Innovation Programme

What is it?

The Innovation Programme is an annual programme of educational and practical workshops that runs each academic year.  The Innovation Programme is a 4 part series of workshops and is open to all students, trainees and early career researchers. Participants are tasked with taking real problems in healthcare today and working in small, interdisciplinary teams to design novel solutions.  Participants will learn about the healthcare technology innovation cycle, how to concept develop, product design, market entry and how to translate new technology to improve healthcare for patients.

What’s involved?

The two hour workshops are ran on evenings fortnightly at the University of Leeds. The first workshop is a Hackathon, an event where different people meet to tackle a problem from different perspectives. Here you will be introduced to problems in healthcare known as unmet clinical needs. Then you will form teams with people from differing subjects and begin to brainstorm ideas and technologies to solve this problem. You will then progress through the programme over the following weeks remaining in your same teams.

Each of sessions 2-4 will be educational, where you will receive training from clinicians, scientists, engineers and industry experts on how to develop your novel technology.Each session will have a guest speaker to provide the theory and experience behind identifying healthcare needs, developing concepts and product design, followed by dedicated time to work within multidisciplinary teams to work on the solution!

At the end, each team will briefly present their idea in a pitch to experts from healthcare, engineering, physics, chemistry and industry. After the programme there will be opportunities to apply for summer internships to gain extra skills and experience in healthcare technology development.