London "is number one European city in life sciences"
A new report says that London is the top city in Europe for the life sciences industry, and ranks third worldwide after Boston and New York in the US.
That puts the city above some well-recognised life sciences hotspots – notably San Francisco and Singapore – and ahead of European rivals like Paris – the second-ranked European destination, at number five – as well as Amsterdam and Munich.
The benchmarking report has been launched by MedCity – which is the life sciences cluster organisation for London, so clearly has a vested interest in promoting it as a hotspot – but is pitched as an unbiased assessment of a wide range of factors that goes well beyond, say, the number of biotech companies that choose to locate in a particular city.
According to the group, it considers of a range of factors, including research innovation – the output of patents and publications and the presence of leading academic institutions, for example – along with health research that measures how easy and affordable it is to carry out research and clinical trials.
Other variables include the talent ecosystem – how easy it is to recruit researchers and provide them with a good quality of life – and the investment environment, including access to venture capital, as well as the business environment, consisting of the concentration of life sciences companies, and also the cost and ease of running companies.
By those measures, the top 20 cities are as follows:
- Boston
- New York
- London
- San Francisco
- Paris
- Tokyo
- Singapore
- San Diego
- Shanghai-Shuzhou
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- Amsterdam
- Munich
- Basel
- Berlin
- Stockholm
- Melbourne
- Hong Kong
- Shenzhen
- Hyderabad
London's lofty ranking is a result of its high placing in research and innovation (#2), health research environment (#1), and business environment (#2), with the city coming in fourth for investment environment and talent ecosystem.
The first place in the health category stems from its "high concentration of clinics, rapid recruitment of participants in early-stage clinical trials, and supportive regulatory system," according to the report, which also highlights the city's 35 biomedical research institutions and ethnically diverse population – 40% of whom identify with either Asian, Black, Mixed, or other ethnic groups.
It also highlights the UK capital's strong presence in artificial intelligence, saying that it has more AI and data-focused life sciences companies than any other city worldwide.
The Global Cities Comparison Report (PDF) is being released ahead of London Life Sciences Week, which starts on 17th November and is running alongside the Jefferies European Healthcare Conference.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
