King’s College London has been awarded £1.5 million in funding from Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund, to develop “the UK’s first” MedTech accelerator programme. The programme, led by Professor Sebastien Ourselin, head of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, will look to “translate medical devices (MedTech) to commercial success and clinical impact”.
The Collaborative Centre of Excellence for Healthcare Technology Commercial Translation (CCoE) will be based at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering (LIHE), and will work in partnership with Queen Mary University London, City University of London and St George’s University of London.
Applicants including MedTech startups from both the UK and abroad will be able to access “hands-on executive support” from King’s specialists in healthcare, entrepreneurship and innovation, to “create a seamless pipeline of novel healthcare technologies for commercial and clinical success”.
Professor Panicos Kyriacou, director of the Research Centre for Biomedical Engineering at City, University of London, commented: “Technological innovation lies at the heart of academia; however, commercial translation of such innovations has traditionally been poor, particularly in the healthcare sector. The creation of the centre will mitigate the current barriers research faces and enable transformative healthcare technologies to reach from “bench to bedside”.
Dr Nicolas Huber, director of the Commercial Operations and Partnerships of the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, added: “LIHE’s mission is to become an evergreen pipeline of medical device innovation to transform the health and care of patients.”
In MedTech news, the Department of Health and Social Care published its medical technology strategy in February of this year.
In other news from King’s, the institution has also recently launched a new research project which seeks to explore the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence enabled health, with a central focus on how “ethical principles can be integrated to improve the sustainability” of digital health systems.
In innovation, Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network has opened its latest accelerator to support innovators with digital and patient solutions spread nationally.
