Electronics, Photonics and Electrical Systems (EPES) underpin activity in healthcare, energy, transport, environmental sustainability, built environment and throughout the consumer market.

Whether through sensor systems, embedded systems, plastic electronics or photonics, the UK benefits from a strong science base and a long tradition of inventiveness and innovation in the uses of electricity and light, underpinning the hugely disruptive technologies of electronics, photonics and electrical systems.

The global electronic products market is estimated to be worth over $2.0 trillion, and over 1 Billion transistors are being produced every year for every man, woman, and child on earth.

The development of ideas into industrially relevant technologies, and then onwards to become products in the marketplace, provides one route to realising the economic benefits.  In addition, adoption of EPES technologies in new applications in the healthcare, energy, transport, environmental sustainability and built environment yield benefits that can be felt by both the technology providers and by the technology adopters in the end-use markets.

The EPES sector should always be looking for technology with an identifiable route to market and those areas where technology push and market pull are both evident, resulting in persuasive arguments for intervention.

In the UK, global corporations are supported by a large, vibrant and diverse community of technology-intensive SMEs. The Technology Strategy Board will work to further a business framework that allows these players to work together to the best advantage for the UK economy and will particularly target the EPES sector with vehicles that are most accessible to SME involvement.

Partnership and collaboration with other branches of government and with major stakeholder groups in industry, is essential in a sector lacking natural focal points.

The Technology Strategy Board's EPES team works with the Research Councils to ensure alignment of Science and Technology development strategies, with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on the business and regulatory environment and the devolved administrations to coordinate national and regional policy and investment, with UKTI to encourage inward investment and to attract and protect value in the UK, and with other government departments to investigate technology synergies and sector collisions.

The Technology Strategy Board also works within Europe to represent UK interests by steering the EU research agenda and ensure that EU funding complements national programmes, where the ARTEMIS & ENIAC Joint Technology Initiatives and PHOTONICS21 European Technology Platform are of particular interest.

The industry sector also provides its own voices in the form of the Electronics Leadership Council and the Photonics Leadership Group, Plastic Electronics Leadership Group and the Technology Strategy Board will work with these, linking up the technology and innovation agenda with those of industry leaders, Trade Associations and others.