INTRODUCTION & OBJECTIVE

There is a clear need in the animal health sector in Europe to bring early developers (academia, research organisations, spin-offs/start-ups) and medium- to big size companies together to facilitate interaction and collaboration between them and thus stimulate innovation.
To fill this gap we will organize a conference differentiating from B2B conferences and focussing on innovation in animal health through collaboration in the phase of pre-development/discovery/proof-of concept: Discovery to Innovation in Animal Health (DIAH).

The DIAH-conference will be characterised by:

• A limited number of participants and more informal, interactions between them
• a focus on co-development and R&D-collaborations between industry and academia/research organisations
• how to find the right (academic) experts 
• funding: transition from public to public-private funding
• address regulatory science research needs to facilitate the availability of alternative products to antibiotics, novel vaccines to deal with emerging threats and other novel technologies in a more efficient manner and increase the overall availability of veterinary products
• multidisciplinary and cross-species (human and animal) approach to innovation
• valuation and market potential of new technologies: how to come to a fair and realistic deal
• showcase upcoming technologies, emerging start-ups (in (pre-)incubation phase and the scientific basis of their technology

The goals and objectives of the conference are to

• enable networking among different actors in the field, including researchers, academia, funders, and industry
• improve access of industry to front-edge technologies and expertise in academia
• familiarize researchers with the innovation pipeline process, stages of product development, IP and the regulatory frameworks
• learn young and entrepreneurial researchers to pitch their technology to industry
• align valuation of breakthrough technologies by universities and industry and manage expectations at both sides
• pinpoint differences in culture and objectives between academia and industry, find solutions to overcome them and present best practices of working together
• facilitate researchers scaling up new discoveries/proof of concepts/prototypes to marketable innovations
• show the value of the animal health sector to innovators, funders and industries that are less familiar with the sector but have interesting technologies
• demonstrate the value of interesting ecosystems for innovation in animal health and stimulate collaboration between them
• stimulate (international) public private partnerships for innovation in animal health
• get to know each other better, both when doing business and having fun