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Innovative Medical Technologies Cluster will appear in the capital

A new cluster is being established in Moscow — medical one. Its configuration and prospects were discussed at a round table during the second day of the HSE Foresight Conference. The participants included representatives of the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Economic Development, Department of Science, Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship of the City of Moscow, Russian Cluster Observatory and Foresight Centre at HSE ISSEK, the RAS institutes, medical and pharmaceutical community, and experts in other relevant areas.

Why a medical cluster?

The Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University initiated (and now coordinates) the setting up of the Moscow Medical Technologies Cluster. Sergei Lukyanov, the university’s vice-rector for critical biomedical technologies, told the audience that the idea originated from the need to more efficiently organise interaction between existing organisations, which in the course of developing innovative products encounter numerous inter-agency barriers.

The Moscow Medical Technologies Cluster will comprise key organisations and companies active in medical biotechnology, production of medical equipment, and provision of high-technology medical services.

The cluster’s spearhead group comprises the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the M.M. Shemyakin — Y.A. Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the RAS, the Dmitry Rogachev Federal Scientific and Clinical Centre of Paediatric Haematology, Oncology and Immunology, the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, and innovative companies Eurogen, Inc., Imagerysoft, Inc., and Neurobiolab, Inc.

The strategy and development programme for the cluster are expected to be put together shortly, as well as proposals to provide support for projects of the cluster’s participants.

Cluster as a hallmark of quality

To organise a more efficient cooperation between R&D and educational organisations and production companies, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development in 2012 launched innovative territorial clusters support programme covering 25 pilot clusters. The commission on selecting clusters’ projects to provide support to has just completed its work, said Pavel Rudnik, deputy director of the ministry’s Innovation Development Department; 2.5 billion roubles will be allocated for their support this year. The competition was quite tough: a significant proportion of projects were refused funding (the total requested amount was close to 2.7 billion roubles). Compared with the previous year, the share of funds allocated to six pilot clusters specialising in biotechnology, pharmaceutics, and medical industry, has increased. In total they received 680 million roubles.

Two out of 25 pilot innovative regional clusters operate in Moscow: Troitsk New Materials, Laser, and Radiation Technologies Сluster, and Zelenograd Electronic Industry Сluster. In addition to that Moscow Composite Cluster was created this year, and biotechnology cluster is currently being set up.

However, according to Yevgeny Kutsenko, head of the NRU HSE Russian Cluster Observatory, the capital’s potential for creating new clusters isn’t yet exhausted. Due to high concentration of medical organisations, the capital became a “medical tourism” centre for Russians a long time ago. In 2011, in the course of drafting the Socio-economic Development Strategy for the City of Moscow Until 2025 (HSE jointly with the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration and Monitor Group), medical technologies were named among the most promising for application of the cluster approach.

Putting the stake on developing new medical formats is a global trend. E.g. personalised medicine is one of the seven new industries European Cluster Policy updated this year is aimed at promoting. Foreign countries apply various approaches to set up biomedical clusters: while the Munich cluster is oriented towards providing medical services, the Osaka cluster concentrates on research and supporting development of pharmaceuticals to accelerate introduction of new drugs on the market. South Korea is creating a medical cluster from ground zero.

International experts — participants of the discussion shared their knowledge of best international practices in cluster policy. In the UK, clusters became an important element of regional-level management, noted Ian Miles, head of HSE ISSEK Laboratory for Economics of Innovation and professor at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research of the University of Manchester. He compared clusters with “social networks of stakeholders”, and noted that foresight methodology can help establish and cement the right links between them.

Being quite complex self-organising structures, clusters cannot develop without a long-term strategy and specific, achievable priorities, stressed Leonid Gokhberg, first vice-rector and director of HSE ISSEK. Development priorities based on foresight methodology give an idea of technology chains and allow to establish efficient cooperation links — and this is particularly important to the service sectors which define post-industrial economy.

Russian Cluster Observatory