annual review and directory 2010
In order for the life science sector to thrive, MediWales understands that academics, businesses and clinicians (ABC) must work together. Our long term goal is to represent, communicate and network with, and for, these different groups, to enable them to collaborate and build invaluable relationships. Continuing with the ABC model, the MediWales quarterly magazine - The MediWales Review is another platform whereby these groups can attract each other. Using The Review as a promotional vehicle, stakeholders can communicate their services, either through a written article or an advertisement. Our aim is to increasingly become more health focused in order to widen our audience to clinical groups. In line with our desire to reach broader audiences, MediWales’s national publication, the Medilink UK Review, has been re launched this summer as the UK Lifescience Industry magazine. Published on behalf of the UK’s Medilink organisations, the magazine has evolved to cover more scientific fields and create a clearer brand and purpose. Each edition of the magazine has a readership of more than 10,000, both through print and online viewing. In a tech-savvy world, where social networking has evolved into a mass communications tool for businesses, it is important to keep up. In light of this, MediWales is giving its website a complete facelift. www.mediwales.com will shortly be relaunched, becoming a resource that our members use and value day to day. The site will be updated daily, giving our users Welsh, national and global news about the life science sector. The aspiration is for the MediWales website to become a ‘favourite’ in our members’ regularly used links, where with just a click of their mouse, funding opportunities, news, and advancements in the sector are immediately visible. MediWales is also expanding its position within the sector and diversifying the services it offers. The forum, drawing on its eclectic mix of expert directors, extensive knowledge, and excellent working relationships, is feasibly one of the main sources of sector intelligence in Wales. To this end, MediWales will be updating the Welsh Assembly
Government, Department of Technology and Innovation’s 2009 bioscience sector mapping figures, which include information on all the companies and NHS and academic groups that operate within the sector. In times where resources are scarce, and future funding is uncertain, it is more important than ever for industry to have current data to support funding applications. Complementing this quantitative resource, the forum is in the midst of forming a life science advisory group. This medley of academic, clinical and industrial experts will advise the wider Welsh life science sector on how to navigate successfully through these inauspicious times. This group will also join MediWales in providing a collective voice for the needs of industry members, from the startup, to the SME, to the large pharma corporations. So why is the life sector worth investing in? Starting with MediWales, our membership has consecutively grown in the past eight years. We currently have 130 members, showing that companies are surviving the recession. Taking a more bird’s eye view, this sector is worth £1.3bn to the Welsh economy, employs over 15,000 people, and has seen 19% growth over the past three years. In the UK markets, life science has small and big players. Most lucrative is the pharmaceutical industry that turns over more than £16bn per annum, and employs nearly 70,000 people. Close behind is the medical technology sector, where many of its sub sectors in Britain are leading the way globally, such as wound care, in-vitro diagnostics, and single-use technology. Globally, the med tech industry is set to grow by 10% per annum in the next 5-6 years. The drivers behind this are strong: people are ageing, putting pressure on the human body to keep going that much longer. Rates of cancer, dementia, and chronic care come hand in hand with this phenomenon, giving the broader life science industry much more food for thought. As Wales continues to utilise its excellent mix of people, skills and resources, it can create a fiercer position in global markets, project a well–groomed picture of Wales as a country worthy of investment, and most of all, demand and retain the strong government support that the sector’s had to date – and deservedly so.
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