The University of Birmingham is set to lead UK-wide virtual reality (VR)-assisted training in medicines manufacturing to address critical skills demand in life sciences.
Set to benefit future medicine and vaccine makers, the new RESILIENCE Centre for Excellence for UK Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre aims to deliver free training, outreach materials and programmes.
Supported by £4.5m of funding from Innovate UK and the Office for Life Sciences, the centre will be led by an academic consortium of UK universities, including University College London, Teesside University and Heriot-Watt University.
The training centre aims to work with healthcare and pharmaceutical organisations to provide a single-entry point for training and career input, which includes a pipeline of continuing professional development courses.
Hundreds of students across the UK are set to benefit from the training developed by the RESILIENCE Centre, including VR and mixed reality situations to offer “near-to-real-life” experiences of lab environments for medicine manufacturing, as well as more traditional teaching approaches.
The innovative training technologies, which also include artificial intelligence (AI), will give trainees access to virtual replicas of industry facilities to become ready for the workplace while reducing the production of manufacturing waste and speeding up training processes.
More specifically, the centre aims to address needs including training provision for digital skills, data analytics and AI, as well as embedding environmental sustainability into manufacturing processes.
In addition, the centre will provide free teaching and outreach materials to 150 schools, colleges and universities to enable them to become part of the RESILIENCE network.
Ivan Wall, professor of regenerative medicine at the University of Birmingham and co-director of RESILIENCE, said: “The RESILIENCE Centre of Excellence will… develop a pipeline of talent and [will] provide training for industry to ensure current and future employees possess the right skills for a rapidly evolving sector.
“This approach will allow us to standardise and scale out training provision across our core partners, ensuring consistency in skills development across the UK.”
