Yorkshire & Humber

The Yorkshire & Humber region offers investors access to world-leading industry sectors ranging from advanced engineering and materials, cutting-edge clean energy solutions and electronics to food processing. These sectors offer businesses access to established research and development facilities, robust supply chains, a highly skilled workforce, market opportunities and industry networks. These strong, established sectors combine with the region’s excellent business infrastructure and low cost base to give companies the tools they need to build a successful business and to support their growth.

What Is Yorkshire Forward Doing for the Healthcare Sector?

Yorkshire Forward supports a variety of organisations that promote the interests of this priority sector:

The region has invested in CPD4 Health Innovation, a one-stop shop for innovative and relevant continuing professional development activities across the Yorkshire & Humber region.

Bioscience YES - Yorkshire & Humber is an innovative competition that raises awareness of the commercialisation of bioscience ideas among postgraduate students and postdoctoral scientists working at universities in the region. The competition is promoted and funded by Yorkshire Forward and aims to encourage an entrepreneurial culture in the bioscience research community for the benefit of the regional and national economy.

The Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship (YEF) helps university researchers to set up a business based on their research. Building on the successful Bioscience Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship scheme launched in 2004, this new initiative from Yorkshire Forward delivers practical support for commercialising ideas and research findings from the region's universities.

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Yorkshire & Humber Is Reducing Development Times
for Effective New Drugs

The World Health Organisation reports that each year more than 11 million people are diagnosed with cancer and 33 million people worldwide are currently infected with HIV. The search for viable and affordable treatments is therefore a vital goal for the medical profession, researchers, scientists and drug companies in the 21st century.

Finding new cures, however, is generally expensive, time consuming and not without risk. Scientists searching for a new drug must sort through some 5,000 to 10,000 new chemical inventions to identify a pool of 250 combinations. This is followed by preclinical laboratory testing and three phase trials: animal, human and patient.

In all, the process from discovery and development of new cures can take up to 15 years. So how can the pharmaceutical industry rise to the challenge of producing new drugs that take less time and are more affordable to health services worldwide?

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Pharmaceutical Companies Mix with Nature

The Region Is Developing Drug Innovations
through Plant Extraction Technologies

According to the World Health Organisation, the number of new cases of cancer diagnosed each year is expected to grow from 11 million to 16 million by 2020. Curing a disease that strikes so many people indiscriminately and often without warning is a priority for researchers, scientists, drug companies and the medical profession as a whole but, until this challenge has been met, the development of more effective treatments for people with the disease is key to the improved prognosis for those who have it.

As governments struggle to find sufficient funds to treat existing and new cancer patients effectively, and provide palliative, supportive and terminal care, what can be done to improve existing treatments and ultimately find a cure?

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Healthcare Technologies: A Priority Sector

Yorkshire & Humber is one of the foremost regions for the healthcare technology industry in the United Kingdom and, indeed, in Europe. It has one of the fastest growing healthcare sectors in the nation. Yorkshire & Humber has one of the United Kingdom’s highest concentrations of medical device companies and specialist skills (especially in surgical instrumentation, orthopaedics and advanced wound care) and it affords ready access to clinical trials and pioneering R&D. It is also home to Leeds Teaching Hospital, which is the largest teaching hospital in Europe. The region has a real opportunity to leverage the collaborative potential and resources held within businesses, the NHS and its universities.

A Strategic Sector Champion for Healthcare Technologies

Yorkshire Forward directly employs a strategic sector champion for healthcare technologies. This experienced industrialist identifies opportunities for innovation through collaboration and brokers relationships between businesses and the science base.

Healthcare sector strengths

What Is Covered by Healthcare Technologies?

An array of companies active in the medical device sector are represented in the region. These include makers of surgical instruments, implantable devices, assistive equipment, medical consumables, prosthetics and orthotics, as well as companies in the pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals industries.

More than 300 healthcare technology businesses operate out of the region, from established companies like Smith & Nephew, Johnson & Johnson DePuy, Symmetry Thornton, B. Braun Medical UK, Sandvik, Reckitt Benkiser, Covance and Seven Seas to smaller university spin-outs such as Syntopix and Avacta.

Key facts relating to the region's involvement in healthcare

The region has three medical schools and strong academic research in medical engineering, tissue engineering and related skills. Many have achieved a five-star rating for research, which is the top grade that can be received, from the UK Research Assessment Exercise.

Yorkshire & Humber has a large number of specialist research units and institutes with world-renowned expertise.

NHS International and a Department of Health headquarters are based in the area. The region has a unique innovation interface, with five relevant Centres of Industrial Collaboration (CICs).

Yorkshire & Humber has four teaching-hospital NHS trusts and five regional BUPA hospitals. Europe’s largest teaching hospital with an annual budget of £540m is located in the region.

The region also has exceptional access to clinical trials.

Business accommodation centres include:

• Leeds Innovation Centre
• Sheffield Bioincubator
• Bradford Bioscience Business Incubator
• York Science Park
  

Vital Factors

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