The survey, which is aimed at Swedish drug development companies, shows that 80% of the companies plan to expand by recruiting more employees/consultants in the coming year. Compared to the situation one year ago, confidence has increased, with 62% of companies having a more positive view of their future prospects now than before COVID-19 struck, and only 8% stating that it has deteriorated.
To understand what a message of strength this is, we need to look at the impact the pandemic has had on the life sciences industry. It has by no means been spared. On the contrary, capital raising was initially a problem, clinical trials have been delayed, and many companies have experienced delivery problems and other disruptions. At the same time, the industry’s companies have gone all out to help the community, from lending staff to making hand sanitizer and in many cases adapting their operations to contribute to the vaccine race.
– At the same time, the situation in the sector has strengthened. This says something about the efficiency with which Swedish life science delivers,” says Helena Strigård, CEO of SwedenBIO.
What companies are now signaling as worrisome is growing pains. The industry’s progress is held back by two types of barriers. It is also about how we can get top-level international expertise to work in Sweden. We need a talent strategy for the supply of skills, all the way from the education system to how we can ensure relevant skills on company boards.
– When we look more closely at the companies that are doing well, we find that all of them buy R&D services abroad, half have international board members and a third have recruited staff from abroad.
– The international connection is prioritized to continue to strengthen and SwedenBIO invests heavily this year in both Nordic Life Science Days and the new Nordic Life Science Invest. At the same time, we need to look at how we manage the quality requirements with our own competence supply channels,” says Helena Strigård.
The second issue highlighted as an impediment to continued growth in Sweden relates to systemic factors. Many small streams of regulatory hassle, which together reduce the attractiveness of Sweden to grow here.
– We have unreasonable bureaucratic obstacles that prevent us from making full use of different resources,” says Helena Strigård. This list of relatively easily removed obstacles is very long and adds up to a big problem.
These include regulations on biobanks and health data, reimbursement systems for new medicines, increased fees for clinical trials, the fact that research infrastructures still differentiate between project applications from academia and companies, and much, much more.
– We can conclude that, on the whole, the companies are doing very well. International investors are showing record interest in Swedish life science companies. The question is what happens to the attractiveness of Sweden to keep them,” concludes Strigård.
[1] The Swedish Drug Discovery and Development Pipeline Report 2020 (SwedenBIO).
