REMEDIE · Regenerative medicine in Europe: emerging needs and challenges in a global context

The globalization of regenerative medicine is gathering pace yet has not been examined with respect to its medium and long term implications for European regulators, the corporate sector or patients located within different member states. Over the coming years it is hypothesised that the global pace of change in this field will be extensive and this needs to be both tracked and assessed for healthcare systems across Europe. But we also argue that it is a field that is characterized by complex dynamics across a range of scientific, clinical and industrial sectors, highly unstable, yet developing rapidly. Building on a platform of research experience, academic and policy networks, and data relevant to the field, this 3 year collaborative project will examine the economic, political and bioethical implications for Europe of near-term and future global developments in the field of regenerative medicine. It will adopt an interdisciplinary approach which brings together social science and humanities researchers to understand the emerging needs, expectations and challenges that Europe faces that is conceptually and methodologically innovative, empirically robust and policy relevant. The objectives of the project are to provide: • A detailed analysis of the competitive position of Europe within the globalisation of regenerative medicine, the requirements of successful innovation in this field and the EU policies that need to be developed to support Europe’s global advantage in the field. • An integrated series of workpackages organised around three inter-related streams of research that constitute the platform for this analysis (the economic, political and bioethical) • An integrated quantitative relational database on the geo-economic pattern of activity within the field of regenerative medicine derived from a) ongoing review of secondary data sources and b) primary data derived from partner projects • The use of novel techniques to interrogate results using geom