Healthcare Innovation: Strong regional assets to attract inward investment

PUBLIC healthcare assets in Yorkshire could draw overseas interest in potential investment, according to medtech and telehealth experts.

Yorkshire is a hub of the NHS’s national activities and according to Andrew Dyson, partner in the Leeds office of law firm DLA Piper, for healthcare informatics businesses, this is a “massive” opportunity.

He added: “It is very hard to get access to healthcare databases. Researchers in pharmaceutical goods need information and data. Companies can use existing data to short circuit historically expensive and time consuming clinical trials. The NHS has that data with good samples – if it can be made accessible.

“The Yorkshire and Humber region is already one of the leading lights in the UK’s medical technology and healthcare informatics sectors. The opportunity exists now to become a centre of excellence in these fields on a global scale.”

The market trends, opportunities and challenges businesses face in healthcare services and medtech are outlined in TheBusinessDesk.com’s Healthcare Innovation supplement. Click here to read it.

In September, Leeds signed a collaboration framework agreement with US-based supplier of healthcare solutions, Alere, to position the city region as the UK’s leading centre for health and innovation.

Since September, a series of planning and project setup meetings have taken place with Alere on a weekly basis with all the key partners across the city to define the next phase of work.

Colin Mawhinney, head of health and innovation at Leeds & Partners, which has been coordinating the framework, said he expects the next stage of the agreement to come early in the new year, if not before.

Graham Bowland, chief executive of Leeds-based keyhole surgery instruments manufacturer Surgical Innovations, classes the company as an export business – with around 85% of sales coming from exports to the US – and says a large number of SMEs in the health supply chain would benefit if a major US player were to move here.

“Around 50% of the world’s medical devices are sold in the US – it is the biggest market in the world,” he said.