Clinical Research & Innovation

Teaching clinical research and innovation

Providing a pivotal link in the scientific pathway underpinning the Medicine course, the module lays the groundwork for students later in the fourth year, when they undertake a full science year and earn a BSc degree before completing the MBBS.

Designed to help students develop data-collection, analysis and presentation skills early in their medical degree, the module gives them further opportunities to apply those skills throughout the rest of their course. In collaboration with corporate partners, students gain industrial research experience and develop a wide variety of practical skills.

Under the technology basket, the following research experiences were carried out at Imperial College London:

• 2017–18 – Active and passive VR, artificial intelligence and neurological response, with ImmVRse
• 2019 – Impact of VR on neurological responses and mental health, with Barclays
• 2020 – Artificial intelligence research for the COVID-19 public-health response
• 2021 – Energy storage and its impact on MedTech in African countries, with Alp Technologies
• 2022 – Artificial intelligence and blockchain in MedTech, with Plexal
• 2023 – Artificial intelligence, particularly OCR and convolutional neural networks, in MedTech, with Plexal
• 2024 – Generative AI in MedTech, with Plexal

Leadership in a three-week research sprint

Farabi led teams of top-performing students, ensuring that their projects could be initiated and completed within a defined timeframe. The students demonstrated outstanding organisational skills, conducting secondary research, collecting data and developing reports in just under three weeks.

Team members used systems analysis and user-experience methods to recommend high-level technical approaches for their backend architecture. They gathered intelligence on future technologies, investigated how those technologies affected end users and described high-level tools as potential solutions.

Dr Sohag Saleh, founder of the module, said: “The module is a great opportunity for students to get out of the lecture hall and experience both science and medicine in new and unfamiliar settings. It teaches science and research at its core, but in the much broader context of the importance of research in meeting the healthcare needs of society, and how the students can play a role in that in the future.”