Southern Policy Centre report highlights region’s life sciences strength

A new life sciences sector report from independent think tank the Southern Policy Centre is seeking to draw attention to one of the region’s “unsung stories: its strength in fostering and promoting the life sciences”.

The Life Sciences in the Central South report, covering Portsmouth to Bournemouth and everything in between, sets out the area’s ideas pipeline, highlighting its “Intellectual capital” in the form of more than 220 businesses, five universities, research-active primary and secondary NHS Trusts and a range of others.

This underpins strong “Testing and Evidence” which is supported by facilities including Substantial trials capability across two Integrated Care Systems, the NIHR Research Design Service South Central, the Wessex Investigational Sciences Hub and many more.

From these trialling facilities, a number of initiatives are promoting the commercialisation and adoption of life sciences innovation sparked in the South Central region. Among these are the Dorset Innovation Hub, SETsquared, Future Worlds and the Solent Freeport.

Bill Gillespie, chief executive of a key regional innovation arm within the NHS - the Wessex Academic Health Science Network (AHSN), is quoted as saying: “Over the last two years we have supported over 250 life science business owners, helped create or safeguard 180 jobs and secured more than £56 million in investment, grants and contracts.”

Further on, the report focuses on the areas within the life sciences sector in which the region is driving innovation: data, medtech and digital health, and biomedical research.

Describing the region as a “data powerhouse”, it points to the recent funding won from NHS England to develop a Trusted Research Environment, where researchers can request access to sensitive but anonymised health data.

Another initiative based in the region aims to cross reference GPs’ patient records with a selected group of people born at the same time, using data from the South-based Care and Health Information Exchange (CHIE).

Professor Gordon Blunn, a bioengineer and Director in health and wellbeing at the University of Portsmouth, said: “We were responsive, collaborative and attuned to the needs of local people. COVID-19 accelerated the regional collaboration that was already underway.”

Accounting for 23 per cent of UK medtech employment, the South East’s medtech and digital health sector was described in 2017 as a “hotbed of ideas”.

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Along with wearables and gadgets, the report points to the South’s “strong community of digital health entrepreneurs who are leveraging new technologies to boost patient care, limit health inequalities and help people stay healthy.”

Nigel Clarke, chief executive of Hampshire based Morgan Innovation & Technology, said: “We come across some fantastic ideas and innovation at a local level.”

The commercial side of life sciences is underpinned by strong academic institutions which, according to the report, “collaborate rather than compete”.

The Universities of Southampton, Portsmouth and Solent contribute £4.2 billion per year to the UK economy, while supporting 52,300 jobs – according to the Solent LEP. Meanwhile, Bournemouth University contributes £1 million to the region’s economic activity every day, creating 1,400 full time jobs.

Professor Peter JS Smith, Director of the Institute for Life Sciences (IfLS) at the University of Southampton, calls the range of life sciences expertise in the region “extraordinary yet underappreciated”.

Looking forward, the report highlights a number of future opportunities in the region. One example of this is the Operating Theatre 4.0 which, based in a Bournemouth hospital, uses robotics to aid surgeons in hip replacement therapies.

Along with the ideas new spaces for innovation are currently in the works, such as a 14.6 acre business park planned for Bournemouth and a new health and innovation campus earmarked for North of Southampton - the Adanac Health and Innovation Campus.

In his summary of the report, Professor John Denham of the Southern Policy Centre writes: "With a population of 2.4 million, the central South punches well above its weight in life sciences. This is a region rich in assets, with unique strengths and the intellectual firepower to tackle the concerns of the future and drive prosperity.”

The full report can be found here.

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