How can we keep society healthy, while innovating health care with scientific research? The knowledge agendas help achieve this goal, the umcs’ elaboration of some of the general public’s questions for the National Science Agenda (NWA).

Together with ZonMw and other partner organisations, the NFU took the initiative to develop knowledge agendas based on the general public’s questions for the NWA. These knowledge agendas were developed from some of the general public’s questions for the National Science Agenda (NWA) in the field of health. They describe how the knowledge field can find solutions and scientific breakthroughs with innovative scientific research for the major societal challenges of this age:

  1. Prevention: preventing disease and promoting health;
  2. Personalised medicine: medicine that is geared to the individual;
  3. Regenerative medicine: new treatments that make smart use of our body’s capacity to heal itself using, for example, stem cells or biomaterials.

The three themes reinforce each other and are mutually connected: knowledge about differences between people offers a perspective for prevention, and techniques from regenerative medicine offer opportunities for customised therapy.

Translation of research

In the Knowledge agendas the original general public’s questions about health are translated into concrete research. Broad coalitions of umcs, universities, universities of applied science, health funds, patient organisations, TO2-institutions and the business community worked on them. In 2018 the NFU presented the Knowledge agendas to the Minister of OCW, Ingrid van Engelshoven, and state secretary Paul Blokhuis of VWS.