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A roadmap for the health industry

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How will Norway commercialise research and turn health into a green export success?

The roadmap for the health industry was released today by Ingvild Kjerkol, Minister of Health and Care Services, and Jan Christian Vestre, Minister of Industry, Trade and Fisheries. The roadmap includes 12 focus areas and 41 actions, which the two ministries have worked together with industry to identify.

Commercialising research

One of the focus areas is testing and piloting of novel health solutions.

“We will become better at commercialising research results and create industry. We want the state to contribute considerably more so companies have access to testing facilities, so they can develop their solutions. We will develop the catapult scheme for the health industry,” said Vestre.

Today there is no health catapult in Norway. SIVA, the Research Council of Norway and Innovation Norway will now investigate how the health industry can better utilise the catapult scheme.

“The health clusters are ready to contribute! Based on work we did in 2019 and 2020, Oslo Cancer Cluster, Norwegian Smart Care Cluster and Norway Health Tech have set up Health Catalyst, a national arena for developing, testing and piloting novel solutions in health. Among other things, we have signed an agreement to collaborate with Nortrials,” commented Ketil Widerberg, general manager of Oslo Cancer Cluster.

A green export opportunity

In 2021, the Norwegian health industry had a total turnover of NOK 65 billion, where NOK 22 billion came from export alone, according to a Menon Economics report (2023).

“The health industry has a natural place in a low emission society. We believe we can increase the export from the health industry considerably, and this will contribute to solve global challenges and create workplaces in our own country,” commented Vestre and added there will be additional funding for this.

The Norwegian health industry is united through the clusters and is ready to contribute as the government launches this historical investment.

“When we work with pharma and biotech, we create green workplaces. We work to establish national production, local testing, and precision medicine, which will shorten value chains, as well as decrease transport and logistics,” commented Widerberg.

A supercluster is needed

The Norwegian clusters were also mentioned especially for their ability to facilitate collaboration and knowledge transfer between large and small companies, and research environments – which will strengthen the success of Norwegian export.

“We want to clarify that the three internationally renowned, National Centres of Expertise (NCE) clusters in health, including Oslo Cancer Cluster, Norwegian Smart Care Cluster and Norway Health Tech, wish to unite into a supercluster.

“We hope the revised cluster programme builds on an understanding that all parties must contribute to the development and financing of the clusters to make public-private collaboration a reality,” commented Widerberg.

Towards a Cancer Mission?

Kjerkol also mentioned several actions that will make a big difference for the development of cancer therapeutics and diagnostics in Norway. These include:

  • Securing that research milieus in the private and public sector get guidance on clinical studies
  • Developing the Directorate for Medical Products
  • Facilitating access to health data for the health industry
  • Investing in clinical studies and personalised medicine
  • Creating a strategic arena for dialogue between health authorities and industry

“Oslo Cancer Cluster is delighted that input we have made over the last two years towards public policy are taken seriously in this roadmap, but there is still work to do. Our project CONNECT shows the opportunities of public-private collaboration in implementation of precision medicine including regulatory innovation. We applaud that the government wants to build on this.”

“We believe these combined efforts represent the first steps towards Norway making its mark internationally and are a contribution to the European Mission on Cancer,” said Widerberg.

Oslo Cancer Cluster has set up a hub to pursue the EU’s Cancer Mission nationally, together with the Research Council of Norway, the Cancer Society and several other key players.

 

 

Personalised medicine to relieve the health service

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Smaller patient groups and targeted treatments are the future of cancer care in Norway.

It is no longer a question of if but when personalised medicine will be a reality for all cancer patients in Norway. This was a key message in a recent meeting arranged by the public-private consortium CONNECT during Arendalsuka, where the resource crisis in the health service was discussed.

Forward-looking health authorities

Ulrich Spreng, Chief Medical Officer of the South-Eastern Regional Health Authority (Helse Sør-Øst), underlined how critical personalised treatments will be in the future. Spreng sits in the Decision Forum of New Methods, the national system that manages the introduction of new treatments in Norway. The Decision Forum looks at three criteria; the severity of the disease, the effect of the treatment and the resources it requires.

“If you can target treatment better according to an individual patient’s genetic profile, there will be a greater effect. This makes it easier to implement that drug since it is a different relationship between resources and effect than when you treat a large patient group where many do not have an effect. It is important for us to separate a total patient group into subgroups according to their genetic profile. This is very exciting for New Methods!” Spreng commented.

Urgent lack of resources

The Norwegian health service faces a lack of resources and personnel, according to an investigation by the Health Personnel Commission in 2022. Gro Live Fagereng, Coordinator Precision Cancer Medicine at Oslo University Hospital, agreed this is a major challenge:

“We have limited time and finances in the health service, so we must prioritise the available resources. Both personalised medicine and research in general form the basis for making the best priorities. We need to invest in research to make the most of our resources. I hope and believe we will have a more systematic and learning health service in the future; that we will learn more from patients, so we can update treatments and make better priorities.”

Åsmund Flobak, oncologist at St. Olavs Hospital, explained how personalised medicine enables us to learn from patients:

“Traditionally, we have treated patients on a group level, but we know that patients are different; some respond and some do not. The goal is to find out which biomarkers relate to which treatments. We have worked to establish publicly financed precision diagnostics through InPreD and we give patients precision treatment through IMPRESS. A third of us will at some point get cancer, so we must implement better treatments.”

Watch this video (in Norwegian) to understand personalised medicine:

Health economists also agree that this strategy can help to save resources.

“When a patient gets the right treatment, you avoid giving a treatment that doesn’t work well enough first and there are fewer side effects. The consequence is less use of resources in the health service and we can live better lives,” commented Erik Magnus Sæther, Partner at Oslo Economics.

Public-private collaboration needed

Karoline Knutsen, Manager Market Access at Legemiddelindustrien (LMI), said that the vision for the future looks grim:

“The number of people of working age will decrease, while there will be more elderly in need of health services. We will see more chronically ill people with complex diseases. We believe new technologies and treatments are part of the solution, so more of us can keep working. The success of implementation of personalised medicine relies not just on financial investments, but also on contributions from many key players and stakeholders. Everyone must sit around the same table.”

CONNECT was set up to be that table, as a public-private consortium driving the implementation of precision cancer medicine in Norway. Since 2020, CONNECT has gathered 30 partners, including industry, patient organisations, university hospitals and several governmental institutions.

“We need to nurture this collaboration, develop it and use it in more areas,” commented Thomas Axelsen, Head of Politics at the Norwegian Cancer Society. “Personalised medicine in cancer needs to happen, no matter what. It is just about how fast we want it to happen. If we do it faster, we can save patients’ lives.”

Political ambitions

The government’s ambition is also high in this area, as seen in the Strategy for Personalised Medicine launched in January 2022.

“Personalised medicine should be an integrated part of the specialist health service. We need to develop the health service in a way that maximises value creation, both for the individual and for society as a whole,” said Truls Vasvik, State Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Care Services.

“Our doors are always open. We need to talk together about the development of competences, research and new price models; how we can get documentation of small patient groups and single treatments with uncertain long-term effects,” added Vasvik.

Crabble letters saying be the changeBrett Jordan/ Unsplash

Our role as Changemaker

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Did you know that Oslo Cancer Cluster is a changemaker?

Being a changemaker means that Oslo Cancer Cluster works towards improving the framework conditions for cancer innovations in the Norwegian health industry. We have different ways of playing out this role and addressing specific challenges for the health industry, for instance by giving our input to national policies.

The role of changemaker is part of our strategy for 2020-2022.

We have published the current strategy here.

Input to national policies

So far this year, we have provided input to four national policies: the outlook on Norway’s economy for the next forty years (Perspektivmeldingen), financial options for employees in start-ups and scale-ups, more available health data, and the new plan for research and higher education.

Find out more about our political input and role as a changemaker on this project webpage.

Joining forces

Oslo Cancer Cluster joins forces with other health clusters and organisations when the subject requires a forceful choir. Together with Norway Health Tech, Norwegian Smart Care Cluster, the Life Science Cluster, and Melanor, we provided a collective input on the new platform for the availability of health data to the Ministry of Health and Care Services in July this year.

You can read the collective input here (in Norwegian).

A Norwegian Cancer Mission

Our latest input was to the new long-term plan for research and higher education from the Ministry of Education and Research. We emphasized the important Cancer Mission of the EU Commission, and how a mission for reducing the time it takes to develop a new cancer treatment should be one of the prioritized areas for Norwegian research in the years to come.

You can read the latest political input here (in Norwegian).