A new online community of researchers, businesses and healthcare providers is bringing the future of medicine one step closer.
Cambridge is one of the UK’s leading centres of life sciences and innovation. Researchers from the University and the world-leading research institutes on our doorstep have contributed to major breakthroughs in healthcare. Monoclonal antibodies, IVF and gene sequencing technologies are just some of the life-changing innovations to have emerged from the Cambridge Cluster.
The need to connect
Cambridge is also a research powerhouse in maths, physics, computer science and engineering. The future of healthcare - earlier detection, better diagnostics, more-personalised medicine - lies where these disciplines meet. Maths and computer science, for example, are driving advances in AI which will help us to better understand biological processes (and hence where to target drugs), interrogate the vast genomic datasets that underpin personalised medicine and improve how clinical trials are run. Inventing new diagnostics and medical devices, using new materials and new processes such as additive manufacturing, needs both medical and engineering know-how.
There are plenty of examples of powerful interdisciplinary collaborations in the University, such as the new Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. But finding out who does what and connecting the right people across a complex ecosystem is not always easy. An already difficult task is made harder by the fact that researchers in different disciplines, executives in large companies, entrepreneurs and clinicians often talk a very different language and have different expectations of collaborative activities. Once connections have been made, therefore, it can be a challenge to convert them into projects which go on to have a ‘real-world’ impact.
A clear vision
Connect: Health Tech, a Cambridge University Enterprise Zone was set up in 2019 with funding from Research England expressly to bridge these interdisciplinary and inter-organisational gaps through a range of activities. A roadmapping exercise was carried out, using innovation management techniques developed at the University’s Institute for Manufacturing. Key stakeholders were brought together to identify the top five barriers to collaboration and the best ways to overcome them. The report, Creating a University Enterprise Zone for Cambridge across the life and physical sciences, will be published in June 2021.
Building a community
The roadmap identified a clear need: a digital way of connecting and collaborating with people across the Cambridge ecosystem. A year later, we are delighted to be launching, a new, easy-to-navigate online community where the physical and life sciences can meet, along with entrepreneurs, large corporates, venture capitalists, science parks, National Health Service and member organisations. While focused on Cambridge initially, in time we hope that it will help community members forge connections further afield and expand the geographical boundaries of the ecosystem to create the right environment for ideas, start-ups, innovation and co-creation to thrive.
The idea of Connect: Health Tech is to ‘join the dots’, to help researchers from different disciplines to find each other and other resources they might need, whether that is mentorship, skills, equipment, funding or physical space. For businesses, it’s about all that as well as being a welcoming, easy-to-navigate way into the complexity of the University and the wider Cambridge cluster.
Getting successful collaborations off the ground often relies on the efforts of a relatively small group of people who have the knowledge and expertise to make connections – and broker relationships - across projects, disciplines and sectors. Connect: Health Tech brings these ‘super-connectors’ together in one place, creating a hugely powerful resource that, we hope, will both bring people together and provide the support they need to take collaborations forward.
How it works
Users will be able to find new contacts and networks and the community can post events, funding opportunities and jobs of interest. Special interest groups will encourage businesses and academics to discuss areas of common interest, with the topics chosen to catalyse inter-disciplinary interactions across the physical and life sciences. In time, the intention is that businesses will use these groups to share the challenges they face so the community can help solve real world problems
If Connect: Health Tech is successful it will benefit everyone – business, academia and patients. We want to see it leading to stronger and deeper interaction between physicists, material scientists, chemists, engineers, biotechnologists, biologists and clinicians across academia and industry leading to more clinically beneficial projects. And we hope it will strengthen the already rich pipeline of healthcare spin-outs, start-ups and SMEs that emerge and flourish in the Cambridge Cluster.
Please join us
With this blog comes an open invitation for businesses and individuals to join the online community and to get involved. The link is here. We will ask you a few short questions about why you want to join, what expertise you bring and what your expectations of it are. The platform is designed to enable informal connections and provide an easy way into Cambridge through individuals. It’s not a searchable website, it’s a live discussion forum with access to real people. I look forward to seeing and connecting with you there!
Dr Kathryn Chapman
Deputy Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute
and University Relationship Manager for the Cambridge-AstraZeneca Partnership
May 2021
