While Biovia has put in place many strategic initiatives, one of its key activities is its role as a spearhead cluster, focusing on innovation at the intersection of medical biotech, medtech and digital health. This year Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) is working with its spearhead clusters (SPCs) — the seven organizations that represent key sectors for the Flemish region — to roll out the new Flemish cluster policy.
One of the new priorities is that SPCs should provide more support for startups and SMEs, including helping them secure financing, such as venture capital. The good news for Biovia? It was already doing that.
“Securing financing is essential in the sectors Biovia represents, and the cluster took up that challenge from the very beginning.” – Sara Van Overmeire
“Securing financing is essential in the sectors Biovia represents, and the cluster took up that challenge from the very beginning,” says Sara Van Overmeire, project advisor and Biovia’s liaison at VLAIO. “We encourage Biovia to continue its efforts, thereby strengthening innovation in Flanders.”
Biovia assists its members with finding capital in a number of ways, not least at its annual HealthTech Investor Summit conference. But subsidies are an important part of a healthy mix of financing — and that is where VLAIO also comes in.
Bridging Worlds to Foster Innovation
A spearhead cluster’s main focus is to bring companies and other stakeholders together, identify shared challenges and opportunities and translate these into strategic roadmaps for the sector. Within this broader mission, a key activity for Biovia is the set‑up and guidance of collaborative innovation projects aligned with the cluster’s strategic priorities.
While members can rely on Biovia’s expertise for any VLAIO application, the cluster mostly provides in‑depth support for collaborative projects involving three or more partners. “These projects bring together very different types of organizations — something that does not happen naturally,” explains Van Overmeire.
“If Biovia was not there, a lot of those projects would not make it to full proposal and get funded.” – Sara Van Overmeire
In terms of Biovia, partners in a project consortium can be companies, hospitals, research institutes and universities. And they must represent at least two different sectors among medtech, biotech and digital tech.
“These people usually live in different worlds, speak very different languages,” explains Van Overmeire. “If you’ve got two young engineers in a software company together with a pharma giant… well, they do not tend to understand each other very well! When it comes to the innovation projects submitted to VLAIO through Biovia — if Biovia was not there, a lot of those projects would not make it to full proposal and get funded. That is why this cluster is so very much needed.”
A Neutral Partner
This approach to collaboration is present in everything Biovia does, emphasizes Van Overmeire. “Biovia is a neutral actor. It is not affiliated to one of the stakeholders; it is a central organization that knows all of them”.
In fact, this collaborative approach is at the heart of spearhead cluster policy in general. “Bringing different actors together is a crucial part of a strategic approach for collaborative innovation,” says Annie Renders, Head of Cluster Policy & Strategic Relationship Management at VLAIO. “The Flemish government has decided to support this through a dedicated cluster policy that assigns this task to the spearhead clusters. If Biovia and the other SPCs did not take up this role, it just would not happen. This is why we need cluster organizations.”
“We developed the cluster policy because it was too fragmented, there was no coherent vision.” – Annie Renders
VLAIO’s cluster policy was launched in 2016, with Biovia joining the existing clusters — including energy, logistics and the food sector — in 2021. This makes it one of the youngest spearhead clusters to date.
Clusters allowed the Flemish government to organize support in a uniform manner across various domains. “Before 2016, there were several cluster-like initiatives in Flanders, each with their own approach to stimulate and support companies,” explains Renders. “We developed the cluster policy because it was too fragmented, there was no coherent vision.”
Industry-Driven Network
Clusters are the result of bottom-up initiatives, the formal development of sectors with an active interest in innovation, growth and becoming more competitive. “Clusters are always industry-driven,” Renders continues. “They are the result of a group of companies that see the value of collaboration to achieve their goals. They can come to VLAIO with a proposal to launch an SPC. While this is of course only a first step in a long process toward establishing a cluster, the initiative clearly comes from industry.”
Biovia is the result of the former MedTech Flanders and tech cluster DSP Valley converging, then later merging with flanders.bio. While the discussion started as early as 2017, the Covid-19 crisis significantly accelerated the process. In every country, Covid exposed the weaknesses in the healthcare system.
Read this article for more on the benefits of One Health in Flanders!
“The Flemish government saw the need for cross-domain innovation,” explains Van Overmeire. “We need more digitalization, better access to health data, partnering for ambulatory care. During Covid, doctors were doing consultations through video calls. Nobody saw that coming. We really understood the need for cross-over collaboration, so this all came together nicely to create Biovia.”
Biovia brings together a wide variety of stakeholders, including hospitals and patient care organizations. “It’s the unique strength of Biovia, and its biggest challenge,” notes Van Overmeire, pointing to those different worlds again. “It connects companies to the research that is happening in universities and hospitals. And it figures out ways for very different kinds of stakeholders to collaborate. Providing that guidance is a unique role Biovia takes on as an SPC in the sector.”
About Biovia
Biovia is Flanders’ health innovation cluster. Established in 2021 by VLAIO as one of the region’s spearhead clusters to support innovation at the intersection of digital health, medtech and biotech, its reach also extends to agtech and industrial biotech. This approach brings together all sectors at the crossroads of human and planetary health innovation.
Together with its 400+ members and partners, Biovia has defined strategic priorities for the future of health innovation in Flanders, Belgium and beyond. These include areas such as preparing for value-based healthcare models, fast-tracking clinical trials and building a network of competent talent. Biovia takes part in multiple European projects that also support these priorities in order to increase the impact of its members on a larger stage.
