New landmark innovation hub in Belfast given planning approval

Image: courtesy of Ulster University

Belfast City Council has granted planning approval for the landmark Centre for Digital Healthcare Technology (CDHT), a major new innovation hub, that will strengthen Northern Ireland’s position as a global leader in medical technology and digital healthcare.

Led by Ulster University and supported through the Belfast Region City Deal, the £40 million project will deliver a bespoke Open Innovation Centre and Community Living Lab on Frederick Street, adjacent to the university’s Belfast campus, alongside dedicated Clinical Living Labs within the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.

Ulster University states:

'Together, these facilities will provide end-to-end support to innovators developing next-generation medical technologies, from concept and prototyping through to clinical validation and commercialisation.

'The Centre will bring together leading expertise across engineering, data science and clinical practice, co-locating academic researchers, clinicians, industry partners and entrepreneurs to accelerate the safe and efficient journey of innovations from the laboratory to patient care.

'Specialist capabilities will include artificial intelligence, surgical robotics, diagnostics, data analytics, design and simulation, imaging and vital signs monitoring.

'The CDHT forms a core component of ambitions to establish Belfast as one of the best places in the world to design, develop and launch innovative medical devices and diagnostics, delivering economic growth, high-value employment, enhanced skills development and improved patient outcomes.'

'The CDHT ecosystem will operate as a collaborative ‘one-stop shop’ innovation cluster, supporting research collaboration, business development and foreign direct investment while enabling enhanced networking between academia, industry, clinicians, government agencies and patient cohorts.

'Construction at the Frederick Street site is expected to progress following the completion of a formal competitive construction tender process.'

The Innovation Commissioner for the City of Belfast ( Innovation City Belfast), Adrian Johnston, joined our recent 'Student Cities' discussion alongside the universities of Liverpool John Moores, Sheffield and Huddersfield. Adrian commented on the creation of new buildings in the Titanic Quarter including Momentum One Zero and to attract global investment

'We are delighted with the Belfast Region City Deal of one billion pounds investment. My role as Innovation Commissioner is to bring a strategic alignment across all of the anchor institutions who are involved in the City Deal, but also the digital colour of the activities.

'If you look at the Northern Ireland economy over the last ten to fifteen years, it has been built on digital and AI capability as well as innovation in cyber-security and data, so Momentum One Zero is essentially about a one health initiative - from environmental to animal health to citizen health.

The research activities can help the city develop into a living lab, It will provide not just economic benefit but societal benefit. It will consolidate a lot of our strengths with an inclusive growth agenda.

'The brand of the building is very important as it is co-located in Titanic Quarter with Catalyst which back in Gordon Brown's day was called the Northern Ireland Science Park. It has been hugely successful. That campus has 350,000 square feet of space for start-ups, scale-ups and established businesses, with 2,500 employees are working there on the campus. It is co-located with the research and academic institution of Momentum One Zero looking at cyber-security and wireless technologies.'

'So we have an innovation eco-system here with academic research and translation to the commercial with entrepreneurs and its having a massive impact on the growth of student entrepreneurship.'