The Health Technology Implementation Chair focuses on:
- Connecting technologies developed at the UT with the needs in clinical practise.
- Bridging the 'valley of death' by research focussing on optimizing (commercial) translation, implementation and application of research output.
- R&D new devices for diagnostics and treatment.
- Development of validation facilities and testing of medical technologies.
Researchers at the UT are continuously working to advance the knowledge. In the TechMed domain implementation of this knowledge may be clinically and/or commercially oriented. Implementation of knowledge is essential to have impact on society. However, clinical and/or commercial implementation of technology is highly challenging for most TechMed projects executed at the UT.
The technology push towards the clinic needs to be guided well to promote clinical acceptance. The medical specialists are rather conservative and need to learn to appreciate the potentials of new technologies. On the other hand, technology can be problem driven coming from the clinical practice. There are opportunities for researchers at the UT by developing technologies to solve problems in the clinic.
New technologies/solutions proven (pre-)clinically successful can be commercialized. However, on this route the ‘valley of death’ needs to be crossed which is a metaphor to signify the many potential obstructions (regulation, funding, clinical studies, marketing etc.) on the road toward of commercialization or utilization of the developed knowledge.
ACTIVITIES OF THE HTI CHAIR
Developing tools to create awareness of the research community at early stages of projects on how to optimize commercial and/or clinical implementation and exploitation of their developed knowledge.
- Interaction with researchers to exchange essential information regulatory aspects, guidelines, safety aspects, testing requirements, preparing clinical studies with ethics approval and facilities, etc.
- Promoting cooperation with medical specialists to become aware of their needs/problems in the clinical practice.
- Develop methods about optimizing relationships of technology push from the UT and the demands from the market and society (market pull). This concerns national and international market analyses and searches for matches with the technologies produced by researchers and vice-versa.
- Promoting early stage cooperation with the leading MedTech companies and especially with the smaller SMA companies with specific knowledge.
- Coaching researchers to optimize investment opportunities. Typically, projects end at the university at Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) of 3-4. In order to enhance societal and commercial impact of the research at the UT it would be of great importance to advance these levels to 6-7. Strategies are required to improve success rates of research implementation in general and the establishment of spin-off activities from the UT research community.
Location and facilities in TechMed Centre
The HTI chair is located in the TechMed Centre with various complementary groups with a primary and complementary translational health focus. The TechMed Centre has experimental facilities, (simulated) pre-clinical testbeds (such as a Hybrid OR, medical imaging equipment, ICU and a simulated living environment) that available for the chairs activities.
There is a strong collaboration with multiple research groups that are part of the Technical Medical Centre, e.g. BioMedical Photonic Imaging group (BMPI ), Multi-Modality Medical Imaging group (M3I), Magnetic Detection & Imaging group (MDI), Biomedical Engineering (BME), Robotics and Mechatronics (RAM), Medical Physiology, domain Imaging & Diagnostics.
Simulation and Training Centre