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This module is focused on acquiring an in-depth understanding of the development of digital technologies, an overview of the current digital landscape in Bio-Industry and identifying opportunities within this landscape.

A range of devices, tools and services, both software (e.g. AI) and hardware (e.g. imaging, VR), in the medical (e.g. ophthalmology, cancer) and bioscience domains (e.g. genomics, sustainability), will be covered as case studies, with a particular emphasis on software as a medical device, digital health-tech platforms and bioscience tools and services.

Students will learn about:

The translational pathway. How to critically evaluate current and future products and be able to assess their technology readiness level, their viability, as well as the steps required so that these can be taken to market and adopted by a large user base.

Ethics, quality control processes, organisations, standards and the regulatory framework relevant to these digital products (e.g. ISO/FDA standards).

The intellectual property that underpins these inventions, the context-dependent legal framework (e.g. what is patentable vs trademarkable vs copyrightable) and licensing arrangements.

Students will also get a basic overview of the development processes for building digital products (e.g. requirements engineering, prototyping, the software development life cycle) and the technologies available to develop these into successful commercial products.

During this module, students will learn the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively research their own innovative/creative ideas, develop these into business cases, pitch them convincingly and, hopefully, win funding to make them into a reality!

The module will be based on a mixture of traditional lectures, seminars, tutorials, eLearning and flipped learning and will maximise access to diverse speakers drawn from academics and entrepreneurs who have created start-ups and those from the UK-based legal and business entities with current expertise in practice with patents, intellectual property and international variants. There will also be engagement with ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Innovation & Enterprise and the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Centre for Digital Innovation.

This module aims to provide students with the opportunity to:

• Engage with the current landscape for digital development, including a background on software as a medical device, database development, digital healthcare and traditional hardware device development
• Understand the principles, processes and contexts of harnessing big data to develop AI,
• Understand the landscape regarding the development and protection of intellectual property and copyright in the digital age and the frameworks which inform these,
• Understand the principles and processes of hardware and software development, commercial development in both and how the entrepreneurship environments for each are similar and different,
• Develop their capacity to identify, critically evaluate and integrate digital developments within an enterprise scenario.