How Yorkshire is aiming to be the centre of health innovation - Richard Stubbs, David Skaith, Tracy Brabin & Oliver Coppard

Yorkshire Day is always an opportunity to celebrate our great county and what makes us unique - our people, our pride, and our refusal to do anything by halves. This year is no different as we show the world what we have to offer.

For the first time, the mayors of West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and York and North Yorkshire are joining forces with Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber to launch a single, shared pitch to the world: Invest in Yorkshire.

The combined offer to potential investors is clearly laid out in our compelling new brochure, ‘Yorkshire: Investing together for a healthier economy’.

It is a simple idea with a serious purpose. Our three mayoralties represent more than 4.5 million people. Individually, we are significant. Together, speaking with one voice, we are a health and life sciences powerhouse that can rival anywhere in the world – and it is time the world knew it.

This joint initiative grows out of the White Rose Agreement, our landmark commitment to align around the priorities that matter most to champion Yorkshire, together, both at home and overseas. Invest in Yorkshire is that ambition put into action.

The case for investment is not aspiration alone; it is already built. Yorkshire and the Humber is home to more than 27,000 people working in biopharmaceuticals and medical technology, over 600 life sciences companies, and a sector generating £5bn in annual turnover.

We have global leaders in orthopaedics, diagnostics, digital health, precision manufacturing and child health technology, sitting alongside advanced research centres and a fast-growing cluster of start-ups.

The combination of complementary regional strengths – research excellence, industry depth, and a large, young, diverse population – creates something rare: an ecosystem where innovation can be discovered, developed, tested and adopted at scale, and where partners get direct access to the clinical, academic and commercial expertise needed to make change real.

It helps that our universities are among the best in the country. Twelve higher education institutions teach more than 196,000 students across the region, with 46 per cent of undergraduates studying science subjects and over £150m in collaborative research funding flowing through our academic community each year.

Total R&D expenditure in Yorkshire and the Humber reached £2.84bn in 2024 alone. This is a talent pipeline that keeps renewing itself, decade after decade, and a research base that keeps pace with the ambitions of the businesses that call our region home. The region’s multiple investment zones and Local Innovation Partnership Funds are enhancing the regions’ attractiveness for companies choosing Yorkshire as their home.

We are equally proud of our data infrastructure, often the deciding factor for investors weighing up where to test new healthcare technology. The Yorkshire & Humber Secure Data Environment, the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record, and programmes such as Born in Bradford give partners access to some of the richest, most representative health datasets in the UK.

If an innovation works here, across our mix of cities, towns, rural communities and coastline, there is a strong case it will work anywhere.

This matters well beyond our boundary walls. The NHS is under extraordinary pressure. Health inequalities persist. And there is a growing, urgent recognition that we must shift from treating sickness to preventing it in the first place.

Yorkshire offers one of the most mature environments in the UK to accelerate the solutions this moment demands – and to do it at a scale that changes outcomes for millions, not hundreds. That is why we so strongly welcome the Government’s own ambitions in this space, set out in its Life Sciences Sector Plan and its Fit for the Future 10-Year Health Plan for England, which together aim to make the UK Europe’s leading life sciences economy by 2030 and the third most important in the world by 2035.

Yorkshire intends to be central to delivering that ambition, not a bystander.

Every one of our 4.5 million residents will feel the impact of what is developed here: new applications of artificial intelligence in care, surgical techniques, vaccines, prosthetics, and technologies not yet imagined. That is the promise of a region that gets things done and gets them done right.

As reforms in government open new opportunities for digital transformation, prevention and data-enabled care, Yorkshire is ready. Not ready to wait for others to lead – ready to lead itself.

Yorkshire has never waited for permission to shape its own future. We are a county of disruptors, built on innovation, enterprise and the belief that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things when they work together.

Today, as the world looks for new ways to tackle rising healthcare challenges, improve lives and drive economic growth, Yorkshire has an opportunity to lead these challenges. The White Rose Agreement brings together our strengths and shared ambition to make Yorkshire the place where the world's most exciting health innovations are discovered, developed and adopted.

It's about creating better jobs, longer and healthier lives, stronger communities and greater opportunity for the next generation. In ten or twenty years' time, we want people to look back and see this as the moment Yorkshire decided to stop thinking regionally and start acting globally, collaborating over competition and unlocking the full potential of 4.5 million people, speaking with one voice.

When Yorkshire comes together behind a common purpose, we don't just respond to change, we create it. It’s why we believe Yorkshire can help define the future of health innovation, not only for our region, but for the UK and beyond.

Mayor of York and North Yorkshire, David Skaith, Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, South Yorkshire’s Mayor, Oliver Coppard, chief executive of Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber, Richard Stubbs.