CDT Participation at External Events

A massive thank you to the LifeArc team for the invitation to the LifeArc Translational Sciences Summit in London in May. It was a genuinely inspiring day all round.

700 researchers, clinicians, investors, policymakers and patient advocates gathered around one question: how do we turn scientific discovery into real-world benefit for patients, faster?

A few powerful take-home messages came from the discussions:

• Science is no longer the bottleneck. As LifeArc CEO Sam Barrell put it, the system is the bottleneck and the system is something we have the power to redesign together.
• For rare disease, data is everything. With small, fragmented patient populations, the ability to connect, share and interrogate health data at scale isn't a nice-to-have, it is the foundation for earlier diagnosis, better patient stratification, and targeted therapies.
• AI as a medical device sparked one of the most engaged debates of the summit, expertly hosted by Claire Bloomfield and passionately debated by Alastair Denniston and Joe Zhang.

For AI4BI, these conversations land close to home. Our PhD researchers are working at exactly this intersection: applying AI to genomics, biomedical imaging, cellular systems and health informatics to tackle the kinds of complex, data-sparse challenges that rare disease presents.

Looking forward to continuing these conversations.

In April, we attended the Bionow BioAI Summit 2026 at Alderley Park, a packed day at the intersection of AI and life sciences.

From Gary Leeming's opening keynote on civic health innovation, to deep dives on AI in R&D, real-world applications, and critically regulation and validation, the agenda covered the full pipeline from discovery to deployment.

A few themes came through clearly: the technology is moving fast, but trust, governance and regulatory readiness are what will determine whether AI actually reaches patients. The closing panel on regulation and validation felt as important as anything that came before it.

For AI4BI, it's a useful reminder that training the next generation of biomedical AI researchers means preparing them not just to build powerful models, but to navigate the real-world systems those models need to work within.

Thanks to Bionow for a well-curated day.

The national rollout of MyCare.sco across Scotland, has reminded us of the excitement in the room surrounding this at the Health and Social Care Transformation Confrence in March.

The conversation at this meeting wasn't about whether to digitise. It was about how to do it at scale, safely, and in a way that genuinely serves patients.

Discussions strongly demonstrated that Scotland has the data assets, the clinical networks and the policy intent. The work now is connecting them and doing it in a way that builds lasting capability. That doesn't happen without genuine collaboration between government, industry and academia. The triple helix model is key for this type of transformative change.

Academia's role in that partnership is distinct. It's not just about producing research; it's about producing people. The leaders who will shape this system over the next decade are being trained now. Our PhD researchers are developing the judgment, the cross-sector fluency and the translational thinking that health and care transformation actually demands.

Thank you to Future Scot for an inspiring day and congratulations to the teams behind the MyCare App in making this impactful step for patients across Scotland.