The Basel Area's healthtech edge
Leveraging its powerful ecosystem opportunities, global healthtech start-ups and scale-ups are uncovering the strategic operational advantages of the Basel Area Life Science Supercluster. The Swiss city is now garnering considerable attention for its unique blend of advanced clinical expertise, efficient regulatory pathways, and research-to-market support. With global biotechnology leaders like Roche and Novartis well established in the region, hundreds of leaders across digital health, techbio, and medtech have also set up shop, leveraging the area’s thriving, interconnected ecosystem.
Guilhem Dupont is one of these healthtech pioneers. After initially relocating to Basel for a role with Roche, he began his entrepreneurial journey in 2012. Today, as the founder and CEO of Indivi, a techbio company enabling precision and personalized medicine in neuroscience R&D, Dupont credits the Basel Area’s unique ecosystem for helping him scale globally.
"What made me stay in the Basel Area is the ease of building the company."
Indivi has now grown its operations in Europe and research collaborations in Boston, while Basel remains its headquarters and strategic anchor.
The Basel Area’s location advantage
Healthtech growth powered by direct collaboration and research excellence
Indivi is a leader in the development and validation of responsive measurement instruments that focus on Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias. To power its efforts, the company partnered with Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience (RC2NB), an internationally renowned institution embedded in Basel University Hospital and University of Basel to help better characterize disease processes. Dupont explains the ecosystem-facilitated research collaboration:
"We brought the idea and the technology, and they brought the clinical expertise, the patients, the data science capabilities, and some additional research capabilities."
Indivi also collaborates with Polytechnic University of Turin and University of Cordoba, partnerships advanced by the Basel Area’s optimal location.
"Basel is central in Europe, so you have an easy flight to most main cities and also Northern Africa."
This type of collaboration is enabled by the Supercluster’s dense academic and collaborative environments. In fact, the region boasts:
- 14 universities within a one-hour drive of Basel, Switzerland, enabling healthtech start-ups to access world-class academic institutions for collaboration on medical research, data science, and advanced technologies.
- More than 1,000 research groups and world-renowned innovation centers that facilitate advancements in areas like personalized and digital health, computational biology, and quantum technology.
- A growing number of international conferences and educational and networking events that drive innovation and ecosystem-wide collaboration.
The Basel Area’s growth results
The right talent, venture capital, and infrastructure for healthtech
Dupont observes a quickly growing base of biotech companies in the Basel Area that are leveraging the ecosystem’s supply of rich talent and capital, with plenty of flexible office and lab space, and competitive corporate tax rates.
"There are so many healthtech companies that didn’t even exist five years ago. Since I arrived, the startups have blossomed in numerous ways. This is a dynamic environment. Enormous investment has gone into the infrastructure. It feels like the city has been fully renovated."
The area’s bustling energy is apparent in the many development projects underway, spanning urban transformation, housing, and infrastructure to support the region’s internal growth as well as cross-border connections. The experienced talent base in the Supercluster as well as from France and Germany next door – from researchers to data scientists to clinicians and engineers – is well versed in healthcare and supports confident, fast development of quality, science-backed products.
The existing public transportation system – trains, trams, and buses – and close proximity to the airport make travels within and out of the city seamless according to Dupont, whose family enjoys the quality of life made possible by walking, biking, or taking a train just about anywhere they need to go. “It’s life made easy.”
The Basel Area as a launchpad
Funding opportunities and operational stability for healthtech growth
As healthtech start-ups and scale-ups find an advantageous home base in the Basel Area, the techbio CEO acknowledges that processes relating to regulatory affairs, grant approvals, and raising capital are designed with efficiency in mind to maximize growth opportunities. Incentives and cost advantages abound. Ecosystem entrepreneur support services and relocation assistance programs offer sector-specific guidance. Dupont adds that business dealings are typically collaborative, and a “highly pragmatic” legal system favors arbitration over litigation, driving a positive, productive enterprise environment for growing companies.
The ability to both scale quickly and operate globally in such a stable environment delivers strategic advantages that cannot be found elsewhere. With local and immediate market connections that bring credibility and opportunities for scalability, the Basel Area Life Science Supercluster booms with powerful assets that healthtech is realizing – without the churn that’s common in larger, chaotic hubs.
“There’s a lot of willing collaboration and energy in the Basel Area Life Sciences Supercluster. It’s booming."
Explore the Supercluster
Learn more about the Basel Area’s strategic advantages for healthtech, techbio, and digital health organizations.
