European Disparities in Regional Health R&I Performance

Abstract

Health represents one of the thematic priorities for smart specialisation. Until now the difficulty in properly measuring research and innovation (R&I) in Health sector has represented a barrier to address specific policies in favour of less performing regions. This is due to two factors: a lack of available data particularly at regional level; and the difficulty in clearly defining the boundaries of the Health sector. Data provided by European Commission, focusing on Health as FP7 thematic priority, as well as recent data on ongoing clinical trials and Health infrastructure at regional level developed by university of Trieste allow the use of a novel regional and sectorial breakdown to deeper investigate the mechanisms supporting R&I in European Regions. The paper provides an analysis of possible determinants of EU regional Health R&I inequalities, disentangling the factors related to publications propensity from those related to patents propensity. The results show that despite one of the most relevant determinants of R&I in the Health sector remain the level of R&D expenditure, other factors such as the size or degree of Health specialisation of the region should also be taken into account. While patenting activity in this sector remains a prerogative of regions with already technological and industry capacity, publications activities result less context specific being present also in peripheral regions. Our results are in line with the new place-based smart specialisation-type policy thinking.

Keywords: Health, patents, scientific publications, regions, smart specialisation, Europe

JEL Classification: O33, O34, R11, R58