Today marked the launch of the We Work For Health campaign in Colorado. We Work For Health is a grassroots campaign bringing together communities and industry to demonstrate how the healthcare and life science industry benefits the socioeconomic climate and promotes better quality of life. The Colorado kickoff brought together leaders from government, universities and industry at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora to highlight the achievements and goals of the bioscience and health industries within Colorado.
Speakers at the event were:
- Senator Michael Bennet (via videoconference)
- Don Elliman, Colorado Office of Economic Development
- Tom Clark, Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation
- John Collar, Colorado BioScience Association
- Jill Farnham, Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority
- Jay Gershen, University of Colorado Denver
Panelists spent equal time taking stock of Colorado’s success to date and looking forward to ways to continue and accelerate growth. A major focus was the 184 acre bioscience park in Aurora where the event took place. The campus currently employs 16,000 and will employ over 40,000 when it is fully built out. Along with providing superb medical care facilities and elite researchers, the area hosts an incubator facility which currently hosts 28 companies and provides flexible lab facilities to startups as well as Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partners, which offers support to nascent companies.
Although the bioscience industry has made many strides, efforts continue to speed commercialization of ideas developed in Colorado and enhance incentives to get companies to locate and stay in Colorado. A strong focus is being placed on turning home grown ideas, many generated in the university system, into businesses. To this end, plans for the Colorado Drug, Diagnostic, and Device Development Institute which will help to bring business expertise to move potential products through pre-clinical testing are in the works. Panelists did not ignore the current capitally constrained environment, noting efforts are in place to attract more risk capital to the area – including lobbying for an angel investment tax credit bill and the region’s first bioscience focused investor conference, the Rocky Mountain Life Science Investor Conference planned for September.
