Technopolis

Life Sciences and Health

The life sciences and health domain is increasingly important worldwide. Work in these fields offers the promise of societal and economic benefit through the generation of knowledge on the biology of disease and its translation to applications that enhance human health. Such work not only addresses medical needs more effectively, but it also offers challenging opportunities for the life science industry. Both national and European policies seek to realise the full potential of the life sciences.

In the life science and health domain, Technopolis has  performed a wide range of studies and evaluations, which can be categorised:

  • studies on technology transfer of life sciences, biotechnology and medical scientific knowledge to stakeholders and industry;
  • studies on the translation of research to clinical applications;
  • studies which focus on societal impact of medical & life science research at large.   

The consultants at Technopolis call upon in depth expertise on life science in regard to medical developments (e.g., (post-) genomics, stem cells, medical devices, diagnostic imaging and e-health) as well as on life science and its impact upon health policy.

Technopolis has built a strong portfolio of projects in the area of life sciences, health policy and related industrial sectors that is co-ordinated by the Dutch office. This portfolio covers all aspects of the policy life cycle. It includes a number of strategic, baseline, foresight and benchmark studies, as well as ex ante and ex-post evaluations.

More information

It you are interested in this topic please contact Wieneke Vullings at Technopolis Group Netherlands.

Examples of our studies (download of reports) in several languages (English, Dutch and Swedish) are:

Measuring societal impact: method development

The ultimate objective of health research is to improve the health outcome of each individual. Thus, health research has a dual mission, namely a scientific and societal one. Despite the societal character of health research, the performance of researchers still tends to be measured by the scientific quality of their research rather than by its impact on the health care sector and society at large. Technopolis has started the development of a tool for measuring the societal quality of medical research in collaboration with the Leiden Academic Medical Hospital (LUMC) and ZonMw (The Netherlands organisation for health research and development), with the intention to intensify the interactions of health research with society (health care, health industry and the general public).

Papers on this topic include: 1) “Strategic research planning: Increase the impact of public research by integrating user-perspectives in planning and evaluation”, Wieneke Vullings, Ingeborg Meijer, Bastian Mostert, Prime Conference Mexico, 2008, 2) “Societal output and use of research performed by health research groups”, Bastian Mostert, Stefan Ellenbroek, Ingeborg Meijer, Gerrit van Ark, Eduard Klasen (submitted for publication in Health Research Policy and Systems)


In addition, we have used this expertise to broaden the study and define guidelines for measuring societal quality of scientific research in all academic domains. It is taking place in the context of the ERiC project (Evaluating research in Context) and in collaboration with QANU.