Tech4Health celebrates its launch

Tech4Health is a collaboration between UCL and Ulster University, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The programme provides multidisciplinary training for the next generation of digital health innovators. 

The Tech4Health CDT accepted its first cohort of 15 students this academic year from a diverse range of academic and professional backgrounds. 

To date, CDT students have been engaging with interdisciplinary research modules, selected based on their specific training needs and research interests. They have also attended bespoke lectures and seminars provided specifically for the CDT programme (for example MATLAB software training through Mathworks).   

This term, CDT students are looking forward to a 3-day course in collaboration with UCL’s AMR Hub, “MedTech Device Innovation and Commercialisation for Digital Health” and are working on securing 3-month secondments with industrial or clinical collaborators and confirming PhD projects for Year 2 of the programme. 

“It was a huge pleasure to launch this new EPSRC Centre alongside our academic colleagues and project partners across healthcare and industry, who provide an incredibly rich training environment for research, innovation and deployment of digital health technologies. The event was also an excellent opportunity to celebrate our first cohort of doctoral researchers across UCL and Ulster as a community”. 

• Professor Rebecca Shipley, UCL Mechanical Engineering 

“The Ulster Team were delighted to officially mark the launch of the CDT which we see as the perfect platform to cultivate the next generation of highly skilled digital health researchers.  We're also thrilled to have formed a strategic partnership with UCL on this initiative, allowing us to tap into the extensive combined expertise in Healthcare Technology research at both institutions”. 

• Professor Dewar Finlay, Head of the School of Engineering at Ulster 

In the evening, guests heard from: 

• Professor Colin Turner, Pro Vice-Chancellor & Executive Dean of Faculty of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment at Ulster; and, 

• Professor Ibrahim Abubakar, Pro-Provost (Health) for UCL and Dean, UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences. 

Both speakers emphasised the strong advantages of the partnership between Ulster and UCL. UCL ranks number one in the UK for biomedical engineering and medical technology, and number seven globally for digital health research. Ulster is a UK leader in digital healthcare technology with a world-class innovation ecosystem.  

We are excited to be beginning this collaborative journey and look forward to sharing more milestones as we develop technologies that have a positive impact on patients and society.