How European Biological and Medical Sciences Research Infrastructures Boost Innovation by Open Access

Published 29 June 2017

On June 20th, Medical University of Graz (BBMRI Austria) and EATRIS co-organised a meeting in Brussels as part of the H2020-funded CORBEL project (Coordinated Research infrastructures Building Enduring Life-science Services) and its specific work package devoted to “Accelerating innovation”. Speakers from the Biological and Medical Sciences research infrastructures (BMSRI), the European Commission, Industry and other European organisations explored the theme of open innovation with particular emphasis on pre-competitive research collaboration models.

The various BMS RI gave presentations on ways they are working to achieve this goal. EATRIS also one of the presenters showed various examples of successful public-private collaboration which have been realised within its translational research network. The meeting closed with a lively panel discussion that included representatives from EMA, EFPIA and industry.

The main conclusions of the day were that pre-competitive, open access models can be very valuable as instruments for innovation, provided that issues such as intellectual property (IP) rights are adequately addressed in the planning; additionally, IP turns out to be particularly important to protect for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Open access collaboration models are already used by BMS RIs, for example the Expert Centres approach; the CORBEL project is intended to establish guidelines for their increased use. A report will be prepared which collects the learnings from this meeting and earlier discussions and workshops.