CHN: The Northern Edition

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In February we travelled to Manchester for our inaugural event in the north! 

We had a fantastic trio of speakers and a large and lively audience.  

Our speakers – Ben Bridgewater, Mark Cubbon and Marion Bernard – spoke about the synergistic work they are doing to build a thriving healthcare and life sciences sector across Greater Manchester and more widely across the North.

Key messages were:



  1. All parts of the country, including Greater Manchester, are currently facing significant population health challenges combined with increasing numbers of people not working due to health-related problems, resulting in significant economic challenges.
  2. Adopting digital tools and wider innovations in science and technology, combined with transformation of services can deliver significant improvements in health outcomes, quality of care, and efficiency of care delivery – which in turn can drive economic growth, thereby driving a virtuous circle with better wealth creating better health. which is itself a significant driver of improvements in health.
  3. Essential to progress is alignment of priorities across the multiple actors in an innovation ecosystem, as well as the appetite to do things differently underpinned by rigorous method,
  4. Rigorous method is key to ensuring compelling ROI from innovation spend and access to, and smart of use of, data is essential to get you to first base as an innovation ecosystem; population based data can identify where to target innovations/new products, drive improvements in care delivery, enable personalisation of medicines and services and measure outputs, outcomes and impacts of innovation activities.
  5. Investors like Northern Gritstone and Angel groups can play a significant role in encouraging and supporting innovation and change by helping to create new healthtech and medtech companies.
  6. Changing models of health and care requires collaboration across organisations and sectors as well as alignment of priorities – from universities, the life sciences industry, start-ups, investors, healthcare commissioners and providers and innovation intermediaries like Health Innovation Manchester. The example of the roll out of Inclisiran and subsequent measurement of benefits across GM is a good example.
  7. Given the primacy of addressing population health, Integrated Care Boards and their innovation partners must work together with Local Authorities and healthcare providers to create the conditions for success, and catalyse change.