The ERRIN innovation event, The Hospital of the Future, 2 March 2010, explored the future of the hospital as a recipient of financially and environmentally sustainable investment.
The key outcome for me, as one of the moderators of the event, was the emerging view of the hospital as a major innovator within their local/regional economies.
Hospitals are [...]

I had the distinct honour of speaking at and participating in a panel discussion at the European Foundation for Management Development conference at Advancia, in Paris recently. An informed group assembled to hear from entrepreneurs and academics.
I was impressed with the work of Advancia and the support it gets from the Paris Chamber of Commerce. [...]

Writing about health issues also means thinking about how people learn — we all want our health professionals to be highly trained and educated. We are also generally mindful that talent should prevail over privilege. Such appears to be an issue for President Nicholas Sarkozy of France and the elitist Grandes Ecoles that enable the [...]

We are all innovators now.  Gone, surely, must be the days of free-riders, of subsidised mediocrity and creative malaise. A new world beckons. But doubts remain.
I had the privilege of moderating an excellent post-Lisbon event on innovation for ERRIN, the European Regions Research and Innovation Network.  What was so exciting was to hear from different [...]

It would be a serious mistake not have an EU-wide regulatory framework for internet pharmacies.  Not achieving one would be just more evidence of the politics that infects all discussions of cross-border healthcare to the detriment of the patient and health consumer.  Illegal drugs, fake drugs, reimported drugs, counterfeit drugs, substandard drugs, legitimate drugs — [...]

Recent research suggests that the European pharmaceutical industry is more productive than the US one.  Euractive reports on this here: article-184974.
A few things to consider.  Light’s work is a reanalysis of existing data.  His conclusions are based on using the head-office of the company discovering the drug as determining the country of origin.  He is [...]

Annalee Saxenian, an astute observer and analyst of the regional advantage of Silicon Valley, observes in her book, The New Argonauts, that the Valley has gained as its home-grown entrepreneurs have built overseas businesses in China, India and elsewhere.  She notes: “By promoting the development of local capabilities in Tel Aviv,  Hsinchu, Shanghai, Bangalore, and [...]

The review of the European Research Council paints at times an ugly picture of a bureaucratic mess.  In search of simpler solutions of state run/owned type bodies, bureaucratic distance might be the best thing.  Otherwise known as autonomy, the ERC could still act in the interests of the European Union, but without all that bureaucratic [...]

NICE is the health technology assessment [HTA] agency in England, the one upon which others in many countries are modelled.  More generally, HTA is increasingly being used by governments for more than simple economic evaluation of medicines and devices, but is being used as a form of rationing of access to technologies (medicines or devices [...]

Sweden is home to the Karolinska Institute, one of the most effective bio-medical institutions in the EU. The worst thing the EU could do would be to copy Sweden; they are exemplary.
What should be left behind at the end of December is a commitment by member states to unleash the creativity in their research communities [...]