What is CDHT?
As part of the Belfast Region City Deal, a £42m high visibility and quality Centre for Digital Healthcare Technology (“CDHT”) and associated living labs in the areas of cardiology, diabetes, respiratory and stroke is being scaled-up.
The vision underpinning CDHT is to help establish the Belfast City Region as one of the best places in the world to design, develop and launch innovative medical devices and diagnostics measurably contributing to economic growth and productivity, reduced healthcare costs, enhanced levels of care and improved patient outcomes.
It seeks to achieve this through the development of a collaborative innovation ecosystem that enables clinicians, industry and researchers to work on mutually beneficial projects, driving development in medical technology by innovation and co-ideation, through the process of design, trialling and manufacture, to the market, and hence the patient.
For the first time CDHT will bring together internationally leading Computing-SERG (AI to IOT), Engineering-NIBEC (Health Tech. to Connected Health) and Biotechnology strengths (Molecular Diagnostics), as well as local hospitals and industry, leading to impactful multidisciplinary research focused on many of the world’s key challenges including rising healthcare costs and healthy ageing.
CDHT acts as a facilitator, innovation and knowledge broker and a stimulus for ABC multidisciplinary clusters via collaborative partnerships that address clinical and healthcare challenges with world-class research & development, discovery and knowledge exchange through skills development, living-labs, co-ideation, enhanced facilities and highly efficient productivity pathways to create a 10X economy.
The Project
CDHT is an innovation focussed, industry-facing project, developed in response to the identified strategic needs of the digital healthcare technology sector, which is projected to grow significantly transforming healthcare and delivery systems.
The Concept
The concept for CDHT has been developed with extensive industry engagement and consultation with key stakeholders and partners, including clinicians and researchers, with the primary components including:
- Purpose-built CDHT facility (c.3,800m2) in Belfast City Centre, adjacent to UU’s new expanded Belfast campus, to include:
- Shared space in which industry and researchers can co-locate
- State-of-the-art research equipment and innovation facilities
- Dedicated staff to accelerate innovation and facilitate collaborative R&D
- Community Care Living Laboratory - CCLL allowing innovators to test and iterate their products in a range of community care-based settings
Dedicated Clinical Innovation Living Lab
Dedicated Clinical Innovation Living Lab - CLL facilities based within various clinical settings within the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, these living labs will include:
- Enhanced access to clinicians to validate and generate innovative ideas for products and services
- Access to a range of advanced clinical equipment which is dedicated to research and development projects
- Assistance with the development of and running small scale clinical trials with various patient cohorts
CDHT Ecosystem
The CDHT ecosystem which is a one stop shop to world class innovation focussed cluster open to collaboration which can help to:
- Provide access to collaborate R&D projects in focussed on digital health
- Share business intelligence and provide a soft landing for potential foreign direct investments into the region
- Allow for enhanced networking opportunities for your organisation with academia, industry, clinicians, government agencies and patient cohorts
Project Objectives
The CHDT project has many stakeholders and aims to meet the many and varied aims of all partners involved. The aims of the project are many however they can be summarised by 6 objectives that it aims to deliver to the benefit of the digital healthcare technologies sector in Northern Ireland and globally.
Objective 1: To stimulate and facilitate collaborative innovation by strategically/ operationally clustering, thus supporting researchers, government, industry and clinicians to address real-life patient needs and support economic growth.
Objective 2: To implement an ecosystem of support that delivers an optimally efficient and effective digital health technology commercialisation pathway encompassing ideation, UX testing, prototyping, product development and product testing through to new product launch.
Objective 3: To support the growth, in productivity and scale, of the Digital Health Technology sector in NI and provide a favourable environment for FDI.
Objective 4: To deliver additional world class, internationally recognised research and innovation that is at the forefront of the digital health technology sector to position Belfast as a globally recognised research centre of excellence. Break down silos.
Objective 5: To support skills development and build capability to meet the future needs of the sector.
Objective 6: To develop both a financially and environmentally sustainable operation and facilities.