Scotland has the research. Now it needs the infrastructure to use it.
Every year, ideas that could transform healthcare, reshape manufacturing and create thousands of skilled jobs leave Scotland. Not because our researchers lack ambition or because the science isn't good enough. It’s because we haven't built the conditions that allow those ideas to travel.
It is undeniable that Scotland produces world-class research. But the question is whether we are serious about turning it into economic value and better public services. Celebrating innovation and building the infrastructure that makes it happen are not the same thing.
The countries making real headway in health technology and advanced manufacturing are not necessarily those generating the most research papers. They are the ones that have invested deliberately in the physical and institutional conditions that allow discovery to move into commercial development, clinical adoption and long-term industrial growth. That is the standard Scotland should be setting itself against.
At Heriot-Watt University, we have become increasingly focused on what that infrastructure actually looks like in practice. Our Edinburgh campus is home to the National Robotarium, the UK's largest applied robotics and artificial intelligence centre. Alongside it sits the Global Research Institute in Health and Care Technologies, officially launched by Professor Sir Chris Whitty in 2025, which brings together expertise from engineering, data science, psychology, design and clinical research to address cancer, chronic disease, mental health, healthy ageing and global health threats. These are not problems that any single sector can solve alone.
What we have learned from building these environments is that collaboration depends on proximity. When engineers work alongside clinicians, when software developers share space with manufacturing specialists, when researchers are in daily contact with companies navigating regulatory systems, different conversations start to happen. The distance between invention and adoption shortens.
The Medical Device Manufacturing Centre illustrates this. Led by Heriot-Watt in partnership with the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Robert Gordon, and backed by Scottish Enterprise, it has supported more than 150 Scottish medical device companies since 2020. For many of those firms, often small businesses with compelling technology but limited resources, access to prototyping facilities, manufacturing expertise and regulatory guidance has been the difference between staying stuck at concept stage and becoming genuinely investable.
One of the persistent weaknesses in the UK's innovation landscape has been the assumption that early-stage companies can navigate complex manufacturing and regulatory systems on their own. Most cannot. The MDMC was designed around that reality, creating shared infrastructure that lowers practical barriers and allows companies to accelerate development without needing to build expensive capability in-house.
The same logic applies to how we prepare the people who will staff these industries. Heriot-Watt’s Immersive Suite, part of the Global Research Institute in Health and Care Technologies, provides a professional clinical environment in which students can test and develop health technology prototypes alongside clinical manikins and simulation equipment. It is the kind of facility that allows a postgraduate team to move from design to physical iteration without leaving the university, shortening the feedback loop that has historically slowed learning as much as it has slowed commercialisation. Students gain exposure to realistic settings that reflect the expectations of clinical and industrial employers, and that experience carries forward into their careers. Building that pipeline is not incidental to the innovation agenda. It is foundational to it.
This matters beyond individual business success. Scotland's competitiveness in health technology depends on whether we can consistently take strong science and turn it into products that reach patients, attract investment and support industrial growth over time. At present, the journey from research to widespread NHS adoption can take well over a decade. That pace discourages investment, delays benefit to patients and slows the economic returns that further innovation depends on.
There is also a regional dimension here that deserves more attention than it typically receives. Innovation policy across the UK has too often concentrated around a small number of cities and sectors, leaving significant capability underutilised elsewhere. This is where universities can play a different role, acting as anchor institutions with deep roots in their regions. This means they are well placed to bring together businesses, health boards, local authorities, investors and public agencies around shared priorities. That model of place-based collaboration is not a consolation prize for regions outside London. It is a serious and increasingly well-evidenced approach to building economic resilience.
Scotland has the talent, the research strength and the industrial base to lead in this space. What it needs now is greater confidence in the infrastructure that connects those strengths. That means long-term commitment to collaborative research environments, funding models that support translation as well as discovery and procurement systems capable of adopting proven innovations more quickly.
Universities are sometimes still spoken of primarily as teaching institutions or as producers of research outputs. That framing is too narrow. We are part of the infrastructure through which countries compete. The question for Scotland is not whether it has the ingredients for a serious innovation economy. It clearly does. The question is whether it is willing to invest in the conditions that allow those ingredients to work together.
That is not primarily a question for universities. It is a question for all of us.