Key Imperial staff visit Downing Street to discuss creating Global Medical Excellence Cluster

Rector and Principal of Faculty of Medicine join Prime Minister to discuss creating Global Medical Excellence Cluster in South East of England

By Laura Gallagher
Monday 18 December 2006

The Rector, Sir Richard Sykes , and the Principal of the Faculty of Medicine, Professor Stephen Smith , joined the Prime Minister at Downing Street last week to discuss the idea of forming a Global Medical Excellence Cluster (GMEC) in the South East of England.

The GMEC would mean much greater collaboration between a cluster of world-class universities such as Imperial, Oxford and Cambridge, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. The aim would be to ensure that London and the South of England were at the forefront of global pharmaceutical and medical research and development.

Professor Smith, who spoke at Wednesday's meeting about the potential benefits of creating a GMEC, said: "Healthcare research and development is increasingly global and in the UK we are competing with medical clusters across the world. There is a risk that if no action is taken, the UK will fall behind. We have a unique opportunity to build a leading Global Medical Excellence Cluster in the South of England based on the assets of the world class medical institutions like Imperial."

Well-developed medical clusters already exist in California and in Boston, Massachusetts, where the cluster includes Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, eight medical schools, 14 teaching hospitals and 200 biotechnology companies. The Massachusetts Life Sciences cluster generates employment for 601,000 people and contributes USD 26.6 billion to Gross State Product. Other clusters are emerging in Singapore, New Dehli, Dubai and Shanghai.

Based on the US experience, a UK cluster should increase productivity, and attract additional funds and talent for UK research and development. It should bring greater commercialisation and product innovation, and create better outcomes for patients.

Prime Minister Tony Blair told the heads of universities, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals at the meeting that such a cluster would be a source of economic prosperity and a powerful signal of the type of country and economy the UK was going to be in the future.

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