While the challenges across the NHS dominate headlines, Leeds is spearheading a revolution in healthcare innovation. As Head of Business Development and Innovation at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, I could fill my calendar every week with people wanting to learn what we’re doing here.
Four years ago, the Trust made a strategic decision. While research had long been the organisation’s bread and butter, innovation needed stronger foundations. We recognised that supporting new ideas and industry partnerships couldn’t rely on sporadic connections – it needed coordination, infrastructure, and most importantly, a physical home.
Enter the Innovation Pop-Up, based in the historic Gilbert Scott building and launched in late 2021, as both a space and a statement of intent. It created a front door for industry partnerships and a platform for developing an innovation culture within one of the UK’s largest teaching hospitals, supporting the Trust’s Hospitals of the Future programme to build new state-of-the-art healthcare facilities. Recently refurbished with support from industry and charity partners, the Pop-Up has become a catalyst for collaboration between NHS staff and commercial partners.
The Pop-Up’s success builds on Leeds’ established strengths in healthcare research. In partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the country’s largest funder of healthcare research, the Trust hosts a Clinical Research Facility running over 100 early-stage clinical trials, a Biomedical Research Centre, and the HealthTech Research Centre. The NIHR BRC and NIHR CRF recently received a £4.28 million boost to expand their innovative work. These resources form part of a growing innovation network that extends from local partnerships to collaborations with organisations across Europe and the Middle East.
This momentum is shifting into a higher gear. The Trust has partnered with Scarborough Group International to transform its historic Old Medical School – one of England’s first provincial medical schools, completed in 1894 – into a globally recognised health-tech innovation hub. Beyond preserving this Victorian landmark, the redevelopment will create an ecosystem where clinicians, academics, researchers and entrepreneurs can collaborate in laboratories, co-working spaces and communal areas designed to spark the kind of serendipitous interactions that often lead to breakthroughs.
The hub is the first phase of the ambitious Innovation Village project – a 2.2m sq ft development that promises 4,000 new jobs and a £13bn economic boost for West Yorkshire. As part of the new West Yorkshire Investment Zone, it positions Leeds at the heart of the UK’s life sciences strategy. This development will complement the Trust’s broader transformation plans, including a new adult hospital, a new home for Leeds Children’s Hospital, and one of the UK’s largest single-site maternity and neonatal centres.
The impact is already visible in how healthcare innovation happens. Recently revealed as the UK’s top recruiter for medical device studies, with more than 5,000 participants in pioneering treatments last year, the Trust is also pioneering AI in breast cancer screening to tackle diagnostic bottlenecks, exploring AI-assisted clinical consultations to improve patient care, and using generative AI to make patient information more accessible. Leeds is becoming a testbed for technologies that could transform healthcare delivery.
The Leeds approach to innovation is practical and grounded. We create physical and organisational spaces – where good ideas can take root and grow. Innovation can be anything new – a new idea, a new thing, a new step in the patient pathway. What Leeds has done is make sure those ideas have somewhere to land.