Biocat brings the strategic frameworks of personalised medicine to the heart of the EU Presidency

This week, Biocat has participated in key events held in Poland under the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union, at a particularly crucial time for Europe’s competitive position on the global stage.

PRECISEU, the Regional Innovation Valley project in Personalised Medicine coordinated by Biocat, has been at the centre of strategic debates on the future of health innovation in Europe, positioning the BioRegion of Catalonia as one of the leading ecosystems in the transformation of healthcare at the European level.

Montse Daban, Director of Strategic Analysis and International Relations at Biocat and President of the Council of European BioRegions (CEBR), represented Biocat at these events, reinforcing Catalonia’s leadership in interregional collaboration and knowledge transfer.

EU Innovation Journey

Biocat shared a stand with the European Commission at the EU Innovation Journey 2025 conference (12 May, Warsaw), an international event dedicated to innovation and deep tech in Europe, organised by the Polish Presidency of the Council to define the next steps towards the new Multiannual Financial Framework of the Union in terms of competitiveness. In this context, Biocat strengthened its position by leading the first Regional Innovation Valley in Europe and acting as a European benchmark among innovative health ecosystems.

CEBR Annual Meeting 

The 2025 General Assembly of the Council of European BioRegions (13-14 May, Krakow), co-organized with Klaster LifeScience Kraków, was the strategic meeting point for the main European life sciences clusters and ecosystems. This network of 50 European bioregions represents around 15,000 health innovation stakeholders across Europe. The network’s president opened the annual meeting by reflecting on the role of clusters in connecting ecosystems and promoting favorable conditions for startups and scale-ups. Over the two days of the meeting, clusters interacted with policymakers from the European Commission, representing the Directorates-General for Research, Industry and Regional Cooperation.

LifeScience4EU Conference

The LifeScience4EU Conference (15-16 May, Krakow), organized under the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, brought together experts, policymakers, researchers, industry and patients to discuss the future of life sciences and health innovation in Europe.

As part of this conference, Biocat coordinated the high-level side event PRECISEU “Tailoring Tomorrow: Personalised Medicine in the EU Compass”. This session brought together experts, policymakers and patient representatives to discuss the future of personalised medicine in Europe. Elina Drakvik (Sitra), Anton Ussi (Eatris), Aneta Tyszkiewicz (EFPIA), Ramon Maspons (AQuAS), Pedro Carrascal (POP), Chris Morton (ELEM Biotech), and Apostolos Dimitriadis (FORTH) delved into key concepts and elements to help guide the next steps of the project and steer the debate on the adoption of personalised medicine in Europe.

Within the main conference programme, Montse Daban moderated one of three parallel sessions, focused on Medtech and Digital Health. This session addressed, through two debates, the main obstacles preventing the European Union from achieving its health and well-being objectives, as well as the mechanisms to overcome them, and also the indicators for measuring health innovation, taking into account the needs of patients, innovators, professionals and systems. The conclusions of these discussions, together with those from other areas such as Biopharma and Public Health, were presented in a plenary session to provide a global vision of the future of health innovation in Europe.

InnoMedCatalyst Focus Group on Precision Medicine

As an active partner in the European InnoMedCatalyst project, Biocat coordinated the focus group dedicated to precision medicine and regional roadmaps. This meeting brought together European experts, including Aneta Tyszkiewicz (EFPIA), Ramon Maspons (AQuAS), Pedro Carrascal (POP), Sauro Vicini (ClustER) and Apostolos Dimitriadis (FORTH). The session generated a strategic debate on the key players in designing regional roadmaps for personalised medicine.

EIT Health Morning Health Talks

Remotely, Montse Daban opened the EIT Health Morning Health Talk organized by the Cluj (Romania) ecosystem on 15 May, to inspire enabling policies in regional innovation ecosystems, with the presentation “Ten key drivers of a thriving healthcare innovation ecosystem”, highlighting the essential factors for the success of a health innovation ecosystem beyond funding, such as collaboration, regulation and access to health data.

These activities close an intense week of debates that, within the framework of the Polish Presidency of the Union, have addressed the future of health innovation in Europe within the new EU Competitiveness Compass and against the backdrop of new geopolitical scenarios arising from changes in US research and innovation policies.

In the upcoming months, the BioRegion of Catalonia will continue to strengthen its presence in strategic forums driving health innovation in Europe, with notable participation in:

• HERA Brussels (Brussel·les, June 2025): Annual conference of the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority.
• Irish Life Sciences Cluster (Cork, June 2025): With the CEBR presidency, Biocat has been invited to the launch of the Cork Health Innovation Cluster to discuss strategies and present the Catalan success story.
• HLTH EUROPE 2025 – MEDVIA Round Table (Amsterdam, June 2025): Round table on digital health innovation and interoperability.

• ECIV (European Circular Innovation Valley) (Brussel·les, June 2025): Presentation of the PRECISEU project in the debate on the role of Regional Innovation Valleys in the future of the European Framework Programme (FP10), organised by ECIV, the Regional Innovation Valley project led by the Government of Navarre.

   

PRECISEU (PeRsonalised medicine Empowerment Connecting Innovation ecoSystems across EUrope) is an initiative funded by the Horizon Europe programme aimed at accelerating the adoption of personalised medicine in Europe by improving collaboration between health innovation ecosystems in different regions and countries. The project brings together 25 partners from 12 European regions in 10 Member States and Ukraine, with strong Catalan participation: Biocat leads the consortium, alongside the Department of Health, ACCIÓ, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and AstraZeneca.

With a budget of €23 million and a duration of five years, PRECISEU aims to:

• Reduce fragmentation and inequalities between leading and emerging regions in health innovation.
• Accelerate European patients’ access to personalised medicine and advanced therapies, leveraging the potential of health data and the transfer of innovative solutions.
• Drive the digitalisation and sustainability of European health systems, facilitating the adoption of disruptive technologies and creating a shared European model of personalised medicine.