Warm welcome for
​Prof. Dr. Nico van Meeteren

At the 1st of February, Nico van Meeteren will start his position as the Executive Director and Secretary General of the Dutch Topsector Life Sciences and Health. We look forward to welcoming him to the team!

“To me Health and Healthcare both can be considered as one of the success-stories of the modern western world. Frontrunner in this respect has been and still is the Dutch healthcare setting, as we Dutch made steps to replace “I” into “We”, thereby gradually turning the individual Illness-approach to a community Wellness-approach. In order to continue and even extend this success, the Topsector Life Sciences and Health - in partnership with many - will preferably foster innovative and mostly integrated products and services, initiated via co-creation by regional coalitions. Thereupon the Topsector will help these coalition-partnerships to maximize their return of investment by, on the one hand, facilitation of nationwide implementation and, on the other hand, providing means for their profitable export abroad.” 


Life Sciences and Health in essence is about people; about peoples’ functioning in today’s dynamic society. And health, their health is the most important prerequisite for their functioning. With our Dutch mentality we are able to combine efforts and interests of people, business, politics and knowledge institutes and still keep patients and their needs as a starting point. As a former physiotherapist and neuroscientist in the long term care facility (Driemaasstede) and the acute care setting (UMC Utrecht), as well as up until recently as a Director of Innovation within TNO, that is what still drives me: to fuel people and their functioning and protect them from (the consequences of) diseases. Complex innovations as the perioperative “Better in, Better out”-concept and systems approaches in Livings labs like “Economie071” and “Vitaal Vechtdal” may be a few of the examples of the work I was involved in. 


At the Topsector LSH, I hope to contribute to the expansion of such partnerships and programs. With the various efforts that have been made the past couple of years, I strongly believe in the added value of the topsector. I look forward to work together with existing partners, such as the Health Foundations, the Dutch LSH alliance and TNO.Furthermore, I hope to establish new contacts and lay foundations for new partnerships. Financial means might be limited, but the power of partnering is not. 


Wishing all of you and all of us success, I look forward to meeting many of you the coming time.


Kind regards,


Nico van Meeteren