UCL Early Diagnosis Workshop

New and innovative technologies are particularly important with the ageing population and increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and age-related multi-morbidity.

On Wednesday 3 July, we co-hosted the UCL Early Diagnosis Workshop with the NIHR UCLH Biomedical Research Centre. The workshop was led by Prof Danny Alexander (Director of CMIC) and Prof Geoff Parker (Deputy Director, Translation, Institute of Healthcare Engineering).

More than 100 UCL academics, businesses, charities and policy-makers attended the event. The workshop was designed to encourage mixing between different communities – academic, patient specialists, industry and policy – to co-create potential solutions. In the afternoon, participants worked in groups to identify unmet clinical needs and brainstorm novel approaches to early diagnosis.

In the morning, there were panel discussions from academics and business representatives.

Daniel Quirke from the Office for Artificial Intelligence and Penny Wilson from Innovate UK provided context of the Government’s financial support for projects in this area. UK Research & Innovation are making up to £210 million available to researchers and businesses improving the way we use data to support earlier diagnosis.

Daniel Quirke, Office for Artificial Intelligence

The UCL Innovation & Enterprise team shared an overview of the support they provide through knowledge exchange activities for the development of business partnerships.

The day concluded with networking drinks, giving attendees the chance to continue discussions and build collaborations.

Thank you to those who attended and made this such a successful exchange of ideas.

Funding opportunities in early diagnosis

UCL academics can apply for follow-up seed funding to develop ideas and collaborations on this topic.

Contact Eugenio Zapata-Solvas (BEAMS Research Facilitator) for more information.

Diagnostics at the Institute of Healthcare Engineering

Diagnostics is one of the Institute of Healthcare Engineering’s five research themes.

Related links:

• BEAMS Research Coordination Office
• UK Research and Innovation: ‘From data to early diagnosis and precision medicine’ challenge