Sant Cugat hosts the Health Cities Days!

From 27 to 29 October, Sant Cugat welcomed the European partners of the Health Cities project: delegations from Lunds Kommun (SE) and Medicon Village (SE), ROM Utrecht Region (NL), National Development Centre (HU) and Pannon Business Network (HU), Toulouse Métropole (FR), and Ivano Frankivsk (UA) — leading European ecosystems in health and life sciences coming from Sweden, Hungary, France, Ukraine and the Netherlands.

The visit, framed within the Interreg Europe programme, aimed to exchange experiences and showcase Sant Cugat’s local innovation ecosystem in health and life sciences – SantCugatisBIVA, highlighting local best practices and reference models around the project’s key areas: governance, talent management and business support services.

The study visit began with an institutional welcome at the Sant Cugat City Council, in collaboration with Biocat, Sant Cugat Empresarial and B.Link, who provided context on the positioning and relevance of both Catalonia and Sant Cugat within the health innovation sector.

The first roundtable, held at the ESADE Campus Sant Cugat, focused on early-stage funding, featuring contributions from Oriol Alcoba, Fernando Zallo (ESADE BAN, BStartup), Daniel Clivillé (Crea Inversión) and Jordi Ortiz (ACCIÓ).

At ALBA Synchrotron, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Eurecat presented how science, research and applied innovation are driving progress in health technologies and industry transformation.

The second day was dedicated to talent and innovation, with visits to Boehringer Ingelheim and the BIVA Talent Day, co-organised by the City Council of Sant Cugat and Mobile World Capital Barcelona, which brought together over 30 companies. Later, at Tech Barcelona, a roundtable on acceleration and incubation models for start-up generation featured Miquel Martí, David Pijoan (Biocat) and was moderated by Marta Rojas (B.Link).

The final day showcased Sant Cugat’s industrial excellence, through visits to the corporate headquarters of HP, Roche, and Grifols, with the collaboration of the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR). David Soriano, Jacques Baudin and Josep Quer presented global advances in 3D printing, digital health, artificial intelligence and personalised medicine.

The Health Cities Days visit reinforces Sant Cugat and Catalonia’s position as European leaders in health and life sciences innovation, fostering international collaboration and knowledge exchange across Europe.