We are living through an exciting period for health research and innovation. Scientific advances are crossing the traditional boundaries, bringing together technologies and expertise that once developed separately. Medical devices, digital technologies and e-health solutions are already part of healthcare, and future breakthroughs are expected to rely even more on cross-sectoral innovation – from combinations of medicines and medical technologies to AI-supported diagnostics.
As a result, turning these advances into solutions that can make a difference for patients requires collaboration across disciplines and sectors.
This is the rationale behind the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), a public-private partnership that brings together the European Union and Europe’s life science industries to create an ecosystem where research and innovation can better address health needs.
As an IHI-funded project, COMPASS follows this collaborative approach to tackle a complex challenge at the intersection of cancer and cardiovascular health, bringing together academic and industrial partners to translate scientific advances into clinical applications.
Why does public-private collaboration matter in health research?
Today’s health challenges rarely fit within a single discipline or sector. New healthcare solutions may combine medicines with medical devices, diagnostics with artificial intelligence, or clinical information with data generated by digital technologies.
However, as IHI highlights, the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical technology, digital and diagnostics sectors have traditionally often worked in isolation. This fragmentation can make it harder to combine knowledge and technologies into integrated solutions.
Public-private collaboration creates an environment where complementary capabilities can come together. Universities and research organisations contribute scientific knowledge and research capacity; hospitals and healthcare professionals bring clinical expertise and an understanding of real-world care; companies contribute technological capabilities and experience in developing innovations; and patients, associations, regulators and other stakeholders provide perspectives that can help ensure that solutions respond to real needs.
In addition, the benefits extend to the resources available for research, including access to knowledge, data, infrastructures, laboratories, biobanks and clinical centres.
Ultimately, this model supports IHI’s broader objective: integrating fragmented research and innovation efforts and demonstrating healthcare solutions that draw on different technologies while addressing the needs of patients and healthcare professionals.
Bringing complementary expertise together in COMPASS
COMPASS brings together 62 academic and industrial organisations from 25 countries, working together to translate scientific advances into clinical applications and ensure that the solutions developed meet patient needs and align with European health policies and regulations.
In practice, this collaboration reflects the complexity of the challenge COMPASS is addressing. The project aims to improve cardiovascular health for cancer patients and survivors by developing a comprehensive, patient-centred clinical pathway and new tools for better prediction, prevention, diagnosis and management. Its approach combines three main pillars: the discovery of novel biomarkers and parameters; AI prediction models and clinical decision support; and improvements in care delivery and patient engagement.
In other words, interdisciplinary health research in action.
From collaboration to real-world impact
Developing an innovative technology or generating new scientific knowledge is only part of the journey. For health research to ultimately make a difference, innovations also need to respond to the realities of clinical practice, the needs of patients and professionals, regulatory requirements and the constraints of healthcare systems.
This is another important dimension of the public-private approach: to create a research and innovation ecosystem that facilitates the translation of scientific knowledge into safe, effective, people-centred and cost-effective innovations.
For this reason, COMPASS incorporates these considerations across the project. Patients and carers will be actively involved to ensure their perspectives are integrated into project activities, while multistakeholder engagement will bring together patients, clinicians, researchers and health-system representatives to explore needs and priorities.
In essence, public-private collaboration is not simply about pooling resources. It is about connecting the different capabilities needed along the innovation pathway. For COMPASS, this shared effort ultimately has one overarching purpose: to improve outcomes for both cancer and cardiovascular health.
