Overview
Health & Life Science Cluster Bulgaria (BIO Cluster BG) is a non-profit organization that brings together businesses and organizations with key activities focused on the practical application of life sciences & health – innovative companies in the fields of drug discovery, genetic research, 3D human tissue printing, software solutions for medical and outpatient care, drug manufacturing, nutrition supplements, green technologies, bio-based technology, food tech, agrotechnology, and many more.
The Cluster focuses its efforts on developing a technology agenda at all levels: regional, national, and international. Health & Life Sciences Cluster facilitates confidence-building relations to fulfill the needs of our stakeholders for strengthening innovation through cross-disciplinary and international partnerships.
Today’s BIOBG main topic is the Smart Health Innovations driven by data sharing, data analytics – using AI/ML-enabled technologies, to shift to Patient-centered and Personalised Healthcare.
The Motivation Behind Joining VELES
Joining VELES is a unique opportunity for BIOBG to contribute to placing the ground of the RSHDS (Regional Smart Health Data Space) and participate in the development of policies and their validation in an effective environment so that Bulgaria and the region are prepared to become an effective part of the European Health Data Space.
Significantly increasing the potential of data exploitation for health and research purposes is part of their short-term agenda. As part of VELES, BIOBG is committed to bringing together the industry players and the researchers in biotech and health and to paving the way for Smart Health and innovations in the widening countries in the region.
The Health & Life Sciences Cluster Bulgaria became part of VELES with great enthusiasm and expectations for the expansion and development of big data in the field of health, as well as the accompanying ecosystem of producers, administrators and users. Big data in health are in their initial stage of development and exploitation in Bulgaria. Therefore, they strongly believe that VELES will pave the way for expansion, diversification and accelerated development of many existing and new stakeholders, which will add value to a richer and socially beneficial ecosystem in the field of medical data.
Through the establishment of Regional Smart Health Data Space (RSHDS) and the demonstration process of its innovation potential, BIOBG expects to:
- prove a sustainable process of the secured health data transfer and to enable all stakeholders to benefit from EU-wide data sharing,
- bring Bulgaria and the region to EHDS
- provide Personalised medicine through sharing European data infrastructure, allowing researchers and healthcare professionals to pool resources across the EU
- empower the society with common digital tools and finally shift to Person-centered health care.
Responsibilities & Contribution
BIOBG has several roles in separate work packages within VELES, the key ones being planning and grounding the RSHDS (Work Package 3) and demonstrating the RSHDS innovation potential (Work Package 4) by implementing the second use case (Pilot 2) for illustrating the Alzheimer disease data processing, benefits and opportunities of digitalization, identifying the challenges linked to the respective health domain.
BIOBG will rely on the extensive knowledge and experience of local practitioners, business experts and policymakers. In addition, BIOBG will contribute to the know-how transfer between participating widening countries by processing and exchanging health data through the RSHDS, improving health outcomes and cost-effectiveness.
