We’re pleased to publish our Year in Review for 2025-26, highlighting how innovation is improving access to care, speeding up diagnosis, supporting business growth, and helping NHS and social care teams adopt new technologies.
Our Year in Review showcases how we continue to help deliver better outcomes - improving the lives of people in Wales, and building a healthier, more prosperous future.
Cancer remains a priority area for Wales. This year, we played a key role in establishing a national Innovation Adoption Pathway for cancer - a structured, collaborative approach that gives innovations a clear and consistent route from identification to adoption.
Through the Tackling Cancer Programme, which brings together partners to improve cancer services through innovation, we delivered collaborative workshops across various cancer sites. These brought together NHS professionals from across Wales to identify where innovation can make the greatest difference to earlier diagnosis, treatment pathways and patient experience.
This is also being strengthened through our new partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support to reduce differences that exist in cancer care across Wales and help spread best practice, so more people can benefit from the best possible support and outcomes.
Innovation in health making life better for people in Wales
We played an important role in supporting Public Health Wales in their £7.8 million bid to help transform weight management services, which, if successful, would support new approaches that can improve access and outcomes for people who need it. More than 500,000 patients across Wales are now benefitting from electronic prescriptions, a major step forward in how people receive their medicines, with the system now in place in every health board in Wales.
Driving economic growth in Wales
We’ve supported more than 200 life sciences companies to grow, collaborate, and scale, strengthening Wales’s innovation ecosystem and creating new opportunities for partnership.
The report also highlights our role in supporting innovators and partners across the system – from helping identify service needs and connect organisations, to supporting funding applications, evidence development and the scale-up of solutions. This includes support for Welsh companies such as Goggleminds. The Mediverse VR platform was supported towards scale-up, alongside £50,000 of Innovate UK Growth Catalyst funding to accelerate development and deployment.
Why does this matter for Wales?
Wales has a thriving life sciences sector worth £3.59 billion, employing more than 13,000 people across 287 organisations, with centres of expertise emerging across the country.
The challenges facing the NHS are well recognised - rising demand and workforce pressures, with the need to deliver more with limited resources. Innovation in health is vital in helping address these challenges, supporting earlier diagnosis, more consistent care, and better outcomes for people across Wales while building a more sustainable, resilient health system.
Wales has the ambition to lead the way, with world-class research, a talent pipeline, and the ability to collaborate to improve things further. However, continued progress needs stronger connections across the system and faster routes from evidence to implementation. We exist to create the conditions for this to happen, by bringing partners together and supporting innovation to reach the people and services that need it most.
Chris Martin, Chair, Life Sciences Hub Wales, said:
“I’m proud of what’s been achieved this year through partnership and shared ambition. At the heart of what Life Sciences Hub Wales does is bringing the right people together so that innovation in health reaches where it matters most. This year, that’s what we did. A national cancer care innovation pathway, electronic prescribing reaching over half a million people, new talent pipelines being built for Wales’s future. Behind every one of these milestones is a network of committed partners - across government, the NHS, industry, academia and the third sector – whose shared ambition is brought to life through collaboration, making a difference for people, services and the Welsh economy.”
Cari-Anne Quinn, Chief Executive Officer, Life Sciences Hub Wales, said:
“Our Year in Review is a testament to the importance of collaborative innovation across life sciences. Wales has a real opportunity to harness the power of life sciences, with the talent, ambition and partnerships needed to thrive in health and social care innovation. By continuing to strengthen how innovation is adopted and scaled, we can play a vital role in helping address some of the key challenges facing the NHS - for better health and a stronger more resilient economy.”
