Technology Innovation and Data-Informed Healthcare
The Technology Innovation and Data-Informed Healthcare (TIDH) research cluster drives digital transformation in healthcare through data analytics, tech innovation, and real-world implementation.
The Technology Innovation and Data-Informed Healthcare (TIDH) research cluster addresses the urgent need to transform healthcare through the integration of digital technologies and advanced data analytics. In the face of ageing populations, rising costs, and growing demand for personalised care, this research cluster offers critical insights into how technology can improve health processes and outcomes while promoting equitable access.
TIDH brings together multidisciplinary expertise from computer science, informatics, human–computer interaction, medicine, social sciences, and related fields. Our research leverages data analytics to understand problems and inefficiencies in existing healthcare systems, develops technical and data-driven solutions to global healthcare challenges, and evaluates digital health implementation in real-world contexts. These efforts result in innovations that enhance patient experiences and clinical outcomes, improve organisational workflows and performance, strengthen public health systems, reduce health disparities, and drive responsible, effective healthcare delivery.
Dr Susanne Gaube
Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Human Factors for Healthcare & Head of Technology Innovation and Data-Informed Healthcare Cluster
Susanne’s research focuses on identifying opportunities in healthcare that can benefit from digital technologies, understanding the support needs of healthcare providers and patients, and improving user-technology interaction. She also investigates how AI-enabled clinical decision support systems influence decision-making and develops strategies to strengthen human-AI collaboration.
Dr Hend Abdelhakim
Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Healthcare Innovation
Hend’s research focuses on taste assessment and taste-masking methods to support age-appropriate dosage development and improve patient adherence, among children and older adults. Her work applies advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and formulation science to optimise drug palatability and clinical outcomes. She explores the commercialisation of healthcare innovations in primary care, bridging research and industry to translate scientific findings into pharmaceutical solutions.
Dr Clara Aranda Jan
Associate Professor (Teaching) in Digital Health & Entrepreneurship
Clara’s research focuses on digital for development, digital inclusion, digital health, and sustainability. She employs multidisciplinary approaches combining qualitative and quantitative methods, participatory design thinking, and network analysis. Her work bridges academia, industry, and international organisations, advancing inclusive and sustainable digital innovation across global contexts.
Dr Anjali Bakhru
Associate Professor (Teaching) in Strategy
Anjali's research and teaching focus on strategic management, particularly how organisational capabilities and innovation underpin competitive advantage in contexts of technological change. She is currently researching, with colleagues, how AI is positioned within healthcare management education. More recently, her practice has pivoted to sustainable technology and climate change, advising clean-tech and purpose-driven start-ups on investment readiness and strategic growth.
Dr Conrad Coelho
Associate Professor (Teaching) in Digital and AI Marketing
Conrad’s research explores the integration of digital and AI technologies in marketing education to enhance authentic learning and employability. He investigates innovative pedagogies that engage students and foster critical understanding of marketing in a digital era. His work also examines social media dynamics, online consumer behaviour, and creative technology-enhanced learning across disciplines.
Dr Paul Expert
Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer)
Paul’s research focuses on studying complex systems by developing and applying methods to characterise their dynamics and structures. He is interested both by theoretical and applied aspects of complexity theory, with applications spanning digital health, neuroscience, and social systems. His toolbox includes complex networks theory, higher-order interactions and dynamics, topological data analysis, and AI methods. His applications span digital health, neuroscience, and social systems.
Dr Annmarie Hanlon
Associate Professor (Teaching) in Digital and AI Marketing
Annmarie's research interests are the application of technology, AI, social media platforms, robotics, systems, policy and ethics in healthcare. She is investigating devices that contribute to the management of care with the ageing population.
Dr Pratap Kumar
Associate Professor in Digital Health Policy
Pratap’s research integrates technology, data, clinical practice, organisational processes, and policy to address complex challenges in global health. His work applies systems approaches and implementation science to understand and improve healthcare delivery in resource-constrained settings. Methodologically, he combines data generation and digitisation, industrial engineering, and simulation to model and strengthen health systems such as blood transfusion networks.
Dr Waty Lilaonitkul
Associate Professor in Digital Health Technologies
Waty develops scalable, robust AI to tackle healthcare challenges, including rare diseases, early diagnosis, and pandemic preparedness. She integrates AI with complex systems and network physiology to model human health and disease dynamics. Her methods include dynamic time risk prediction, active learning, human-in-the-loop AI, and natural learning processing for open-source drug development. She aims to build safe, data-efficient, human-centred AI systems for clinical decision support.
Dr Marzena Nieroda
Associate Professor in Marketing and Commercialisation
Marzena’s research explores person-centred care by designing service and technology ecosystems around lived experiences. Her work spans three areas: Person-Centric Service Ecosystems: co-creating value across life stages using service frameworks and journey mapping; Intelligent Ecosystems: developing tools to track evolving needs through market research; Connected Ecosystems: building secure, data-driven infrastructures to enable personalised, collaborative service delivery across sectors.
Dr Nadine Scholz
Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Healthcare Management
Nadine’s research examines how individuals and teams engage in creativity and innovation, focusing on networking and feedback that enable idea generation, refinement, and evaluation. She collaborates with corporations and startups to address practical challenges, delivering insights for academia and industry. Nadine also designs and delivers workshops on entrepreneurial mindset and innovation storytelling to foster professional development across sectors.
Dr Shivaang Sharma
Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Shivaang’s research explores Human-AI and Human-Technology collaboration in humanitarian crises, disaster contexts, non-Western settings and marginalised communities. His research examines how institutional and organisational decision-making is increasingly influenced by and entangled with AI. His research programme explores Human-AI phenomena and their profound effects on society theoretically and empirically.
PhD students
Dr Nicolas Barticevic
Research Focus: Modelling chronic care patient management in a community setting in Chile
Haruka Goto
Research Focus: Evaluating the effects of government income interventions on mental health and suicide in Japan.
Tammy Jin
Research Focus: Tammy’s research focuses on understanding how organisational behaviour influences employees’ mental health.
Tanya Karakyriakou
Research Focus: Tanya’s project examines how strategic decisions by pharmaceutical companies, academia, investors, and governments influence medicine accessibility. It aims to develop a framework that aligns R&D strategies with public health needs while maintaining industry sustainability.
Xiunan (Yuki) Li
Research Focus: Yuki’s project explores the use of electronic tongue (e-tongue) technology and human sensory panels to improve taste masking in oral drug delivery, focusing on bowel preparation formulations. The goal is to enhance patient compliance and support the design of optimised drug delivery systems.
Caitlin Lin
Research Focus: Caitlin’s research primarily focuses on the integration of data-driven computational modelling methods to understand complex health problems.
Huiying Long
Research Focus: Huiying’s research focuses on how ML-based approaches can help to reduce discharge delays in hospitals.
Ali Maashi
Research Focus: Identifying gaps in clinical managers’ leadership competencies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Mengning Pan
Research Focus: Mengning’s Research focuses on how tailored digital interventions can support autistic students as they transition into and navigate higher education.
Yutong Wang
Research Focus: Analysis of supply chain restructuring through a political economy lens, investigating how digital infrastructures alter organisational control, fiscal discipline, and risk distribution within hospitals.
Jinjue Yue
Research Focus: Jinjue’s research primarily focuses on infection prevention and control, and patient movement in hospitals.
Longzhu Zhu
Research Focus: Using patient-reported outcomes and clinical data to predict acute deterioration within the hospital setting.
DBA students
Elizabet Gomes Dos Santos
Research Focus: The transition to an integrated digital ecosystem in Jersey
Iakovos Kritikos
Research Focus: Iakovos’s project develops an AI-enabled electronic tongue platform to predict and optimise the palatability of oral drug formulations, particularly GLP-1 and GLP-1/amylin therapies for obesity. It integrates sensor analytics, cheminformatics, and machine learning to improve adherence and accelerate innovation.
Aishah Yaaqib
Research Focus: This study investigates how governments can develop and operationalise effective countermeasures against health misinformation and infodemics. Using the UAE as a case study, it proposes a policy model that enhances resilience and strengthens public trust in health systems.
...Support for Aging
PI: Marzena Nieroda | Co-Is: Professor Tara Keck (UCL Brain Sciences), Dr Zoe Gallant (UCL IOE), James Jennings (UCL I&E) | Funder: Innovation & Enterprise, Knowledge Exchange | Amount: £7,000 | Timeline: February 2025-March 2026
InnovAge Network takes a place-based approach to positive ageing by fostering creativity, education, and health awareness among young people. Centred on one London local authority, it mobilises community, policy, and industry stakeholders to co-create scalable, person-centred models that strengthen intergenerational wellbeing and build healthier, more connected local ecosystems.
PI: Marzena Nieroda | Co-I: Professor Philip Treleaven (UCL Computer Science) | Funder: Innovation & Enterprise, Knowledge Exchange | Amount: £26,000 | Timeline: June 2025-December 2025
The Open Health Proof of Concept develops and tests a scalable, privacy-preserving digital infrastructure that enables secure data collaboration across health and care organisations. Combining person-centred design with federated data approaches, it aims to create interoperable systems that support evidence-driven healthcare innovation and enhance equitable, connected service delivery.
...(Accessible, Inclusive, Universal) Image-Based Digitisation of Paper Records
PI: Pratap Kumar | Funder: UCL-AIIMS-IITD trilateral call for collaborative research in medical technologies
Despite the significant progress made in hospital-based health record digitisation under India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), outreach settings—particularly in low-resource and underserved regions—remain largely excluded. This project addresses that gap through the development of AIU (Accessible, Inclusive, Universal) tools for image-based digitisation of paper-based dental records to support effective integration of public health dentistry with secondary and tertiary care systems.
PI: Pratap Kumar | Funder: NHLBI | Amount: £3,000,000 | Timeline: Jul 2020-Jun 2026
Studying Transfusion Committees for Improving Blood Availability in Kenyan Hospitals: A type III hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial to establish, enable and assess the function of Community-Facility Transfusion Committees (CFTCs) incorporating diverse representation involving hospital, community, and county leadership, to improve blood availability and transfusion at the point-of-care.
...support in higher education
PI: Dr Susanne Gaube, Co-I: Dr Brian Irvine, Collaborator: Mengning Pan | Funder: UCL Grand Challenges | Amount: £14,957 | Timeline: 2025–2026
This project investigates how tailored digital interventions can support autistic students as they transition into and navigate higher education. Through a participatory, mixed-methods approach, we will explore the lived experiences, support needs, and preferences of autistic students and key university stakeholders. Interviews, a longitudinal diary study, and a co-designed theory of change workshop will guide the development of a roadmap for future digital solutions. By embedding autistic perspectives throughout and aligning interventions with institutional realities, the project aims to lay the foundation for inclusive, sustainable support systems that enhance academic engagement, improve well-being, and remove systemic barriers for neurodiverse students.
...Intelligence in Healthcare (Horizon Europe Partnership Development Seed Grants)
Co-PIs: Dr Susanne Gaube and Dr Zahra Shakeri | Funder: UCL Global Engagement and University of Toronto International Partnerships | Amount: £10,191 | Timeline: 2025–2026
The project builds an international network between the University of Toronto, UCL, and TU Darmstadt to promote safe, equitable, and human-centred AI in healthcare. It investigates how human, organisational, and model factors contribute to AI-related incidents and seeks to develop strategies for responsible AI use. Activities include regular virtual meetings, international partnership events, and stakeholder roundtables in Canada, the UK, and Germany to prepare a Horizon Europe proposal on responsible health AI.
...Regulation in Healthcare Settings
PI: Dr Susanne Gaube, Co-PI Dr Priyam Batra (AIIMS), Co-PI Dr Shahid Malik (IITD) | Funder: AIIMS–IITD–UCL MedTech Grant | Amount: £13,611 | Timeline: 2025–2026
Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) remain a critical threat to patient safety, with hand hygiene as the most effective preventive measure. However, global compliance remains low due to inadequate monitoring methods. This project aims to develop a low-cost, sensor-integrated, real-time monitoring system to objectively assess hand hygiene compliance aligned with the WHO’s Five Moments. Combining proximity, motion, and camera-based sensing with machine learning, the system will detect hand hygiene events, track movement, and provide real-time feedback to healthcare workers. Through a user-centred co-design approach, the prototype will support behaviour change, reduce infection risks, and provide actionable data for infection control, particularly in resource-limited healthcare settings.
Dr Marzena Nieroda
Date: Wednesday, 29th April 2026
Time: 1pm-4pm
Location: UCL East - Marshgate, London
The Global Business School for Health (GBSH) is pleased to announce the launch of the GBSH Impact Playground — Building Cross-Sector Health Collaborations. This interactive session serves as a strategic forum for academics, practitioners, and industry leaders to catalyse new partnerships aimed at addressing systemic global health challenges.
Aligned with the GBSH mission to accelerate innovations that improve societal health outcomes, the Impact Playground is designed to move beyond traditional networking. It offers a structured environment to bridge the gap between theoretical research and practical, scalable health solutions. This session will provide space to:
- Identify shared, real-world challenges where collaboration could unlock greater impact
- Explore cross-sector partnership opportunities, as well as support avenues for your ideas (industry, NHS, policy, civic and third sector)
- Form working groups around high-potential collaboration ideas
Seed funding will be available to support early-stage partnership development emerging from the session.
Dr Susane Gaube
23 - 27 February 2026
Researchers from GBSH recently travelled to New Delhi to collaborate with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD). The visit is a key milestone for a joint project funded by the prestigious AIIMS–IITD–UCL Trilateral Call for Collaborative Research Projects in Medical Technologies 2025/26.
The research initiative aims to develop a "Sensor-Integrated Automated Feedback System for Hand Hygiene Compliance Regulation" specifically designed for healthcare settings at AIIMS. To initiate the technology development, the team conducted an intensive on-site requirements analysis. The delegation included Ilka Hein, a visiting PhD student from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, who is currently based at the UCL Global Business School for Health.
Dr Pratap Kumar and Dr Prateek Raj
21 February 2026
Researchers from UCL GBSH, AIIMS New Delhi, and IIT Delhi recently convened a high-level online webinar titled "Digital Transformation of Outreach Dental Camps: Paper to Platforms". The event focused on the critical shift from manual record-keeping to integrated digital ecosystems in community dentistry.
The webinar was part of a larger collaborative project: "Integrating Health Outreach Programmes into National Health Ecosystems through AIU (Accessible, Inclusive, Universal) Image-Based Digitization of Paper Records"
Research Partnerships
- University of Toronto
- Unity Health Toronto
- Technical University of Darmstadt
- All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi
- Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
- UCL Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE)
- London Sport
- Global Health & Digital Innovation Foundation
- Actuari, AI and Tech solutions for Insurance
- African Population and Health Research Centre
- International Institute for Primary Health Care
- Strathmore University
- University of Pittsburgh
- National Heart Lung and Blood Institute
- Gates Foundation
Recent Publications
Cecil, J., Kokje, E., Kleine, A.-K., Schaffernak, I., Vogel, L., Angerer, S., Lermer, E. & Gaube, S. (2026). The effect of AI-enabled virtual patient simulation on training outcomes in psychotherapy education. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/m6h5j_v1
Gaube, S., Jussupow, E., Kokje, E., Khan, J., Bondi-Kelly, E., Schicho, A., Kitamura, F. C., Koch, T. K., Ezer, T., Mottok, J., Lermer, E., Ghassemi, M. & Colak, E. (2026). Examining Reliance Patterns on AI Advice in Medical Imaging: A Mixed-Methods Randomized Crossover Experiment. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/4wv8j_v3
Cecil, J., Schaffernak, I., Evangelou, D., Lermer, E., Gaube, S. & Kleine, A.-K. (2026). Navigating the complexity of AI adoption in psychotherapy by identifying key facilitators and barriers. Npj Mental Health Research, 5(1), 17. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44184-026-00199-1
Kokje, E., Lermer, E., Kleine, A.-K., & Gaube, S. (2026). AI-augmented decision-making in face matching: Comparing concurrent and non-concurrent advice presentation. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-026-00707-z
Kokje, E., Lermer, E., Donkin, C., & Gaube, S. (2026). Understanding the influence of design-related factors on human-AI teaming in a face matching task. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-025-00701-x
Hu, D., Navas, D. A., Gaube, S., Mozannar, H., Taylor, M. E., Dvijotham, K., & Bondi-Kelly, E. (2025). Human at the center: A framework for human-driven AI development. AI Magazine, 46(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/aaai.70043
Gaube, S., Pan, M., Rath, A., Caplunik-Pratsch, A., & Lermer, E. (2025). Non-pharmacological interventions designed to support carriers of multi-drug-resistant organisms (MDROs): A systematic literature review. Journal of Hospital Infection, 164, 114–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2025.07.019
Abdelhakim, H. E. Pharmacy in the fourth industrial revolution. (2026). Pharmaceutical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1211/pj.2026.1.401086
Abdelhakim, H. E. Supporting pharmacists beyond graduation. (2026). Pharmaceutical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1211/pj.2026.1.401090
Abdelhakim, H. E., & Awad, A. (2025). From material to medicine: Translational frontiers in dosage form design for oral administration. Pharmaceutics, 17(12). https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics17121529
Memon, R., Shah, B. A., Asif, M., & Abdelhakim, H. (2025). Accommodating cultural differences in the International Conference of Harmonisation Good Clinical Practice guidelines. Journal of Medical Ethics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme-2024-110197
Ubani-Ukoma, U. N., Li, X., Faiyaz, M., & Abdelhakim, H. (2025). Fabrication and characterization of taste-masked core-shell nanofibre mats for dual drug delivery of antihypertensives in pediatrics. International Journal of Pharmaceutics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2025.126541
Nartallo-Kaluarachchi, R., Expert, P., Beers, D., Strang, A., Kringelbach, M. L., Lambiotte, R. & Goriely, A. (2024). Decomposing force fields as flows on graphs reconstructed from stochastic trajectories. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2409.07479
Hanlon, A., & Jones, K. (2026). Ethical concerns about social media privacy policies: do users have the ability to comprehend their consent actions? Journal of Strategic Marketing, 34(1), 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254x.2023.2232817
Honeyford, K., Cooke, G., Kinderler, A., Welch, J., Brent, A., Glampson, B., Tonkin-Crine, S., Lazzarino, R., Patil, S., Ghazal, P., Goodman, P., Daniels, R., Gordon, A. & Costelloe, C. (2026). Digital alerting to improve sepsis detection and patient outcomes in NHS Trusts: a multi-methods study. Health and Social Care Delivery Research, 14(5), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.3310/gjcc0605
Lenglart, L., Titomanlio, L., Bognar, Z., Bressan, S., Buonsenso, D., De, T., Farrugia, R., Honeyford, K., Maconochie, I. K., Moll, H. A., Oostenbrink, R., Parri, N., Roland, D., Özkan, E. A., Almeida, L., Alberti, I., Angoulvant, F., Assad, Z., Aupiais, C., … Zurl, C. (2025). Surge of Pediatric Respiratory Tract Infections after the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Concept of “Immune Debt.” The Journal of Pediatrics, 284, 114420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2024.114420
Raykar, N., Chelagat, T., Barnes, L. S., Kumar, N., Raguveer, V., Makanga, C., Musa, A., Williams, W., Lokoel, G., Onyango, S. O., Mutebi, E., Esekon, E., Cap, A. P., Delaney, M., Signore, M. del, Dey, T., Gupta, S., Kumar, P., Kundu, S., … Wangamati, C. W. (2025). The local initiative for emergency blood (LIFE-blood) study: A mixed-methods, single-center
exploration of civilian walking blood bank need, feasibility, and safety in a low-resource blood desert. Transfusion, 65(12), 2293–2305. https://doi.org/10.1111/trf.18460
Tian, Y., Zeng, B., MacLeod, J., Murithi, G., Makanga, C. M., Barmasai, H., Barnes, L. S., Bidanda, R. S., Chelagat, T., Epuu, T. E., Musa, A., Kaburu, R. K., Madan, J., Makin, J., Munoz-Valencia, A., Njoki, C., Ochieng, K., Olayo, B. O., Paiz, J. R., … Kumar, P. (2025). Simulating the blood transfusion system in Kenya: Modelling methods and exploratory analyses. PLOS Global Public Health, 5(8), e0004587. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0004587
Feng, S. I., Oyelade, T., Ko, M., Zhang, Y., Lilaonitkul, W., Williams, T. B., Costello, J. T., & Mani, A. R. (2026). Interpreting peripheral oxygen saturation variability in critical illness: A directional framework adjusted for hypoxia severity. Experimental Physiology. https://doi.org/10.1113/ep093235
Dimitrov, L., Lilaonitkul, W. & Mehta, N. (2026). Identification of sensorineural hearing loss subtypes using unsupervised machine learning and assessment of their replicability. Scientific Reports, 16(1), 3774. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-33815-9
Dimitrov, L., Barrett, L., Chaudhry, A., Muzaffar, J., Lilaonitkul, W. & Mehta, N. (2025). Uncovering Phenotypes in Sensorineural Hearing Loss: A Systematic Review of Unsupervised Machine Learning Approaches. Ear & Hearing, 46(6), 1401–1411. https://doi.org/10.1097/aud.0000000000001696
Consortium, D., Aslett, L. J. M., Avramescu, A., Bakewell, N., Birds, I., Bowler, L., Camilleri, M. P. J., Chung, S.-C., Clifton, D. A., Cohen, S. N., Constantine-Cooke, N., Daub, E. G., Davidson, S., Denaxas, S., Diaz-Ordaz, K., Feltbower, R., Gallier, S., Gardiner, S., Gasperoni, F., Lilaonitkul, W … Zou, X. (2025). DECOVID: A UK Two-Center Harmonized Database of Acute Care Electronic Health Records for COVID-19 Research. Data, 10(12), 195. https://doi.org/10.3390/data10120195
Campbell, R., Monkhouse, C., Patel, B., Orini, M., Lambiase, P. D., Lilaonitkul, W. & Bhuva, A. N. (2025). Incorporating machine learning into ICD remote monitoring: risk assessment for sustained ventricular arrhythmia after an isolated non-sustained ventricular tachycardia alert. European Heart Journal, 46(Supplement_1). https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf784.663
Nieroda, M., Fenoglio, E., Smietanka, M., Kalogeropoulos, D., & Treleaven, P. (2025). Open Health Digital Research Platform: Federated Computing and Data Infrastructure for Multi-Partner Collaboration (Preprint). https://doi.org/10.2196/preprints.89685
Cui, C. C., Mrad, M., Solomon, M. R. & Nieroda, M. (2025). Decoding visual influence: how aesthetic, ergonomic, functional, and hedonic cues in casual smartwatch photos shape use intentions. Behaviour & Information Technology, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2025.2586225
Grace, B., Wise, L. A., Nieroda, M., Egbunike, J. & Usman, N. O. (2025). Digital health technologies to transform women’s health innovation and inclusive research. BMJ, 391, e085682. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2025-085682