Digital technologies are changing the face of healthcare, with the Midlands uniquely placed to foster opportunities for growth and connections across the world. Simon Himsworth, the chief executive of life sciences industry association Medilink Midlands explains why.
There can be no doubt that COVID-19 has accelerated the use and acceptance of digital health worldwide, thanks to the use of lateral flow tests, and self-reporting results using apps or QR codes.
Highlighting the central role healthcare plays in every aspect of our lives, this reliance on digital technologies is set to remain, accelerating long-term growth in the digital economy and digital trade.
With the Midlands at the heart of the UK’s medtech and life sciences sectors, the region is uniquely placed to foster the connections that continue to deliver these changes on a global scale.
In many ways, this is thanks to the Academic, Business and Clinical (ABC) ecosystem, and the region’s broad and stable diverse population. It is large enough to have a great range of businesses, institutions, NHS trusts and universities, but small enough for people to know one another and forge strong relationships.
The power of digital
What so many of these organisations have in common is digital. Digital underpins, enhances, and accelerates activities, and as we become more connected, and data becomes enriched and more accurate, this activity will multiply.
Support from a variety of communication providers allows the Midlands’ digital health developers opportunities to prototype, trial, validate and commercialise 5G-enabled health solutions with regional health and care providers.
Strong workforce
The region has the highest number of young adults in the UK, and they come from a varied and diverse ethnic and cultural range of backgrounds, giving not only a youthful perspective and enthusiasm, but also a diverse set of ideas, which are imperative if you want something new or ground-breaking to break the mould of traditional approaches.
This young population is also stable, which is of great benefit to those looking to conduct clinical testing and studies.
Thanks to the high number of universities and colleges, the Midlands has an enormous pool of individuals studying digital and healthcare data degrees. This represents an available future workforce that will look for career opportunities with cutting-edge companies.
This fertile ground has led to a number of exciting developments from the region, including projects looking at the use of AI in medical applications, and how regulations adopt and can facilitate the greater usage and development of such technology. There are also new approaches to diagnostics – from digital to chemical – and the exploration of remote care and digitising clinical trials, to alleviate care and health staff shortages and ensure a greater diversity of patients are catered for.
International and global impact
For Midlands-based medtech and digital healthcare companies, the opportunity now is to discover international partners who can support their innovation and growth.
This partnership can take many forms:
- Providing new technologies to help UK-based innovators to achieve their concept
- Spotting a technology or product that could have a change of use that will benefit healthcare
- Assistance with access to new markets with different regulatory conditions
- Resolving a manufacturing / supply issue
- Providing an overseas innovator with an opportunity that they might not be able to realise in their country
- Conducting global comparative studies
- Attracting inward investment to our region, based on its reputation and position as a global centre of excellence for diagnostic testing and clinical trials
Bringing a technology to market in the UK could help these partners create a product that may save lives, not only in the UK but potentially worldwide too.
Accelerating innovation
Medilink Midlands helps by introducing new players to businesses that can support or facilitate these requirements, because we work to help Midlands’ life sciences companies establish, develop and achieve long-term growth.
Medilink Midlands is the voice of the life sciences industry, and sits at the heart of business, academia, government and the NHS across the region.
Through our network and industry influence, we bring all these elements together, and meet the delivery needs of the government’s Levelling Up and life sciences industry vision agendas. We constantly look for new and innovative ways where we can add value and support the regions’ life sciences community, working in partnership with other organisations that share our ambitions for the sector.
Funded life sciences innovation support
To deliver new technology and innovation into the healthcare system, it must be coordinated, supported, and nurtured. It can’t be left to chance.
At present, the East Midlands is balanced on the edge of a cliff , with little or no funded cross sectoral support programmes existing beyond June 2023. The UK government’s Share Prosperity Fund is going to each local authority but with little joined-up business support activity, let alone life sciences specific innovation support.
This means the region is now facing a return to the late 1990s, and we have learned nothing since the collapse of the Regional Development Agencies then. For Midlands businesses, it is a business support postcode lottery, but of course, businesses don’t look at local authority boundaries when pursuing global innovation, digital health agendas and global best practice. However, the Office of Life Sciences’ vision of the UK becoming a ‘life sciences superpower’ simply won’t be met without coordinated support activity across the region and the country as a whole.
That said, Birmingham’s Combined Authority in the West Midlands is an Innovation Accelerator UK pilot, which has the HealthTech/MedTech cluster as one of its two priority clusters, and could mean a £15m injection in coordinated and focused support into the West Midlands region; whilst the East Midlands must await the outcome of the devolution bid.
Since 2019, Medilink Midlands has helped secure almost £80 million in funding for the region’s life sciences sector, created £47 of investment for every £1 of public money, and engaged with 1700 of the sector’s SMEs, and been instrumental in 47 university collaborations and 34 traineeships for life sciences businesses.
With our skills, knowledge, expertise, network and connections, Medilink Midlands has the resources to deliver relevant industry support. We continue to create connections and opportunities through engagement with all organisations and regional stakeholders.