DTL in the bigger (international) context

Initiatives such as the ESFRI scheme and the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) in Europe, and the Grand Challenges in the USA, show that the challenges in life sciences are global. Therefore, we should carefully tune our efforts with activities at the European level and beyond, and team up whenever possible. To enable Dutch academia and industry to play a leading role and set the scene in this international game, wellaccessible expertise in high-end technology in the life sciences is all-important. DTL fulfils this need.

The next phase is clearly a further consolidation of the networked connection of distributed top expertise and equipment in national facilities. These should in turn be networked at the international level as proposed in the ESFRI agenda. For example, DTL provides the adequate link to the ESFRI-ELIXIR programme covering the European bioinformatics infrastructure, as the DTL data analysis facilities will adopt the strong network in bioinformatics formed under the Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre.

DTL as a public-private effort

Cooperative models, such as PPPs, have made the Netherlands internationally leading in many aspects of life science research and infrastructure. On a national scale, initiatives such as NGI, CTMM and the Top Institutes in life sciences, all became drivers of developing networks between industry and academia in specialised fields. These public-private networks not only flourish in the health, agro-food and biotech research, but they are also rapidly growing in ICT and instrumentation in the life sciences.

Industry is increasingly taking the initiative to establish ‘born-private-public’ partnerships with academic top groups, where in the recent past such public private partnerships were frequently academically driven, with industry having more of an observing and valorising role. DTL seamlessly fits in this pattern by creating strong distributed centres for top
expertise and equipment in the life sciences, involving industry as co-drivers and –users of the DTL high-end technology facilities.