HAMPSHIRE and Dorset are “brimming with ideas” to tackle the nation’s most pressing health and wellbeing challenges, a report says.

A study of the life sciences industry in the Central South sets out how the region “punches above its weight” in addressing issues such as dementia and ageing, long-term conditions, immune therapies and mental health.

The report, Life Sciences In the Central South, has been produced by the Southern Policy Centre and takes in an area stretching from Portsmouth to the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole conurbation.

The centre’s director, the former Southampton Itchen Labour MP John Denham, says in his summary: “With a population of 2.4million, the central south punches well above its weight in life sciences. This is a region rich in assets, with unique strengths and the intellectual firepower to tackle the concerns of the future and drive prosperity.

“Innovators in the central South are amply catered for, with access to expanding space, new business parks and dedicated support – more than 220 health and life science companies prosper in the immediate vicinity and around 500 innovative life science organisations are within an hour’s drive of BCP, Southampton and Portsmouth.

“Universities in Hampshire and Dorset work together rather than compete, small businesses with big ideas are nurtured and medical teams engage with researchers – who have access to leading clinical trials facilities.”

Mr Denham, a former cabinet minister, told the Daily Echo that life sciences was “quite a broad topic”, ranging from innovation in care for the elderly to studying biofilm which could benefit marine life.

“It’s the group of sciences which are about living organisms but the real focus here is on those that relate to health and wellbeing in the human population,” he said.

The report says the region excels in areas such as data, medical technology, digital health and biomedical research.

Mr Denham writes that the region is “collegiate, collaborative and brimming with ideas to meet future challenges”.

Hampshire case studies in the report include:

  • Southampton Women’s Survey, which started in 1998 and is the only project of its kind in Europe to follow women before they become pregnant and monitor them and their children over the years.
  • Sooba Medical: Entrepreneur and biomedical engineer Dr Ali Mosayyebi has worked with Southampton urologists and microbiologists to design a urinary stent less prone to failure. Existing stents mostly fail, damaging quality of life and costing the NHS £300milion a year.
  • The use of a drone designed at the University of Southampton to make the first beyond-visual-line-of-sight to the Isle of Wight, carrying packaging for containers for St Mary’s Hospital.

Mr Denham hopes the report will attract further interest in the region because it looks across county boundaries to show how the sector is thriving.

“Where we would like get to here is if you talk to somebody in government, whether a civil servant or a minister, or the international investment community that’s interested in life sciences, the idea of a central South as a place to be, as an important place, would be at the forefront of their minds,” he said.

“We’ll only get other people to see the region in that way if we tell the story ourselves. By pulling together this report, it’s not just to sit there, it’s meant to give examples that somebody interested in talking about the region can use.”

The report can be downloaded at southernpolicycentre.co.uk/publications-2/life-sciences-in-the-central-south/