On 15 May, the director general for Industry of the Government of Catalonia Matilde Villarroya, and Jordi Aguasca, director of Start-up Catalonia, visited the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) in order to learn first-hand the innovative ecosystem of the health sector of Barcelona.

Barcelona has become a benchmark in innovation that competes with other cities on a global scale, especially in two prominent sectors: health and gaming. From the Generalitat there is a clear objective of promoting initiatives that encourage and support entrepreneurship and the creation of companies that benefit society.

The PCB is one of the leaders in research and innovation in the European health sector with 2,800 professionals, who not only have large public research centres, but also integrate the private sector into a single ecosystem with 83 companies installed. “Of the incubators that the PCB has had in the past, large companies have emerged that are now success stories in the health sector and that, possibly, would not have had the same trajectory without this initial impulse”, explained Maria Terrades, director of the PCB. The PCB is working to articulate a third incubator in the near future.

The visit included a meeting with one of the key agents of the innovative system of the Catalan health sector, Biocat. Jordi Naval, director of Biocat, commented on the Open Innovation Forum initiative led by Biocat that is promoting the interaction between business and public research and calls on the business sector to join in.

Finally, one of the most recent success stories of the PCB companies, Stat-Dx, was visited. Stat-Dx was formed in 2010 as an entrepreneurial initiative with three workers. It was acquired by the Dutch group Qiagen in 2018 for 154 million euros and currently already markets diagnostic devices internationally and continues to innovate to bring new products to market.