By Ivor Campbell

ONE of the positive outcomes of Scotland’s response to the Covid pandemic has been a significant growth in our medical technology industry.

From nowhere a year ago, PCR testing is a term now familiar to the public. Existing medical technology companies are reconfiguring their operations to address a burgeoning demand for diagnostics equipment and new companies are springing up all the time.

So why, in the face of this unprecedented demand, are we now faced with an impending shortage of world-class scientists, engineers and technologists?

Growth in demand for diagnostics business specialists in the past year has effectively vacuumed up all of the existing talent, with companies being forced to pay ever higher salaries to existing industry specialists.

Board-level executives with technical, scientific, or engineering qualifications now routinely command salaries around £150,000 a year, while experienced engineers involved in research and development and transfers to production are regularly employed on salaries of £120,000. In some cases, those are double what they could have expected five years ago.

However, the pipeline of top overseas graduates from China and the Far East, that this country has traditionally relied upon to meet ongoing demand, appears to be drying up.

Companies are increasingly reporting that research students are being put off coming here because of a perceived resistance to immigration in this country following Brexit and greater hurdles.

The UK med tech sector is the third largest in Europe, comprising 3,700 companies – 250 in Scotland – most of which are small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), generating a turnover of £21 billion.

Last year Scotland’s first Medical Device Manufacturing Centre was launched to provide advice to SMEs and to support them in the advancement and production of medical devices.

It received £3.7 million funding from the Advancing Manufacturing Challenge Fund, managed by Scottish Enterprise, the Edinburgh & South East Scotland City Region Deal, Heriot-Watt University, Robert Gordon University and the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

But that could all be put at risk if Scotland and the UK are not perceived as welcoming environments to students, particularly those from China and the Far East.

I recently had a conversation with Peter Hewkin, founder of the Cambridge-based Centre for Business Innovation and head of the global Microfluidics Consortium.

He told me that, rightly or wrongly, since Brexit, the UK is now perceived as less friendly to overseas students, not just from Europe, but from further afield.

“Many Far East students are saying ‘oh gosh, if Britain is not taking foreigners from there, then why should they take foreigners from here?’,” he said.

A secondary effect is that British companies are hiring these graduates, not into Britain but into overseas outposts – places like Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia – so if the people can’t come to the jobs, the secondary effect is that the jobs will try to go to the people, which works very well for the companies but isn’t much good for Scotland and the UK.

Ivor Campbell is Chief Executive of Callander-based Snedden Campbell, a specialist recruitment consultant for the medical technology industry.