LIFE SCIENCES

From Assisted Living and Digital Health to Medical Technology and Synthetic Biology the West of England’s Health & Life Science’s cluster is young, fast growing and extremely dynamic; employing approximately 2,700 people within Life Sciences and a wider 4-5,000 in Medical Technology and Digital Health. Enabling institutions and translational entities such as BrisSynBio and Spin Up Science support researchers with the movement from the university into the market place.

Concurrently, the region’s universities and incubators & co-working spaces accelerate the development of technology, and fast track the growth of burgeoning companies. These facilities are extremely popular. Unit DX (sat within the Sciences Creates ecosystem) was awarded the Best Sector Support Organisation by the Oxford BioScience Network in 2018. The University of the West of England Enterprise Zone houses the Bristol Robotics Lab, the Health Tech Hub and Future Space.

From here some fantastic success stories include Bristol University Spin Out Ziylo was bought by Danish global healthcare company Novo Nordisk for $800 million in 2018. Similarly, Bristol based Open Bionics have developed a prosthetic ‘Hero’ arm to provide a new lease of life for those with upper arm differences.