Speech bij opening Ultra-High Field MRI Facility
Speech by the Netherlands' Economic Affairs Minister, Ms. Maria van der Hoeven, at the opening of the Ultra-High Field MRI facility, Leiden, September 6, 2007.
Ladies and gentlemen,
First, I would like to thank the management of the Leiden University Medical Center for the opportunity to attend this symposium and to witness the opening of the Ultra-High Field MRI Facility.
This is an important event, even to me as the current Economic Affairs Minister, who, you might suppose, is not directly involved in purely scientific stuff such as a 7 Tesla scanner. There are two reasons why this assumption is wrong.
First, in my previous job as the Education, Culture and Science Minister, I was able to help secure funds to develop and build this marvellous piece of medical technology. I am honored – and, frankly, proud – to have been in the position to make this contribution, and I am very happy to see that this important project has come to full fruition.
Second, I strongly believe that high-tech projects such as the 7 Tesla scanner are beneficial to the Dutch – and European – economy as a whole, and that is of course one of my prime concerns in my current job.
And it is about these broader economic implications and the role of innovative scientific medical research in addressing a wide range of problems in society that I would like to talk to you today.
Ladies and gentlemen!
Innovation is, of course, the lifeblood of any economy, indeed of any society. Without new ideas, new developments, and new products they become stagnant and, in the end, obsolete. One of the prime examples of an insufficiently innovative – and market driven – economy was that of the Soviet Union and its client states in the final decades of their existence.
Innovation, then, should be a top priority for any government. Successive Dutch governments have recognized this; and the current one aims at shaping the Netherlands into a “nation of entrepreneurial innovators”. That sounds like nice catchphrase, and it sure is, but let me explain what it takes to be an “entrepreneurial innovator”.
First, co-operation is essential. The time of the lone, slightly mad inventor – such as, for instance, the Serbo-American genius Nikola Tesla who gave his name to the unit of magnetic flux density – is over. Innovation these days is increasingly a question of national and international networks of scientific institutes, the R&D side of the business world, and governments.
I think that the development of the 7 Tesla scanner is a prime example of such co-operation. I already mentioned the role of the government, which helped secure a subsidy enabling the participants in the project to begin their work by founding the Virtual Institute for Seven Tesla Applications (VISTA). VISTA is a joint venture of the University Medical Centers in Leiden and Utrecht, as well as the F.C. Donders Institute at Nijmegen UMC.
Moreover, VISTA has European connections through the Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a joint venture of the Donders Institute and Essen UMC in North Rhine Westphalia. Last week, another 7 Tesla scanner became available there.
On top of that, Leiden UMC is closely co-operating with Philips Medical Systems, the manufacturer of this scanner, in further development work.
The second factor contributing to successful innovation, in my view, is to put your money where your experience is. In other words, pursue those fields in which you already excel.
In this respect, the 7 Tesla scanner builds on a long tradition in the Netherlands, which has enjoyed a strong position on the technical side of the Life Sciences and Health (LSH) for many decades. This tradition probably harks as far back as the Nobel laureate Willem Einthoven (1860-1927), a physiology professor here in Leiden and one of the fathers of the electro-cardiogram.
In more recent years, Dutch mulitnationals such as Organon, Philips and DSM, as well a smaller and younger companies such as Crucell and Galapagos, are strong competitors the LSH field.
Moreover, the citation indexes of the Dutch University Medical Centers are well above average, while seven of the Netherlands’ 13 universities are holding positions in the European top-20 in the Life Sciences and Health field.
The third factor in successful innovation is social relevance. The sciences pertaining to life in general and to health in particular have, of course, always been relevant to humankind from Hippocrates onwards.
But I dare say that they will become even more important in the coming decades, what with the strongly increasing demand for health care because of the “greying” of the population here in the Netherlands and in the rest of the Western world.
Increasing demand means increasing costs. And one of the great challenges of the near future is to mitigate those rising outlays. This challenge can be met partly by saving on the costs of labor by investing in IC technology in the health care sector. But I think there are even greater – and more exciting – opportunities in trail-blazing, innovative developments in the field of medical products and services. Think of personalized drugs, preventive screening and diagnostics and regenerative medicine. I think we’re making the right choice in investing heavily in those areas, together with our partners in the scientific and the bussiness worlds. Good examples are the recent initiatives of TI Pharma, here in Leiden, and the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine.
Ladies and gentlemen!
Needless to say, the Ultra-High Field MRI facility is the result of co-operation, builds on existing strengths and scores high in medical and social relevance; as to the latter, I understand that it will eventually play an important role in the diagnostics and treatment of diseases such as cancer, heart disorders, Alzheimer’s and the like, all of them illnesses closely related to the ageing of the population.
As such, this and other scanners of its kind will make an important contribution to the quality of life of millions of people around the world, as well as to more cost-effective health care systems. Even more so, I am told, when its pioneering technology will trickle down to more mundane MRI scanners with a less spectacular field strength.
These are important contributions in their own right, but there is more to it than that. You will understand that as the Economic Affairs Minister, I am also deeply interested in the benefits the Life Sciences and Health sector will bring to this nation’s economy.
These are not to be sniffed at, ladies and gentlemen. Worldwide, the LSH market is growing steadily, and there are solid opportunities for the Dutch business wolrd. Currently, some 900 companies are active in the LSH field. Together, they contribute euro 15.9 billion, or three percent, to the Netherlands’ GNP. Moreover, they have generated some 50,000 jobs, one-fifth of them in Research & Development. Those are significant numbers.
To further underscore the importance of the Life and Health Sciences to the Dutch economy and to society as a whole, we are investing an annual euro 650 million from the public purse in medical research. Moreover, another euro 1 billion will find its way in the 2002-2012 period into the National Genomics Initiative and into a number of Public-Private Partnerships. I will mention only the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine because, I am told, it will greatly benefit from the 7 Tesla scanner we are inaugurating today.
Ladies and gentlemen!
You are proud of this wonderful new piece of equipment, and justifiably so, for it is one of the very few that are in operation worldwide. The 7 Tesla scanner places the VISTA consortium even more firmly on the scientific map.
I can imagine that to you, the scanner primarily embodies tremendous scientific challenges and opportunities: the exploration of hitherto unknown territories, the crossing of faraway frontiers, all to the benefit of mankind.
I, for one, am proud that the Netherlands’ scientific community, its high-tech industry and, yes, its government were able to bring such a vastly complicated project to a successful ending. Or is it an ending?
I think that as so often, the appropriate quote is from Winston Churchill: “This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”
I wish all of you an exciting scientific expedition, and I am looking forward to your – and the scanner’s – achievements.
Thank you.