Ivan Wall, is co-director of Resilience, a two-year, £4.3 million UK government scheme using VR to educate the next generation of medicine makers.
As the world marks International Day of Education on 24 January, the UK faces a stark reality: without urgent action to train the next generation of medicine makers, its ambitions to remain a global life sciences powerhouse could falter. At the heart of the challenge is a severe and growing skills gap in advanced medicines manufacturing. But an innovative programme is offering a glimpse of how education, technology and industry can come together to close it.
Advanced medicines manufacturing underpins everything from vaccines and biologics to cutting-edge cell and gene therapies. Yet, according to industry estimates, the UK is heading towards a shortfall of 145,000 medicines manufacturing workers over the next decade. That figure includes 70,000 new roles and 75,000 replacements – jobs that should be filled by today’s students.
The skills gap is acute. Not enough young people are entering the sector, and the challenge stretches right back to how we engage students with STEM subjects at school.
The consequences are already being felt. Global drug shortages have become headline news, with patients struggling to access vital medicines. For some conditions, such as ADHD, shortages can worsen core symptoms and disrupt daily life. In the most tragic cases, they have proved fatal. In December 2022, Ava Grace Hodgkinson died after the antibiotic she was prescribed was unavailable at her local pharmacy.
Beyond patient impact, the risks to the UK economy and its life sciences ambitions are profound. In recent months, Merck scrapped a £1 billion UK investment, AstraZeneca paused projects, and Eli Lilly placed a £279 million investment on hold – all pointing to concerns about the long-term environment for life sciences manufacturing.
Government investment in buildings and equipment is important. but it’s not enough. We also need future generations of trained, motivated and educated people to work in these facilities.
A virtual solution to a real-world problem
That is where Resilience, a £4.3 million government-backed programme, comes in. Using immersive virtual reality (VR), Resilience recreates one of the UK’s most advanced medicines manufacturing environments, allowing learners to train in a realistic, risk-free setting.
Traditional training in live laboratories is costly, disruptive and limited by space, materials and availability. VR changes that equation entirely.
Accessing real manufacturing facilities for training is inevitably expensive and disruptive. With VR, training becomes flexible, on-demand and repeatable. There’s no need to travel, no consumables are used, and there’s no interruption to live production.
Perhaps most importantly, VR allows training to be standardised across sites and scaled without limits on class size. Hundreds of learners can practise complex manufacturing processes that would be otherwise expensive or impossible to replicate as real-world training exercises.
From cleanrooms to intricate manufacturing equipment, students can explore every corner of a facility in extraordinary detail. The virtual environment used by Resilience is modelled on the Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult’s manufacturing centre in Stevenage – one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the UK.
Inspiring interest from the earliest years
One of the most distinctive aspects of Resilience is its reach. Unlike many industry-focused training programmes, it introduces medicines manufacturing to learners as young as primary school age.
For younger students, it’s about inspiration. It’s about sparking interest in STEM subjects and showing that there’s a whole world of careers beyond the ones they already know.
That matters because careers awareness remains a major blind spot in the education system. As far back as 2013, Ofsted warned that schools were failing to provide adequate careers advice, leaving high-demand industries struggling to fill skilled roles. For many young people, medical careers still mean only doctors and nurses, leaving out roles like biomanufacturers, process engineers or cleanroom specialists.
Careers advice and inspiration should be integrated into everyday teaching at every age. Education shouldn’t just be about passing exams; it should prepare young minds for real careers.
VR is uniquely powerful in this respect. Students consistently report that immersive learning is more engaging and memorable, and crucially, Resilience links learning directly to real jobs that urgently need skilled workers.
Building confidence before entering the cleanroom
For older students and industry trainees, VR offers more than inspiration. It builds confidence and operational readiness before they ever step into a live Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) environment.
Much of early training in advanced therapy manufacturing focuses on orientation, familiarity and process understanding. Tasks such as gowning and cleaning may appear simple, but they are critical to safety and compliance. Practising them in a live facility would waste valuable space and resources needed for producing high-demand medicines.
VR allows trainees to learn vital practices without setting foot in a real lab. It’s an efficient, cost-effective way to build confidence and competence.
Measuring success and looking ahead
After just one year, Resilience is already showing tangible results. Around 1,500 trainees from across industry and education have completed training, with a further 15,000 people reached through outreach and engagement activities.
But success is about more than numbers. True success is creating a sustainable pipeline of medicine makers for the UK.
That pipeline is essential if the UK is to maintain its leadership in biologics, advanced therapy medicinal products and personalised medicines – all areas with immense therapeutic promise, but significant manufacturing challenges.
Looking ahead, VR and digital training platforms are becoming a cornerstone of both education and industrial training worldwide. Advances in wireless headsets, processing power, artificial intelligence and 5G connectivity will only deepen their impact.
For advanced medicines manufacturing, this means better training, greater scalability and a more exciting career path for young people. VR and AR will help create a generation of workers equipped with the skills the industry desperately needs.
As International Day of Education highlights the role of learning in shaping our collective future, Resilience reminds us: investing in how we educate today may determine whether life-saving medicines can be made tomorrow.
About Resilience
Resilience is the UK Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence. It is a £4.3 million programme funded by the Office for Life Sciences, part of the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, and managed through Innovate UK.
The two-year programme, which started in April 2024, uses virtual reality to train medicine makers in core skills which would be impractical, disruptive, and expensive to gain in the real world.
Partner organisations across the UK delivering the programme include the University of Birmingham, University College London (UCL), Teesside University, Heriot-Watt University and Britest. Professor Ivan Wall of the University of Birmingham and Professor Gary Lye of UCL are co-directors.
As well as bridging the skills gap, Resilience is helping the NHS to meet its long-term goal of achieving net zero. 25% of NHS emissions are in the supply chain, and VR will help the industry deliver net zero medicines manufacturing by reducing laboratory waste.
The programme, which started in April 2024, has so far delivered encouraging results (stats accurate as of Q4, 2025):
- 1,200 trainees attended industry relevant training events led by Resilience partners
- 13,500 students from across the UK participated in training and outreach activities through 170 events
- 75 future sector leaders from 23 organisations developed skills through leadership accelerator programmes
- 66% of future leaders across the leadership accelerator programme identified as female
- 45% of future leaders across the leadership accelerator programme came from BAME backgrounds
