Researchable joins LIFE Cooperative: data and AI for life sciences and health in the Northern Netherlands

Researchable has joined LIFE Cooperative, the network of entrepreneurs in life sciences and health (LSH) in the Northern Netherlands. As a strategic data and AI partner, we join a group of more than 60 companies working together on innovation, talent and economic growth in the region. From our base in Groningen we have worked with hospitals, research groups and healthtech companies for years, from kidney transplantation to cardiology; with this membership we also formally commit to the northern LSH ecosystem.

What is LIFE Cooperative?

LIFE Cooperative is a cooperative of companies in life sciences, health and medical technology in the Northern Netherlands, based in Groningen. It was founded in 2014 by and for northern entrepreneurs in the sector. The cooperative strengthens the position of its members by facilitating networking and collaboration, by providing access to talent, knowledge, facilities and funding, and by representing members' interests towards government, knowledge institutions and investors.

Its membership is broad: startups, SMEs and international players, from pharmaceutical production and diagnostics to medical devices and service providers like Researchable. LIFE Cooperative works from three roles:

• One voice: uniting LSH and medtech SMEs to get government and research, knowledge and education institutions moving.
• Organising together: meeting members' shared needs jointly, such as training and procurement.
• Developing projects: setting up new collaborations when different players from the same field come together.

It works: over the past ten years, LIFE Cooperative has realised more than 50 million euros in investment and more than 500 new, high-quality jobs in the region through a number of major projects.

Two programmes: LIFE Capital and LIFE Innovation

LIFE Capital focuses on people: attracting, developing and retaining talent for the sector. The programme, which grew out of LIFE Academy, organises joint training, HR networks and labour market research. In its first year it raised 6.6 million euros, with support from PharmaNL, ZonMw, the municipality of Groningen and the province of Groningen, among others.

LIFE Innovation turns members' innovation into lasting economic activity in the region. The programme supports innovative projects, startups and scale-ups, with projects such as ONCO-Q (quantum sensors in cancer diagnostics), Care2Change (a circular healthcare sector) and Medicijnresten uit water (pharmaceutical residues in water). LIFE Innovation is co-funded by the European Union, the Northern Netherlands Provinces Alliance (SNN) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and organises the annual LIFE Science Conference, among other events.

Who is Researchable?

Researchable is a strategic data and AI partner based at Zernike Campus in Groningen. We conceive, design and build solutions that help organisations work AI-first and data-driven, including in life sciences and healthcare. Our clients include academic hospitals, registries, diagnostics companies and research organisations. A few examples:

• Kidney transplantation, ADORABLE: in project ADORABLE, more than 25 organisations led by the UMCG are working on AI-driven allocation of donor kidneys, aiming for 20 percent fewer failing kidney transplants. We are the technical backbone: we set up the secure data environments, make the predictive models robust and scalable, build the API to the application of the Dutch Transplant Foundation (NTS) and the Evidencio decision tool, and guide the technical route to MDR/CE certification.
• Donor kidneys, 34 Lives: for 34 Lives, which develops technology to extend the safe preservation time of donor kidneys, we are building a HIPAA-compliant platform. It replaces fragmented communication with one secure environment where teams and transplant centres share information on hard-to-place kidneys, including perfusion and donor data, so surgeons can decide faster. This includes integrations with laboratory information systems.
• Wearable data in cardiology: with Amsterdam UMC we built Watch@Heart, which detects atrial fibrillation early in patients with an inherited cardiomyopathy using smartwatch data, and which can scale to other studies.

What sets our approach apart: from data to direction in a few weeks. We map where the value lies, assess which AI use cases are promising, check whether the data you need is available and build the business case, before anything gets built. Read how that works under AI and data strategy. Because we often work with sensitive health data, we are ISO 27001 certified.

Why we joined LIFE Cooperative

The Northern Netherlands has a strong LSH cluster, with the UMCG, the University of Groningen, Zernike Campus and a growing number of companies in pharma, diagnostics and medtech. Many of those companies sit on valuable data, but do not always have the capacity or expertise in-house to put it to work with AI. That is exactly where we help.

With this membership we want to achieve three things:

• Sharing knowledge: giving members an easy way to discuss AI applications, data infrastructure and the requirements of regulation such as the AI Act.
• Developing projects together: bringing our technical expertise to collaborations between companies, knowledge institutions and healthcare organisations in the region.
• Contributing to talent: using our team's experience to develop data and AI skills in the sector, in line with LIFE Capital.

We already know the northern network from earlier projects. For the Northern Netherlands Pharmaceutical Residues in Water Network, for example, we built a dashboard that sets GP prescribing behaviour against pharmaceutical residues in wastewater.

Let's meet

Are you a member of LIFE Cooperative, or do you work in life sciences and health and wonder where data and AI could create value in your organisation? We would be happy to meet, for example at one of the LIFE events or at our office on Zernike Campus.