The need to cooperate has become more important than ever

2021 has been a peculiar year in many ways. Where 2020 created an unpredictable situation, this year has shown that life science, in general, is growing surprisingly strong. It has been proven that life science may provide many solutions to the medical challenge with the pandemic and thus we have perceived companies craving for more skills resulting in them growing by more than 10 percent.

The growth comes with some challenges as well. The need for skills creates a situation where many companies must come up with new solutions to find the competencies sought after and an undesired local competition for skills has arisen. Unresolved this may hinder continued growth and even disrupt production and deliveries threatening life-supporting activities for patients worldwide.

This will be a priority for 2022, where we will need to support the industry by attracting talents from a larger geographic distance, from other sectors, and even maybe with less experience than before.

During this year we’ve focused a lot on sustainability, where networks sharing best practice has been developed as well as programs for companies not yet needing to report their sustainability work, but who sees the opportunity to be proactive.

We’ve also worked closely with our government and the life science office running our national life science strategy. At the beginning of the year, we co-hosted a national life science conference with the life science office, followed by conferences focusing on health data and how to collaborate and learn from our Nordic neighbors, as well as producing a video podcast series with a focus on the topics in the national life science strategy.

In addition, the pandemic made it as easy to collaborate and reach out internationally as locally, why we have strengthened and established contact and initiatives with other clusters in order to learn and share best practices – even with those not within life science since we realize that it is not within your own silo you will find new solutions and inspiration.

We are also strongly engaged in the development of Testa Center. The area of bioprocess and development of biological drugs is moving fast and Sweden, as well as Uppsala, can position ourselves in a strong position here. In addition, initiatives accelerating digital transformation of the bioprocesses are performed in parallel and we are searching for partners to assist and/or to validate their products.

In general, we are looking to partner with those of you who see that you want to support the ecosystem by cooperating to solve or benefit from the system challenges or opportunities we experience or predict. This partnership will be built on engagement instead of previous membership schemes since we believe in being inclusive, open, and working together towards mutual goals.

All in all, we’ve engaged more than 1500 people and 550 different organizations, with an equal representation of genders.

Next year, we’ll most likely focus on continued support with skills supply, sustainability work as well as how we can advance faster with the digital transformation. In all these areas we need your participation, engagement, and feedback – so do not hesitate to reach out to us where you find a mutual interest.

To fulfill our goal of making Uppsala a world-class ecosystem in life science we need to cooperate and co-create even more.