European Life Science Research Infrastructures
Innovation Helpdesk
Welcome to the web portal of the Innovation Helpdesk!
The Innovation Helpdesk is available to assist the European Biological and Medical Research Infrastructures with collaboration with industry and technology transfer. This had its origins in the CORBEL project (Work Package 8, Accelerating Innovation) which provided the infrastructures access to real time legal support and partnering advice from a team of innovation specialists. This access continues through a team of legal and business development staff at EATRIS to which requests for support can be made. For more information, please look at the Contact section.
In addition to providing assistance upon request, the Innovation Helpdesk acts as an expertise centre providing access to essential tools and resources for collaboration such as guidelines on intellectual property rights, open innovation or legal agreement templates. Relevant guidelines and (downloadable) templates are available on this web portal, as well as some links to useful sites.
In summary the services provided by the Innovation Helpdesk to the RIs include:
- Real time advice;
- Template documents for frequently occurring technology transfer situations (MTA, CDA, etc.);
- Guidelines and assistance with cross-infrastructure, industry/academia collaboration and knowledge sharing;
- Access to specialist knowledge in relation to business development and legal and regulatory aspects;
- On a case-by-case basis, hands on involvement by Innovation Office staff with real collaboration and negotiation cases.
Workshops and webinars on various aspects of public-private research collaboration are also available.
Local technology transfer offices (TTOs) are the first point of contact for innovation at the individual institute level. The Innovation Help Desk is designed to complement the local TTOs and focus in particular on adding value in situations involving:
- A number of institutes within an infrastructure;
- Industry-academia research collaboration across a range of parties;
- Cross-RI interactions, with and without industry partners.
Contact
To apply for support from the Innovation Helpdesk, please send an email to: innovation(at)eatris.eu
You will then be contacted by a team member who can assess the possibilities and give further assistance with the process and operating principles.
An Innovation Helpdesk Success Story
An SME company developing a novel product in the field of alleviating addiction requested assistance in identifying expertise centres to help clarify the mechanism of action of its investigational new drug substance and possibly enable smartly designed translational studies to establish in vivo efficacy.
A report was prepared listing a selection of academic groups of potential technical and clinical relevance. The SME studied this report of matching partners and is engaged in follow up contact with one of them to explore (under confidentiality) a potential collaboration.