Professor Ivan Wall, co-director of the UK’s first Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence, says VR and AR will help fill the sector’s acute skills gap.
Ivan Wall, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at the University of Birmingham, and co-director of Resilience, the UK’s Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence, says the use of VR and AR technology will create a generation of workers equipped with advanced laboratory and manufacturing skills.
VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) are powerful training tools that can recreate a real environment with which users can interact, making it perfect for training in those environments that it would be expensive, impractical or disruptive to use.
The medicines manufacturing sector is suffering from an acute skills gap, in response to which the government set up RESILIENCE, funded by the Office for Life Sciences, part of the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, and managed through Innovate UK.
RESILIENCE is a £4.3 million, two-year programme.
Professor Wall said; “Medicines production is evolving rapidly, and we are seeing some ground-breaking, personalised therapies. But they are produced in many small batches, which means production is costly, difficult to reproduce at scale, and requires highly-skilled operators.
“The UK is already at the forefront of the science behind these medicines but we need to match this in manufacturing capability, which we can by harnessing technology to deliver training that will create a work-ready generation of highly-skilled staff.
“With VR we can train anywhere, anytime, and repeat as necessary. Crucially, there’s no need to use actual labs or manufacturing facilities for much of the core training as it’s more about orientation, building confidence, familiarity and understanding of the processes, so it’s a highly efficient and cost-effective way to deliver training.”
The VR software used in the Resilience training programme, created by Birmingham company FourPlus Immersive, includes a training package that is based on one of the most advanced facilities in the country, the Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult’s manufacturing centre in Stevenage.
The Catapult, established by Innovate UK, is part of a network of world-leading technology and innovation centres.
Professor Wall added: “It’s not just personalised medicines that benefit from training using VR tools. Many new drugs under development contain high-potency active pharmaceutical ingredients and there is huge demand for their production.
“However, they present serious handling challenges and expensive specialised equipment is needed to protect employees and their environment from exposure.”
In addition, ‘biologics’ (which includes vaccines, blood components, somatic cells and tissues) may offer the most effective means to treat a variety of currently untreatable conditions. But they tend to be heat sensitive and susceptible to contamination, so the initial manufacturing steps are especially sensitive.
Finally, advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), based on genes, cells or tissues, promise groundbreaking opportunities for the treatment of diseases. But here too, there are significant manufacturing challenges.
The VR software RESILIENCE is using consists of modules that together form a comprehensive training package that addresses workplace readiness for working on these new medicine types in manufacturing cleanrooms.
The Resilience affiliate programme provides free access to materials and will scale to over 150 schools, colleges and universities to ensure national accessibility.
VR hardware, training licenses and onboarding support will be provided to 20 universities, FE colleges and other stakeholders to support sector-specific outreach and training.
The programme has been quick to take off; since launching earlier this year, 450 students and industry professionals have been trained with over 14,000 hours of learning, and 49 organisations have signed up to various Resilience schemes.
Resilience partner organisations across the UK delivering the programme include the University of Birmingham, University College London (UCL), Teesside University, Heriot-Watt University and Britest Ltd, all of whom have a strong track record of delivering training for industry and supplying new talent for the medicines manufacturing sector.
Professor Gary Lye of University College London, co-director of Resilience, noted: “There are many other benefits of VR. No expensive consumables or single-use plastics are needed and there’s no limit on the number of people we can train at the same time. So we can grow a workforce whilst supporting government net zero goals.”
“Perhaps most importantly, VR is a highly engaging technology and has been shown to enhance learning. For the many school and college students who’ve used the technology, it has also proven to be a very powerful mechanism for engaging them.
“In short, VR is cool!”
The recently published Life sciences competitiveness indicators 2024 noted that pharmaceutical manufacturing’s gross value added (GVA) was £13.7 billion in 2021.
The Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership (MMIP), which represents medicines manufacturers in the UK, noted in 2023 that medicines manufacturing generates the majority of life sciences jobs.
Professor Wall concluded; “The use of VR/AR will also help the NHS to meet its long-term goal of achieving net zero. 25% of their emissions are in the supply chain, and VR will help the industry deliver net zero medicines manufacturing.”
To find out more about Resilience, please visit https://www.resilience-skills.com/.
