Next practises and post-pandemic learnings for international research collaboration

Even a small company can greatly benefit from international collaborations, especially in the research and development phase. But why specifically should a health technology or biotechnology start-up look into the possibility of international collaboration? How can you ensure successful international collaboration in the new digital era? And how do you even begin looking for potential partnerships? In this blog post our CEO Timo talks about our international collaborations and how they have helped us in our research. 

Why should a small company look for international collaborators?

There's an incredible amount of expertise in the world, and it’s never a bad idea to broaden your horizons. Even if you’re a small business just starting up. 

Here at Aqsens Health, during the past two years we have managed to build new research collaborations with merited research institutes and other partners in both China and Ghana. The areas for collaboration are very important to us – we collaborate in developing new screening methods for urinary tract cancers, and better infectious disease diagnostics for malaria using saliva samples, and how to use biosensors in diagnostics.

The validation of the non-invasive AQ Prostate and AQ Malaria tests is not a simple task, and in the end Finland is population-wise a very small country, making the access to large randomized sample cohorts for preclinical and clinical validations of a new diagnostic or a screening test quite challenging. In these projects our international partners have become invaluable.

How to find a potential partner?

Your network and connections are often the most efficient way to find a partner with whom you can work together towards a win-win situation. By sharing your goals and aspirations and talking about your capabilities and the meaningfulness of what you are doing you will typically end up in a situation where you suddenly realize that you are in discussions with people who share your mindset, and realize their willingness to help you and to contribute to what you are trying to achieve.

As we all know, in this new digital and even AI driven world people with local knowledge and connections are the most essential partners as you try to establish meaningful and sustainable relationships in a new country.

But if your network is not as wide as you would like, don’t worry, there are also different organizations that can help you. In Finland organizations like Team Finland and Finnpartnership are dedicated to connecting Finnish companies with local people and organizations both globally and Finnpartnership specifically in low- and middle income countries (LMICs). 

Don’t forget emerging markets and LMIC’s

Sometimes we people tend to be too tied up in our own familiar circles. And it’s true that setting up a collaboration is easier within your own culture, as you might literally speak the same language. But if you get too caught up in your own circles, you will miss intriguing opportunities as well as incredible amounts of expertise and capabilities especially in low- and middle income countries. At the same time, sometimes our western way of thinking and well-established structures hinder new innovation and development, though their purpose is obviously the opposite.

For us for example, our malaria research collaboration with NMIMR in Ghana has been extremely efficient and important. We have gotten access to over 2 000 thousand high-quality saliva samples that we could not have gotten from Finland. We have also had the chance to work together with some of the world’s top malaria researchers and experts, which has taught us a lot. 

Similarly in Nanjing, China our research collaboration aims towards a sample cohort of over 5000 urinary tract cancer samples for pre-clinical and clinical validations. If performed only in Finland the sample collection alone would take significantly longer just because of the difference in the size of the population. 

From talk to walk

There are many ways of collaborating with an international partner, but there is no single solution that works for everyone. However, there are certain fundamentals which should be in place in every case.

When planning a new collaboration you have to think over all project details, potential pitfalls, and go through them not only by yourself but with your partner. Having a comprehensive risk assessment done with mitigating actions, ensuring the structures and practices of sharing information both formally and informally, and agreeing on roles and responsibilities and the whole project management are essential. But after the first steps you are basically good to go and can start figuring out which ways of working will work the best for you and your project. 

In our case, where we are executing fairly rigorous and systematic projects which will require remote guidance, we have begun compiling our own laboratory processes into a product form: the AQ Lab platform.

Using a web based environment to perform all the necessary steps in a guided manner will help both us and our partners perform research work in a controlled and high quality manner. The AQ Lab platform is now in test use and we are planning to roll it out to our development partners during 2023, and potentially to other researchers who are interested in working with us on non-invasive research work sometime in the near future.

New era of international collaboration

If the times of pandemic have taught  us something, it is how to create sustainable relationships and what new practices and tools it requires! We are excited to continue our partnerships at home and abroad, and we are always looking forward to new and inspiring partnerships. 

Think global, act local!

Timo Teimonen

Co-Founder and CEO

Aqsens Health Oy

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