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06 - DSP Valley

Trans Tech Diagnostics (TTD) focuses on the development of innovative diagnostic alternatives that allow for better assessment of risks to develop cardiovascular diseases.

TTD provides an open innovation network for public-private collaboration to create the cardiovascular health solutions for the future.

To streamline these options for collaboration, and to align them with the goals (indicators) of the project, DSP Valley entered the TTD-team and applied the ‘MIX Approach’  to support the transfer of solutions from key TTD partners -  Maastricht University (CARIM), University Hasselt (BIOMED), VITO and TSG InnoteQ – to market.

The MIX approach is a Multi-disciplinary, Interregional, X-sectoral innovation approach which applies the systemic, virtuous cycle of innovation and knowledge creation and aims at developing sustainable value models.  This approach takes into account seven success factors that address the key challenge related to the implementation of the MIX model, ic. integrating people with different expertise, different background, different experience into one coherent approach targeting concrete and tangible solutions.  The MIX innovation approach results from the experiences gained during the EU CIP project Nano4Health, which had as objective to support the development of personalized healthcare applications at the crossroads of nano- and biotechnologies.

Based on the MIX principles the approach was tailored to the TTD context (see Figure) and 5 steps were defined:

1. Idea Screening & selection
2. Value modelling
3. Team building
4. Plan for Action
5. Set up PPLs.

Within the running time of TTD, two MIX-rounds are foreseen, of which the first was finalized in January 2018 and the second has started in November 2018 and is expected to run until March 2019.

Resulting from the first round, three teams have been formed. All teams contain partners from the original TTD-consortium, additional (private) partners, and partners from both Flanders and The Netherlands. The first team (‘Dynamic Inflammation Assay’) started with the original TTD partners UM and TSG InnoteQ, and has added two private partners (PimBio and Tenco DDM) als PPL to the consortium. Currently, the first prototypes leading from this collaboration are being tested within the consortium. The second team in on the verge of adding an addition private partner as PPL to TTD, and the third team is making an inventory on possible PPL-addition of a partner.

Within the second round, again three projects have been defined. In addition, several (private) partners have been contacted and additional possible partners will be selected within this round. The team building of this round is expected to start in January 2019, enabling setting up the teams and inclusion of PPL within the TTD consortium from February 2019 onwards.