Health Valley

The Health Valley is a name given to the biomedical industry cluster which follows the shoreline of Lake Geneva. This cluster is composed of public and private medical research centres, firms and start-ups working in the biotechnology and medical technology sectors, as well as hospitals and clinics (for instance the University hospitals of Lausanne and Geneva).

The name of the Health Valley is inspired by that of Silicon Valley in California, United States (where the focus is on information technology). According to Swiss newspaper Le Temps, there were close to 1,000 biotech and medtech companies in the Health Valley in 2017, employing 25,000 people.[1]

According to Swiss journalist and politician Fathi Derder, the idea of a Health Valley was actively promoted by Patrick Aebischer during his tenure as president of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne/EPFL (2000-2016). Notably, Aebischer promoted teaching and research in the life sciences while deepening cooperation with Lausanne University Hospital/CHUV.[2][3]

Biotech expert Jürg Zürcher argues that Switzerland as a whole constitutes a cluster, with the Basel BioValley employing 50,000 people and the Zurich region employing 21,000. "Together, these three regions form the densest network of biotech firms anywhere in the world", Swiss Info notes, with over 40% of the world's pharmaceutical companies in the Basel region alone. Foreign competing clusters include the Oxford-Cambridge-London cluster in the United Kingdom, the Boston, San Francisco and San Diego clusters in the United States, as well as emerging ones in India (Hyderabad, Bangalore, New Delhi) and China (Shanghai, Shenzhen).

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Guillaume, Michel (1 December 2016). "La Health Valley, un modèle pour la Suisse". Le Temps (in French).
  2. ↑ Derder, Fathi (14 February 2012). "L'avenir de l'innovation suisse passe par l'Arc lémanique". Le Temps (in French).
  3. ↑ Etienne, Richard (31 October 2017). "Sciences de la vie : "Nous créons une health valley en Suisse romande"". Tribune de Genève (in French).

See also

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