The Surgical MIC has just launched its PPE Challenge to protect front line workers from COVID-19 and keep health services functioning.
Surgery and other interventional procedures generate aerosols that put health care workers at particular risk from COVID-19 infection. Viral particles liberated from infected patients are circulated by positive pressure ventilation systems producing a “viral storm”, with particles remaining viable on surfaces for several days. Operations involving laparoscopic surgery, endoscopy, power tools etc. put healthcare workers at particular risk.
Lessons from China and other European countries have taught us that current standards of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) do not provide adequate protection from the aerosol transmission. Full body Hazmat suits are the only real protection but these are not routinely available.
There is an urgent need to understand the challenges faced by healthcare workers in protecting themselves against aerosol contamination. Only by adequately protecting front line staff will the health service continue to function.
The Surgical MIC is asking our community to respond to the Surgical MedTech Co-operative “PPE Challenge” to help understand what the real day-to-day challenges are for front line healthcare workers in maintaining PPE, and also to generate simple, effective solutions that might be rapidly scaled up.
Examples might include impractical “doffing and donning techniques”, communication difficulties when wearing PPE, modified snorkel face masks etc.
They have a team of clinicians and academics on standby to receive your challenges and solutions. Once they receive your entries, this team will prioritise those challenges and solutions in an effort to get them to the frontline during this pandemic.
They will be updating their website with the challenges they receive. If you work within the NHS and would like to lead on any of the ideas presented, then please contact them by emailing surgicalmic@leeds.ac.uk.
We know that the ongoing situation regarding COVID-19 is having a significant impact on the medtech community.
We want to reassure you that we are working hard to understand the challenges of this changing landscape, and that we will continue to provide you with innovation support as safely and effectively as possible. Our work on this matter is already in motion, and we will provide regular updates as the situation evolves.
Please see below for more specific updates on activities and previously advertised opportunities:
We are fully committed to continual support for our ongoing projects. We are aware that given current circumstances, research across our partner universities is being halted, and clinical and industry partners may be prioritising other activities in the short term. This, in turn, could have a knock-on effect on Grow MedTech-funded projects.
We urge all project teams to maintain contact with your Technology Innovation Manager, who can be reached using the contact information listed on their website profiles. In the first instance, inform them of the impacts that the current situation may have on your projects, if any, and the implications.
Your Technology Innovation Manager can aid you in identifying work packages that may be more suitable for remote working and can help you update and amend the agreed project plans accordingly.
We can grant short no-cost extensions until March 2021 for projects that are currently underway. If this is an option that you’re considering, inform your Technology Innovation Manager as soon as possible.
Where no-cost extensions aren’t a viable option, inform your Technology Innovation Manager of your challenges so that they can work with you to determine the best way forward.
If you have received Proof of Feasibility or Proof of Concept project funding and your project has not started already, we suggest that you delay the start date, again informing your Technology Innovation Manager of your plans and any implications that this may cause.
We have made the difficult decision to pause all active Proof of Feasibility calls.
We understand that this will be a huge disappointment to those of you that have already spent time developing projects and drafting applications.
However, we recognise that many of you will be facing unknown delays as a result of lab closures and project partners will potentially, at least in the short term, be prioritising their focus elsewhere in response to the crisis.
We need to have an understanding of what is required for us to complete existing projects – and what will be possible to deliver – before confirming the start of new projects.
However, our Technology Innovation Managers are still on hand to work with you to understand your technology development and innovation needs and identify the right partners within our regions to help you build a successful collaboration for the future – click here to view their profiles and obtain their contact details.
We are continuing to run our Proof of Market funding call at present. If you are interested in applying, please contact a Technology Innovation Manager in the first instance to discuss further – click here to view their profiles and obtain their contact details.
Application forms will continue to be reviewed monthly and should be emailed to info@growmed.tech by 12 noon on the 15th of the month for review in that month’s review meeting.
Further details on the call can be found here.
The Translate MedTech secondment scheme is still going ahead, with the deadline for applications being extended until 12 noon, 3 April 2020.
We will be urging all awardees to follow government advice and only start their secondments when appropriate to do so. If you have any questions, queries or concerns, please get in touch with Mohua Siddique.
We are currently exploring whether all remaining courses can be delivered online after having successfully delivered our Business Case Planning and Pitching course this way.
You can still sign up for a place on any of the remaining courses via our events page, and anyone that has registered will be kept informed about their delivery.
We will continue to monitor and review our activities in these unprecedented times and will ensure to communicate any updates through our usual channels – please ensure you are signed up to our mailing list to get the most up-to-date information.
If you have any questions or concerns that aren’t covered by the above and relate to disruptions you’re experiencing while engaging with one of our services, please get in touch with us by emailing info@growmed.tech.
Over the past few weeks, Parliament has seen a surge in need of access to research expertise as it engages with the COVID-19 outbreak.
In this rapidly evolving situation, Parliament needs quick access to researchers who can provide expert insights relating to both Coronavirus and its impacts.
Parliament and Parliamentarians use these insights to help carry out their function effectively; that is to say, to represent the people, scrutinise the Government, debate important and pressing issues and pass legislation.
To speed up the process of Parliament accessing relevant research expertise, Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit (KEU) are creating a COVID-19 Outbreak Expert Database.
If you feel you have any expertise relating to the COVID-19 outbreak or its impacts, the KEU would be very grateful if you would sign up to the database.
Signing up does not commit you to contribute in any way, it’s simply so that Parliament has your details to hand and can contact you very rapidly; if they contact you and you aren’t able to respond, they will fully understand.
Staff in Parliament have identified a number of areas where Parliament may need to be able to access research expertise, listed below, and found on the sign-up page. If you identify an area that has not been listed, please do feel free to give detail on the sign-up form in ‘other’:
Request sent on behalf of Dr Sarah Foxen, Knowledge Exchange Lead, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.
UKRI has just published its mid-programme review of all projects funded by its Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) Programme, including Grow MedTech, to inform the case for the continued funding.
The CCF Programme is a £100 million Government-funded initiative to encourage collaboration between universities in their research commercialisation activities. The programme has funded 18 innovative projects, each involving at least three Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in England, and is administered by Research England (RE).
At the core of all the projects are schemes aimed at increasing the commercial readiness of HEI or industry ideas. The eventual aim is to produce successful products or services which are available in the marketplace and/or to spin-out successful companies, but this may only occur after the end of the projects.
More broadly, the goals of the CCF programme are to strengthen the contribution of English HEIs to productivity and economic growth, and to deliver on the objectives of the Government’s Industrial Strategy by supporting the effective use of the university knowledge base to deliver commercial and business applications and wider applications for the economy and society.
The report found strong support across the board for a continuation of the CCF programme, and concluded that there are already positive benefits coming from the scheme with more expected to come.
The report goes on to state that further value could also be gained by extending the scheme to some other HEIs that are not yet participants, through funding new schemes and/or through supporting some of the existing schemes to expand their membership.
To read the full report, which can be downloaded for offline review, click here.
Translate MedTech’s Secondment Scheme is designed to develop the innovation skills and translational capability of medical technology researchers in the Leeds City Region. This blog is part of a series that showcases the impact that secondments have had on medtech research, as recounted from the secondee’s perspective.
Due to the success of the scheme, it is being run again in 2020. To find out how to apply for Translate secondment funding for your medtech research, click here.
Name: Dr Amber Gislason-Lee
Host organisation during the secondment: Guys and St Thomas' Trust
(London) and UZ Leuven (Belgium)
My name is Dr Amber Gislason-Lee and I teach medical imaging science and technology to radiography students at the University of Bradford’s School of Allied Health Professionals.
My background is in medical physics, which puts me in a unique position to teach this topic and to contribute to research in medical imaging.
I previously worked under the mentorship of Arnold Cowen, who designed the original Leeds Test Objects before they were bought by a commercial company outside of Leeds.
One area of research which I have many years of experience in is interventional X-ray imaging. For that reason, I am on a working group for the Institute of Physicists and Engineers in Medicine (IPEM) to write a quality assurance (QA) guidance document for medical physicists testing interventional X-ray systems.
This guidance document has been challenging for the group to write, one of the main reasons being a lack of X-ray test object to mimic the motion of a human heart, to check for temporal and spatial resolution of the X-ray system at hand.
These aspects of image quality allow for better accuracy in treating patients via angioplasty, radiofrequency ablation and other life-saving interventional cardiovascular procedures. Since joining the University of Bradford last year I have discovered the collaborative potential between radiography and engineering and reached out to some engineering colleagues to discuss potential projects to address ongoing X-ray research problems to be solved.
One of the results of these was a collaborative relationship with Peter Twigg from Engineering. After a successful application for medtech funding to support a summer student engineering project, we had a prototype X-ray test object which addressed the needs brought to light by the IPEM group.
Although I found the prototype seemed potentially useful and affordable for hospital physics departments, I needed to run it by my colleagues who have more day-to-day testing experience than me. I am an academic involved with teaching and research in medical physics and they are hospital physicists doing routine testing and troubleshooting, so there is a big difference between these roles.
Given their busy schedules we made arrangements for a short meeting at the end of the workday (in hopes the patients would be finished with the X-ray machines) – only a few hours long. This secondment allowed for the funding of travel to these meetings.
There are two key medical physics experts whom I sought to visit for this secondment, to bring the test object prototype to them in person, show them how it works and potentially view it under X-rays should an interventional X-ray system be available for use.
Ian Honey works as a hospital physicist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust in London, UK. Nick Marshall, formerly of St Barts Hospital, London, works at UZ Leuven in Belgium and is now an active member of the European medical physics community.
Both these experts have written IPEM QA guide books previously, and both have expressed their desire for a test object such as the one designed at Bradford. I should clarify that during my previous conversations with these experts they communicated what was required of the test object, however, they did not have any specific ideas for its design and how it would achieve its goals.
The design by Peter Twigg is very unusual, different than any of the Leeds Test Object designs that physicists around the world are accustomed to using. For this reason, I did not provide any details about the test object prior to arriving on-site and opening the box. I only divulged its uniqueness.
In London, Ian had 2 colleagues with him as well as a (dated) X-ray system to use for testing. The comments were very positive from all 3 physicists, generally foreseeing the test object as a troubleshooting tool for situations where clinical X-ray systems have had temporal blur issues reported. We spent a few hours testing the object using a range of clinically relevant experimental setups, and I captured both stills and videos on my phone (see attached).
We all enjoyed ourselves and it made me proud to bring our design form the North to such a prestigious London hospital. Ian and Nick are very different from each other, though both very honest – so although I was very excited about the positive response from Ian I was very keen to see what Nick had to say before I let my excitement take off!
After my first meeting, I learned that it’s always worth ‘having a go’ at making something if you have the right people to do it! I was nervous about showing the test object to Ian, but it was well-reviewed. This is something I had never done before and it required a certain level of confidence in my own level of expertise in my subject area.
Nick, for very different reasons than Ian, also supported the test object design and could see its usefulness should some further testing be done on a modern interventional X-ray system. He offered to do these tests at his site in Belgium in the coming months.
Nick is one of a handful of medical physicists in the world who have access to unprocessed X-ray image data from an imaging system manufacturer, and this is a necessity for test object testing/validating. Even if Nick hadn’t liked it at all that would have been useful information to determine our next steps with the prototype – but what a fantastic result!
My next step is to meet with Peter and determine what our next steps should be to complete the design with the intent of turning the prototype into a commercially available product for medical physicists to purchase for use at their hospitals.
We also plan to show the test object to the entire interventional X-ray physics community at a national meeting on 1st May. The organiser of the meeting has put aside a time for Peter to bring the test object to the meeting in the hopes of receiving more detailed feedback from its potential users to feed into specific aspects of its final design.
There are 2 reasons why I really appreciate this secondment:
I would recommend this experience to anyone in a similar position – go for it!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you could benefit from support while progressing a medical technology towards commercialisation, or if you want to develop innovation skills then consider applying for a Translate MedTech secondment.
Our latest call is open to applications, and further detail can be found on our website here. You can also contact Mohua Siddique with any questions you might have about the scheme.
A Grow MedTech-funded partnership between University of York academic Prof Roddy Vann, and industry-partner Sylatech is developing a new technology capable of capturing 3D imaging of burns.
This will result in more comprehensive mapping of burn severity, more targeted treatments, and reduced healing times and scarring.
Over 13,000 people in the UK are referred to specialist burn units each year; 50% of which are admitted for ongoing treatment.
Burns can be a complex injury to treat since their severity is determined by the area and depth of the injury, which can continue to develop over the first 72 hours after injury, and vary widely across the wound.
Accurate, rapid and repeated assessment of a burn injury is crucial for choosing an effective treatment course for the best patient outcomes.
Currently, a procedure called Laser Doppler Imaging (LDI), which measures blood flow in the wound, is considered best practice for assessing burns, but a major limitation of LDI is that it can only provide an accurate assessment after a burn has stabilised.
Cost and usability issues can restrict the use of LDI and so in many cases, a visual inspection of burns, where healthcare professionals rely solely on their own experience to assess the severity of the burn and decide the best treatment, is carried out instead.
A team led by Professor Roddy Vann, in the York Plasma Institute at the University of York, is currently working on a prototype device that is capable of producing accurate 3D images of burns by measuring microwaves naturally emitted by the body.
If successful, this device could greatly advance research into burn progression through direct imaging of the damaged area.
Microwave imaging of burns has been considered in scientific literature since the 1970s but technical challenges have so far limited its translation into the clinic.
The device being developed is innovative in that it combines recent advances in the design of antennas and ultra-fast data acquisition with the potential to make microwave medical imaging both technically and commercially viable.
Scientists from industry partner, Sylatech, are co-inventors of the technology, working alongside Grow MedTech and the York team to commercialise the technology.
Working closely with industry from an early stage is always important and the link with Sylatech is particularly strong, having grown from its early days as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership.
The partnership has been dedicated to creating an impactful technology for end-users, having brought in clinicians from specialist burns centres at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield – as well as Patient and Public Involvement groups – to guide their work.
This works to significantly de-risk the technology in the eyes of future investors, and accelerate it towards commercialisation and clinical adoption.
Their most recent Grow MedTech-funded project is allowing them to develop the mathematics and software components required for a portable prototype.
Proof of Feasibility funding of up to £20,000 is currently available to support 6-month, industry-led medtech innovation projects.
This funding is available to support early-stage feasibility and de-risking of technologies through:
The focus of the funding should be used to accelerate technologies towards commercialisation or clinical adoption and assisting in the attraction of follow on or external funding.
Successful applicants will receive the support of our six Grow MedTech Technology Innovation Managers who will work with you to understand your technology development and innovation needs and connect you with the academic expertise at our university partners that you need to move your technology forward.
Translate MedTech’s Secondment Scheme is designed to develop the innovation skills and translational capability of medical technology researchers in the Leeds City Region. This article is part of a series that showcases the impact that secondments have had on medtech research, as recounted from the secondee’s perspective.
Due to the success of the scheme, it is being run again in 2020. To find out how to apply for Translate secondment funding for your medtech research, click here.
Name: Patrick Lawson-Statham
Host organisation during the secondment: Versus Arthritis
Patrick Lawson-Statham is two years into his PhD research, looking at using decellularized tissue from pigs to regenerate a patient’s own cartilage following damage caused by osteoarthritis.
Through Translate MedTech, Patrick secured a 12-week secondment to Versus Arthritis, a national charity committed to improving the lives of people living with arthritis. Here’s what he had to say about the opportunity:
“I heard about the secondment opportunity in the Research Liaison and Evaluation team at Versus Arthritis during a staff meeting and thought it sounded really interesting.
After discussing it with my supervisor, Dr Hazel Fermor, I arranged to talk to Mohua Siddique, Translate MedTech’s Innovation Development Officer. She was brilliant, helping me put a strong application together.
I had an interview at Versus Arthritis, and shortly after, Mohua let me know I’d been successful. It was a very easy, smooth process.
The secondment allowed me to spend two days per week, with travel expenses, at the charity’s Chesterfield offices. I also visited the London office and had to travel up and down the UK a fair bit too.
The Research Liaison and Evaluation team has a wide variety of functions, including liaising with Versus Arthritis-funded researchers across the UK and providing research information to other teams across the charity, such as communications and fundraising.
Day to day, my role covered collecting, collating, translating and sharing information and data about funded research to whoever needed it, both internally and externally.
I was also tasked with producing a booklet to encourage and guide researchers through the basics of incorporating Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) into their research. PPI is a key requirement of all research funded by the charity.
This was a really interesting and valuable project. I gained experience and managed activities that I’d never done before – interviewing patients, writing case studies, organising photography, liaising with graphic designers to structure the content and layout.
I’ve really enjoyed seeing how the booklet developed; in fact, while my secondment officially finished in July, I’m going to stay involved as it’s so close to being printed and I really want to see it completed!
Having learned so much about the benefits of PPI, I realised that my own research lacked a PPI element, and have already taken steps to address that.
I’ve spoken to a colleague at the university and we’re getting the ball rolling on involving a patient in my research. It’s definitely something that I’ll carry forward in my research career.
Before the secondment, everything I did was purely research-focused and in the laboratory. The secondment has given me a wider perspective of research and an appreciation of how the skills I have can be applied in my future career.
I’ve translated research into lay language, run focus groups, worked with patients and delivered presentations, so it’s helped me communicate my research to non-scientific audiences much better.
I also learned a great deal about the grant application, evaluation and approval process at Versus Arthritis. Gaining insight from a funder’s perspective, together with my greater understanding of the importance of PPI, will definitely help me to strengthen future grant applications.
Overall, it’s been a fantastic and highly beneficial experience. I’m extremely grateful to Translate for enabling this opportunity to develop both personally and professionally. If another secondment opportunity arose, I’d jump at the chance.
On the secondment, Dr Katherine Free, Research Engagement Manager at Versus Arthritis, said: “We find the secondments extremely enjoyable and valuable and they give researchers an idea of other career choices beyond academia and industry.
Patrick was a joy to work with and he made the booklet project his own, bringing some really creative ideas and improvements to the table.
The end result will be a valuable resource for many researchers around the UK, and make the research we fund more relevant to the ultimate beneficiary – people with arthritis.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you could benefit from support while progressing a medical technology towards commercialisation, or if you want to develop innovation skills then consider applying for a Translate MedTech secondment.
Our latest call is open to applications, and further detail can be found on our website here. You can also contact Mohua Siddique with any questions you might have about the scheme.
Translate MedTech’s Secondment Scheme is designed to develop the innovation skills and translational capability of medical technology researchers in the Leeds City Region. This article is part of a series that showcases the impact that secondments have had on medtech research, as recounted from the secondee’s perspective.
Due to the success of the scheme, it is being run again in 2020. To find out how to apply for Translate secondment funding for your medtech research, click here.
Name: Dr Ruth Evans
Host organisation during the secondment: S-Med
Dr Ruth Evans is a Postdoctoral researcher at Sheffield Hallam University, where she’s working with Reza Saatchi, Professor of Electronics (Medical Engineering), to develop a non-contact thermal imaging device to help diagnose sleep disorders in children.
Ruth has been awarded £1800 by Translate MedTech for a 3-month part-time secondment with S-Med, the UK’s leading supplier of specialised sleep diagnostic systems and services.
We had a chat with Ruth about the technology being supported, and what her secondment will help her achieve.
What clinical need does this new technology address?
Investigating sleep-disordered breathing such as sleep apnoea in young children is particularly difficult because they naturally want to pull off the sensors placed on them which measure things like blood oxygen levels, respiration and heart rates.
We’re developing a non-contact sensor using a thermal camera which can measure respiration by looking at temperature changes around the nose and mouth.
When you breathe in the colder room temperature air, it minutely affects the skin temperature around this area, and when you breathe out the air around this area is warmer. It’s a really clever solution.
Is your background in medical devices?
No, my PhD was in Physics and Astronomy and I was working with infrared data using a thermal camera to look at galaxies!
I wanted to apply my skills to something that was more immediately useful and my skill set matched with those Professor Saatchi needed to analyse and interpret his data.
It sounds bizarre, but the technical side, the signal processing and data analysis, is the same – it’s just the subject matter that’s different.
How did the secondment opportunity arise?
Coming from a Physics and Astronomy background to medical devices, I’ve been on a steep learning curve. I attended several Translate training courses earlier this year and learned about the secondment scheme via their newsletter.
I realised that this would be a valuable opportunity to gain insight into industrial processes and the regulatory side of medical device development.
Professor Saatchi has a long-standing relationship with S-med, which helps develop and distribute the devices that are currently used to measure heart rate and respiration rate in hospitals.
They’ve already supported several of my grant applications and immediately saw the benefit of a fully-funded secondment.
The Translate MedTech team helped with feedback to strengthen my application and I heard back really quickly that I’d been successful.
What do you hope to gain from the secondment?
It’s an incredible opportunity to gain a much deeper understanding and experience of what industrial partners need from us to be able to bring a new device to market.
The secondment will enable me to visit S-Med’s partner company, SOMNOmedics, whose production plant is in Germany.
I’ll learn about the software that they’re currently using and work with the team there to find a way to incorporate the imaging software that I’m developing into the devices that they produce. I’ll also learn more about medical device regulations that govern new product development.
I hadn’t considered doing a secondment before I saw the Translate opportunity and I haven’t even seen any other organisations offering grants for secondments.
Without Translate, I don’t think I’d have had the opportunity or found funding to do something like this. I can’t wait to start.
Finally, we had the opportunity to speak with Selwyn Sher, Managing Director of S-med, to discuss his views on hosting an academic secondment.
“We’re always looking for unique, innovative technologies to retain our competitive advantage and collaborating with researchers like Ruth and her colleagues at the university, has clear benefits for all parties.
We’ve worked with plenty of universities and hospitals where they’ve used our equipment and technology for their research projects, but this is the first time we’ve worked this way round – using university expertise to help us design and develop a new product. Ruth’s expertise is perfect for assisting with this and the secondment will be instrumental in enabling this work.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you could benefit from support while progressing a medical technology towards commercialisation, or if you want to develop innovation skills then consider applying for a Translate MedTech secondment.
Our latest call is open to applications, and further detail can be found on our website here. You can also contact Mohua Siddique with any questions you might have about the scheme.
We have made the difficult decision to pause all active calls.
We understand that this will be a huge disappointment to those of you that have already spent time developing projects and drafting applications. However, we recognise that many of you will be facing unknown delays as a result of lab closures and project partners will potentially, at least in the short term, be prioritising their focus elsewhere in response to the crisis.
We need to have an understanding of what is required for us to complete existing projects – and what will be possible to deliver – before confirming the start of new projects.
However, our Technology Innovation Managers are still on hand to work with you to understand your technology development and innovation needs and identify the right partners within our regions to help you build a successful collaboration for the future – click here to view their profiles and obtain their contact details.
Our Industry-led Proof of Feasibility call is a new package of support available for small and medium-sized enterprises to develop new medical technologies by connecting to academic capability within our partner universities.
We can help businesses to access the specialist expertise needed by teaming up with the relevant Grow MedTech researchers to de-risk and advance the development of new medical technologies in order to build confidence for further investment.
Proof of Feasibility awards of up to £20,000 for a maximum duration of 6 months are available to support industry-led medtech innovation projects, which fit with the scope of the award, and where proof of market and the clinical need have already been established.
Our Technology Innovation Managers can work with you to understand your technology development and innovation needs and identify the right capability within our partner universities to help you build a successful collaboration. We can help you connect with the academic expertise you need to move your technology forward.
*30% micro and small companies, 40% medium companies of the total project costs (in-kind and direct cash paid to the university partner).
Grow MedTech supports the development of medical devices, including materials and software, but does not support the development and discovery of pharmaceuticals.
All applications should have a strong emphasis on patient benefit with plans for patient and public involvement and strong clinical engagement is encouraged.
This call does not directly fund industry/commercial organisations.
Click here for full call guidance, scope and eligibility. Application forms can be provided by and should be co-developed with a Grow MedTech Technology Innovation Manager – click here to view their profiles and obtain their contact details.
Are you a patient, a family member or carer of a patient, or a person living with a long term condition? Are you interested in supporting the development of new medical technologies? Do you want to help steer innovation?
If so we are offering a range of opportunities to get involved with Grow MedTech.
Patient and public involvement (PPI) is an essential part of Grow MedTech’s community culture – something we value, advocate and practice.
We want to see users involved at every stage of the innovation journey; identifying needs, providing high-level insight, making decisions on the projects we fund and helping to steer technology development projects.
We are seeking PPI representatives to be involved in the following Grow MedTech activities:
Full information about each opportunity, role responsibilities, commitment requirements, essential and desirable criteria, how to apply and support available can be found in our opportunity brief document.
To be considered for the different Grow MedTech patient and public involvement activities please complete an application form, selecting which aspects are of interest to you.
If you need any more information or if you have any questions about getting involved with Grow MedTech, please contact us.
Our Opportunity Management Panel is where we make a decision on what projects we fund. The panel is made up of university representatives, external specialists and end-users.
Role Responsibilities:
To be considered for our Opportunity Management Panel, please download and complete an application form.
To be considered for our next Opportunity Management Panel on Thursday 26 March 2020, please email completed application forms to info@growmed.tech by Monday 2 March 2020 or post to Sara Liptrot, x101 Medical and Biological Engineering, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT.
Our Strategic Advisory Board provides insight, advice, and guidance on the direction and future development of Grow MedTech. The Board is formed of stakeholders and leaders in medical technologies innovation, all of whom bring a breadth of perspectives that guide our programme.
Collectively, the Board is asked to:
Role Responsibilities:
To be considered for our Strategic Advisory Panel, please download and complete an application form.
To be a representative at our next Advisory Board meeting in early summer 2020 (date TBC) please apply by 30 April 2020.
Our ambition is to develop medical technologies that are aligned to end-user needs by involving patients and people with long-term conditions at every stage of their development.
This ensures our project teams are accountable to those who will ultimately benefit from the technology they are developing, resulting in a better product.
To support this, we want to build a diverse and inclusive group of PPI members that can be invited to be involved in PPI activities on individual technology development projects.
We are also planning a series of unmet need workshops in collaboration with our partner programme Translate MedTech, which we would like to invite relevant members of the Grow MedTech PPI group to attend.
Role Responsibilities:
To apply to join our wider PPI group, please download and complete an application form.
Completed application forms should be emailed to info@growmed.tech, or post to Sara Liptrot, x101 Medical and Biological Engineering, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT.
Your details will then be stored on our secure database accessible by the Grow MedTech team only, and appropriate opportunities shared with you when they arise.
If at any time, you do not want to receive any information from Grow MedTech about involvement opportunities you can ask for your details to be removed.