Digital health focuses on helping individuals and healthcare providers use digital technologies, to improve wellbeing and health.
It also represents a huge business opportunity which has already begun to attract millions of pounds, euros and dollars in research funding and seed capital.
Digital Health London has been set up to make London the global capital for digital health by creating an environment for entrepreneurs to start and scale businesses in the digital health sector.
Digital Health London is a collaboration between MedCity and Imperial College Health Partners, UCL Partners, and Health Innovation Network. It is supported by London’s Mayor.
Its accelerator programme is a year long programme running over three consequtive years. In each year the accelerator will help businesses define and provide products for the NHS and the broader health sector.
The support for 20-30 companies each year will be tailored specifically to the enterprises to help them bring suitable products to market.
"The Accelerator aims to find and support the highest potential digital health start-ups and businesses, and support them to work with the NHS and the wider healthcare sector in developing and deploying their products as solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing health and social care," it said.
UCL is separately home to IDH, ‘the Institute of Digital Health’ which is ‘a network of researchers, projects and research centres united by a shared interest in the potential of digital technologies to improve health and wellbeing.
IDHOur expertise spans health and medicine; data and computational sciences; the human sciences; and legal and policy matters. More importantly, we work in interdisciplinary consortia to address complex research problems of practical relevance to the future health of people and populations.
Horizon 2020 is an 80bn Euro fundwhich includes backing digital health programmes across the EU.
Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.
Horizon 2020 was among the backers for a digital health project for the chronically ill called ProACT which is being lead by Trinity | College Dublin.
