17 Catalan clusters have travelled to Boston this past week with the aim of exploring strategic opportunities within their sectors, fostering international networking and learning about how clusters work in advanced and innovative ecosystems. This trip is part of the Strategic Cluster Week, an initiative organized by ACCIÓ through the Catalonia  Clusters programme, in collaboration with the Foreign Trade and Investment Office in New York. CataloniaBio & HealthTech is one of the clusters that has participated in the initiative.

As part of the mission, the clusters got to know first-hand the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Campus, Harvard University, the technology area of Boston City Council and the most important business accelerator of the city, MassChallenge. Participants have held more than 50 individual meetings with leading technology companies and organizations in the region. In the case of CataloniaBio &  HealthTech, Melqui Calzado, General Secretary of the association and cluster  manager, also met with Ben Bradford, VP Economic Development of MassBio; Brian Johnson, President of MassMedic; Jeanne LeClair, Directora of Business Development at MassLifeScience Center; Katherine Green, Division Manager of MeHi (Massachusetts eHealth Institute); and Madison Sowards, MassChallenge Accelerator Community Manager.

During the week, participants also received specialized training from international professionals such as Harvard Business School professor Christian Ketels or a doctorate in artificial intelligence from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Luis Perez-Breva. In addition, more training and attendance at business conferences in other sectors.

In previous editions, this initiative has accompanied Catalan clusters to explore alliances in countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Quebec and Israel, as well as other areas of the United States such as New York and Silicon Valley. This  is the first time that the coordination of the biotech and healthtech cluster  is involved. "Our internationalization strategy has been limited in recent years due to pandemic restrictions. We have now taken advantage of this mission to strengthen our relations with the leading entities in the most important biomedical ecosystem in the world ", says Calzado.