11 July 2019

King’s College London, in partnership with Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, has today been awarded £16m UKRPIF funding to establish The London Institute for Healthcare Engineering.

This opportunity was generated through major co-investment of over £32m from Wellcome and industry partners including Siemens Healthineers, Medtronic, NVIDIA and IBM, as well as £15m contribution from King’s towards the construction of the new building.

The London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, part of the vision for St Thomas’ MedTech Hub, is a joint initiative led by King’s School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It will involve the construction of a new building embedded within St Thomas’ campus which will bring together King’s research excellence, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust’s leading clinical practice and the medtech sector’s commercial innovation power and talent, engaging multinationals, SMEs and start-ups simultaneously. The close collaboration will ensure that research in healthcare engineering is translated rapidly into new products and technologies that will benefit patients.

The Institute’s initial focus will be on key clinical challenges in cancer, neurological, cardiovascular, ophthalmology, oral health and prenatal conditions, which have been selected for their high disease burden and potential for transformation through healthcare engineering.

Professor Sebastien Ourselin, Head of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences at King’s said:

We need to pioneer approaches that will advance the implementation of new medical technology into the patient care pathway while enhancing the standard of care. The London Institute for Healthcare Engineering will address these aspects by physically embedding staff from multiple sectors to create an ecosystem to accelerate end-to-end translation of novel healthcare technologies.

Dr Ian Abbs, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Chief Executive, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said:

Advances in healthcare engineering have opened enormous opportunities for transformative advances in healthcare, yet closer collaboration is needed to deliver innovation to patients in a more efficient manner. We welcome the development of The London Institute for Healthcare Engineering as an integral part of St Thomas’ MedTech Hub and we strongly support the co-location model it champions.

The funding received by The London Institute for Healthcare Engineering is part of the Round 6 of UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF), which today announced major financing of 11 research and innovation projects.