A delegation from the Association of British HealthTech Industries (ABHI) visited Memphis last week to develop relationships with Memphis health care organizations, including the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Regional One Health, and West Cancer Center & Research Institute.
The visit was organized by the Greater Memphis Chamber and ABHI leadership to build connections that could bring more jobs and investments to Memphis’s medical technology industry.
Acknowledging the importance of collaborating with health systems across the United States, ABHI has partnered with institutions in Texas, and now seeks to expand collaborations in Memphis and throughout Tennessee.
The contingent visited UTHSC Thursday morning for a gathering in the Mooney Library.
“I am grateful to have the opportunity, for this morning, but also the opportunity to help put Memphis more on the map. It has an extraordinary, vibrant, glorious, cultural, and economic history and we have played some role in that opportunity,” Chancellor Peter Buckley, MD, said during his welcome to the ABHI delegation.
Several UTHSC researchers discussed their work during the event. They include:
- Jim Bailey, MD, MPH, Robert S. Pearce Endowed Chair of Internal Medicine, and executive director of the Tennessee Population Health Consortium
- Ramesh Narayanan, PhD, MBA, Muirhead Endowed Professor of Pathology, director of the Center for Cancer Drug Discovery, and deputy director of the UTHSC Center for Cancer Research.
- Wei Li, PhD, distinguished professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and director of the College of Pharmacy Drug Discovery Center
- Colleen Jonsson, PhD, professor and Van Vleet Chair of Excellence in Virology, director of the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL), and director of the Institute for the Study of Host-Pathogen Systems
- Robert Davis, MD, MPH, director of Center for Biomedical Information and UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair in Biomedical Informatics
- Siamak Yousefi, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and the Department of Genetics, Genomics, and Informatics and director of Data Mining and Machine Learning (DM2L)
“We are the largest and the only public academic health institution statewide in Tennessee and our mission is truly to help the health of Tennesseans,” Chancellor Buckley said.
ABHI is a not-for-profit organization and industry association for the Health Technology sector in the United Kingdom, providing products and services that aid individuals to live healthier lives. ABHI works internationally as well as with important UK stakeholders, such as the National Health Service (NHS) and the Academic Health Science Networks and others to cultivate international collaboration, learning, and trade in health.
“We are really thrilled to be able to make these kinds of connections that really make our world smaller,” said Ted Townsend, chief economic development officer of the Greater Memphis Chamber. “Our hope is that we forge some great partnerships here with UT and their leadership team, scientific team, and educators, so that you can seek out opportunities and connections here moving forward.”