Blossoming Partnerships - For a Future-Proof Health & Care

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are formalised national multi-annual, thematic and programmatic collaborations between quadruple helix organisations that contribute to the central and at least one of the four other Ministry of Health-missions for the societal theme Health & Care. PPPs include end users like professionals and/or citizens during their development and in their operations. Each of the 40 PPPs contributes to the Central Mission in its own unique way to ensure that in 2040 “five more years of healthy living and reducing socioeconomic health differences by 30%” is reached.

We are looking forward to giving our PPP community a flying start in 2022 with the first physical PPP session since the pandemic outbreak.’

- Twan Kerssens, Community Manager PPP's

Most of these these strategic PPPs are supported by one or more KIC-partners, firstly via focussed information and sandpit sessions,  secondly via matchmaking meetings to enable maximal knowledge exchange and collaboration between relevant public and private stakeholders and partners. Once the colleboration is set and the innovation-programme and instrumental technicalities are approved, Health~Holland, mostly in coalition with other financers, stimulates, facilitates and finances the PPP-programme. Most of the PPPs cover a specific area of a disease, such as cardiovascular diseases (DCVA) and Cancer (Oncode) or a more generic and overarching theme like regenerative medicine (RegMed XB) or the national infrastructures for health data (Health-RI).

‘In mission-oriented innovation, the emphasis is on more than technological development alone. It is about behaviour, regulation and affordability, with attention for the end user. Private organisations, scientists, the government and as many new challengers as possible work together in public-private consortia. Consortia that understand that innovation asks a lot of people, and therefore see that challenges should be approached from different angles. The approach that the Netherlands chooses is unique, but not straightforward, or easy.’


Innovating mental health

A large number of national public-private partnerships focus on areas of somatic diseases. In light of the Mission-Driven Top Sector and Innovation Policy, attention broadened since 2019 when attention was raized towards public-private R&D and innovation in the area of mental health. Brain and psychosocialal diseases must be tackled together with clients/patients, their relatives and loved ones, researchers, care professionals, knowledge institutes, companies, and societal and governmental organisations.

To this end, ZonMw, MIND and the Dutch Brain Foundation launched a large initiative called Hoofdzaken, which aims to mobilise 250 million euros in 10 years for research and innovation in brain related and mental health. To realise this, Hoofdzaken advocates for a national knowledge and innovation programme in which knowledge and data on psychiatry, psychology, neurology and neurosciences are brought together and better solutions for patients are implemented in practice faster.

We interviewed  Prof. Dr. Robert Schoevers, Professor of Psychiatry and Head of Department Psychiatry of the University Medical Center Groningen, about what partnerships in the field of mental health can do with and for clients and patients, in the innovative ecosystem.

This article is one of many articles in our recently published Year in Preview. Curious about the other subjects in our online magazine? Take a look now!

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