Leeds is set to cement its position as the UK’s largest research powerhouse outside the traditional Golden Triangle of life sciences under a bold new strategy to improve health outcomes, tackle health inequalities and drive economic growth.
The five-year plan, launched today by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, builds on momentum that has seen the Trust slash clinical trial setup times by 50 per cent and become one of the UK’s top five research delivery centres alongside London, Oxford and Cambridge.
Targeting £140 million in research activity by 2030 – a 40 per cent increase on its previous ambitions – the research and innovation strategy directly supports the Government’s 10-year plan for the NHS and its three major shifts: moving care from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. With 350 planned industry partnerships and an enhanced approach to commercialising NHS innovations, Leeds is positioning itself as a major driver of Yorkshire’s economic growth.
Prof Phil Wood, Chief Executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “This strategy puts the NHS 10-year plan into action, showing how research and innovation can deliver tomorrow’s healthcare today. We’re preventing illness, pioneering new therapies, and creating high-skilled jobs that will make Yorkshire a global leader in health innovation.
“Research and innovation are at the heart of how we deliver and improve our services to patients and we are committed to ensuring every patient and staff member has the opportunity to take part in and benefit from research and the medical advancements they enable.”
The economic vision is already taking shape. The Trust’s Innovation Village, anchored by the transformation of the Old Medical School into a healthtech hub, will create a cluster for life sciences businesses.
The Trust is enhancing its approach to the commercialisation of innovations developed locally, ensuring that intellectual property created in Leeds benefits the regional economy.
By training 1,250 staff in research and innovation skills, the Trust is embedding capability throughout its workforce, enabling more staff to contribute to breakthrough discoveries alongside their clinical roles.
The urgency is clear: in Leeds, one in four people live in areas ranked among the most deprived 10 per cent nationally. The life expectancy gap between affluent and deprived areas reaches 14 years for women and 11 years for men. In deprived areas, 11.9 per cent of reception-age children live with obesity and 32.8 per cent of children report feeling stressed or anxious daily.
To transform these outcomes, five strategic themes will drive immediate action: digital, data and AI supporting the NHS shift from analogue to digital; health inequalities research targeting socioeconomic health gaps; devices and diagnostics advancing surgical precision; novel therapeutics developing gene therapies, immunotherapies and preventative vaccines; and patient outcomes research improving care through better understanding of treatment impacts.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust’s international credentials are growing through clinical, academic and commercial partnerships. This is being demonstrated through initiatives like the Trust’s cutting-edge digital pathology innovation, unveiled this week to a global audience at a major healthcare conference in Singapore. Spearheaded by the Trust’s National Pathology Imaging Co-operative, the technology is now being expanded for international use.
This builds on the Trust’s work with Flatiron Health which has allowed the Trust to become the first NHS organization to generate high-quality anonymized datasets at scale for global research, with 96% of 40,000 patients with cancer contacted, supporting the work. Such partnerships bring investment and expertise to Yorkshire while providing global companies with access to diverse patient populations and NHS clinical excellence, supporting job creation and helps advance research and care locally and globally.
An AI lab launches this year, giving NHS staff access to high-performance computing to develop artificial intelligence applications while keeping patient data secure. The Trust is pioneering ‘innovation passports’, a streamlined system that cuts through NHS bureaucracy to speed adoption of new technologies.
The strategy commits to recruiting 100,000 research participants, training 1,250 staff in research methods, and delivering 350 industry collaborations. Crucially, 10,000 participants will be recruited from community settings, bringing research directly to those who need it most.
Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire, said: “Leeds and West Yorkshire are a health innovation powerhouse, rivalling the golden triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge, and ranking as one of the most attractive places in the world for healthtech businesses.
“With world-class buildings and businesses boosted by our £160 million investment zone, we’re creating jobs, attracting investment, growing the economy, and transforming the lives of patients across our great region.
“This bold new strategy to invest even more in research and innovation will put our region at the heart of the future of the NHS, and the future of healthcare worldwide, as we work to build a stronger, brighter West Yorkshire.”
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest NHS Trusts in the country and a major academic healthcare institution which works in close collaboration with partners across healthcare, academia and industry. It works in partnership with NIHR, hosting a Clinical Research Facility running over 100 early-stage clinical trials, a Biomedical Research Centre, and the HealthTech Research Centre, which contribute to the £30m of research and innovation funding. These resources form part of a growing innovation network extending from local partnerships to collaborations across Europe and internationally.