Construction of an Imaging Centre of Excellence (ICE) at the new South Glasgow University Hospital

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The synergy between imaging and genomics technologies has been recognised as being an important driver to the future development of Stratified or Precision Medicine. The benefits of stratified medicine are now globally recognised, and Scotland is uniquely placed to capitalise on this potential, owing to its strong academic research base, advanced electronic health records within the NHS, and a strong industry presence in genomics, bioinformatics and diagnostics. The South Glasgow University Hospital represents an investment to Glasgow and Scotland in the region of £1Billion. When it opens in 2015, the new hospital will be the largest in Western Europe and will include maternity, paediatric and adult services on a single site. The Imagine Centre of Excellence (ICE), located at the new hospital, will uniquely accommodate a 7 Tesla MRI scanner together with other imaging modalities for clinical and research use, including 3T MRI and high resolution multi-slice CT, all networked and sharing staff with the large number of service scanners within the main hospital. This state-of-the-art equipment will be housed alongside clinical academic imaging specialists, NHS clinical physics expertise, innovation space for industry, and potential for expansion of precision medicine activities.The University of Glasgow led the development of the Scotland-wide £20M Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre (SMS-IC), which will be based adjacent to the ICE building. The co-location of ICE and SMS-IC will therefore provide significant added value to both centres.The creation of an internationally competitive centre in medical imaging incorporating NHS, academic and industry partners will allow Glasgow to support a much greater volume and variety of clinical trials and translational development than currently, including the associated supply chain. The facility will be co-located alongside commercial, learning, research and clinical facilities, and will be accessible to industry partners and collaborators thus ensuring spin off benefits to the local Scottish company base of specialist CROs and other service providers.The proposed facility will maximise and facilitate the economic impact from the clinical research excellence at the new South Glasgow University Hospital, and ensure the hospital site becomes a clinical research-driven UK exemplar of a Life Sciences cluster. As such, the proposal fully aligns with the Scottish Life Sciences Strategy and the facility will add significant value to existing assets in Scotland.