Edwina Hart, Welsh Minister for Economy, Transport and Science and Kieran Murphy, President and CEO of GE Healthcare Life Sciences, opened the first phase of GE Healthcare’s new campus for growing businesses developing tools and technologies for the global life sciences industry on 27th April.
The Innovation Village, the GE Healthcare’s first in the UK, has created substantial interest amongst early stage life sciences businesses internationally – with more than 50 expressions of interest received to date since it was announced last month at BioWales 2015 – the flagship event for life sciences in Wales.
Based within GE Healthcare’s existing Maynard Centre Facility in Cardiff, the Innovation Village hopes to support and grow emerging life science businesses and academic spin outs. GE Healthcare will help them explore their ambitions to reach global markets, advise them on scaling up manufacturing and potentially partner with them on new innovations that tackle the challenges of health and biotechnology.
GE Healthcare is setting up the Innovation Village as part of its business-wide commitment to embedding a culture of collaboration in its operations. The campus is backed by £367,000 from the Welsh Government’s Open Innovation programme and European Regional Development Funds. The first phase of the project is the establishment of a facility which will target businesses working in the life sciences tools and technology sector. Further project phases examining how the Innovation Village can grow further are in development.
GE Healthcare will offer tenants a supported ecosystem for them to develop and commercialise products including access to state of the art scientific and manufacturing equipment, process and supply chain expertise, a global distribution network and access to commercial services. As they develop, the early stage businesses can also access advice from GE Healthcare on Lean, a way of eliminating waste from a manufacturing process, and Six Sigma, techniques for improving outputs.
The initial phase of the facility includes laboratories, meeting and office space with room for 12 businesses.
Speaking at the launch, the Minister said: "GE Healthcare is to be congratulated on its drive to promote Open Innovation and support the growth of innovative young businesses that have the potential to make a real impact on the sector, the economy and the health and well-being of people.
“It offers growing businesses a tremendous opportunity to access the innovation of GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ global ecosystem and benefit from the company’s extensive expertise in all areas of business.
“The life sciences are one of our key sectors and I am delighted that GE Healthcare – one of our anchor companies – is supporting our efforts to grow and expand the sector, helping to make Wales one of the best locations in the UK for life science businesses.”
Kieran Murphy said: "We are pleased with the interest shown by small life science companies in joining us at the Innovation Village. Part of GE's strength is built on 120 years of innovation, and by bringing growing businesses onto our site, we can both support their development with our expertise and scale, and potentially access promising new technologies that could complement our own.”
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