Health innovation and healthtech transforms health and care services. It improves health outcomes and patient wellbeing. It can even save lives. As we emerge from the pandemic, there are deepening inequalities in health that we must address.
By working together, pursuing innovation that recognises and builds upon diversity, we have the potential to tackle health inequalities that blight the lives and opportunities of many in our region – and far beyond it. I am passionate about supporting the best and brightest ideas of clinicians, academics and business innovators to make a difference in a health and care system which is precious to us all. Therefore I am delighted to endorse our region’s first ever Healthtech strategy and welcome the pivotal contribution it promises towards better health for everyone.
Tracy Brabin
Mayor of West Yorkshire
This strategy aims to capitalise on the exceptional regional Healthtech strengths across West Yorkshire and the Leeds City Region to drive both future economic prosperity and improve health outcomes. Ultimately improving population health and wealth through healthtech innovation.
The Covid-19 crisis has laid bare the need and desire for a step change in tackling entrenched health and economic inequalities. Tackling this with new health innovations – accelerated into the health system – will support both economic (business) growth and the health outcomes of patients.
West Yorkshire has all the vital components to be an engine of health ideas and innovation that can drive levelling up; not just for the region’s economy, but for the nation’s health. It is able to contribute significantly to the post COVID economic and health recovery.
The West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership 5 year plan has already identified this critical opportunity. ‘Better health and wellbeing for everyone’ highlights the transformative opportunities that healthtech and innovation can bring across health provision to deliver a healthier economy.
Our region has a unique healthtech innovation ecosystem with its strengths across medtech, digital and data – and connectivity across and between these strengths – and is leading the way with the translation of research into commercialisation.
The region has been recognised by central government as a high potential opportunity area for woundcare, regenerative tissue, AI and data analytics. However we are not currently seen as the leading Healthtech cluster nationally, due to the fragmented nature of the system and the lack of adoption of products and services into practice. This means our region does not currently reach its full potential for residents and businesses.
There are other well-known health and innovation clusters across the country. However, none boast the level of assets that we possess in West Yorkshire and Leeds City Region – assets across industry and academia, plus unique strengths within our public sector infrastructure. The Opportunity section of this strategy focuses on these assets, demonstrating the prime opportunity for West Yorkshire and the City Region to become the leading healthtech cluster nationally and to partner, where appropriate, with other healthtech clusters across the UK and globally.
We must act now to capitalise on these strengths, the market opportunity and to deliver the health and wellbeing outcomes needed post COVID.
In 2019, the global healthtech market was worth an estimated $175 (US bn), expected to rise to $660 billion by 2025. Even before COVID, which sharply increased the need for digital health tools to be used, adoption has been steadily increasing.
The healthtech sector faces significant challenges post COVID and the City Region with its dominance of micro businesses and SMEs is no exception. To achieve the full potential of this market, collaboration between the NHS, industry, universities, the third sector and government requires a unified approach. Only through collaboration and connection will we overcome barriers to healthtech innovation, translation and adoption.
Driving excellence in science and innovation will play a key part in addressing the Leeds City Region productivity gap, and the challenges that underpin this.
This strategy provides the framework for that unified approach. It sets out a common language, a shared vision and priorities, and a framework for activity and investment in healthtech, which all partners can work towards.
It is not intended to displace or disrupt all the existing initiatives and programmes underway, but to add value by setting out an agreed roadmap to reach our ambitions.
This is a regional partnership strategy and therefore engagement across partners has been critical throughout the development of this strategy and agreement of the vision and approach.
Our region is not coming to this from a standing start. This strategy builds on the Science and Innovation Audit in 2017, and the subsequent regional healthtech Memorandum of Understanding developed in 2019. This underpinned the region’s first cross-sector healthtech partnership, comprising senior representation from the healthtech industry, the health and care system, five universities and the LEP. The MoU functions as a call to action for the range of stakeholders in the region involved in supporting and growing the healthtech ecosystem.
The Region’s first cross-sector Healthtech Leadership Group (now titled the Healthtech Cluster), which evolved from the MoU, continues to grow and thrive. Facilitated by Leeds Academic Health Partnership, the Healthtech Cluster involves numerous regional partners, supports shared healthtech programmes, events, promotion and partnerships with other regions, and reduces duplication of work.
This strategy outlines how we (the whole partnership/ecosystem) will align our strategic and collaborative approaches. This will begin to reduce fragmentation and bring together the region’s universities, health and care system, LEP, Combined Authority and healthtech industry to develop an integrated healthtech innovation system in West Yorkshire.
It will position the region as a locus of healthtech expertise, that will deliver both high quality patient outcomes, alongside economic and productivity gains. The strategy sets out high-level ambitions, which will be underpinned by a detailed accompanying ‘live’ and dynamic action plan owned by the partnership.
The 2018 Digital Health and Healthtech study agreed definitions of healthtech, medtech and digital health based on a review of existing definitions. A working definition was agreed as:
Healthtech is the broadest possible definition of new products and/or services relating to the health sector and/or the health and wellbeing of individuals.
Within the umbrella of healthtech are the following:
A subset of healthtech that involves the design and manufacture of physical products or technologies used primarily in medical settings, encompassing medical devices and medical equipment as defined by the World Health Organisation.
A subset of health technology that involves the use of electronic or mobile digital technologies via applications, software and/or online platforms.
Below are examples of innovations driven nationally by NHS England and the Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) which have been adopted across the region, showing how effective adoption and deployment can be achieved with the right conditions in place.
Leeds City Region was one of the early adopting sites of this new innovation (requiring pathway redesign) to convert a three day urology intervention into minimally-invasive day case surgeries. £33k was secured from the Pathway Transformation fund for this innovation to support the pathway re-design.
GammaCore and SecurAcath are also in use in the region. These are all examples of innovations endorsed nationally by NHS England and driven into the system by the AHSN, with West Yorkshire and Harrogate being particularly receptive.
TCAM has been adopted in Leeds City Region for some time now, creating an IT bridge between acute and community care. This ensures patients being transferred out of hospitals into the community have their medication reviewed by a community pharmacist – preventing medicines errors and unplanned re-admissions.
An evaluation toolkit to further support the adoption and use of the TCAM system was developed by the University of Bradford in 2021. This offers a step-by-step approach to evaluate the successful use of this system within our hospitals, promoting sustainability in practice.
The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the need and desire for a step change in tackling health and economic inequalities. Health outcomes and economic performance are intrinsically linked, and this forms a central part of our wider regional economic recovery plan. There needs to be a focus across the UK in tackling these issues and, within this, West Yorkshire can play a significant role through our unique strengths in health innovation.
We have all of the vital components to be an engine of health ideas and innovation that can drive levelling up, not just for our region’s economy, but the nation; and contribute significantly to the post COVID economic and health recovery.
This strategy will provide a focus for making these ambitions a reality.
The region has a high concentration of knowledge-based, innovative health sciences organisations, alongside broader healthcare industries. It has recognised strengths and pedigree in digital health innovation and the manufacture of medical and dental instruments.
In December 2020, a workshop was convened to support the development of this strategy. The following sets out the strengths and assets as previously identified by the group.
The region is a nationally regarded leader in healthtech research and development, and healthtech firms in the region have enjoyed steady growth in recent years. The Office for Life Sciences has published data showing there are substantially more value-adding med-tech firms in the region than in any other UK Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area – over 20% more.
Traditional industry strengths in the region include implants, surgical instruments, and devices, e.g. DePuy Synthes, Surgical Innovations, Xiros and Brandon Medical.
More recent start-ups and high growth companies are based on emerging technology areas, including biological materials and digital health, e.g. Tissue Regenix, Neotherix and Avacta; TPP and EMIS.
The Yorkshire and the Humber Region, and particularly Leeds City Region, is one of the foremost UK locations for digital health business. The combination of a solid digital health business base, and associated leadership and cross-sectoral strengths, mean that the area has a vital role to play in the development of the UK’s digital health industry.
Over three-quarters of the region’s digital health firms deliver either healthcare provider communication solutions (internally oriented), or data collection, management and interoperability products and services.
Known firm revenues in the healthcare provider and data collection categories amount to just under £500m, with employment of just under 5,000 (almost 90% of total revenues and just over 90% of employment).
These businesses proactively chose Leeds City Region because of the broader strengths of the region set out in this strategy:
Digital health businesses in particular have seen considerable growth in the last two financial years (pre pandemic), of which almost half is within data services businesses (£55m), one third are among businesses that deliver healthcare provider products and services, and one fifth are among more client facing products and services.
The two categories of interoperability and healthcare provider solutions include some of the region’s most significant businesses, such as:
They clearly represent strengths in the region and provide a critical advantage because they are also the foundation for advancing other sub-sectors. The world leading Yorkshire and Humber Care Record for example has interoperability as a core aspect.
The region is home to some of the most innovative patient-facing digital health businesses, including ‘Advanced Digital Innovation’, which offers a broad portfolio of patient facing solutions such as:
Similarly, the region has several examples of innovative health system management solutions, including:
Investment data suggests that these two digital health categories (patient facing solutions and health system management solutions) represent major future growth areas, and have the potential to advance the UK’s position as a world-leading digital health economy. (Healthtech and Digital Health report, 2020)
Regional universities, and a broad base of wider research and business incubation actors, have played and will continue to play a major role in advancing the region’s healthtech sector in areas such as remote patient monitoring, patient engagement, AI, data etc.
West Yorkshire universities have been responsible for securing nationally significant levels of academic and health research funding. They hold the knowledge and expertise required to maintain the region’s position nationally, and the UK’s position on the international stage. Since 2009, universities within Leeds City Region have attracted c.£675m in academic research funding for innovation from UKRI bodies relevant to the healthtech ecosystem, including:
Since 2006, Yorkshire and the Humber has attracted a total of 447 NIHR research projects to the value of £278m, spanning every aspect of NIHR funding. The region has delivered more Health Technology Assessment (HTA) projects; hosted more NIHR fellowships; delivered more Health Service and Delivery Research (HS&DR) projects; and delivered more Public Health Research (PHR) projects than any other region outside London. Per head of population, the region has received the highest proportion of NIHR funding outside of London (£163php compared to the next highest proportion £140php in the West Midlands).
Our region has been recognised by central government as a high potential opportunity area for woundcare and regenerative tissue. Regenerative tissue technologies were pioneered by University of Leeds.
Underpinning everything is the move to digital and remote care. West Yorkshire is well placed to lead the way here, with significant assets and a long history of academic excellence in AI, machine learning and data analytics. Another recognised strength of our region is in evaluation of digital healthcare solutions to effect system change, improve system performance and enhance patient health and wellbeing. We have Europe’s first AI-powered hospital command centre in Bradford; researchers at the city’s university have contributed expertise to analyse the influence on safety and patient health and, more widely, analysis of the effect of computerised decision support systems on healthcare professional performance and patient outcomes.
We also have significant strengths in longitudinal data studies such as the groundbreaking Born in Bradford programme. This world-leading initiative is helping to unravel the reasons for the high level of childhood illness in the UK, and bring new scientific discovery to the globe – now rolling out to Leeds, Wakefield and Doncaster, and expanding through the recently-announced Age of Wonder study.
The region is uniquely positioned as home to a cluster of national health organisations. Our public sector assets – hospitals and universities – double up as assets for the private sector; Leeds City Region is home to no fewer than seven significant government health headquarters, including NHS England, NHS Digital, Public Health England, NHS Leadership Academy, Health Education England, NIHR Clinical Research Network, and NHSX.
As such it is the decision-making centre for national policy and c.£130bn in funding for NHS commissioning, leadership and digital advancement (via major initiatives such as NHS Spine), as well as education and training of England’s health and public health workforce and the protection of public health and wellbeing. There is a significant opportunity around increased collaboration to drive the region’s health innovation ambitions.
In May 2021, the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership (WYHCP) formally signed a partnership with the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) to deliver a system-wide program for innovation and improvement for its health & care partners. The Health and Care Bill puts this on a statutory footing. The new Innovation and Improvement Hub formed between the WYHCP and AHSN will provide strategic direction, leadership and guidance around the innovation agenda.
The Hub will consolidate existing work across key players in the region to better understand and coordinate health care need, and match these to innovative technologies and improvement methodologies.
The partnership works on a subsidiarity model, performing activities at a regional level where most appropriate with area-specific work driven locally. In this way, areas within the partnership will be supported to articulate the needs of the local area and, where needs align, will work via the Hub to achieve economies of scale.
It is the region’s ambition for the WYHCP to be the leading ICS on innovation and improvement. Developing, implementing and adopting innovation, and striving for continuous improvement, leads to improved care; and to better health and wellbeing, greater service efficiency and improved workforce capability and capacity.
West Yorkshire is ideally placed to realise this ambition, with a vibrant life sciences industry in the footprint and a wealth of expertise and enthusiasm that is not only within the WYHCP but across our partners, including the voluntary and community sector.
The commitment to collaborate across all these assets is a significant strength for the region. Via the Healthtech Cluster and its expansion, there is real commitment and drive to further develop and deepen collaborative relationships – to drive activity as a collective, rather than operating in isolation.
There is no doubt that West Yorkshire boasts the assets and the opportunity to lead in the healthtech space – particularly in the whole-system approach to discover, develop and deploy.
However, the nature of the system, with the array of organisations and bodies involved has historically at times resulted in fragmentation and lack of coherence.
Despite significant health sector leadership and a very strong base of health sector assets in the region, efficiently and effectively navigating the health and care system presents a significant challenge, particularly to start-up and smaller scale businesses (note that this has been identified as both a regional and national issue). This assertion is borne out in the survey data (Digital Health report) collected from regional businesses, in which none of the micro businesses (1-9 employees) identified public procurement as a route to market. As one micro business respondent put it: “selling into the NHS is too hard for start-ups”.
Numerous consultees highlighted the need for an agreed and obvious way of accessing the NHS health system, or a ‘front door’ that would support smaller firms to develop and test new and / or alternative digital health and care solutions.
Consultees also suggested that finding an effective solution to this challenge was more likely within this region than in other parts of England because of the well-connected and significant influence of the regional ecosystem. Regionally, the challenge to date has been in co-ordinating and effectively positioning the region’s assets so that they are widely known among innovators and businesses.
To begin to tackle this, and building on the recommendations of the Science and Innovation Audit, a Healthtech Leadership Group was established in 2019, bringing together the key stakeholders in the region to reduce fragmentation and maximise the opportunities identified above.
The group identified the following problem statement:
The region has a strong history of innovation in healthtech, however it is not systematic or at scale. There is an opportunity as a partnership to learn from successes and build on these as a region to create spin outs, support existing SME; trade internationally and secure investment – whilst also adopting our home grown innovations.
There is also more to be done to create and support a more diverse pool of healthtech innovation-driven enterprises in the region.
Misaligned objectives and resources are the major issues preventing the initiation and success of programs, as is a focus on piloting rather than deploying at scale, all hindering potential partnerships.
Collectively this means the innovation culture required needs support to strengthen. The ecosystem misses out on opportunities as industry does not always see the region as a magnet for healthtech innovation, regarding other global systems as potentially being easier to navigate.
It is important to clearly articulate the range of partners involved in delivering against our regional healthtech ambitions. Each partner has a different role to play in each of the stages and in creating an effective journey through from discovery to deployment.
Connectivity and the creation of a shared purpose and knowing ‘who does what’ across our assets is essential. Good connectivity drives innovators to the right place at the right time – and partners need to have effective referral routes to ‘hand on’ where appropriate.
Central to this is the new West Yorkshire Innovation Hub. The West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, working with the AHSN through the new Hub, will clearly set out the innovation needs and challenges of the health system in the region. In doing so, the clear articulation of unmet needs will drive discovery and development in the region, supporting local SMEs and start-ups and attracting inward investment. This clear system pull will drive the adoption of innovation and help with strengthening the system wide culture.
The West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership operates on a principle of subsidiarity where each of the five places in the region will articulate the specific health and care needs of their area. Organisations such as Leeds Academic Health Partnership will support health and care businesses in this needs-driven approach and more broadly support the discovery of new and novel ideas across academia and the business base, which may be globally scalable or of global relevance.
No other country is as well placed as the UK to foster innovative product development in both medical technology and digital health solutions (Healthtech) at scale, largely because of the potential within the NHS.
No other region is as well placed to unlock that potential meaningfully and sustainably because of the strengths and uniqueness of our cluster of industry assets, university assets and public health assets.
Discovery, development, evaluation and adoption of proven innovation that delivers improved health outcomes and reduces inequalities.
We will be the number one place for healthtech entrepreneurs, innovators and industry.
Our healthtech ecosystem will be the best-connected and most innovation-driven in the country, providing unrivalled prospects to partner, locate and grow.
We will be the national engine of ideation, development and adoption of proven healthtech innovation. Through connectivity and synergy in our systems, we will drive levelling up – in economic and health terms.
The positive impact of our healthtech ecosystem will be felt by citizens and communities across the region, the country and the world.
To achieve this vision, our focus needs to be twofold;
We must focus on developing and supporting connectivity across our regional healthtech cluster to focus on start-ups, SMEs and inward investment opportunities for economic growth.
Given the assets we have in the region, we must focus on the opportunity for translation and diffusion into the health system across the region (and beyond) to support patient and end user health benefits and reduce health inequalities.
To deliver against these priorities we will commit, as a regional partnership, to driving activity in the following areas.
The Mayoral Combined Authority’s Business, Innovation and Economy Committee will have a particular interest in overseeing discovery and development (innovation) activities aligned to this strategy, ensuring that business support needs and gaps are addressed.
The West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Innovation and Improvement Programme Board will set the direction of travel to support needs-based innovation in the region, focusing particularly on the adoption agenda to improve health outcomes.
The Healthtech Cluster will bring together stakeholder across discovery, development and deployment and be the ultimate owner of this regional strategy. This group will also function as expert advisory group for healthtech in the region.
