Northern region entities create technological alliance to generate health products
A memorandum of understanding was signed yesterday in Guimarães with a view to formalizing the Tech Alliance, a collaborative network made up of eight entities linked to innovation, science and technological development.
This network will be led, in its start-up phase, by DTx – Collaborative Laboratory for Digital Transformation, in conjunction with the other partners.
Recognizing the complementarity of their strengths and capacities, the eight entities – DTx, CEiiA, 4LifeLab, Computer Graphics Center, DONE Lab, Polymers Engineering Innovation Pole, Life Sciences and Health Research Institute, and Academic Clinical Center – decided, through this alliance, concert efforts to develop new products and services with added value, in a first phase in the health area.
“This alliance will be a contribution of the eight entities to the strengthening of the competitiveness of the North region in the design and industrialization of technologically innovative products and services based on multidisciplinary competencies committed to the complexity inherent to the challenges of the emergence, ubiquity and digitalization of today’s society”, he said Ricardo Machado, president of DTx and vice-rector of the University of Minho.
The Tech Alliance will be operationalized through joint projects that cross the R&D and innovation agendas of the collaborative laboratories, based on the complementarity of the eight entities that compose it.
The collaborative network intends to affirm the North region internationally as a generator of new technologically advanced products and services, fostering a new generation industry with a strong impact on society, emerging as an assertive response to the challenges associated with the country’s economic recovery.
“The spirit that underlies the creation of this alliance is the aggregation of complementary skills and capacities of the members that allows the valorization of science and its integration with the industry, through the development and production of new products and services, replicating the effect of Athena”, said José Rui Felizardo, president of CEiiA, Engineering Center for Product Development.
The network thus intends to respond to the opportunities associated with changes in society and the potential of new technologies in solving complex problems and strengthening competitiveness, giving a sign of strong commitment to the country and to the North region in particular.
The alliance that also happens with the University of Minho as a whole, plays a direct and indirect role in this conception, where some laboratories and industries are based, with the contribution of their teams.
“This is a real opportunity for the University of Minho and the entities here partner to promote the role of promoters of development in the northern region and the country,” commented the rector of the University of Minho, Rui Vieira de Castro.
In addition to the technological challenge represented, the process showed a set of other challenges within an institutional and economic regulatory framework that can only be overcome with strong alliances.
“This is how I see this alliance, in which the main challenge is how they will be able to identify the components that are missing from our technological and institutional concepts in order to face putting cutting-edge products on the market, including internationally”, stressed Manuel Heitor, Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education in yesterday’s presentation at the presentation of the memorandum.
In a next phase, the alliances of these technologies can be used for the industrial area and other challenges that may arise, guaranteed the leaders of the Tech Alliance yesterday.
