Applications are now open for the first The Sir Peter Rigby Digital Futures Institute Interdisciplinary Ideation Workshop (IIW), to tackle the ‘Digital Health’ challenges, an important interdisciplinary priority area that cuts across several disciplines including STEM, medicine and health sciences, social sciences, humanities and business. The The Sir Peter Rigby Digital Futures Institute IIW is designed to convene interdisciplinary groups from across Aston University research groupings to develop high-quality interdisciplinary funding proposals.
This IIW focuses on the technological, medical, social, human, commercial, economic and application challenges of digital health, with particular attention given to the service quality provision, speed of operation and cost effectiveness of delivering health and social care to citizens and communities in modern societies.
With the exponential growth in the number of connected mobile devices worldwide (currently over 10.5 billion) and the forecasted increase in this number to over 27 billion by 2025, we are moving ever so closely to living digitally in all aspects of our life. Public health systems have been going through unprecedented pressures, more so than ever since the outbreak of the recent pandemic, both in terms of having to respond to the large service demand and the extremely overstretched resources that are required to deliver the healthcare services cost-effectively and within relatively short timeframes while also ensuring an optimal end-user’s experience.
Governments and public health authorities have put in place within the public health systems ‘digital transformation’ plans aimed at embracing advanced digital technologies such as AI and data analytics to streamline processes, automate mundane workflows, reduce operational inefficiencies and costs, assist health/social care professionals and increase the reliability and precision of the relevant service provision. However, huge challenges are being encountered along the way, both in terms of developing ‘bespoke’ solutions to existing problems and integrating these solutions within respective clinical pathways while ensuring the health/social care workforce is fully skilled to cope with this new paradigm shift. While this shift presents a suite of new challenges to the end-user, the health/social care professional communities, and the society at large, it also creates new opportunities for enhancing the quality of life of the world’s citizens and making effective use of public funds on a global stage.
The ‘Digital Health’ IIW workshop is open to all Aston University researchers, from any discipline, who can be named as investigators on external grant applications:
Digital health can be conceived of widely in terms of its aim to improve patient care through the use of digital technologies and platforms. Research and innovation projects may be developed around a wide variety of topics including but not limited to:
Expressions of interest are particularly welcome from early career academics but the workshop will attract and convene a balanced mix of research academics at different stages of their career experience. Proposals will be assessed based on the following criteria:
Expressions of interest to participate in this IIW workshop should provide the following details:
Expressions of interest should be submitted in PDF format to Ranjit Judge at r.k.judge1@aston.ac.uk no later than 17:00 hrs on Monday 29 July 2024.