Daresbury's New HealthTec Cluster











Jane Lambert

Immediately after last Friday's breakfast meeting at Daresbury Sci-Tech, I attended an interactive session with Phil Carvil, the cluster's development manager, exploring how the Daresbury HeathTec Cluster can work with innovators and industry. The official launch had taken place the previous day. Phil began his talk by asking who had attended it. 

Phil explained that the cluster aims to bring together business, academics and the public sector in the North of England. He reminded us that there are 28 universities and more than 1,200 life science companies employing over 50,000 people in the region.  Some 32 of those companies are based in Daresbury itself.

The Cluster's vision is set out in the leaflet Connecting Capabilities.  It is the second health technology cluster in the UK, the first being at Harwell in Oxfordshire. Phil hoped that the two networks would complement each other. He expected businesses on one campus to find partners for projects and ventures in the other.

There were several questions from the floor. Some were quite technical about sterilization facilities. Others more general about accelerators. At that point, John Leake intervened to say that Daresbury had already hosted two very successful accelerator projects and could easily run more. An American gentleman in the front row suggested dedicated liaison officers to work with companies on campus. Phil and John nodded their heads.

At that point, I had to leave the room to take a call from London but that gentleman was still talking when I came back. He opined that the Daresbury cluster was very precious and unique. That aroused my curiosity and prompted me to ask him for specifics. He spoke about geographical proximity compared to the USA where distances are so huge. "True, but I seem to remember that they had phones when I was at graduate school there in the 1970s," I said to myself. "How about a massive purchaser of healthcare services in the NHS?" I put to him. He did not demur.

I shall follow the progress of the Cluster with interest and blog about it from time to time in IP Northwest. There are bound to be lots of legal issues in collaboration agreements, title to intellectual property and maybe even a few disputes that I can help to resolve.  Should anybody wish to talk about any of those issues, call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact page.

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