Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has announced Scarborough Group International (SGI) – a UK privately-owned property regeneration specialist – as the preferred developer to ‘transform’ its historic Old Medical School at Leeds General Infirmary into ‘a globally recognised health-tech innovation hub’.
The Trust says the proposed agreement to acquire and refurbish the grade II*-listed building represents the first phase in the delivery of the Innovation Village, which it dubs ‘a world-class cluster for science, innovation, and technology surrounding the new hospital development at Leeds General Infirmary’. The Innovation Village is – the Trust explains – a transformational project encompassing more than 2.2 million ft2 of development, which will create up to 4,000 new jobs, over 500 new homes, and a £13 bn economic boost for West Yorkshire.
As part of its proposal, SGI has set out plans to create a ‘health-tech ecosystem’ at the Old Medical School to encourage collaboration between clinicians, academics, researchers and entrepreneurs, ‘supporting start-ups and scale-ups to grow and help transform the future of healthcare’. The contractor says it will build on the success of the Trust’s Innovation Pop-Up, founded in 2021 ‘to provide a front door for new and established businesses to partner with one of the UK’s largest teaching hospitals’. SGI’s plans include preserving the Old Medical School’s historic Tudor Gothic style, while implementing contemporary enhancements to offer ‘a dynamic and functional’ workspace. These includes laboratories, co-working spaces, offices’ and communal areas, along with a new atrium over the inner courtyard.
Completed in 1894, the original red-brick building was designed by Leeds architect, WH Thorp, as home to one of England’s first provincial medical schools. It currently houses the Trust’s pathology department, which is relocating to the ‘state-of-the-art’ Centre for Laboratory Medicine at St James’s University Hospital. West Yorkshire Combined Authority has provisionally identified the Old Medical School as a major project set to benefit from the £160 million West Yorkshire Investment Zone.
The site is within the Innovation Arc, a series of connected neighbourhoods formed around Leeds General Infirmary, the University of Leeds, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds Arts University, and the city’s West End. The proposed use for the Old Medical School is in line with the Council’s strategy to create a world-class district for research and innovation west of the city centre. Leeds has one of the highest concentrations of health-tech employees in the UK, and, reportedly the most high-growth health tech firms securing investment, the most health and care patents, strong demand for research and innovation skills, and the highest proportion of bioscience undergraduates.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals has ‘a long track record of medical breakthroughs’ – including the world’s first double hand transplant, and the first procedure using non-invasive sonic beam therapy to target and destroy cancer tumours. Its fully-funded new hospital development at Leeds General Infirmary will include a new adults’ hospital, a new home for Leeds Children’s Hospital, and the UK’s largest single-site maternity and neonatal centre.
Mark Jackson, Group development director at SGI, said: “We are immensely proud to have been selected as Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust’s preferred developer and partner for the transformation of the Old Medical School into a cutting-edge, health-tech innovation hub. By creating a dynamic environment where clinicians, academics, researchers, and entrepreneurs can collaborate, innovate, and grow, we want to help drive forward the development of ground-breaking technologies and solutions, and support their swift integration into the broader healthcare landscape, benefiting patients, and advancing the forefront of medical innovation.”
