Ten UCL undergraduate healthcare engineers begin summer secondments at RNOH

Ten undergraduate students and budding healthcare engineers arrived this week at RNOH to begin eight weeks of shadowing clinicians and hands-on learning in hospital.

These summer studentships, funded by UCL Engineering and with coordination support by UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering (IHE)’s Education Delivery Group, provide an exciting opportunity for ten students.

The students are based at RNOH in Stanmore where, after three weeks of exposure and interaction in the clinical setting, they will be taking part in a related research project which will be jointly supervised by an RNOH clinician and a UCL healthcare engineering academic.

The students will be working on an exciting and diverse range of research projects including the development of smart insoles to help individuals recover from gait falls, 3D printed orthopaedic implants, vibration therapy to aid rehabilitation of ankle injuries and devices to help control the bladder following spinal cord injuries.

Chair of UCL IHE’s Education Delivery Group, Dr Pilar Garcia Souto (UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering), said: “Our students at UCL are very motivated individuals that seek to complement the learning from their academic studies with in-situ experience in clinical practice, research and industry.”

“I am always amazed at their stamina, responsibility and fore-planning, searching for opportunities to get that experience doing some volunteering work or studentships during the summer and their holidays. UCL and the IHE are committed to help students into developing on the young professionals that make us proud. We embed them onto our research at different levels, with a research-based teaching, small volunteering opportunities, and final year research projects in the state-of-the-art of each field. But the paid internships offered by the IHE address another of the interest of the students, learning about clinical practice and research in hospitals where access would have been difficult otherwise.”

“I am very happy to see our first cohort about to start, I am sure the students will enjoy it and gain lots from it. We hope to continue and extend this IHE internship scheme in future years.”

Particular thanks are extended to the rest of the IHE Education Delivery Group including Co-Chair, Dr Billy Dennis and IHE Research & Development Manager, Marilyn Aviles, as well as RNOH’s Head of Research & Innovation, Iva Hauptmannova.

Iva said “We’re pleased to welcome students on a summer studentship programme here at the RNOH. We hope they will gain a good insight into the working of a hospital and will enjoy their opportunity to work on clinically relevant projects. This will be the first year this programme is running as a collaboration between UCL IHE and RNOH, hopefully the start of many to come.”

Look out for more updates about the students’ progress over the coming weeks!