Medical manufacturing, motoring and driving quickly up a hill backwards

The relationship between the UK’s healthcare and manufacturing sectors will take centre-stage this Thursday at the ‘High Value Manufacturing in Healthcare’ conference.Held at Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Park, the event has been set up to raise the profile of high value manufacturing within the UK’s healthcare technologies industry. According to the organiser it will focus on what high value manufacturing is, why it’s important and what the challenges are within the healthcare sector.

Throughout the day delegates will learn from case study examples about the innovative processes and technology integration, how new technologies have been successfully commercialised and how new materials and processes have developed for healthcare or adopted from other sectors.  They will also be given a detailed analysis of future developments and anticipated advances for the sector.

Elsewhere, there’s a distinctly automotive flavour to some of this week’s key events.

Tomorrow in London, delegates from across the UK’s automotive sector will gather at Millbank Tower in Westminister for the the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) international automotive summit.

In the keynote speech, Stephen Odell, Ford Group Vice President and Chairman and CEO of Ford of Europe will discus Ford’s UK activities and the wider automotive industry. While Mark Prisk, Minister for Business and Enterprise will close the day with a political keynote address.

Other  speakers include Richard Parry Jones, co-chairman of the Automotive Council; Antony Sheriff, managing director of McLaren Automotive; Jon Goodman,managing director of Peugeot UK; Tony Walker, deputy managing director of Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK; and Andrea Thompson, managing director of Leyland Trucks.

On a less business-focussed note, petrol heads will be flocking to West Sussex from Thursday for the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed.

As always the main focus of the event will be the action on the notorious Goodwood hill, which as well as a host of classic racing cars will this year feature the all-electric Nissan Leaf, which will attempt to set a record for driving up the hill backwards.

Staying on the record-breaking theme, Don Wales — grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell and nephew of Donald Campbell — will this weekend head to Pendine Sands in Wales in an effort to set a new UK land speed record for an electric car.

Malcolm Campbell achieved his first World Land Speed Record of 146.16mph at Pendine Sands in 1924, kick-starting a long history of Campbell family record breaking, that has been continued by Wales.

Wales raised the UK EV land speed record to 137mph at Pendine Sands in 2000 and in 2009 he broke the speed record for a steam car along a measured mile, at 148mph. He now plans a world land speed record attempt for an electric car in 2013, in a vehicle which will revive his family’s famous Bluebird name, and is aiming for more than 500mph.