Keele University’s Digital Health Hub has been highly commended in the ‘Outstanding Digital Innovation of the Year’ category at the national Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards 2018.

The Digital Health Hub was ‘Highly Commended’ at the awards ceremony held on Thursday, June 21st, for its use of immersive technology to support student learning. The Digital Health Hub provides the opportunity for students to use one of 60 terminals for independent learning using visualisation. It also offers ten screen monitors which can work with augmented reality apps developed specifically for the room to project a molecule, human body, or living patient 3D visual onto the work tables which the student can then interact with.

The 3D Health Cinema is a 133-seat lecture theatre with cinema-grade projection and large screen. It is used to display computer-generated 3D models to visualise drug interaction at a molecular level and human anatomy, as part of a lecture or demonstration by a subject expert.

The award also included KARE (Keele Augmented Reality Environment) app which offers further opportunity for students to “take home” the resources used in the Cinema or Digital Health Hub, using their own smartphone or tablet. KARE allows students to continue ‘treatment’ of a patient over time, starting in class and monitoring the virtual patient visually and ‘treating’ the patient using a smartphone or tablet and the augmented reality apps developed in the School of Pharmacy.