Date: 29 October 2013
Source: Scottish Enterprise Press Centre

Now there’s even more opportunity for collaboration with healthcare innovators as Scotland’s Digital Health Institute launches.

Innovative efforts to use technology to improve healthcare have been given a big boost with the opening of the new Digital Health Institute in Edinburgh.

With £11 million of funding from the Scottish Funding Council, it’s going to be the focus for collaboration between leading health and care operators and technology businesses across Europe, the United States and Asia.

The Institute’s role is to speed up research and development to produce innovative new technologies that will transform the quality of people’s lives, all with an eye on helping Scotland become an exporter of world-leading healthcare products and services.

With Scotland’s market for digital heath and care estimated to grow to between £0.5 and 1 billion over the next 5 to 10 years, and the Europe-wide market to as much as £70 billion over the same timeline, the ambition for this project is to help businesses based in Scotland to access at least 10% of this Europe-wide market. Not an inconsiderable sum.

The Institute and its partners will offer facilities to develop and test new ideas, plenty of opportunities for collaboration, and support to bring products to market.

At the launch, attended by representatives from Samsung Electronics, IBM, Philips, Deutsch Telekom Celesio, Continua Health Alliance and Lockheed Martin, Professor George Crooks, Chairman of the Digital Health Institute and Medical Director, NHS 24 said: “We already have a number of exciting projects underway and we will see the number increase further now that we are officially open for business.”

Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise are supporting the development of the DHI, as well as Scotland’s other innovation centres.

Background information on DHI is available from http://www.dhi-scotland.com