Improving Innovation in Nano-Healthcare Funding

Abstract

European countries have invested heavily in Nanomedicine over the last decade, however, the output has been much reduced by a lack of knowledge of how to innovate in a heavily regulated setting. This development failing is not unique to nanomedicine but is there to differing extents across most open innovation healthcare projects. The transition from research to development requires informed debate and high-quality data and is a very challenging milestone. Researchers often say they are developing a new drug, when they are in fact doing research – funders also use the terms (R or D) interchangeably - an unfortunate consequence of their academic training. A simple test is if you don’t know actually what you are developing - you are in research.