,800 students have already enrolled , securing lifetime access to a course that can improve their entrepreneurial ability and ideally enable them to successfully introduce their business ideas to market.
Result 10. Health-2-Market Advanced Services: Case outcomes and knowledge gained
The outcomes of the advanced services will be directly 'exploited' by the recipients of the tailored support in order to facilitate the introduction of their innovations into the market and thus are expected to contribute to long lasting impact. In parallel, project partners that provided the services will 'exploit' the knowledge and know-how acquired during the implementation of these cases in order to improve similar service offerings in the future. Finally, experience and feedback from various advanced services was integrated in the Health-2-Market Innovation Guides, therefore enabling a much bigger audience to benefit from the outcomes and learning of this type of project activities.
Result 11. Health-2-Market web portal
The Health-2-Market portal will remain in operation for a period of 5 years following completion of the project. Europa Media is responsible for its operation and maintenance, while its content will be periodically updated with content provided by the partners. In addition, the possibility of providing the content of the portal either to an interested existing project (e.g. Fit For Health 2.0) or even to a new HORIZON 2020 initiative in the field of Health / Life Sciences focusing on supporting the exploitation and commercialization of research outcomes will be considered if it emerges in the future.
Result 12. Health-2-Market communication database
The Health-2-Market communication database will serve as a valuable asset for all project partners for future communication as well as other activities in the EU health sector. The database has been provided to all interested Health-2-Market consortium partners in the form of an excel file that contains all e-mail addresses collected during the course of the project (with the exception of the contact data collected in the frame of the online survey so as to safeguard the confidentiality of the respondents). The personal data protection is ensured, as the database is only used internally by the consortium partners.
Result 13. Policy development and health initiatives with recommended courses of actions
The policy brief is freely disseminated and accessible through the Health-2-Market web portal. However, in order to ensure that it reached the maximum possible audience, in addition to social media and personal networks of Health-2-Market partners as well as direct mailing to Health-2-Market newsletter subscribers and participants in Health-2-Market project activities (e.g. online survey, trainings, advanced services, etc.), additional dissemination channels were foreseen including: European networks and initiatives (e.g. the EBN, the Europe Enterprise Network, NCPs network, Fit For Health 2.0 ENTENTE, FI-STAR community, GET project, etc.), groups and communities in LinkedIn, (e.g. H2020 HEALTH Medical Research, Pharma, Drug Discovery, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Digital Health, Life Science Opportunities in EU, FFH, ENTENTE, Health-2-Market, etc.) as well as various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions, etc. (e.g. European Society of Cardiology, European Dermatologist Network, European Alzheimer Network, Association of Science Parks, Career Office of University of Athens, Hellenic Pasteur Institute, ASTP Proton, etc.).
Results 14 & 15. Health-2-Market Innovation Guides: “How-to-do” guidebook and ARIaT
Both Health-2-Market Innovation Guides are freely disseminated and can be accessed by all interested parties without any financial requirements through the Health-2-Market web portal. Dissemination was also done via the following channels: European networks and initiatives (e.g. the EBN, the Europe Enterprise Network, NCPs network, Fit For Health 2.0 ENTENTE, FI-STAR community, GET project, etc.), groups and communities in LinkedIn, (e.g. H2020 HEALTH Medical Research, Pharma, Drug Discovery, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Digital Health, Life Science Opportunities in EU, FFH, ENTENTE, Health-2-Market, etc.), various medical or innovation societies, networks, associations, institutions, etc. (e.g. European Society of Cardiology, European Dermatologist Network, European Alzheimer Network, Association of Science Parks, Career Office of the University of Athens, Hellenic Pasteur Institute, ASTP Proton, etc.), social media and personal networks of Health-2-Market partners as well as direct mailing to Health-2-Market newsletter subscribers and participants in Health-2-Market project activities (e.g. online survey, trainings, advanced services, etc.). A very large and heterogeneous audience has thus received access to these Innovation Guides.
List of Websites:
The project’s web-portal ( http://health2market.eu/ ), as described above (sections 1.3 and 1.4 Result 11), was and can still be ‘exploited’ by the research and business communities in the EU as well as all other relevant stakeholders to find meaningful information on the field of Health / Life Sciences (e.g. programmes and initiatives, relevant events organised at national and/or EU level, etc.) as well as to access Health-2-Market assets available to the public.
As mentioned above, the web portal will remain in operation for a period of 5 years (2020) and will be updated if needed.
Some of the main pages include(d):
• Conference / Academies / Seminars
This section pointed out where the project Health-to-Market organised the academies and seminars. The visitors of the website could download some information about the events (ex: agenda) and the slides presented by the speakers. It also allowed direct registration of the participants.
• e-trainings
The e-learning courses were provided in a registered-section of the web portal to participants who were interested in receiving either standalone training, or supplementary training to the face-to-face trainings. The e-learning courses remain available until 2020. Users can have access to the e-training lectures, the cases studies or the quiz.
• Results
The most important page now that the project is finished is the results page showing the main results of the Health-to-Market project as well as links to the main sustainable assets such as the “how-to-do” guide, the ARIaT, the MOOC “Roadmap to entrepreneurial Mindset and Toolkit” and the e-learning courses.
Finally, as mentioned above, a mobile application has been developed (android and iOS) allowing users to access project’s results and contents on the go!
