News from the Director - Affinity meetings make their mark

The best way to drive innovation in medical engineering and Med-Tech development  is to get engineers/IT specialists and doctors meeting each other and developing collaborations at an early stage in the evolution of a project or idea. MIME is reaching out to Monash University affiliated clinicians to encourage them to identify problems that require engineering/IT expertise and then present their ideas to a group of Monash Engineers, IT and Art and Design experts (from the Monash Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (MADA)) at our Affinity Meetings. We have had several of these meetings including a very successful recent Alfred Hospital Affinity meeting where eleven Alfred Hospital Professors gave ‘quick-fire’ presentations over 90 minutes to a group of Monash Engineers and IT Faculty staff who MIME transported to the Alfred for the event. The programme can be viewed on the News and Events webpage of the MIME website. You will see the topics were wide-ranging and have great potential to stimulate the development of new medical technology and IT for diagnostics, monitoring and therapy. We are sure this represents the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of untapped potential or nascent medical engineering-IT projects. A number of engineers, IT and art and design academics now have some new projects and new collaborators to work with. 

MIME aims to hold further Affinity meetings at Monash Health (Monash Medical Centre), Monash School of Psychological Sciences and the Monash University Department of Physiology. We are also keen for our other Monash Clinical Schools to get involved with MIME (Cabrini Health, Eastern Health and Peninsula Health).

MIME is also encouraging these newly established research groups to reach out to industry at an early stage of their projects. MIME has many industry contacts and can facilitate these connections.