What Berlin is still missing on its way to becoming a world leader

VBKI visits the BiotechPark Campus Berlin-Buch

With the growing healthcare industry, Berlin has the opportunity to become an international center of this future-oriented sector - the VBKI visited the BiotechPark Campus Berlin-Buch to find out what successes the healthcare city of Berlin has already achieved.

Since 1990, a science and technology location with biomedical research facilities, a BiotechPark with 74 companies and service facilities has been established on a 32-hectare site. The campus is one of the most important players in the healthcare industry cluster in Berlin and one of the largest of its kind in Germany.

In the subsequent panel discussion moderated by Prof. Dr. Andrea Grebe, member of the VBKI Presidium, Stefan Oelrich, member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG and Head of the Pharmaceuticals Division, spoke of a "flourishing healthcare industry" in Berlin. This is how the great role model Boston once began. There is no comparable location in Germany and only London, Paris and Basel in Europe. There is still a long way to go to become a world leader, but Berlin has developed a vision and has already implemented important points and made it credible that Berlin wants to be at the top.

Dr. Elisa Kieback, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of T-knife GmbH, a spin-off of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine based on the campus, explained what Berlin still lacks: "Fortunately, we have experienced strong growth in recent years. However, this also brings problems, for example due to a lack of knowledge in areas such as HR or accounting. As a scientist, I don't know what is important here. In San Francisco or Boston, there is a much larger pool of potential employees who have experience in startup work."

According to Prof. Dr. Thomas Sommer, Scientific Director of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, one advantage of Berlin that has not yet been sufficiently exploited is the coming together not only of scientific excellence and business, but also of state and federal politics. However, he was critical of the Senate's decision to bring science and health under one roof. Both topics are so large and important that all stakeholders involved are generally dissatisfied. Dr. Elisabeth von Weizsäcker, Director Technology Management at Ascenion GmbH, added that politicians in other cities had already internalized the importance of the healthcare industry to a greater extent. For example, the authorities in Munich are faster and more flexible when processing building applications, approval procedures for clinical trials or funding applications.