The Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Hub for Connected Sensors for Health was opened at UNSW by Tim Ayres, assistant minister for trade and assistant minister for manufacturing.
Ayres said the Hub will position Australia at the forefront of connected health, with new products made locally in Australia, creating jobs in design, testing, evaluation and manufacturing.
“It’s developments like those that will come from this Research Hub that will help push Australian products up the global value chain, broadening our economic complexity and securing our supply chains,” Ayres said.
Funded under ARC’s Industrial Transformation Research Program (ITRP) in 2021, the Hub brings together seven universities and 26 Australian companies to build a national end-to-end ecosystem for the design, manufacturing, and commercialisation of clinical-grade sensors and predictive analytics.
Commencing operations in August 2022, the Hub is led by Scientia Professor Chun Wang, head of the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at UNSW Engineering,
The team consists of renowned scientists and a leadership team including Professor Kim Delbaere, Scientia Professor Nigel Lovell, and Scientia Professor Justin Gooding and Professor Madhu Bhaskaran from RMIT University.
UNSW vice-chancellor and president Professor Attila Brungs, who attended the UNSW opening, congratulated Professor Wang on the world-leading multidisciplinary program.
“This Hub is an excellent example of collaboration at scale, involving a total of seven universities, 26 partner organisations, 37 chief investigators, and $24 million in funding.
“It will contribute economic benefits such as jobs and locally made products for domestic and export markets, as well as improving the health of Australians.”
Wang said connected health sensors are emerging as a transformational technology to address a wide range of pressing issues, such as remote health management of chronical diseases for at-risk populations, rehabilitation and chronic disease management of frail and older people, monitoring acute pain and blood lactate level in athletes, and smart rehabilitation and treatment of neurological diseases.
The Hub team includes 37 chief investigators and 26 partner investigators focused on translating research and co-creating new connected health to achieve a vision of building wearable technologies for better health that benefits humanity.
