Our Priorities
We support innovation by bringing together health care providers, research bodies, companies, and supply chains.
We also work in partnership with our funders and other health and life science clusters across the UK. We collaborate with our affiliates in Ireland through several North-South Research Programmes providing an opportunity for researchers to work to combine knowledge, expertise, and skills, to address global, national, and regional challenges.
Our Northern Ireland City Deals are key investments with a strong focus on health and life sciences.
We work in partnerships to build towards having the skills, people, and projects in place to maximise this investment.
We make it easier for its network of universities, industry, and health organisations to collaborate to achieve improved economic, health and social care outcomes for Northern Ireland’s 1.9 million residents.
We advocate for health and life sciences, enabling the sector to promote itself nationally and internationally.
We lobby government and support local, national, and international investment.
Health and Economy Working in Partnership
We want to see a dynamic Health-Economy partnership to create a framework for industry-health collaboration beyond research, so the knowledge assets and capabilities in health can become an innovation and economic driver. This includes will help retain staff, develop new skills, empower patients, attract in-kind funding and investment and accelerate transformation of the health service to reduce waiting lists, and improve access and outcomes. Read our report on health and wealth in NI:
Regulatory advocate and innovation leaders
The sector needs a Regulatory advocate and an Innovation Lead in the Department of Health to ensure HSC-NI is connected and can benefit from and drive the ecosystem. This includes pushing through executive legislation so anonymised health data can be utlised for both research and commercial purposes to inform earlier detection of disease and better health outcomes.
Cohesive Infrastructure
We need cluster infrastructure to connect with SMEs/academics and grow the ecosystem through horizon scanning, problem-solution sharing and building skills capabilities in areas such as analytics, precision diagnostics and biomarkers.
