CATCH Director, Prof. Mark Hawley attends Technology and Healthcare Innovation Symposium in the Netherlands

This month, CATCH Centre Director, Professor Mark Hawley travelled to the Netherlands to join a symposium to mark the career of Professor Luc de Witte who leaves his role as Director for the Centre of Expertise on Innovative Care and Technology (EIZT) this week to take up the role of Chair within CATCH.

The symposium, Technology and Healthcare Innovation: fromRegional Challenges to Global Opportunities also recognised the developments of EIZT since its launch four years ago.

International colleagues including members of the World Health Organisation and individuals from Bangalore Baptist Hospital joined Professors from local universities as well as our very own Mark, representing CATCH, to contribute to the day which focussed on the importance of Assistive Technology, Connected Healthcare and Health in Slums.

Limburg, compared to other regions within the Netherlands has the fastest growing number of elderly people which is contributing to economic challenges. But these challenges aren’t unique to the region. And this is why it’s so important to connect the region’s developments with the rest of the world to lead to better and more effective, jointly developed solutions.

Together, the institutions wanted to present how regional research and development work in the field of healthcare technology is related to national and international agendas. Professor Mark Hawley’s talk entitled “Connected Healthcare in the UK; current trends and future opportunities” did just this.

For Mark however, the highlight of the day was discovering more about the ongoing work on the Health in Slums. In a programme supported by Zuyd and Maastricht University, which the University of Sheffield, through CATCH, has now joined, the institutions are involving a number of organisations in India to jointly work on solutions for the healthcare challenges in low resource settings.

At CATCH, we very much look forward to welcoming Professor Luc de Witte on Monday 3rd October and continuing this valuable research. You can read more about the Indian Slums project here.