Life Sciences Scotland: On target to achieve ambitious objective
In 2017, the Life Sciences Scotland (LSS) Industry Leadership Group (ILG) set out a new mission and strategic themes for the sector to achieve by 2025.
LSS ILG Mission: “To increase the Life Sciences industry contribution to the Scottish economy to £8bn by 2025.”
Their approach was described as “a strategy for a fast-growing sector”1 and was designed to build on the success achieved from the previous strategy which resulted in 29% growth in turnover to in excess of £4.2bn and 24% growth in gross value added (GVA) to £2bn2.
At the time, a number of new global trends for the Life Sciences sector had been identified; these included the ageing population, spread of chronic diseases and increasing cost pressures on healthcare payers, all of which created new challenges and potential opportunities.
To ensure the sector was best placed to face these challenges and maximise these opportunities, the ILG set four strategic themes and priorities3:
Innovation and Commercialisation
- Drive growth through collaboration to commercialise the output of innovation and excellence centres
- Improve on the current ecosystem to maximise economic growth and create more companies of scale
- Attract, develop and retain entrepreneurial leadership across academia, the health service and industry
Sustainable Production
- Leadership confidence and promoting manufacturing
- Research commercialisation, technology development and scale up
- Supply chains and re-shoring
- Investing in Scotland
Internationalisation
- Leverage Scotland’s networks
- Promote Life Sciences in Scotland
- Develop an international mindset
Business Environment Collectively
- Develop Scotland’s Life Sciences infrastructure plan
- Maintain a world class regulatory environment
- Support the delivery of the Life Sciences Skills Investment Plan
- Improve access to funding and investment
So now, with less than 3 years to go and an unanticipated pandemic under our collective belts, how are we doing?
Reports in the media this year show Scotland’s life sciences sector now turns over £6.6 billion annually, employs 40,000 people across 750-plus organisations and is indeed expected to achieve its £8bn turnover target by 2025 4.
And it’s no wonder, with major new projects such as the BioHub in Aberdeen expected to boost Life Sciences in the North East of Scotland 5 whilst Scotland’s biggest cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow, continue to achieve global recognition as they did earlier this year with Forbes6 describing them as “ones to watch” and “established and high-growth life sciences clusters…anchored by world-class academic institutions”
Want to find out more?
Download the Life Sciences Strategy for Scotland 2025 (pdf)
Are you in Scotland’s Life Science sector and hiring for your team?
Get in touch with Escape’s Life Science recruiters. [call back form]
Or are ready to take the next step in your career?
View our latest Life Science vacancies and register your CV with us for future opportunities.
1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpslwHQA0vs
2https://www.gov.scot/publications/growth-sector-statistics/
4https://www.scotsman.com/business/life-sciences-on-target-to-achieve-ambitious-objective-3744088