The knowledge gap between academia and industry

The effective and efficient running of the health and social care system has tremendous impact on the quality of life in our increasingly ageing society. Information technology has a major role to play in improving the planning and management of the system. In particular, sophisticated modelling techniques, such as patient flow modelling and simulation, have been shown, in numerous academic publications, to be very valuable in providing useful information to aid planning and management.

Many of these techniques are well established among the academic community. However, many organisations in the health care industry are still using simple and often outdated methods to guide their running of the complex system.

There exists a significant knowledge gap between the academic world and the industry. The improvement of knowledge and understanding among practitioners in the health care industry will lead to better delivery of the services for the local community.

The principal goals of the Alliance are to improve links between academia and healthcare practice to

• generate awareness of the newest software and modelling techniques in the industry and
• ensure that researchers are up to date with the latest requirements of today's healthcare environment