Respiratory Innovation Centre to launch in Wales following £2.5 million funding

Fantastic news from Wales as Health Secretary, Vaughan Gething, has announced £2.5mn of funding to develop new ways to prevent and treat respiratory disease.

The money will be used to create a Respiratory Innovation Centre, bringing together health professionals, academics and businesses to more quickly develop, test and implement innovative methods to tackle respiratory illness.

First UK innovation centre for respiratory disease

This is the first innovation centre for respiratory disease in the UK and will allow increased capacity for asthma research as well as respiratory disease more broadly, which poses a large burden in Wales and across the globe.

“Improving the respiratory health of the people of Wales is a major challenge for our healthcare services. In 2016-17, 8% of the Welsh population reported having a respiratory condition, and respiratory diseases caused just over 15% of deaths in 2016. This new centre will identify promising new ideas to prevent, diagnose and treat respiratory disease and help develop them into products and services that can be used by the health service.”

Vaughan Gething

New collaborations

Congratulations to Professor Gwyn Davies who will be leading on Population Health Informatics at the new Respiratory Innovation Centre. Gwyn also leads the UK Postgraduate Training Programme for Asthma Research at the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research.

As part of her role at the Respiratory Innovation Centre, Gwyn is keen to build further collaborations across the UK, with particular interest in developing new informatics projects.

Alongside Population Health Informatics, the new centre will also focus on four other major domains, including: commercial trials; devices and technology; biobanking; and educational programmes.

Find out more on the Respiratory Innovation Centre website

Professor Gwyn Davies on the Swansea University websitef

Originally published 22 Nov 2018