Arnouts Sven, Brown Scott, de Arriba M Luisa, Donabedian Michael, Charlier Johannes
Provaxs, Department of Translational Physiology, Infectiology and Public Health, Ghent University, Merelbeke, Belgium.
SABAH Consulting, Galesburg, MI, United States.
Front Vet Sci. 2022 Dec 21;9:1016959. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.1016959. eCollection 2022.
Public research and innovation initiatives in animal health aim to deliver key knowledge, services and products that improve the control of animal infectious diseases and animal welfare to deliver on global challenges including public health threats, environmental concerns and food security. The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) is a popular innovation policy instrument to monitor the maturity of upcoming new technologies in publicly funded research projects. However, while general definition of the 9 levels on the TRL-scale enable uniform discussions of technical maturity across different types of technology, these definitions are very generic which hampers concrete interpretation and application. Here, we aligned innovation pipeline stages as used in the animal health industry for the development of new vaccines or drugs with the TRL scale, resulting in TRL for animal health (TRLAH). This more bespoke scale can help to rationally allocate funding for animal health research from basic to applied research, map innovation processes, monitor progress and develop realistic progress expectations across the time span of a research and innovation project. The TRLAH thus become an interesting instrument to enhance the translation of public research results into industrial and societal innovation and foster public-private partnerships in animal health.
动物健康领域的公共研究与创新举措旨在提供关键知识、服务和产品，以加强对动物传染病的防控并提升动物福利，从而应对包括公共卫生威胁、环境问题和粮食安全在内的全球挑战。技术就绪水平（TRL）是一种常用的创新政策工具，用于监测公共资助研究项目中新兴技术的成熟度。然而，尽管TRL量表上9个级别的一般定义有助于对不同类型技术的技术成熟度进行统一讨论，但这些定义非常笼统，不利于具体的解读和应用。在此，我们将动物健康行业开发新疫苗或新药时所采用的创新流程阶段与TRL量表进行了比对，得出了动物健康领域的技术就绪水平（TRLAH）。这种更具针对性的量表有助于合理分配动物健康研究的资金，涵盖从基础研究到应用研究的各个阶段，梳理创新流程，监控进展，并在研究与创新项目的整个时间跨度内制定切实可行的进展预期。因此，TRLAH成为了一种有趣的工具，有助于促进公共研究成果向产业和社会创新的转化，并推动动物健康领域的公私合作。
