Colin Roberts Email and Phone Number

Formerly Director and Foundation Professor of Medical Engineering & Physics, King's College Hospital and King's College London, 1990-2004 (previously Professor of Biomedical Engineering at King's). Formerly Foundation Director national Centre of Rehabilitation Engineering, 1991-2004. (see below)

Member , Research Integrity & Ethics CommitteePhD supervisor

The Centre aims to combine world class scientific research with policy development and implementation. Ultimately providing a focal point for environment and health research regionally, nationally and internationally and playing a major role in the commercialisation of this knowledge. An important recent development is in the field of e-Health and e-Wellbeing.

Cornwall Mobility, a Registered Charity limited by guarantee, provides a range of specialist services, equipment and assistive technology for adults and children throughout the South West Peninsula to help their independent mobility. It is the largest and most dynamic mobility centre with the biggest range of services within the UK Forum of Mobility Centres, to which the Centre is fully accredited, and the first purpose built mobility centre in Europe. It is funded both by charitable donations and contracts from the Department for Transport. Under my Chairmanship, for the first time I Ied the Centre to add Research alongside its service delivery and engaged as a partner of a multinational Trans Manche team working on guidance for powered wheelchairs. I also initiated collaboration with the University of Falmouth on the design and development of beach wheeelchairs, many of which will now be found on Cornwall's beaches..

NHS Innovations South West (NISW) is a not-for-profit organisation and was one of six regional Innovation hubs originally set up from 2004. It remains a member of the national Healthcare Innovation Alliance. Its mission is to champion the cause of healthcare innovation and to identify, develop and commercialise innovations and intellectual property created by NHS staff. NISW served the whole of the South West to develop and take forward new innovative ideas – both products and services – to enhance healthcare delivery.Under my Chairmanship the organisation developed an accredited training course in collaboration with PERA, on innovation and its protection. This led to the establishment of Innovation Leaders in all NHS Trusts in the SW Region. Its success led to staff from other regions subsequently enrolling on the course, with materials also being presented at the Royal Society of Medicine.

The i4i programme is geared to supporting the development of medical devices across the UK, in partnership with industry. I was associated with this committee and is predecessors, serving continuously for 13 years in all.

Drawing on decades of experience in raising funds for research and having previously been Church Treasurer for a number of years, I was asked by the Priest in Charge of St Buryan's Parish to spearhead a fundraising campaign to rebuild the church roof which was in serious danger of collapse. In a two year period we held 63 fundraising events, received 700+ individual donations and raised just under £0.5m. The work on rebuilding the roof was carried on while fundraising continued - "the fastest and most productive campaign he had experienced" according to the Diocesan Surveyor. The restored roof was completed by Easter 2013 and consecrated by Bishop Tim of Truro on September 8th. The gratitude of the parish was marked by my initials being cast into the lead rain hopper on the porch roof and I became known popularly to the local clergy and others as "the man who put the roof back on St Buryan".

I led the initiative to create a Health & Wellbeing Innovation Centre - a joint venture partnership between Cornwall Council, the Peninsula Medical School and the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust. The £13m centre was funded in part by the EU and in part by the Regional Development Authority and located on the Treliske Health Centre and adjacent to the Peninsual Medical School in Truro. It was opened in 2009 dedicated to the incubation of new businesses working in the health & wellbeing arena . It was also host to the Regioinal Innovation Lead established as part of a network across the Southwest by NHS Innovations SW. I was Chair of the innovation centre's Strategy Board until 2018 when managment of the Centre was taken on by the University of Plymouth.

RCHT was the only Acute Hospital in Cornwall. Under my Chairmanship it was successful in addressing many of its financial problems and I was instrumental in the development of a Research Strategy for the Trust.

I established the national Centre of Rehabilitation Engineering (CORE), funded by the former Disablement Services Authority to give the lead for professional education and training for those working in the UK in the field of assistive technology. Following its foundation, CoRE provided Foundation, Certificate and Diploma course in Rehabilitation Engineering and was the major contributor to the writing of the competence framework for rehab engineers working in the NHS. It was responsible for establishing and organising an annual conference on Recent Advances in Assistive Technology and Engineering (RAATE).

I was responsible for amalgamating the King's College Hospital Department of Medical Physics with the Medical School's Department of Medical Engineerring to form an integrated NHS/Academic department. The department is based in South London with outposted staff in three of the old NHS Thames Regions from Brighton to Luton. The department ran MScs in Medical Engineering & Physics (this course included the only postgraduate course on medical engineering design in the UK), Medical Ultrasound and Rehabilitation Engineering, as well as Certificate and Diploma courses in Rehabilitation Engineering. It also ran a highly successful and only, postgraduate Diploma in Amputee Management. It also was the Regional Training Centre for physical scientists and medical engineers for SEThames. It's integrated MScs and its Graduate Training Programme were judged Best in UK by the Department of Health's EVETSIN project.The Department also had a number of PhD students and surgeons working towards their MS degrees. Research specialisms included design of medical instrumentation, ultrasound imaging, applied haemodynamics and diagnosis and treatment of vascular disease, rehabilitation engineering, e-learning.

Under my leadership, the all of the department's NHS services achieved registration under ISO9001, included Radiation Protection, KCARE, Equipment Management, Equipment Design and Development, Computing, Rehabilitation Engineering (the largest and most broadly-based service activity in the NHS) and Physiological Measurement. The latter incorporated the first Vascular Laboratory to be established as a routine clinical diagnostic service in the UK. The Department was the Regional Training Centre for Clinical Scientists in Medical Engineering & Physics for the NHS SE Thames Region. Under my chairmanship the department also co-ordinated the development of graduate training programmes in medical physics across Europe for which it was awarded the Inaugural EU Leonardo da Vinci Award. Also see description under previous item.

During my Governorship I was wholly responsible for liaison between the staff and the Governing Board, representing each to the other. In addition to our regular Governors' meetings, I held regular meetings with the senior academic staff and any junior staff who sought guidance and support.

The Journal of Biomedical Engineering was established under my Presidency of the Biological Engineering Society as the Society's official Journal. Years later the Society amalgamated with the Institute of Physical Sciences in Medicine to become the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. Later, I was appointed Editor of the Institute's official Journal and changed the journal's name to Medical Engineering & Physics to better reflect its content and breadth of readership.

This journal is the official Journal of the International Federation of Medical & Biological Engineering (IFMBE). I was an elected member of Council of the IFMBE and Chairman of the Federation's Working Group on Clinical Engineering - which eventually became the IFMBE's first Division.