Life Sciences and Healthcare
Healthcare
A number of highly regarded healthcare providers can be found in the region, including the Royal Berkshire Hospital, the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Oxford University Hospitals.
Innovation Hubs
A number of science innovation ‘hubs’ and centres of excellence find their home in the Thames Valley. These include Harwell, with its world-class facilities such as the Diamond Light Source Synchotron.
Medical Technology
A close proximity to both national and international markets has drawn many world-renowned drugs and delivery technology companies to the Thames Valley.
Pharmaceuticals
Many of the leading pharmaceutical firms have chosen to locate or relocate into the region and enjoy the benefits to being part of a major cluster of companies in the sector.
Research
The LSH cluster within the Thames Valley is supported by a range of academic institutions and R&D centres of excellence. These include the University of Oxford, University of Reading and Imperial College London.
The UK is the number one destination for health and sciences foreign direct investment in Europe, strengthened by the best academic institutions.
It benefits from the deep expertise and international leadership of the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and a world regarded health technology assessment body in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
There are now over 5,600 life sciences companies operating in the UK, generating a turnover of more than 90 billion GBP. Spanning the life sciences product development, supply and services chain, these companies employ more than 220,000 people.
Learn about the investment opportunities within the UK Life Sciences industry in this video. For more information, visit Invest In Great.
Discover Healthcare UK – a joint initiative between the UK Government’s Department of Health, NHS England and the Department for International Trade.
Life Sciences in the Thames Valley
Within the Thames Valley, the Life Sciences and Healthcare (LSH) sector is one of the most important, having more than 135 companies and 8,000 employees, and benefitting from a number of world leading academic institutions and industry centres of excellence.
The region is at the heart of the wider ‘Golden Triangle’ which links Oxford with London and Cambridge – one of the densest clusters in Europe, comparable to international super-clusters such as the one in Massachusetts.
Watch Bayer talks about the Thames Valley and the region’s Life Sciences sector in this video to the right.
Life Sciences Industrial Strategy
Since the Government launched its Life Sciences Strategy in 2011, over £7.5bn of inward investment in Life Sciences has been secured; leading to the creation of 18,000 new jobs.
The Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, provides recommendations to government on the long-term success of the sector. Read the report here.
Life Sciences Sector Deals are a collaboration between Government and industry, with input from digital, medical and biological technology companies, diagnostics experts and pharmaceutical firms.
The second Life Sciences Sector Deal was published in December 2018 and co-authored by the University of Oxford’s Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir John Bell. It sets out the second phase in implementing the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy and contains several references to the work, assets and companies across the Thames Valley.
Building on the success of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, and using the remarkable response of the UK’s world class life sciences sector to COVID-19 – in which organisations within the Thames Valley have played a crucial role – as a blueprint, the Government published a Life Sciences Vision in July 2021. Co-developed by Government, business and the NHS, the Vision sets out a series of proposed policies and programmes to cover seven great healthcare challenges: Cancer, Dementia, Mental Health, Obesity, Ageing, Respiratory Disease and Vaccines over the next decade. Read more HERE.