Life Science and Healthcare Healthy Ageing Diagnostics

Manchester’s ambition is to be the location to grow up, get on and grow old, so all residents can age healthily and equitably. We as a region aim to increase not just our lifespan, but our health span. The use of diagnostics to detect disease is crucial at delivering this core element of our Local Industrial Strategy. Whether it’s cancer, dementia, heart disease or diabetes, early diagnosis can greatly increase clinical outcomes.

With a diverse and thriving healthy ageing industry, Manchester is the perfect place to tap into the global healthy ageing (longevity) market which is estimated to be in the region of $34 billion. After a competitive bidding process, Greater Manchester was awarded a HPO designation, jointly with Cheshire and Warrington, in the use of diagnostics and early intervention for healthy ageing. This was the first HPO to be shared between two regions, highlighting the joint strength of the longevity and diagnostics sector in the region. Manchester has a long and distinguished pedigree in areas like biomarker research, vaccine diagnostics development and medical devices which the HPO builds on. To read the full HPO, please click here.

Manchester has a number of collaborative organisations dedicated to developing new diagnostics like DiTA (Diagnostics and Technology Accelerator) based at Manchester Foundation Trust, or health Innovation Manchester (HInM) or the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) who can help companies find key opinion leaders and clinical partners to trial your new diagnostics. MIDAS can act as the front door for a number of support services in the region in both the public and private sector.

Our MedTech and Diagnostic cluster is maturing and already features the likes of Qiagen, Yourgene Health and Kratos Analytical anchoring key innovation sites across the city. In particular, Qiagen has placed their Centre of Excellence for precision medicine in Manchester, taking sole occupancy of the Citylabs 2.0 development, over 90,000 sq ft of grade A office and lab facilities and creating 600 jobs. Qiagen is the anchor tenant for the wider Citylabs development, Bruntwood SciTech’s, Genomics and Precision medicine Campus.