Health Care Technologies: At the Heart of Technology and Medicine

Ireland is increasingly recognised as a global HUB for the Healthcare Industries and Irelands investment in R&D and its aspiration for its health service to become a leader positions it at the leading of clinical innovation and practice and translational research. GTI is a new addition to Ireland's excellent innovation infrastructure of 3rd Level Colleges Research Institutes and Industries.

GTI seeks to spur innovation and implementation of healthcare technologies in new processes, product and therapies for company's physicians and patients in corporate and clinical environments.

It aligns its objectives to the needs of Ireland's healthcare industries in medical technology pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical industries in emergent areas of technology convergence.

Strategic development services

GTI expands the new technology implementation capability of companies and hospitals by focusing on translational research (from Bench Top to Bed side) and executing around collaborative interactions between it and others on the Island and in the USA.

It serves to assist Irish researchers, research institutes and companies as a one-stop-shop in identifying market opportunities, developing strategic research and implementation strategies. It executes translational research projects to deliver new systems, processes and products.

In addition, GTI is establishing dedicated test bed initiatives that will offer new complimentary capability in emergent strategic research areas to Irish and State of Georgia industries seeking to exploit and develop new healthcare technologies. Allied to this is the possibility of being able to link clinical services through GTI to facilitating joint clinical research and trials between the state of Georgia and Ireland.

New Strategic test bed capability

Allied to these efforts GTI will be developing its portfolio of project proposals with selected Irish partners around new healthcare test beds. Initial focus has been on exploiting GTI's RFID and IPTV test beds and GTRI's international competence in these areas of technology (1). Also underway are advanced initiatives to build upon GTEC's and GTRI advanced capabilities in Cell and Tissue Engineering and Manufacturing systems integration and automation to create a new capability in Stem Cell Manufacturing (2). Finally linked to both is an initiative to develop in Georgia Tech Ireland a complimentary capability in combinatorial deign around GT's expertise in computational and empirical modelling of mechanical, fluidic, molecular and biological systems(3).

Tele-Healthcare Technologies (THT)

Coordinated: Building on RFID and IPTV test bed capabilities

Georgia Tech Ireland is building a Tele-Healthcare Technologies test bed for academic and corporate collaborators. Exploiting GTI's newly established RFID and IPTV test bed capabilities this test bed will offer Ireland's communities of companies and clinicians unique capability to exploit new technology and develop new products and services to improve clinical processes and practices in patient care. By integrating radio frequency identification (RFID) and internet protocol television (IPTV) digital technologies in existing and new products and services in healthcare service centres, i.e., acute hospitals and residential care facilities and in the community care setting.

Focused: Meeting clinical need, innovation and operational excellence

GTI's is working with clinicians and companies on developing new products and services that exploit these technologies in new medical devices and systems; developing new product differentiations and extending product portfolios; improving systems for clinical practice and delivering services to patients through more efficient communication and information management systems that can assist, for example in the roll out of hospital inventory management, patient and staff tracking and electronic health record systems.

GTI is focusing on near mid and longer term strategic opportunities with clients to exploit the efficiencies these technologies offer throughout the healthcare service settings; from theatre acute hospital to assisted living facilities to the home. It is collaborating with companies and hospitals in developing wireless devices and sensors to diagnose treat and track patients. It is also exploring opportunities and communications systems for applications in telemedicine in hospitals and remote monitoring.

Strategic: Working in Collaboration and Complimentary Capability

GTI's unique healthcare innovation translational services centre will link research in centres in Ireland and around the world to the translational test beds laboratories and clinical settings. It will serve as a development centre and test platform managed by GTI for solutions developed by core partners, including industry, academic institutions and government.

Experienced: Developing from and existing world class capability

The outstanding resources and expertise of Georgia Tech and Georgia Tech Research Institute in RFID and IPTV technologies, and human factors engineering offer scope to accelerate research and implementation and translation of these technologies into the clinical setting. The links to hospitals in Ireland and also Atlanta increase the bandwidth of the Irish research community in translational research between research institutes companies and clinicians.

Combinatorial Design

In the coming decade the reliance on experimental methods will increasingly be as a means of validating the results obtained from computational methods. This initiative will build upon this notion, driven by the emerging importance of empirical and computational methods in the design of new products and molecular entities for biomedical applications. GTI would work with its partners in Ireland Europe and the USA to create iterate and test new algorithms and advanced experimental methods and new design concepts, to assist the development of novel sensors, optimize stem cell manufacturing systems and other processes.