Scaling innovation in health and life sciences

The freshly embarked Oxford Health Innovation Forum held their second meeting at Green Templeton College in June 2025. Continuing the Forum’s ambition to connect Oxford’s medical, scientific, entrepreneurial, and policy communities, the event focused on how to make research-to-real-world transformations and scale health innovation.

Dr Christiaan de Koning, as the chair of the Forum and moderator of the event, restated the aim of the Forum in his opening speech: “The real reason for these kinds of forums is to actually bring you all together,” he said, “to hopefully lead to exciting new pathways of development, collaboration and innovation.”

Leading voices in technology transfer and health innovation

The Forum featured a panel experienced in the transformation of laboratory research to the real world of medical practice.

• Professor Peter Friend: Consultant Transplant and HPB Surgeon, Professor of Transplantation at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Transplant Centre. Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of OrganOx. An agreement has now been reached for the acquisition of OrganOx by Terumo Corporation, a global medical technology company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, for US$1.5 billion. Subject to regulatory and other approvals, this would be the largest acquisition of an Oxford spinout to date.
• Katherine Ward: Operating partner at Oxford Science Enterprises with over thirty years of experience in healthcare, across the NHS in the UK and the UnitedHealth Group in the US.
• Professor Gary Ford CBE: Consultant Stroke Physician at Oxford University Hospitals, Professor of Stroke Medicine at the University of Oxford, and CEO of Health Innovation Oxford & Thames Valley.

The art of technology transfer – Peter Friend

Originally a transplant surgeon, Professor Peter Friend founded OrganOx in 2009 after developing a completely automated medical device for liver transplantation. Peter described his incredible fifteen-year-and-ongoing journey – starting from the lab, reaching the front cover of Nature, starting the company, publishing a Europe-wide study, and scaling up. He has recently broadened the impact of his technology to include the United States.

While describing this transformation commercialised technology, Peter was passionate about the science, saying, “I continue to be happily engaged with making sure that a company which was set up on the basis of science, with scientific integrity very much central to it, still has those values.”

Supporting the transformation – Katherine Ward

Katherine’s work at Oxford Science Enterprises – a venture capital firm partnered with the University of Oxford – comprises identifying problems in healthcare that need to be solved, actively seeking for investment opportunities, evaluating market strategies, and generally supporting academics new to the commercial environment.

Based on her expertise in the healthcare system and in linking academic entrepreneurs to investment partners, Katherine shared three points to consider for an idea: “it needs to be a real problem, needs to be an investable market opportunity, and the science in Oxford has to be compelling and differentiating in terms of what we can then build together.”

Driving innovation within the system – Gary Ford

Professor Gary Ford bridges the gap between the academic and the commercial world, driving innovation in UK healthcare at the Oxford Academic Health Science Network. He advised that early-stage academic entrepreneurs must consider not only the impact of technology on the clinical outcome but also how it will fit into existing systems.

Coming from his experience in drug development and initiating stroke and thrombectomy services at the national level, Gary summarised the process: “if you have an innovation, you also have to think about how is this going to fit into the service model with the mindset of people who are going to have to deliver it.”

Scaling requires resilience and patience

“Scaling can be challenging,” said Gary, and Peter and Katherine nodded along. Particularly, the panels pointed out that there are barriers to scaling in the current national healthcare system. They warned that the NHS is slower to take on new technologies compared to other parts of the world, asserting that system-wide innovation is needed.

As much as scaling up within a country can be difficult, broadening it globally requires resilience too. The potentials of different markets were discussed at the event as well as the risks and advantages of widening the market. If you are considering expansion to different national markets, the panel commented, it’s essential to always think about how the innovation aligns to national strategies and policies.

Beyond the size of scaling, the speed of it can also be a hurdle in health innovation. The panels emphasised the role of resilient investors with realistic expectations of how long the journey takes, as it could take many years, or even decades, for research-to-practice transformation to happen.

Finding a supportive environment

The audience were keen to hear the panel’s opinion on:

• What is needed for good execution
• The importance of management

The panel collectively highlighted the importance of recruiting the right people and communicating effectively. Following this, another message was echoed in the lecture theatre: Do not hesitate to reach out for help and advice. We are already set in a supportive environment, “One of the great things about Oxford, Peter pointed out, “is an ecosystem of people that have been around the block before.”

What’s next for the Oxford Health Innovation Forum?

Join us for the next Oxford Health Innovation Forum, ‘From first sparks to first steps’, on Monday 8 December 2025. More information and to register