£4.5 million Edinburgh skills project will boost life sciences sector and NHS

“We have the talent, but it needs to be encouraged into the sector” – Professor Ivan Wall

Edinburgh is to become a base for a multi-million-pound project to help address an “acute” skills shortage in the life sciences sector.

The new initiative, known as Resilience, aims to tackle the skills shortage faced by the medicines manufacturing industry in the UK, and the capital’s Heriot-Watt University will be one of the partners delivering the programme. Funded by the Office for Life Sciences, part of the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, and managed through Innovate UK, Resilience is a £4.5 million, two-year programme.

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The UK’s first Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence will also use virtual reality to train in laboratory skills and support the NHS’s net zero goal.

The new Edinburgh-based Centre of Excellence will also use virtual reality to train in laboratory skills.The new Edinburgh-based Centre of Excellence will also use virtual reality to train in laboratory skills.
The new Edinburgh-based Centre of Excellence will also use virtual reality to train in laboratory skills.

At a launch event, the minister for Science, research and innovation, Lord Patrick Vallance, said: “With over £108 billion turnover, as a provider of over 300,000 jobs nationwide, and as a source of treatments helping tackle some of the most debilitating diseases, the life sciences sector is one of the UK’s true industrial champions.

“Our medicines manufacturers’ work is critical to the economic success, and health, of the nation. For them to keep being successful, it is imperative that we help them bridge the industry’s skills gaps. This new Centre of Excellence will be an important part of those efforts - bringing industry, universities and the NHS together with schools and colleges to ignite the next generation of life sciences talent.”

The new initiative will create and deliver training courses for industry, the NHS and education providers, addressing key sector priorities, including digital technology, artificial intelligence (AI), data analysis and environmental sustainability. Partner organisations across the UK delivering the programme also include the University of Birmingham, University College London (UCL), Teesside University and Britest.

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Professor Ivan Wall, co-director of Resilience, said: “The use of virtual reality (VR) technology will be central to the project, helping young people safely learn skills that it would be impractical to gain in the real world due to logistics and capacity. It will also help the NHS to meet its long-term goal of achieving net zero - 25 per cent of their emissions are in the supply chain, and VR will help the industry deliver net zero medicines manufacturing.”

A Resilience STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Outreach programme will produce curriculum-aligned materials and careers awareness events. It aims to partner with 20 schools or colleges, providing them with an annual free loan of VR headsets. The programme also aims to engage with 150 schools, colleges and further education centres across the UK. It will include laboratory placements and participation in STEM Festivals.

The recently published life sciences competitiveness indicators 2024 noted that pharmaceutical manufacturing’s gross value added (GVA) was £13.7bn in 2021. The Resilience partner organisations will deliver in-person and remote training courses in advanced laboratory and medicines manufacturing skills to schools, higher and further education colleges, universities and the NHS.

Wall added: “We have the talent, but it needs to be encouraged into the sector, so our plans for using cutting-edge technology like VR will help make it an attractive career path and create a highly-skilled workforce.”

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