The BioRegion also has 14 science and technology parks, 12 universities and 104 hospitals, of which 18 are university establishments. Today, the BioRegion has nearly 150,000 highly qualified professionals with profiles especially required by the life science and health sector.
With 160 million euros raised in the last two years, Catalonia stands among the 4 most important European centres in this sector. Despite being one of the smallest countries by population, it is the leading country in Europe in per capital pharmaceutical companies, the third in biotechnology companies (behind Sweden and Switzerland) and fourth in medical technology companies (behind Israel, Sweden and Switzerland).
The turnover of the companies of the BioRegion, 16,000 million euros, accounts for 7.4% of Catalan GDP.
2016 was by far the most successful year regarding investments in the BioRegion, which were more than 101 million euros. The ratio between the number of investments and the amounts invested goes to show the scale of the investments achieved in 2016, far higher than previous years, like that of STAT- Diagnostica (25 MEUR), Oryzon Genomics (16 MEUR), Aelix Therapeutics (11.5 MEUR) and AB Biotics (11.2 MEUR).
Expectations are very positive over continuing to bring in funds in 2017: the creation of a new investment fund by Ysios Capital and another by “la Caixa”, and the arrival of the Alta Life Sciences fund in Barcelona, which hopes to bring in 100 million euros, herald large movements.
2016 also stood out for operations like that of Grifols, which continues to take over companies with the purchase of 49% of the American Access Biologicals, and the merger of Doctoralia with DocPlanner to create the largest online health platform in the world.
Since 2010, every year an average of 50 companies have settled in the BioRegion, which means the creation of one life science and health company every 8 days. This good figure comes in addition to the fact of the high survival rate of these companies.
The creation of new start-ups above all in the e-health sector, and the intrinsic characteristics of the sector mean that the large majority of enterprises (92%) of the BioRegion are smes and micro-companies.
The creation of companies was also largely thanks to the increased number of accelerators in the BioRegion. Today, there are 20 accelerators with life science and health projects on their portfolio, especially including Moebio, an initiative of Biocat and considered one of the best health accelerators in Europe by Tech.eu and HealthStartup Europe in 2016.
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