David Kidney’s blog: April 2024
April 2024
When I was preparing to lead the “deep dive” presentations to the West Midlands Innovation Board (the meeting was on 17 April 2024), I was struck by the glut of riches we have in our region’s HealthTech sector.
Some sense of this richness can be seen just from the calibre of the presenters on my team:
- Suzannah Lucas from The Binding Site (now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific) about the company’s growth in Birmingham;
- Professor Liam Grover from University of Birmingham about the Innovation Accelerator programme on which he is leading;
- Joshua Dale of University of Warwick’s WM Health & Wellbeing Innovation Network about its challenge programme for NHS organisations;
- Cliff Dennett about the land and premises and facilities on offer from Bruntwood SciTech at Enterprise Wharf, Birmingham’s Health Innovation Campus at Selly Oak and four City Centre locations;
- Jane Coleman from University of Warwick about the amazing HealthTech component of the major development at Arden Cross;
- James Tallentire from the Combined Authority about the innovative ways we are planning to meet our employers’ future needs for skills and talent.
We’re starting from a base of around 600 – 800 HealthTech businesses in the core area of the Combined Authority (the 7 Metropolitan Authorities’ footprint).
The Combined Authority has agreed to fund our cluster organisation’s short research project this year which will help us to establish some baseline mapping.
We need a baseline because, as our primary objective is to promote growth in our region’s HealthTech sector, we need a starting point from which to measure our success.
Alongside The Binding Site, other companies who stand out for their knowhow, wealth creation and numbers of good jobs include Salts Healthcare, Kimal and SCC, a multinational digital solutions business from its Birmingham home which operates innovation labs at Kidderminster and Stratford hospitals.
In the here-and-now, this industrial mass of HealthTech enterprise in our region has us punching above our weight and attracting interest from around the UK and indeed overseas.
This positive economic performance is being aided right now by a public spending programme – the WM HealthTech Innovation Accelerator – to the tune of £14M or so. Liam Grover and the 19 partner organisations he is leading are focused on identifying the future successful businesses who, with the right support, will drive the innovative businesses, products and services which will keep our HealthTech sector growing.
And we have good reason to be optimistic about further growth in our HealthTech sector in future years because of developments that are already in the pipeline.
For example, the first seven-storey building on the Health Innovation Campus at Selly Oak will open later his year. It brings much-needed expansion of lab space, alongside the specialist support of the Precision Health Technologies Accelerator.
The site – which borders the Queen Elizabeth II teaching hospital and University of Birmingham – has room for five more 7-storey buildings and Bruntwood SciTech is gearing up to construct the second one.
By 2028, construction will have started at Arden Cross on a new HealthTech Campus at the heart of the Innovation District there.
And an Investment Zone agreed by the Government for the East Side of Birmingham’s City Centre will offer tax incentives and public grant funding for promoting HealthTech and Advanced Manufacturing.
I wish I could add that the superb facilities at the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory at Lamington Spa will be a beacon and a commercial anchor organisation for our region, but unfathomably the Government has shied away from utilising its true potential and potentially the building will be sold.
At the cluster, we understand the business imperative of innovation to drive enterprise, market share and economic growth. We also understand the critical role of universities in instigating, stimulating and sustaining innovation in commercial settings. We very much see the cluster as being at the interface between businesses and universities, oiling the wheels of awareness, understanding and collaboration.
In work funded by the Combined Authority, I am producing – in very close cooperation with all stakeholders – a Vision Statement and 5 Missions which everyone who is relevant to the HealthTech sector can mutually agree to support.
Beyond these outputs, which I describe as a Roadmap for our region’s HealthTech sector, I am working on a Narrative for our sector which will resonate with all our stakeholders, excite our communities and speak directly and meaningfully to external audiences, especially investors and other HealthTech businesses looking for a new UK home.
What came out of the presentations to the Innovation Board?
We identified four themes where our sector’s partners would love to work with the Innovation Board to maximise our impact. These are:
1. As we grow and establish a track record of success, we need to communicate our achievements far and wide; communicating success is good for public reassurance, commercial motivation and attraction of others to come and join us.
2. It is on us to establish our region’s and our sector’s USP and to demonstrate that we are awash with investable propositions.
3. We know that collaboration is key and we are developing a track record of working together for our region’s benefit. The WM HealthTech Innovation Accelerator is a case in point with its 19 partners. We aim to embed collaborative ways of working and make this a critical selling point for our region and our sector.
4. We know that a growing sector like ours will want a matching growth in the proportion of the working age population of our region with the skills and talent that will allow our citizens to prosper because of the expansion in the number of good jobs available. It is such a win-win situation for our residents and for our businesses if our labour supply keeps pace with our demand from HealthTech employers.
At the cluster organisation, we are working hard on the skills and talent agenda. I recently brought employers and the Combined Authority’s skills team together in a skills workshop to encourage the co-production of future skills training in our sector.
We are working on a Skills Framework for the sector and supporting the Combined Authority and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education in developing a new, flexible Level 4 qualification for MedTech. Worthy of note, too, is the venue for the skills workshop – we met at Matthew Boulton College, in recognition that we want HE and FE to be part of the journey with us.
I would be happy to hear from any reader of this blog with your questions and your suggestions on these vital issues.
David Kidney, Executive Chair
19 April 2024.