Comprising more than 300 panellists and speakers from 67 countries, HLTH Europe unites the entire health system, attracting healthcare providers and commissioners, government representatives and decision-makers, investors and industry innovators.
We hear from Professor Phil Wood, Chief Executive, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Chair of Leeds Academic Health Partnership, about why there’ll be such a spotlight on Leeds as the prime location for innovation in healthcare.
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I’m delighted that my colleagues are joining global leaders, innovators, and changemakers at HLTH Europe in Amsterdam – a standout event that brings the future of health into sharp focus. It’s a timely opportunity to showcase why Leeds isn’t just keeping pace with health innovation – we’re leading the charge.
As Chief Executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, one of the largest and most respected teaching hospital trusts in the UK, I see every day how our city is developing pioneering solutions to the most pressing health challenges of our time.
As we bring some of this together for HLTH Europe, I’m struck again at the scale and magnitude of what we’re doing here in Leeds. But what’s truly unique about Leeds is how we do it: through radical collaboration, deep integration of data and digital, and an open door to innovators of all kinds.
Our diligence and passion means we can be guilty of getting on with the graft but forgetting to shout about our strengths. So, our Leeds-strong delegation will be revealing just some of our city’s world-leading health innovation highlights and exclusive opportunities to the event’s 5,000-strong, international audience.
Centre stage for Leeds
Our Director of Operations: Research and Innovation Chris Herbert will join a Northern Health Science Alliance panel to explain how our Trust’s unique, award-winning Innovation Pop Up is providing exclusive industry innovator access to the National Health Service (NHS).
This opportunity – unmatched in the North of England – enables healthtech companies, from start-ups to established firms, to work alongside our clinicians and innovation teams to develop their healthcare solutions.
Since launching less than four years ago, we’ve engaged more than 150 companies from 15 countries, including Norway, Spain, Canada, Switzerland and the USA.
In a separate session, our Chief Digital Information Officer Paul Jones will showcase our groundbreaking work using AI and associated technologies. These approaches are enabling us to support gold standards in breast screening, visualise anatomy, support innovation in radiology and more.
From Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust, Chief Digital Information Officer, Ian Hogan, will be part of an important discussion focused on standards in healthcare data exchange, which are allowing diverse systems to “speak” a common language in order to support integrated, patient-centred care.
And partners from Leeds Beckett University, Nexus Leeds – representing the city’s global community of innovators, and our NIHR HealthTech Research Centre will also join the city’s delegation.
Partnership is what sparks success
One conference topic is the power of partnership, which is where Leeds has a strong story to tell.
Despite being the UK’s third largest city, Leeds is renowned for its culture of strong collaboration across its supportive, city centre infrastructure.
Here, our teaching hospitals trust is one of the UK’s largest, serving more than 1.6 million patients each year and ranking among the UK’s top for clinical research recruitment.
Our £40 million health research infrastructure comprises three centres of excellence producing novel breakthroughs in healthcare, and our three major universities each produce complementary, world-leading health research.
All these are within strolling distance of each other at the heart of the city, as part of our Innovation Arc.
And it’s that tight-knit ecosystem, co-location and partnership culture that is the power behind our collective achievements.
Like most big cities, we have major challenges such as health inequalities, most notably in areas of deprivation, and an increasing prevalence of people with multiple long term health conditions. But by working together beyond organisational and sector boundaries towards a common goal with a shared plan, we are focusing our efforts and resource where it’s most needed.
Ahead of the curve on national priorities
Leeds isn’t new to all this. We have a rich history in health innovation with national and global impact. Spanning more than a century, we’ve achieved milestone breakthroughs in molecular biology and x-ray imaging for example, so it really is in our DNA. And that track record grows stronger each year.
Using our strengths in digital, data and AI, we’re collaborating across wide range of issues to shift healthcare focus from illness to prevention, from analogue to digital and from hospital to community. All of these reflect the UK Government’s new trajectory for national health services.
We host the National Pathology Imaging Cooperative – the UK’s largest. It’s working with Genomics England to build the biggest cancer data repository in the world. Our strengths in harnessing data and data insights such as for cancer, means we can predict, intervene earlier and prevent disease progression.
Similarly, our collaboration across primary, community and social care means we can harness the power of big data to inform timely interventions, such as with our nationally acclaimed HomeFirst approach. Within a short timeframe, that has already reduced or avoided a significant number of hospital admissions, providing care at or closer to people’s homes, so improving their experience while easing pressure on services.
And we have plenty more for audiences to discover about Leeds, such as the AI tool our Trust developed in partnership with the University of Leeds which can predict cardiac problems. Also, our UK-first hand transplant surgery and our work on next-generation nanotechnology for cancer, using tools 500 times thinner than a human hair.
Prime location for industry innovators
But while our colleagues are out there to showcase some of our groundbreaking achievements, we very much want delegates to realise that Leeds should be their first choice and to invite them to come and do business with us.
Our city’s enviable credentials continue to stack up.
Ranked third internationally as a healthtech hub, and at the heart of West Yorkshire, one of the strongest regional economies outside of London, Leeds is all about growth.
We’re a top UK city for business start-ups and our tech firms are growing 125 per cent faster than the national average.
We have an enviable innovation infrastructure right in the city centre within our £2 billion Innovation Arc. Opportunities here range from
- joining the global community of more than 100 innovators – more than half of which are health-related – at Nexus, based at the University of Leeds
- capitalising on the world-leading expertise and knowledge exchange from our three major universities
- or being one of the first in the queue to secure a tenancy in our soon-to-be transformed Old Medical School, with its bespoke, fast-track support service.
Exclusive fast-track funding and opportunities
The exclusive transformation of the Old Medical School is one of the flagship projects within the city centre’s emerging Innovation Village, supported by our region’s £160 million West Yorkshire Health Tech and Digital Tech Investment Zone. That exclusive Government investment signals strong national recognition of our region’s enormous healthtech sector growth potential and will accelerate developments forecast to create £13 billion in economic growth and around 4,000 jobs.
In a further boost, the Investment Zone is releasing £4.5 million for healthtech companies in the region, supported by a new Health Accelerator, helping businesses break into new markets and overcome barriers to growth.
Our door is open – you’ll want to stay
Our message to innovators, investors and businesses at HLTH Europe is loud and clear: we’re open for business and invested in your success.
We’re a large city, but we consistently hear how friendly and welcoming people find it here. A big part of that is the willingness and ability of colleagues across our world-leading organisations to work together as a seamless team and to get you where you need to be.
And to top it all, I’m proud to say Leeds is repeatedly voted as a top place to live: vibrant, diverse, welcoming, nested within the stunning Yorkshire countryside and ideally located with easy links to London and other major UK cities.
People come here and want to stay. That says it all.
As we whet people’s appetites to want to learn more, there’ll be a great back-up team on site to field enquiries, encourage conversations and make the right connections to take things forward in Leeds.
Anyone at this year’s HLTH Europe conference will hear that Leeds isn’t just open to innovation – it’s leading it.
- Sign up here to learn more about what Leeds can offer you: HLTH Europe Enquiry Form – Health Innovation Leeds
- Find out more about Leeds at HLTH Europe 2025: HLTH Europe – Health Innovation Leeds
- Make a connection with Leeds at the event at stand B40
- Follow Health Innovation Leeds andLeedsLovesHLTH via LinkedIn
