Throughout your career, can you think of any prominent principles or aspects of healthcare innovation that most influenced your perspective and shaped your vision on valorisation?
“The most important aspect is that for any innovation you have to work together with other disciplines than your own to achieve impact in innovation. Academic careers are in most cases focused on one theme, diving very deep in science. People have to realize that any ideas that come out of this work need input, efforts, and a lot of time from many others to translate it into something useful in healthcare. And even when it is useful the steps towards implementation are usually underestimated. For important innovations teams with dedicated tasks for implementation are needed”
What were the most significant organizational or cultural challenges you encountered when supporting innovation within a complex academic medical centre, and how did you and the team address them?
“An important challenge when companies and academic medical centers work together is mutual understanding of the needs of both parties. We have created ecosystems where a number of partners work together and also get to know each other. Building certain levels of personal relations between collaborators is an important aspect for long-term success.”
Looking ahead, how do you see the landscape of healthcare innovation evolving in the Netherlands, and what strategic role should university medical centers play in shaping that future?
“There will be many new developments in diagnostics and treatment towards personalized medicine as well as in organization of healthcare. UMC’s have an important role in sharing the best of this, collaborate with and guide medical specialists working peripheral hospitals in the region to form organic networks. This already happens but can further improve, including sharing of data effectively. Another aspect is that UMC’s should much more work together and share best practices in innovation.”
Thank you Martin, for all the work you’ve done! We wish you all the best in your next chapter.
