HSC Innovations visits GlaxoSmithKline

 Posted by  Events
Jun 282013
 
Caution: This post is more than a year old. Be sure to check for more up to date information.

HSC Innovations was part of a Northern Ireland delegation which recently attended a major innovation event at the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) R&D site in Stevenage.

The PraxisUnico “What Industry wants from Academia” event on the 7th and 8th May focused largely on bioscience and healthcare and was chaired by Malcolm Skingle CBE, Director, Academic Liaison, GSK Pharma. It was the largest UK networking event of its type, with more than 70 universities and research institutes represented, along with 30 major technology driven companies from a range of sectors presenting.

The keynote talks included Professor Sir John O’Reilly, Director General, Knowledge and Innovation at Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, setting out a vision for the future keyed to the importance of UK research and Iain Gray, CEO of the Technology Strategy Board, who explained the importance of UK research to business innovation. The Intellectual Property Office also launched the report on the evaluation of the impacts of the Lambert Toolkit in relation to the Lambert model agreements and Dr David Docherty, CEO of the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB), described the priorities for this newly created Centre.

It emerged that the top four challenges facing industry – academia/clinical collaboration in the UK were:

  • The cost of doing research within UK universities
  • Sometimes unrealistic expectations set by universities in the valuation of their IP
  • Attracting and retaining talent
  • The globalisation of research

Presentations from the event are available for download as is the full report from PraxisUnico.

Group photo from the Stevenage event

Barry Henderson (C-TRIC), Dermot Leonard (QUB), Vincent Farrelly (QUB), Malcolm Skingle (GSK), Dr Maurice O’Kane (C-TRIC/WHSCT), Dr David Brownlee (HSC Innovations), Stephen Kennedy (GSK)

The delegation also had the opportunity to visit the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (SBC), the UK’s first open innovation bioscience campus pioneering a unique culture to drive early stage biotech, pharma and medtech developments.

Here they were hosted by Martino Picardo, CEO SBC, who indicated that the convergence of multiple innovative technologies is one of the futures most important healthcare trends.

Further information on the SBC and details on SBC’s DiscoverAssist – helping you work in early stage drug discovery is available at http://www.stevenagecatalyst.com/openinnovation_at_sbc/discoverassist/.