Make Amsterdam the European Health Innovation Hub with arrival of EMA

With smart lobbying and some old-fashioned luck at the final toss, Amsterdam has been appointed as the new location for the European Medical Agency (EMA). It is a direct result of Brexit where all European institutions based in London will need to re-locate. The EMA is considered a big prize with its 900 international staff, most of them highly educated. Amsterdam and region will not only benefit from additional high-quality employment but also over 36,000 international business visits every year. No wonder that many European cities attempted to get it.

Amsterdam won the race and will host the EMA from 2019 onwards in the heart of its business district the ‘Zuidas’. It was celebrated as a victory, but mostly considered as a great addition to the local economy. However, the arrival of the EMA can yield much more for the Netherlands. It can be a flywheel to make the Amsterdam and the Netherlands the European Health Hub.

The EMA is an EU regulatory agency that tests new medicines and determines whether they gain access to the European market. The development of new medicines is complicated and costly. Traditionally, we therefore only look at the large pharmaceutical companies as the main stakeholders. Surely they will be important, but as anyone in the industry will tell you ‘big pharma’ is under pressure. If we want to keep new medicines affordable and perhaps even make them available more quickly, it is wiser to look broader. Because the innovation model in health is changing.

Digitization, artificial intelligence and genomics make that new players are getting opportunities. Last month, the FDA — the American counterpart of the EMA — approved the very first ‘digital pill’. Today, we see startups around the world looking for new medicines and healthcare applications using new technologies, and often with lower development costs. The large pharmaceutical companies are not only challenged by these new competitors, but increasingly also cooperate with these young start-ups. This changes drastically way in which innovation takes place in healthcare.

This will surely have an impact on the work of the EMA. The Netherlands can and must respond to this. But that requires much more than a smooth move of the EMA itself. Yet with as possible upside in becoming the European health innovation hub bringings even more jobs, visits and growth. And more important for patients, a faster introduction of new, more affordable medicines. What has to happen to realize this potential?

Build the number 1 European incubator for health start ups. A health startup is completely different from starting an internet company. Its complexity requires specific support from experts who know the market, housing in the form of shared labs and more patient capital than the fast money usually invested in internet start ups. And they need advice on how to deal with regulation, and therefore being close to the EMA would be a huge asset. So, build the leading European incubator for health start ups. It can collaborate with existing initiatives such as Rockstart’s Digital Health Accelerator and incubator programs from large companies such as Philips Health Works or Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS. But the scale must be large enough to attract both European startups and global investors.

Improve access to international capital. The development costs of new medicines are considerable. Such capital is not available in the Netherlands, let alone Europe. Access to global investors is of vital importance. But where do these investors start? Attracting them to Europe means offering them an easy way to find potential investment opportunities. With the EMA, Amsterdam can become a gateway for international investors looking for innovative health start-ups from Europe. And to make it even more attractive, why not set up a European co-investment fund that holds office next to the EMA?

Strengthen commercialization of research. The Netherlands has a very strong international position in the field of research in healthcare. But despite years of talking, the Netherlands is still weakly developed when it comes to bringing the results of scientific research to the market. A big problem is the fragmentation that makes it difficult for corporates and investors to find their way to the lab. Why not use the arrival of the EMA to create one Health Tech Transfer Office for all Dutch universities and hospitals that perform health research?

Develop innovative regulation. It is a complex process to get new medicines and medical applications. Bringing them faster to market is definitely a competitive advantage. The Dutch government, together with care parties, could speed up this process. Simply by organizing it smarter with innovative regulations. In Canada such a program has been set up (EXCITE) that reduces the ‘time to market’ for healthcare technology. That program is now being extended to the US and the UK. Let’s get such a program to the Netherlands and be the leader in the EU with respect to innovative regulations. This would be an extra asset for both large companies and startups to locate in the Netherlands as gateway to Europe.

Make Amsterdam the health meetup place. The arrival of the EMA will make Amsterdam the most logical meeting place in Europe for healthcare innovators and investors. Help European startups find investors, partners and customers around the world by bringing international marching events to Amsterdam. For example, why not bring the Redefining Early Stage Investments Conferences, which now only take place in the US and Canada, here. And that is just one example.

Finally, there is amazing healthcare research being done at Dutch universies in Leiden, Utrecht and Nijmegen (and yes, even beyond that too). With often each their own character and specialisms. But a highly irritating feature of the Dutch innovation system is an excess of mutual competition between these regions. As a result, everything has too small a scale. What about doing that differently for once and work together? Where it is not said that everything must be concentrated in Amsterdam, definitely not. It is about joining forces in a smart way. For example, I think of the role that the Reshape Center of the Radboud UMC is playing to help innovate the Dutch healthcare system. Or the importance of the BioScience Park in Leiden as location for companies in that space.

In Canada, the aforementioned functions are performed and coordinated through one organization. MaRS is Canada’s largest innovation hub with Health as one of its core areas. Research takes place at various universities, and together they work on commercialization, incubation and systems transformation through MaRS. This creates a scale that becomes interesting for international investors and companies. For example, in 2016 MaRS supported over 1,000 startups that attracted nearly 600 million euros in capital in that year and made more than 300 million euros in turnover. About a quarter of these startups were active in health, but they had a relatively bigger share in capital and revenue. Such a scale should also be the ambition here. And the good thing is that we have about 2 years before the EMA is here to realize it.

Joeri van den Steenhoven was Vice President Systems Innovation at MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, Canada. Before that he was co-founder and CEO of Kennisland. Now he works as independent adviser, teacher and executive.

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