Challenges and Opportunities with the Next Generation of Wearable Health Solutions Designed with Digital Twins
Deirdre Ferguson is an Innovation Broker with Belfast City Council’s City Innovation team and has played a fundamental role in establishing the city Innovation team and developing the 'Smart Belfast' programme which aims to harness digital innovation to address major urban challenges and nurture economic growth.
The City Innovation team has secured over £10 million in public and private sector co-investment since its inception in 2017. This has supported a range of open innovation projects which Deirdre has led on, inspiring colleagues and city partners to work collaboratively to explore the potential of data and digital technologies to address societal challenges.
Deirdre has also played a pivotal role in gaining a place for Belfast within the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities’ Network which has provided £1 million funding to support the appointment and work of a Commissioner for Resilience for the city.
More recently she has supported the development of the Digital Innovation Pillar of the Belfast Region’s City Deal which will bring £120 million into the region over the next ten years. This funding will bring significant investments in data and connectivity alongside a series of challenge funds designed to encourage industry, universities and public policy makers to collaborate to grow our economy while at the same time tackling key urban challenges.
Deirdre and the team are currently working to develop a Smart District – focused on Belfast’s city centre. This will support the trialling, testing and deployment of digital solutions to support the city in addressing its post-Covid challenges. Deirdre is leading on exploratory work with colleagues to identify what this will look like and the key elements that need to be in place to support this ambition.
Adrian has 20 years of industrial Experience in advanced semiconductor manufacturing with a focus on real time data capture, IIOT, factory automation systems and AI enabled analytics. He has a long history and experience of collaborative and academic research in new and emerging technology. Adrian has a PhD in Informatics / AI (Specialising in Business Improvement techniques within high volume manufacturing) from the University of Ulster and has continued to engage and publish in this research area over the past 15 years. He has previously collaborated with academic institutions across the island of Ireland including the National University of Ireland Maynooth, Dublin City University, Ulster University, Queens University Belfast and many other industrial collaborations. Adrian’s industrial collaborations have been widespread across pharmaceutical, semiconductor manufacturing, bioinformatics, agriculture at SME and corporate multinational level. He continues to link opportunities across academia and industry to enable possible disruptive technology opportunities for NI organisations. The overall objective is to continue to promote NI's knowledge economy and open new business opportunities for NI’s Creative and Technology sectors. Adrian has been involved in the areas of economic and social regeneration across the island of Ireland for the past 20 years, most recently as Chair of the International Fund for Ireland. This has provided extensive experience in managing large scale grant giving programs, strategic planning, financial governance and international government relations.
Dr Peña-Rios is a Research Manager at BT Research Labs in Adastral Park, Ipswich, where she has been personally driving the agenda for exploring the use of AI, Digital Twins, and Immersive Technologies (VR/AR/MR) in BT´s field force operations. Her work contributed to BT´s portfolio, presented with a Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award (2017) and an IEEE Outstanding Organisation Award (2017). In addition, her project was highly commended at the IET Innovation Awards 2018. She was the winner of the TechWomen100 2020 awards and was shortlisted for the Computing Women in IT Excellence Awards 2018.
Anasol is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex, where she holds a PhD in Computer Science. She volunteers as Executive Board Member of two non-profits that promote immersive technologies for education and innovation: The Immersive Learning Research Network and the Creative Science Foundation. She serves as Research Topic Editor of Frontiers’ Human-Media Interaction theme and Associate Editor of EAI Endorsed Transactions on e-Learning. Her other professional contributions include 4 patents, 65 peer-reviewed publications and editorial work and serving as general chair and co-organiser of multiple academic conferences. She has more than 15 years of professional experience in the industry, working closely with international multidisciplinary teams.
Prof McLaughlin, a physicist, is currently the Head of School of Engineering and the Director of the Nanotechnology and Integrated Bioengineering Centre - NIBEC. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Irish Academy of Engineering and was awarded an OBE for his services to Research and Economic Development in Northern Ireland and a CBE for his contributions to Teaching and Research. He is also a Senior Distinguished Research Fellow and Impact Fellow (2016) of the University.
His present research interests address nanotechnology and it’s application in areas such as point-of-care sensors and cardiology based medical diagnostics. These interests involve the integration of sensors, microfluidics, electronics and photonics. Professor McLaughlin has led key developments in the technology of sensor materials and it’s impact into the connected health industry in areas such as cardiac arrest, heart failure and ubiquitous predictive monitoring. This work has had a strong influence on the Universities commercialisation of IP relating to Connected Health companies, as well as providing the basis for a range of new biomedical sensing platforms.
He has over three hundred publications (H-index 38), numerous successful patents and achieved outstanding paper awards at international conferences, as well as being honoured as an invited keynote speaker at numerous International Conferences.
Professor McLaughlin has attracted over £55m of funding to establish research that has led to the establishment of the ECME; Biodevices Lab, CHIC, NIBEC, NICAM, NanotecNI and BEST. These centres have now led to a vibrant research institute (ERI) with over eighty researchers carrying out both basic and applied research in topics. He has been awarded funding from EPSRC, Wellcome Trust, EU, NSF, DOH, DEL, HEA, Leverhulme Trust, RDA’s and various funding bodies.
In recent years Professor McLaughlin’s over-arching strategy is aimed at developing a strong Connected Health Platform within Ulster University. This work involves linking bioengineering and computing sciences with sensor technology developed within NIBEC and thus encouraging clinically-led research initiatives to benefit the healthcare sector. This work has resulted in the establishment of the highly successful £6m Connected Health Innovation Centre and the Biodevices Laboratory at NIBEC. In 2017 he has set up a £8m Cross Border Medical Engineering Centre – ECME with a drive to create 24 new PhD qualified Leaders in the areas of Cardio-based Medical Engineering. He was team leader for Zensor Xprize, finishing joint 3rd in the world famous Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize Competition.
He is the co-founder and CTO of Intelesens Ltd. (formerly ST&D Ltd.) which specialises in the design and fabrication of wireless vital-signs monitoring systems, as well as incorporating new micro- and nano-scale technologies, thus enabling the miniaturisation and integration of low-cost medical device systems. He is also a Director with, SiSAF (Chief Scientific Officer) and the European Connected Health Campus/Alliance (Chair 2009-). Early work via consultancies and expert roles led to the initial phases of Heartsine and Heartscape. He is a member of the numerous international advisory boards including COST Action; KTN Health Technologi8seAdvisory Board; TechStart; Heart Trust NI.
Dr Sharma (FHEA, SMIEEE) is working as a Lecturer in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EEECS) at the Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. He received a PhD in computer science and engineering from Thapar University in 2016. At Queen's University Belfast, he also acts as a Racial Equity Network School Co-Champion and BCS Accreditation Liaison. He is the co-chair of the IEEE UK and Ireland Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Before coming to QUB, he was a Research Fellow in the Information Systems Technology and Design Pillar at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, where he worked on the future-proof blockchain systems. From Nov'16 to Mar'19, he worked in the Information Security Engineering Department at Soonchunhyang University, South Korea, in multiple positions. He also held a joint postdoctoral position with Soongsil University, South Korea. He was affiliated with the Industry-Academia Cooperation Foundation and the Mobile Internet Security lab at Soonchunhyang University. Before this, he worked as a lecturer in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Thapar University, India. He is the recipient of the four best paper awards. His research has been supported by ETRI-Korea, NRF-Korea, IITP-Korea, MSIT-Korea, AFOSR-USA, and most recently by UK Innovate for a project on the digital twinning of drone swarms. He has authored/co-authored more than 100 journal/conference articles and book chapters and co-edited two books. He served as an Associate Technical Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine, and at present, he serves on the editorial board of IET Transactions on Intelligence Technology, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, IET Networks, Future Internet, ICT Express, and Section Editor-in-Chief of Drones journal. His areas of research and interests are UAV Security, Digital Twins, Secure Computing, Blockchain, and CPS Security.