The partnership with the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Strathclyde, as well as Public Health Scotland was revealed by health secretary Neil Gray during a speech to Parliament on 4 June.

The announcement followed a roundtable on game-changing technologies.

Gray said: ‘There is a huge future potential in personalised and precision medicine and gene therapies as well as robotic surgery.

‘So we will proceed with a new partnership based between Government, the NHS, our academic institutions, and the life sciences industry, focused on seizing opportunities to empower patients, liberate clinicians, drive efficiencies, and prevent ill health.'