A researcher at the Imperial College and Smith + Nephew UTC Launch Event for the M-Tech University Technology Centre. Imperial College [Photo courtesy of Smith+Nephew]
The British multinational and the university said it’s the first such partnership for either of them, though it’s not the first academic partnership for S+N.
Smith+Nephew said its experts and university researchers will co-develop new solutions, using the device developer’s scale to accelerate clinical adoption.
Ferdinando Roriquez y Baena, an Imperial mechanical engineering professor and Hamlyn Centre co-director, will lead the new research center. The center is expected to grow to one senior postdoc and up to seven PhD students over five years.
The new university technology center will be situated within Imperial’s Hamlyn Centre, part of the Institute of Global Health Innovation and a driver of research in robotic surgery. The Hamlyn Centre has more than 100 full-time researchers working on medical robotics and image-guided interventions.
The new center will focus on tracking systems that could eliminate the pins and rigid markers current robotic systems screw into bone, and computer vision that adjusts the patient’s anatomy during surgery.
“In Smith+Nephew’s 170th year, we are proud to partner with a university that embodies a similar heritage in UK medical innovation. By embedding industry experts within one of the world’s leading engineering schools, this center has the potential to move research into operating theatres at pace, transforming patient outcomes and enhancing the surgical experience,” Vasant Padmanabhan, president of Research & Development, ENT and Emerging Markets at Smith+Nephew, said in a press release.
“Translational research on health devices has historically had two main routes to patients: licensing or spinout companies. This center establishes a third: academic engineers working hand-in-hand to help develop products with a major industry partner. There is no doubt that the innovations discovered within this center will hold major impact for the medical technology industry as a whole and its patients,” Rodriguez y Baena said in a press release.
Smith+Nephew has partnered with universities before, including the University of Hull and the University of York. The University of Hull partnership in 2016 built a wound care research cluster, funded eight PhD students and fed into the company’s R&D Centre of Excellence for Global Wound Management, which opened in Hull in 2017.
This also isn’t the first time Imperial College London has established a research center with an industry partner. Imperial’s Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials resulted from a partnership with the mining group Rio Tinto and focuses on mining and materials research.
