By providing a unique programme of training through its university partners and by offering research funding, the LEAP Digital Health Hub is cultivating a multidisciplinary, entrepreneurial, cross-sector digital health community across the South West and South Wales.
Launched in 2023, LEAP brings together the South West’s leading universities, including GW4 Alliance members the University of Bristol, University of Bath, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter, alongside the University of the West of England.
The Hub is one of five new Digital Health Hubs created with £16.5 million funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
It aims to build on the strengths of each of the Hub’s institutional partners to offer unique opportunities for training, research, and partnership in digital health.
Alongside the core institutional partners, LEAP’s partnership network extends to 21 supporting companies nationally, seven NHS Trusts and Health Boards, four social care organisations, five Local Authorities, Health Innovation West of England, Health Data Research UK and the award-winning business incubator SETsquared.
The South West and South Wales together have a population of 5.6 million that ranges from culturally diverse inner-city communities in Bristol, to remote rural populations in Devon and the Welsh Valleys. Its health needs reflect the EPSRC grand challenge Transforming Health & Care Beyond the Hospital, and the opportunities of Optimising Disease Prediction, and Diagnosis & Intervention.
Hub objectives are co-produced by its partners – surfacing unmet health and care needs, and shaping and nurturing collaborative research projects that bring together new partnerships of industry, academia, patients, carers and healthcare professionals.
By engaging with local communities, the region’s health and social care organisations, and with industry partners nationally, LEAP aims to lead and shape the international agenda in digital health.
Over three years, the Hub will deliver a unique portfolio of training as part of its Skills and Knowledge Programme, leveraging the expertise from LEAP’s university partners, including the UK’s only Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Health and Care at the University of Bristol. Courses are intended for professional part-time learners with a range of levels and topics to reflect the diversity of learners in the digital health community. In addition to a bespoke training catalogue, LEAP learners will have access to a variety of other benefits, including networking events with NHS and industry and career development opportunities.
Alongside the Hub’s Skills and Knowledge Programme, the LEAP’s Research and Fellowship Programmes will pilot new mechanisms for doing research and will develop future leaders.
LEAP’s Director, Professor Ian Craddock based at the University of Bristol’s School of Engineering, Mathematics and Technology, said:
“The Hub and our partners see this as a unique opportunity to make a step change in the field of digital health, bringing together and funding new relationships across academia, industry, health and social care.”