ABOUT

Shaping the Future for the Health and Wealth of Wales

The Institute of Life Science (ILS) is Wales’ premier purpose-built medical research and business incubation facility. It is a partnership between Swansea University, Welsh Government, the NHS, ABMU Health Board and business partners. It provides a cornerstone for the regional MediPark vision being developed as part of the ARCH (A Regional Collaboration for Health) delivered in partnership between University Health Boards, industry, academia and Welsh Government.

The vision for the ILS is to advance medical science through multi-and interdisciplinary research and innovation for the benefit of human health, and to link those benefits to the economy by encouraging interaction with other organisations in a spirit of Open Innovation.

The first phase of the ILS vision – valued at £52 million – delivered a state-of-the-art building (ILS1) housing over 200 professional specialists in medical research, high performance computing, business incubation and technology transfer. The second phase of the vision – which received £28.8 million funding – boasts a further 6000 square metres of facilities that build capacity, expertise and infrastructure for the benefit of the health and wealth of the nation. Standing adjacent to Singleton Hospital, the award-winning ILS1 building, ILS2 houses the College of Medicine’s healthcare research, a range of fully operational business incubation units, and the Joint Clinical Research Facility (JCRF), fully equipped with a bedded clinical trials unit and an imaging suite with cutting edge CT and MRI scanners.  ILS2 also houses the innovative Centre for NanoHealth.

Other unique facilities at the ILS include the EPSRC UK National Mass Spectrometry Facility, the Haemostasis Biomedical Research Unit, the Health Informatics Research Laboratories, the NHS Wales Research Informatics Laboratories and extensive high performance computing capabilities through HPC Wales.

The business centre is home to growing band of companies, including:

Haemair Ltd provides support for people with lung disease or injury.  Its technology takes part of the blood circulation and passes it through an “artificial lung” to oxygenate the blood and remove carbon dioxide.  The aim is to provide patients with mobility by mimicking the natural lung while, allowing them to eat, drink and talk instead of being immobile in intensive care.  The Company is now establishing a manufacturing facility intended to supply devices throughout the European Economic Area.

Haemaflow Ltd was initially established to exploit developments spun-off from Haemair Ltd.  Its current priority is the development of a device to improve the safety and efficacy of transfusion blood.  The Company demonstrated the potential of the device supported by a grant from Innovate UK.

Calon Cardio-Technology Ltd Calon develops implantable blood pumps for the treatment of chronic heart failure. The company goal is the development of a mechanical heart pump with significantly improved blood handling characteristics. In 2015 Calon completed a successful series of in-vivo trials, which confirmed the design goal of freedom from blood damage. In 2016 Calon will prepare for a major European clinical study expected to begin in 2017. In 2016 Calon will raise additional funding to complete the activities required to begin the European clinical study including the establishment of a production facility, and to develop the next generation of Calon heart pump.

Biovici Ltd’s continual focus is to provide Point of Care Technology which converts biological data and transfers that information within seconds to a hand held electronic reader. Biovici’s result driven information can be shared to any part of the Health Care chain from Paramedics first at the scene in Acute Care to Accident and Emergency Departments. The handheld reader stores and transfers the information obtained to relevant Health Care Professionals and Accident and Emergency Personnel. This assists in accelerating patient diagnosis and treatment by Health Care Professionals.

Innoture Medical Technology has assembled a team of commercial and academic expertise to deliver next generation transdermal devices for use in multiple applications within drug delivery and diagnostics.  It holds worldwide patents enabling the company to adopt a unique position in the manufacture, development and commercialisation of microneedle technologies.    Innoture’s patented microneedles offer extreme flexibility compared with standard and traditional microneedle technologies and processes, allowing layering of compounds, flexibility of substrates and dynamic mass manufacture that is cost effective.

Porvair plc develops, designs and manufactures specialist filtration and separation equipment. It serves a range of market segments of which aviation, energy and industrial process, environmental laboratories and non-ferrous metals are the most important.  Chromatrap is a new way of doing ChiP assays, pioneered and developed between Porvair PLC and a Swansea University team.

Bionema is a leading independent research organisation focused on the development of novel natural biopesticide products, helping farmers and growers combat insect pest damage to a wide range of food and other crops.

Bionema is at the forefront of large scale testing and has won ORETO (Official Recognition of Efficacy) accreditation for its testing facilities and procedures. It is currently in the process of registering an innovative new product in both the UK and EU that can reduce or even eliminate conventional chemical pesticides.

Industry on-Line Ltd using cutting-edge web technologies we provide trading partners and service providers in the life sciences industries with a dedicated online collaborative platform that enables and enhances end-to-end, online transactions and work-flows between trading partners.  The platform helps industries to reduce the time (and cost) to source, negotiate, ship and pay for products to minutes instead of days – all without the need for external paperwork, lengthy phone calls, expensive travel, or time consuming research, as well as enabling companies to evidence transparency in their transactions through audit trails and logs to EU and FDA guidelines.

Leadin is a service design and production agency designing and building digital services that empower people to achieve more based on value created from user insight.  Leadin has the skills required to capitalise digitalisation – user researchers, business consultants, service and UI/UX designers, system and software architects, front-end designers as well as quality assurance experts. We work with businesses in all sectors including well known brands such as Jaguar Land Rover, Sandvik, ABB and DVLA.

The Health and Care Research Wales Workforce is part of Health and Care Research Wales, funded by Welsh Government. The Health and Care Research Wales Workforce works in support of Welsh Government’s overarching vision which is to be internationally recognised for excellent health and social care research that has a positive impact on the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the people in Wales. The Workforce’s role is:

• To provide a co-ordinated national research delivery service in health and social care in Wales and
• To work collaboratively with NHS Research and Development teams, the Health and Care Research Wales Support Centre and Health and Care Research Wales Centres and Units to develop an integrated system for research development, support and delivery in Wales.

Symlconnect develops customised software solutions working in collaboration with clinical specialists, academics and general public. We specialise in supporting customised integrated care solutions aimed at reducing clinical time wastage by equipping Clinicians with appropriate information at-the-point-of-care for a better informed decision making. Our unique modular and secured framework is standards based and available both on offline & online, for use within primary, secondary and community care. The smart mobile solutions combined with the business intelligence are focussed to improve the cost efficiency and quality of care giving anywhere anytime to improve the digital economy of the various healthcare organisations.

The Hospital Management Trust (HMT) has located an R&D facility within the ILS to develop ICT healthcare solutions.  The local HMT site, Sancta Maria Hospital, offers a wide range of healthcare services and is the first choice for NHS registered consultants servicing the south and west Wales area. With a history, spanning over 50 years, Sancta Maria owes its excellent reputation to a strategy of gentle care combined with clinical excellence.

Perpetuus Advanced Materials patent pending twin-platform technologies, is based on the mass production of graphenes, surface modified graphenes and functionalised graphene heterostructure, and application development technologies designed to meet the key parameters required to move graphenes out of the R&D stage into the industrial exploitation phase.

Affiliate Membership

As well as housing a cluster of companies, the ILS also operates an Affiliate Membership scheme providing shared and hot-desk facilities for micro-enterprises and satellite operations of larger organisations. The scheme provides facilities and support to individuals and organisations that do not require a dedicated office or permanent base at the ILS but wish to collaborate with academics and become embedded in the ILS ecosystem.