Active Education & Skills NIHR-supported project Public Health & Healthcare

The Leadership Engagement Acceleration & Partnership Digital Health Hub

Funder NIHR (part of DHSC)
Recipient organisation NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Sustainable Innovation
NIHR support Recorded as supported by this research centre
Period Apr 2025 — Mar 2028

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A £4.11 million digital health hub, led by the University of Bristol, will connect five universities, 21 companies, seven NHS Trusts, and social care and local government partners to tackle unmet health and care needs. This matters because the UK’s health and care systems face growing pressure from ageing populations, chronic disease, and workforce shortages. Digital technologies—from remote monitoring to AI-driven diagnostics—could help, but their development is often fragmented, with industry, academia, and the NHS working in isolation. The hub aims to break down those silos by creating a structured collaboration platform. If successful, the hub could accelerate the adoption of digital tools that keep people healthier at home, improve disease prediction and diagnosis, and reduce hospital admissions. It also includes a Skills and Knowledge Programme to train the digital health workforce, and Research and Fellowship Programmes to pilot new research mechanisms and develop future leaders. The immediate impact is on infrastructure: building the partnerships and pipelines needed to turn digital health ideas into real-world tools, rather than producing a single product or treatment.

View original technical description
?The LEAP (Leadership Engagement Acceleration & Partnership) Digital Health Hub is a £4.11 million initiative funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant reference EP/X031349/1. Led by the University of Bristol, the hub brings together a consortium of five universities: University of Bristol, University of Bath, University of the West of England (UWE), Cardiff University, and University of Exeter. The initiative also includes partnerships with Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), 21 national companies, seven NHS Trusts and Health Boards, four social care organisations, five Local Authorities, Health Innovation West of England, and the business incubator SETsquared. ? The hub focuses on two primary themes: Transforming Health & Care Beyond the Hospital, and Optimising Disease Prediction, Diagnosis & Intervention. It aims to address unmet health and care needs by fostering collaborative research projects that unite industry, academia, patients, carers, and healthcare professionals. A key component is the Skills and Knowledge Programme, designed to provide professional training across the digital health sector. Additionally, the hub offers Research and Fellowship Programmes to pilot new research mechanisms and develop future leaders in digital health.

Researchers

Krasi Tsaneva (Principal Investigator)

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Original classification

Data-led research and digital innovation

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.