Healthy cooperation: how northern universities are linking with NHS trusts to drive innovation

H uddersfield might appear an unlikely setting for a thriving health research complex. The West Yorkshire town is best known for its manufacturing heritage, but has quickly become a honey pot for private sector businesses keen to collaborate with the town’s university in a push for the latest medical breakthroughs. Next month, the driving force behind the University of Huddersfield’s national health innovation campus, Prof Liz Towns-Andrews, expects to get the go-ahead for the third of seven planned eco-buildings for research and tech development clustered near the town centre. It was only in March that the £11m centre named after the local healthcare advocate Emily Siddon was opened by the then health innovation minister, Zubir Ahmed, boasting five floors and the UK’s first MRI scanner simulator. “It’s an MRI without the magnets, and yet you wouldn’t know it wasn’t a fully functioning machine,” says the Yorkshire-born Towns-Andrews. The project – fuelled by a mix of private and public finance – provides a model for the UK’s universities as they tackle ailing balance sheets. With Oxford and Cambridge well established as hubs for medical and biotech spin-outs, other universities are working with health trusts and councils to further research and support local economies. A recent report by the University of East London (UEL), which examined the accounts of 160 universities, found that almost 40 were near bankruptcy and had just two months of cash in the bank. …