Huddersfield, a West Yorkshire town long defined by its textile mills and manufacturing heritage, is carving out a new identity as a hub for health research and medical innovation. At the heart of this transformation is the University of Huddersfield’s National Health Innovation Campus, where a cluster of eco‑buildings is rising close to the town centre and drawing private‑sector businesses eager to collaborate on the latest medical breakthroughs.
Huddersfield’s health innovation success
Professor Liz Towns‑Andrews, the driving force behind the campus, expects to receive the go‑ahead next month for the third of seven planned research and technology buildings. The project is already well advanced. In March, the £55 million Emily Siddon Centre – named after a local healthcare advocate – was officially opened by the then health innovation minister, Dr Zubir Ahmed. The centre boasts 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,” Towns‑Andrews said.
The campus also hosts Britain’s first community diagnostic centre to be located on a university campus, developed in partnership with Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust. Beyond its equipment, the complex is built to exacting environmental and health standards. Towns‑Andrews has insisted that every building meets the WELL Building Standard – a performance‑based system that measures features impacting human health, including air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind – a benchmark that should place the campus among the top fifty worldwide.
For Towns‑Andrews, improving health is also a direct route to boosting the region’s flagging productivity. Yorkshire and Humberside has one of the lowest outputs per hour in England. “To me it wasn’t rocket science that getting people healthy, fit and able to work would make the single biggest impact on productivity,” she said.
The Huddersfield health hub has already supported 380 companies since September 2023, a number Towns‑Andrews says “is only set to grow”.
University funding crisis and the Huddersfield model
Huddersfield’s progress stands in stark contrast to the financial strains facing many other UK universities. A report by the University of East London, which examined the accounts of 160 institutions, found that almost 40 were near bankruptcy with just two months of cash in the bank. Wes Streeting, before he quit as health secretary, had put in place investment funds to boost the building of new health centres and hospitals, but a shortage of funding has meant many have faced delays.
By contrast, the University of Huddersfield recorded an operating surplus of about £10 million in the 2024‑25 financial year and is far from going bust. The health innovation campus itself is fuelled by a mix of private and public finance. Part of the motivation for regional collaboration came from the need to secure a share of the £2 billion West Yorkshire investment zone, but also because universities, health trusts and councils have seen their own funding squeezed over the past decade.
Higher education institutions and NHS trusts are among the biggest employers in many local economies, with financial clout and predictable futures that allow private sector businesses to sign long‑term agreements. Carson McCombe, head of innovation at the University of Huddersfield, said that after a difficult few years in which universities adjusted to fewer high‑paying foreign students, there is now an opportunity to turn the situation around. “Putting together the council, university and health trust gives you a powerful engine of economic growth,” he said.
How universities and health trusts are collaborating to drive local growth
The partnership model being forged in Huddersfield is being replicated across the country as universities move beyond the established dominance of Oxford and Cambridge in medical and biotech spin‑outs. By working with health trusts and councils, institutions are not only furthering research but also supporting local economies.
In Manchester, a notable example is Health Innovation Manchester (HInM), an academic health science centre established in October 2017 that works closely with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Manchester. HInM has set up a Dementia Industry Group with six global pharmaceutical companies and launched a £300,000 fund for healthcare innovations. It is part of the Health Innovation Accelerator, a programme funded by Innovate UK that has received additional funding of £30 million and is set to continue until March 2026. HInM’s strategic priorities include improving population health, positioning Greater Manchester as a hub for industry‑led innovation, and optimising digital, data and artificial intelligence for care quality. A recent collaborative project with AbbVie aims to transform migraine care in the region.
Professor Tony Young, national clinical director for innovation at NHS England, sees the NHS now acting as an integrator. “The NHS acts like an integrator, bringing on board the Nobel prizewinners and clinicians, so they can be part of an ecosystem that brings forward innovative ideas,” he said. Young, who started five companies while training as a urology surgeon and raised £5 million in private sector funds, recalled having to “fight the health system the whole way” because he wanted to be both a clinician and an entrepreneur. Today, he said, the tie‑ups behind the current boom involve not only hospitals and universities but also investors, industry, purchasers, providers and charities such as Cancer Research UK.
Professor Malcolm Press, vice‑chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University and president of Universities UK, pointed to “health innovation Manchester” as a network that links all the universities and health trusts into a single digital platform. “We use it to translate research in health and social care into things that benefit local people,” he said. According to Universities UK, the higher education sector’s teaching, research and innovation activities contribute £158 billion to the UK economy. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, titled “Anchor impact: understanding the role of higher education and hospitals in regional economies”, calculated that in the United States, higher education institutions and hospitals collectively provide 18 million jobs and £1.1 trillion of income – showing how health and higher education have become as important to the jobs market and growth as educating people and keeping them healthy.
Other partnerships are emerging across the country. Derby University and Sandwell College are among many higher education bodies to sign deals with local NHS trusts this year. Sandwell College and Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust have agreed a landmark partnership centred on a new £18 million Learning Campus in Smethwick, part of the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital site, which is due to open in 2025 and will support 1,280 learners annually, offering 100 apprenticeships, 250 work experience opportunities and 10 supported internships each year. The initiative is backed by Sandwell Council, the West Midlands Combined Authority and the government’s Town Fund.
Kingston University in west London has also spotted an opportunity to develop links with local hospital trusts to support medical training and small businesses looking to use the latest health technology. Professor Kathy Curtis, provost of the Faculty of Health, Science, Social Care and Education at Kingston University, acknowledged that universities have a reputation for being “leaden footed”, often responding to calls for support by saying “you need a PhD student on a three‑year programme to sort that out”. She said the university is now more likely to partner companies with someone working on a doctoral thesis in that subject area for just four weeks. “We are pretty fleet of foot. And when industry comes to us with a problem, we try to tailor the answer to their needs.”
Company successes and setbacks in the new landscape
Across the road from the Emily Siddon building, in a designated health tech and digital investment zone, a 125‑year‑old textile mill is about to be taken over and partly restored by Paxman Scalp Cooling, which has rapidly become one of Huddersfield’s fastest‑growing businesses. The company manufactures a head cap that prevents hair loss during chemotherapy treatment – a device used by 97 per cent of NHS trusts and exported to 50 countries, with more than half of its exports going to hospitals in the United States. Paxman has also invested £1 million in the world’s first Scalp Cooling Research Centre at the University of Huddersfield, focusing on biological hair follicle research and developing innovative treatments. The company has received planning permission for a new headquarters and innovation centre at Turnbridge Mills, a development that is expected to create around 60 new jobs and is part of the Station to Stadium Enterprise Corridor and the West Yorkshire Health Tech Investment Zone, with funding from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
Richard Paxman, chief executive of the Stockholm‑listed business and son of the founder, said: “Over the years we have fostered many strong connections and partnerships with universities and organisations and acknowledge how much these partnerships have fuelled our innovation, business expansion, skills development and job creation.”
Another sign of the industrial revival is the investment by Convatec, a FTSE 100 health company that manufactures specialist surgical pads. The company told shareholders it is putting Manchester, alongside its existing R&D site in Boston, Massachusetts, as the twin centres of its global operations. Convatec plans to invest £500 million in the UK as part of a larger £742 million investment over the next decade, including a new “flagship” R&D hub in Manchester, due to open in 2027 at CityLabs 4.0. The hub is expected to employ around 200 people, most transferring from the company’s existing R&D operation in Deeside, North Wales. Convatec cited Manchester’s “vibrant life sciences ecosystem, which includes leading universities, hospitals, and research institutions” as the reason for the move. The company will focus its Manchester R&D on advanced wound care, ostomy care, continence care and infusion care, while retaining an R&D centre in Milton Park, Oxfordshire.
Professor Young said Donald Trump’s chaotic attitude to business has encouraged US health companies to back research in the UK, and that Rachel Reeves has played a part by funding biotech and health as a cornerstone of the government’s industrial policy.
Despite these bright spots, the Labour government has suffered setbacks in its dealings with the health industry. Last year, the UK’s biggest pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, scrapped plans to invest £450 million in a vaccine manufacturing facility in Speke, Merseyside. The company cited a cut in government support – specifically a reduction in the final offer from the new Labour government – and had previously expressed concerns about the UK’s tax rate and policies. Meanwhile, US companies Palantir and Epic Systems have won large NHS contracts under controversial circumstances. Palantir is contracted to unify disparate databases, while Epic is opening a 36‑hectare campus near Bristol to provide its MyChart booking and records service. Dr Zubir Ahmed, before resigning as health innovation minister in May 2026, had discussed the government’s federated data platform contract with Palantir and indicated that alternatives might be considered when the contract reaches its break clause.
Still, the broader trend is one of increasing collaboration. Professor Curtis at Kingston University captured the changing attitude, noting that while universities were once slow to respond, they are now tailoring their expertise to industry needs in weeks rather than years.
