In 2022, we were delighted to reach yet another level in our long-term innovation work and, not least, to note that a record number of clinical trials are now available to Norwegian patients.

Photo: Inven2 / Moment Studio

Clinical trials have seen substantial growth over the last two years, from 140 new trials in 2020 to 207 new trials in 2022. Oslo University Hospital (OUS) continues to maintain a high level of activity, while the other health trusts in the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, the University Hospital of Northern Norway and Nordland hospital trust saw the greatest overall increase in 2022. Many hospital departments are now mobilising for clinical trials! Inven2 will continue to work hard to help ensure that this trend continues in 2023. A new development this year is that we will assist hospital pharmacies in all four of Norway’s health regions. We believe this will generate efficiency gains for Norway that will make it even more attractive to conduct industry-initiated clinical trials here.

On the innovation side, the year got off to a strong start with the sale of the IT company Promon, the first and largest sale of a company we have helped to establish and meet the capital needs of over the first few years. Promon’s annual sales to customers were in excess of NOK 100 million when it was sold (for NOK 1 billion), and the founder has been assigned a key role in the buyer company, which intends to further develop the technology. We are delighted about this, because, for Inven2 it means that we have had more funds to invest in and help new start-up companies to make it through their growth phase.

This autumn, it has been exciting to follow the launch of a lunar landing craft/rover and spacecraft on its way to the Moon and Mercury using technology supplied by the Norwegian company Eidel. Inven2 has entered into a number of license agreements with Eidel concerning technology developed by the Department of Physics at the University of Oslo (UiO), and we are thrilled that the technology is being used and proving useful.

Inven2 has a good team and sound processes, with one-third of staff working on contracts and financial follow-up of clinical trials, and two-thirds on innovation and commercialisation. At the beginning of 2022, we asked for feedback on our work on innovation and commercialisation. We learned a great deal from this and have consequently improved our processes. This applies, among other things, to giving clear and more comprehensive feedback on ideas (disclosure of invention – DOFI) that are reported to us and that Inven2 does not take to the commercialisation stage. The result is that the feedback is now more useful for the person who has written the DOFI. We also asked entrepreneurs, investors, inventors, their managers and key people in the innovation ecosystem specifically about the process that leads to the creation of a start-up. We learned from this that expectations of Inven2 far exceed our remit, especially where inventors want to establish companies and raise capital themselves. We regret this, but hope that, together with incubators, clusters, the Veksthuset greenhouse, the Innovation Department at OUS, Oslo Science City and others in the innovation ecosystem, we can meet that need. We have taken the key feedback on board, and are working together with our directors and owners OUS and UiO on new initiatives.

We are looking forward to 2023 and to even more of the projects we have worked on becoming valuable and successful, and to utilising our growing experience in new projects so that they also stand a better chance of succeeding. We now have some of the most interesting investment cases we have ever had. We have already seen significant value creation in the European context as a result of projects we have been involved in, and we will do what we can to ensure that even more projects can succeed globally, thereby ensuring that useful products and services generate export revenue and jobs.

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