New Global Digital Health Institute launched by Bupa & UCL

Bupa and University College London (UCL) are pleased to announce their new collaborative project, the Global Institute for Digital Health Excellence (GLIDHE), combining Bupa’s global health expertise with UCL’s research capabilities.

With the intention of reducing global demands on healthcare and improving quality of life, GLIDHE will research, create, test and evaluate innovative, commercially sustainable digital tools which promote healthier lifestyles. The aim is to improve the lives of millions of people and create a significant evidence base to shape the future of digital health.  

GLIDHE will also fund PhD and MSc students at UCL, creating a legacy in the field of digital health.

Alan Payne, Global Digital Director at Bupa, said: “I am very proud that Bupa is partnering with one of the world’s leading universities, UCL, on such an exciting project.

“A common challenge for digital health is developing an evidence base to demonstrate the success of a mobile or online tool. However, with this partnership, we are combining Bupa’s global health expertise with UCL’s world leading behaviour change and computer science capabilities, so we have a fantastic opportunity to develop scalable tools that are proven to genuinely help people to adopt healthier habits and reduce their risk of chronic disease in the future.”

Professor Susan Michie, Director of the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, said: “GLIDHE is an extremely exciting initiative in the field of behaviour change. The project’s digital initiatives will provide us with unprecedented scale and scope, not only to improve people’s health, but to learn what works and continually improve what we are offering.”

Professor Philip Treleaven, Director of the UK Financial Computing Centre at UCL’s Department of Computer Science, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Bupa on GLIDHE. A fascinating project for my department, we are excited to start work on digital tools that have global scale and really significant implications for worldwide health.”

To mark the launch of GLIDHE, Bupa is supporting the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change Conference 2015 from 23-24 February in London. The event will focus on harnessing digital technology for health behaviour change and features an exciting line up of expert speakers.

More information can be found at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour-change/cbc-events/cbc-conference-2015

For further information please contact:

Fay Jeffery, fay.jeffery@bupa.com / 0207 656 2669  

Steve Marchant, stephen.marchant@ucl.ac.uk / 0207 679 3675

About Bupa

Bupa’s purpose is longer, healthier, happier lives.

As a leading international healthcare group, we offer health insurance and other health funding products, and run care homes, retirement village, hospitals, diagnostic and primary care centres and dental clinics. We also provide workplace health services, home healthcare, health assessments and long-term condition management services.

We have over 22 million customers in 190 countries and territories. With no shareholders, we invest our profits to provide more and better healthcare and fulfil our purpose.

We employ more than 70,000 people, principally in the UK, Australia, Spain, Poland, New Zealand and Chile, as well as Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, India, Thailand and the USA.

For more information, visit: www.bupa.com

About UCL (University College London)

Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by performance in a range of international rankings and tables. UCL currently has over 35,000 students from 150 countries and more than 11,000 staff. Our annual income is more than £1 billion.

UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change (CBC) harnesses expertise across disciplines to address the wide range of challenges facing society. Professor Robert West, a CBC Associate, leads a programme of digital health interventions at UCL, focusing on reducing smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.  Professor Susan Michie’s research seeks to improve the application of theories and scientific methods to the development and evaluation of behaviour change interventions.

UCL’s Department of Computer Science is a global leader in research in experimental computer science. The 2014 Research Excellence Framework evaluation ranked UCL 1^st place for Computer Science. 61% of its research output is rated world-leading, 96% of its research output is rated internationally excellent. UCL Computer Science has made a deep, lasting and sustained impact on all aspects of society, including healthcare; medical image computing has led to faster prostate cancer diagnosis, and developed software to help surgeons avoid damage to essential communication pathways while performing neurosurgery.

It continues to create innovative technologies that changes lives with computers.

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