Lead organisers: SULSA and SINAPSE and KTN (Health)

Contributors: SRPe, SICSA, ScotCHEM, SUPA, DHI, CENSIS, PMS-IC

The first workshop falling under the SULSA theme Health and Wellbeing took place in May 2021 and focused on Our Future Health in Scotland. The focus was on two key areas within the Health Tech sector: management of existing long-term conditions, and early detection of disease.

These are areas that contain opportunities to address the clinical backlog that has been impacted by COVID-19. The Scottish Government’s inward investment plan has highlighted Health Tech as a key area, this workshop acted as a scoping exercise to gather input on the specific challenges within this area as well as on further priority areas to address for Our Future Health in Scotland. Speakers included:

• Andrew Fowlie, Lead for Health, Social Care & Industrial Innovation, Scottish Government
• Richard Hebdon, Interim Deputy Director for Health & Life Sciences, Innovate UK
• Dr Poonam Malik, Entrepreneurial Academic Business Strategy Leader
• Dr Tom MacGillivray, Senior Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh
• Professor Francis Mair, Norie Miller Professor of General Practice, University of Glasgow
• Professor Roderick Murray-Smith, Professor of Computing Science, University of Glasgow
• Russell Overend, Managing Director, Wide Blue
• Dr Debbie Wake, CEO and Chief Medical Officer, MyWay Digital Health

You can register your interest for future events under this theme. 

To complement this workshop, we gathered case studies from researchers across Scotland and created a Case Study Brochure. Some of these were presented via short video at the workshop and you can view these in the ‘Case Study Presentations’ tab below.

READ NOW

• Since this workshop SULSA have commissioned two articles to be published in the Scotsman Digital Contents series in the lead up to the Scotsman Life Sciences Scotland Conference. The first article is now available to read. 
• SULSA, with partners IBioIC and Skills Development Scotland, are organising a panel discussion “Realising the digital potential with skills and training” within the conference in December 2021. 
• SULSA, in collaboration with Research Innovation Scotland members, will be running an innovation funding call in 2022 around healthcare technologies, to find out when it opens please register your interest in the ‘workshop one’ dropdown.

This is what Dr Stuart Fancey, Director of Research and Innovation at the Scottish Funding Council, had to say about the workshop in a recent article in Holyrood:

“What the delegates had to say about collaboration was informed by experiences and insights gained during the pandemic. They wanted the future to be based on transdisciplinary partnerships – beyond the interdisciplinary approaches of the past to one where disciplines combine to form a new force for discovery. And, they wanted these partnerships to include data scientists, social scientists, health economists and NHS procurement teams as well as biologists, clinicians and the pharmaceutical industry. That creative thinking chimes with the SFC review.”

Register your interest for future events being run under this theme.